Topics

I'll kick it off with this thought-provoking exchange.

The proposition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z_O4ImvpCk

The rebuttal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drozvbGvJvU

Discuss.

We might as well start the discussion.

I think it's generally accepted among the supporters and even among us "faceless discussion board critics" that the Meath team is not playing with the effectiveness the individual skill levels of the players should deliver or with the spirit that we expect of Meath teams. I think this has been the case since the departure of Seán Boylan, except for a brief period under Coyle.

I'm not ready to accept that the spirit has died and cannot be recovered. I don't think there are any players in the panel that are not giving their best. Look at Joe Sheridan's obvious willingness to bust a gut in the cause; likewise Kenny, McAnarney, Reilly, etc. And I can't finger anyone for hiding or not trying. I just think their best efforts are not being properly directed and the right leadership is all that's required.

The current management hasn't the slightest clue about this, as far as can be seen. The very first requirement is absent – the players don't seem to be operating to any plan. When the fat is in the fire, it's panic stations, with everybody busting a gut but no co-ordinated effort. The carry-on when Kildare pulled ahead last night was as far removed from the Meath tradition as you could imagine. The memory of cold-blooded assassinations of Dublin, Louth, Westmeath etc., just as they thought they had the job done, was galling as we watched lads making stupid decisions and handing the initiative back to Kildare.

I don't see any sign of leadership, planning, strategy or even tactics from the current management. What is the three-year plan? What is the playing philosophy? We know neither of these exist. All we have to do is look at the eccentric selections and the pattern of play as fifteen lads play their own individual games. And why is our team not fit enough? There's no attempt to address any of this. All we get is spoofing.

For the sake of discussion, here are a few obvious candidates, to put Meath football back on the rails, all of whom have the right stuff in abundance and understand the soul of Meath football, though all have one question mark or another against their names.
O'Rourke – popular opinion says he won't do it as long as there's an O'Rourke on the panel. I think that's nonsense and that he'd respond to an appeal to be saviour of the county. That would have to come from a popular groundswell at club level, because I imagine the county board apparatchiks would rather see Radko Mladic in the job. They'd have a better chance of manipulating him.

McEntee – but would he have the time to commit? And see Radko Mladic above.

Harnan – but has he burned his bridges?

Coyle - yes, I'm serious. I thought he was heading in the right direction before the debacle of Limerick and, while I admire his honesty in taking responsibility and stepping down, I think in retrospect it was hasty and one disastrous performance is not enough to end a promising regime. We should also remember that it wasn't lack of heart that lost the game in Limerick – there was actually an eleven-point comeback in that game.

The quality of football Coyle's team was playing was the best in ages. His one blind spot, in my opinion, was a commitment to football skill that went as far as underplaying the importance of fitness and strength. (Remember his famous self-introduction to his Monaghan team – "this is a football – we'll be doing all our training with one of these".) His team wasn't fit enough or big enough and got pushed around. If Coyle's football coaching could be bolstered by a strong fitness coach, I think we'd have the best management team available. Maybe even with Seán Boylan as a "director of football" type figure? It won't happen, of course.

I have a toilet that won't flush. I replaced a broken flush siphon and now the bowl fills up and then drains out too slowly to flush anything away. It's a fairly complicated problem that I think has to do with the flush mechanism - not a blockage or anything. If anyone thinks they can help, I'll describe it in detail. I asked a plumber about it and he hadn't a clue, at which point I realised I should have come to the gaaboard first.

Amusing responses welcome, as long as they're funny.

Come on lads.

Why do women cover their faces when they laugh?

OK – I’m still struggling with my decision. I do not want my vote to be taken as a  mandate for the socialisation of the bank debts. This is the No. 1 issue for me. Since four of the main parties intend to proceed with this policy (albeit with a greater or lesser amount of proposed modification) I don’t see how I can vote for them.

I can’t support the policies of the only party (SF) that opposes this policy.

I can’t see (so far) anything to recommend a vote for any of the independents standing in my constituency.

What do I do?

-         Vote for the party with the least objectionable bank debt bailout policy
-         Vote for SF and swallow their other policies
-         Vote for an independent (they are mostly covering just local issues)
-         Spoil my vote by writing a protest on it about the lack of representation of the 90% view on the most important issue in the election
-         Don’t vote at all.

OK – I was slagging that young wan from Tyrone, but anyway ...

I was driving down the M8 on Sunday afternoon and I passed a car. I was slightly over the speed limit when I passed him and then slowed to my cruising speed again – just on the limit. I looked in my mirror and saw two (just two) flashes of a couple of blue lights between his headlights. He then pulled out and passed me and as he went past he pointed to his left. He wasn't in uniform.

I expected two things.
- 1. I was told by someone who was stopped by an unmarked car that that they passed him and showed a red sign in the rear window – "Garda – please stop" or something.
- 2. I expected him to indicate left and pull in, at which stage I would have pulled in behind him.

When neither of these things happened I did nothing. He drove on and I drove on behind him.  I don't know what's happening at this stage. Is he expecting me to pull in and then he will follow suit in front of me? We drove for maybe five miles like this, with him one or two cars ahead of me. I then pulled off at the Cashel exit (having passed at least one exit before), giving plenty of warning by indicating well in advance so that he could pull off too, if he wanted to. He didn't.

So what's the story? Am I supposed to stop for a car that just flashes a blue light behind me (which I would have missed if I hadn't been watching my mirror)? This fella had no uniform or any sign that he was a garda. Are they going to turn up at the house and accuse me of failing to stop for a garda? My position is that I'm not stopping for anyone (especially on the motorway, where it's illegal to stop except in an emergency) unless I'm sure it's a genuine garda. Anyone know the rules?

Documentary on hurling  in the US military (interest generated by soldiers seeing hurling on TV while passing trough Shannon) streaming live starting now (12:30) on http://www.pentagonchannel.mil/

Since we're on the subject.

A step up in class this time - some Mensa puzzles.

1. What number should replace the question mark?
   
2. A boy walks south for 3 miles 
Then east for 3 miles
Then north for 2 