Humphries, Walsh and McIlvanney are top of the tree in my book.....
Heaney is top class in the parochial environment he operates in... ;)
Liam Hayes has made a fool of himself in the past but I dont think he's that stupid....theres obviously a method in his madness..
Loads of others deserve a mention but I couldnt be arsed at this time of the night TBH....gimme your views...
I really enjoy Paul Kimmage's interviews, I know he was a pro cyclist for a while and I think the fact he was a pro athlete definitely gives him an insight and advantage over others in his field.
McIlvanney is a legend, his books are first rate.
Brian Glanville. Writes for the Guardian and World Soccer magazine.
McIlvaney is past his best now and Granville is even further along that road.
Kimmage is very good - I'm not sure that its his insight that makes him as good as he is Doogie, rather pro sports people feel more comfortable in his presence because he is 'one of them'. Kimmage is also meant to be great at the silence treatment - if you only give a glip response he'll just stare you out of it, waiting for you to give him something noteworthy, its meant to be a very effective method!
Humphries and Duggan are top class too while Henry Winter and James Lawton would be my favourite soccer journalists.
Martin Samuel
No shock that the above are mostly Times/Sunday Times journalists. I rate all those mentioned as well as Stephen Jones for rugby. I like any journalist that has seen through the David Beckham pr machine and calls a spade a spade!
There is some fella at The Mirror I think is a one man Beckham pr man. Can't remember his name.
Oliver Holt is the chap i think Tony
QuoteI rate all those mentioned as well as Stephen Jones for rugby
Are you serious? That guy is a buffon and widely recognised as the worst rugby jounalist on the planet.
Quote from: Dinny Breen on February 14, 2009, 10:48:28 AM
QuoteI rate all those mentioned as well as Stephen Jones for rugby
Are you serious? That guy is a buffon and widely recognised as the worst rugby jounalist on the planet.
On the planet? Your survey must have been wide ranging. ;) Having said that I only read him when he is interviewing someone rather than his comment so you could be right.
Quote from: Dinny Breen on February 14, 2009, 10:48:28 AM
QuoteI rate all those mentioned as well as Stephen Jones for rugby
Are you serious? That guy is a buffon and widely recognised as the worst rugby jounalist on the planet.
I have no interest in Rugby so cant really comment,but how does he remain employed with a paper that has the standing of the Times? I believe he has been accused of having an anti-Munster slant,perhaps that has something to do with it.
QuoteOn the planet? Your survey must have been wide ranging.
Nope just check out any of the forums on Planet Rugby, Gwald, Munsterfans etc...Gerry Thornley is the best rugby Journalist bar none in Ireland and from across the sea I like Stuart Barnes, Eddie Butler and Brian Moore.
Quote from: Minder on February 14, 2009, 10:47:53 AM
Oliver Holt is the chap i think Tony
Holt is one of the better redtop writers. Not afraid to make a stance on something and usually back its up with good rationale. I like his writing.
I like one of the new fellas who writes for the Irish News, can' think of his name
Niall something
I think its Niall McCoy Our Nail.
I'm a keen follower of him myself. He writes some cracking stuff. He puts the journey back into journalism.
I like Oliver Holt too. He is not afraid to go against the grain on something. Do you know who Holt's mummy is?
I also like your fella Gabrielle Marcoti when he is on the wireless. Sounds like he knows his stuff.
Quote from: doire na raithe on February 14, 2009, 01:01:19 PM
I think its Niall McCoy Our Nail.
I'm a keen follower of him myself. He writes some cracking stuff. He puts the journey back into journalism.
Thats the one.
He puts the RIDE in wrideing.
He puts the new back in Irish News
Quote from: Our Nail Loney on February 14, 2009, 03:15:12 PM
Quote from: doire na raithe on February 14, 2009, 01:01:19 PM
I think its Niall McCoy Our Nail.
I'm a keen follower of him myself. He writes some cracking stuff. He puts the journey back into journalism.
Thats the one.
He puts the RIDE in wrideing.
My view is that his work ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous. On a good day, Tom Humpheries wouldn't lace his boots yet occasionally he verges on illiteracy.
There's an American fella in the Irish Times who has a weekly column (Geroge Kimball maybe?). Useta think it was very good.
Quote from: Norf Tyrone on February 14, 2009, 01:43:35 PM
I like Oliver Holt too. He is not afraid to go against the grain on something. Do you know who Holt's mummy is?
I also like your fella Gabrielle Marcoti when he is on the wireless. Sounds like he knows his stuff.
Emily Bishop!
Quote from: RedandGreenSniper on February 14, 2009, 04:33:03 PM
Quote from: Norf Tyrone on February 14, 2009, 01:43:35 PM
I like Oliver Holt too. He is not afraid to go against the grain on something. Do you know who Holt's mummy is?
I also like your fella Gabrielle Marcoti when he is on the wireless. Sounds like he knows his stuff.
Emily Bishop!
That's her.
Quote from: 5 Sams on February 14, 2009, 12:30:57 AM
Humphries, Walsh and McIlvanney are top of the tree in my book.....
Humphries dirtied his bib when he threw his lot in with Donal Óg and co., and swallowed their propaganda whole. All so that he might get the privilege of ghosting his or Sean Óg's autobiography in return.
spot on . I'm from his club and I wouldn't let Tom away with that.
Quote from: Owenmoresider on February 14, 2009, 08:53:20 PM
Quote from: 5 Sams on February 14, 2009, 12:30:57 AM
Humphries, Walsh and McIlvanney are top of the tree in my book.....
Humphries dirtied his bib when he threw his lot in with Donal Óg and co., and swallowed their propaganda whole. All so that he might get the privilege of ghosting his or Sean Óg's autobiography in return.
Can we take it Owenmore that you're supporting the Cork co board/GMacC/FM side of the idiocy by the Lee?? ::)
Quote from: Rossfan on February 14, 2009, 09:14:58 PM
Quote from: Owenmoresider on February 14, 2009, 08:53:20 PM
Quote from: 5 Sams on February 14, 2009, 12:30:57 AM
Humphries, Walsh and McIlvanney are top of the tree in my book.....
Humphries dirtied his bib when he threw his lot in with Donal Óg and co., and swallowed their propaganda whole. All so that he might get the privilege of ghosting his or Sean Óg's autobiography in return.
Can we take it Owenmore that you're supporting the Cork co board/GMacC/FM side of the idiocy by the Lee?? ::)
Indeed. FM and co. might do damage to Cork GAA with their action or inaction, but Donal Óg and his crew could do wider damage if they got their way. But sure you'll ignore all that, sure the GPA are great blah blah, hasn't stopped you before.
Quote from: Owenmoresider on February 14, 2009, 09:23:58 PM
Indeed. FM and co. might do damage to Cork GAA with their action or inaction, but Donal Óg and his crew could do wider damage if they got their way. But sure you'll ignore all that, sure the GPA are great blah blah, hasn't stopped you before.
Well if all the Corkies want to damage their own GAA sure let them at it.......and worry about our own Counties.
I'm not too sure what you're second sentence is supposed to mean unless you're one of these "offeeshuls" who think that the GAA is a great organisation and would be much better if there were none of them pesky players in it ???
I remember when Beckham went to spread the gospel of soccer to the yanks Holt did a particularly fawning article about how if anyone could convert the yanks to soccer it was him. Did he think all the readers came down the Bann in a bubble? Everyone knew he was going for the green,and fair fucks to him but dont dress it up as something else. That is the problem with a lot of players and managers, they have certain journalists in their back pocket.
still no mention of Matt Fitzpatrick!!!
No matter about Humphries and his allegiance to the two ógs in Cork....anyone remember this little gem of a piece...I had never read it until I found it on another website yesterday.....
TOM HUMPHRIES ONE FROM THE ARCHIVE/JANUARY 30TH, 2001: RUGBY PEOPLE.
Can't live with them. Can't shoot them. Mainly can't live with them. Can't afford to live with them. Haven't the bloodlines to live with them. Haven't the patience to live with them. Haven't the language skills to live with them. Haven't the desire even. Rugby people have always been college scarves and jutting jaws and silly songs I don't know the words of.
C-A-N-N-O-T live with them.
Now, a quick word before we start. Every time I write one of my patented, bitter and twisted chip-on-the-shoulder social-cripple pieces about the rugby world, the same smug epistles hit the desk all the way from D4.
They tell me (surprise!) that I have a chip on my shoulder about rugby.
"You're like a little boy with his nose pressed up against the window – come on in and have a pinty, for croying out loud."
I know. I have a chip. Actually I like having a chip on my shoulder about rugby. It is my inalienable right. I will not have a pinty.
Thonks. I am happy as I am.
I don't like rugby and I work for The Irish Times. It's like being a day trader and working for Pravda.
Listen to this: I have tried. I have reached out to rugby. I have gone forth in a spirit of understanding and fellowship and attempted to break down the cultural barriers between rugby and myself.
For my troubles, I've had nothing but heartache and sorrow.
Let me tell you something I've never told anyone before. Once – and I am disappearing into a witness protection programme after the next full stop – I played half a season of under-19 rugby with Suttonians.
Next time, I'd choose to do my time in jail, as my co-accused did.
Despite being a Gaelic player, and therefore able to do some things most rugby people cannot do – ie, catch a ball, kick a ball, run, etc – I was press-ganged into being a second-row forward. This is like choosing to do a heavy lifting job in your spare time.
For a few months, I spent my time with my shoulder pushing the buttocks of other men and my arm reached up between their legs. Even after a lifetime in the Christian Brothers, I wasn't prepared for that.
My ears were always red and sore and my shoulders ached. Sometimes, to take my mind off all that, the opposing hooker would kindly give me a kick in the face.
That's how rugby people run the game and it's how they run the world.
I thrived only in lineouts, those strange masonic rituals wherein everybody uniformly mistimes their jump for some reason I couldn't initially understand. Clarification wasn't long in coming.
After two clean catches, the person opposing you in the lineout would just reach across and pull your hair. Beats gravity every time.
Hair-pulling wasn't a very manly thing to do, but neither was weeping: "Ref! Ref! He's pulling my hair." I learned to mistime my jump like everyone else.
For a while, I tried to bring several different coloured pairs of shorts to games in the hope that having the same coloured shorts as the opposition might save my testicles from being squeezed and twisted as we lay in panting heaps somewhere on top of the ball.
The biting and hair-pulling I could take. Ball-handling was a no-no – even from teams we played regularly. (Note: In the GAA testicles don't actually exist – except as a metaphor for guts. If a sliotar should whicker a tout vitesse into your testicular area, causing the 29 other players on the field to wince and you to double over squealing like a stuck pig, somebody will run on to the field, pour some water down your neck, slap your buttock and say: "C'mon son you'll be grand in a minute." This at a time when you need a general anaesthetic.)
Anyway it all finished between Suttonians and me one weekend when we played in a triangular tournament alongside the giants of the southside, Lansdowne and Blackrock.
Now most of the team I played with were actually quite good at rugby and had won the Harry Gale Cup (no less) the previous year. This didn't save us from being treated like bumpkins on our venture across the river.
It started with our kits, which were the same colours as Eason's bags, and it went on all afternoon, no matter who we played.
As luck would have it, on this Saturday morning we endured the s*ing of the Lansdowne chaps and then beat them on the back pitch – in Lansdowne. This rightly fouled up the tournament.
The plan had been that we would lose to Lansdowne in the morning and then obligingly lose to Blackrock in the afternoon, ensuring a Lansdowne versus Blackrock play-off in Stradbrook the next day. Now, we yoiks would be going to Stradbrook.
The story has a sad end. We met at noon the next day under the clock at Clerys.
Maybe two of us weren't hungover. The others were pukey or giggly or both.
The thought of perhaps beating Blackrock hadn't even kept them in for Saturday night.
Why would it? They didn't hate Blackrock the way normal people do. They admired them. So we got pushed around Stradbrook for the afternoon and were beaten by a margin in the region of 60 points.
In the secondrow it felt as if we were going to have our scrawny necks snapped like royal pheasants.
For this, I had given up on a Junior B football match with St Vincents? I was deeply ashamed. I never went back. Never told anybody except my spiritual advisor. He quit instantly.
I gave rugby one more chance. Arriving in UCD and not knowing a soul, I put my name down when some jut-jawed, scarf-wearing, acne-free, pinty-type, lady-killing bastard announced that there was to be a class rugby league "to break the old ice, loike".
I too would be an icebreaker! I filled out one of the little forms he gave out. I waited. The teams sheets went up on the lecture theatre wall. I skipped across like a happy little puppy. No T J Humphries listed. My eyes welled up. My heart welled down.
I sought out the jut-jawed, scarf-wearing, acne-free, gout-ridden, Dublin 4, bestiality-is-best-boys, pinty-type, lady-killing bastard and explained my position. Shome mishtake, shurley, I said.
His brow furrowed. "What's your name?" he asked. "Tom Humphries," I replied frankly. "Where'd you go to school?" he asked. "Fairview," I said. "Where's that?" he asked. (I should point out that his geographical ignorance was no worse than mine. I got off the bus at RTÉ on my first day in UCD.) "Where the park is," I said helpfully. The park was in the news regularly then for gay-bashing incidents. "Well that's it," he said breezily.
"The teams have all the 'Rock guys together, the 'Nure guys with the Belvo' boys, 'Zaga in with Clongowes, Mero with 'Knock and and so on. Roight? So sorry, but you lose out Humpho."
"Oh," I said. I'd scarcely understood a word, but realised I had come within an ace of being saddled with a dumb rugger nickname all my life.
I went forth and never sinned against my class or my people again.
There were other sad days in rugby's spiteful jihad against me.
I lied about rugby to get into sports journalism, pretended I loved it, but soon got found out. I misidentified Brendan Foley as Moss Keane at a charity game of old farts and didn't work again for three months.
I described King's Hospital, who haven't once won a small in-bred provincial competition like the Leinster Senior Cup, as the "whipping boys" of the event and the switchboards were jammed for a week by people who wanted to twist my testicles and pull my hair.
I was invited to a pre-match dinner for a fixture I was covering involving Lansdowne, but when I turned up and they realised I wasn't quite what they'd been expecting, I was banished to a broom cupboard and given a hot beef roll.
I know these stories may be very upsetting for some sensitive readers, and perhaps there should have been an appropriate warning at the top of the piece, but I can only hope that any distress caused will serve as a warning to others.
There has been enough hurt already. Stay away from rugby. It is a plague, sent to us – like the potato famine – to undermine the fabric of our society.
The depression-era justification for allowing rugby to prosper (ie, it's the only way most of these oafs will ever get jobs) is no longer sustainable.
The sport should be banned and driven underground.
Note: In the GAA testicles don't actually exist – except as a metaphor for guts.
They dont if Mc Menamin gets his pincers on them
Humphries has some real gems alright. My two favourites are Heaney ( he hates Tyrone no matter what, like me;)) and Kieran Shannon. Both write personal and informative pieces that can at times make you laugh and at times make you want to find them an punch their lights out.
Anyonenot convinced of Heaney should buy the Irish News next Wed, Thur and Fri as they are bringing out 3 volumes of books "The Best of Against the Breeze". Guaranteed to be some absolute crackers in there!
Quote from: screenexile on February 20, 2009, 02:13:32 PM
Humphries has some real gems alright. My two favourites are Heaney ( he hates Tyrone no matter what, like me;)) and Kieran Shannon. Both write personal and informative pieces that can at times make you laugh and at times make you want to find them an punch their lights out.
Anyonenot convinced of Heaney should buy the Irish News next Wed, Thur and Fri as they are bringing out 3 volumes of books "The Best of Against the Breeze". Guaranteed to be some absolute crackers in there!
Fair play to the Irish News for doing this.....they could have made a pretty penny if they had have published these booklets and sold them off at a fiver a pop.
Well they had to justify that 10p price hike some way... robbing baxtards :D :D
Quote from: screenexile on February 20, 2009, 02:13:32 PM
Humphries has some real gems alright. My two favourites are Heaney ( he hates Tyrone no matter what, like me;)) and Kieran Shannon. Both write personal and informative pieces that can at times make you laugh and at times make you want to find them an punch their lights out.
Anyonenot convinced of Heaney should buy the Irish News next Wed, Thur and Fri as they are bringing out 3 volumes of books "The Best of Against the Breeze". Guaranteed to be some absolute crackers in there!
I dunno, I read Heaney regularly and I haven't witnessed this 'hatred' for Tyrone is his writing ... Sure Brolly's supposed to hate us but he has been fulsome in his praise since 2005. Ack, sure, jealousy is a terrible thing all right
heard a lot of stories about a certain female GAA journalist and how she'd get over friendly with some of the players dont wanta say too much the MODS are watchin me ;) :)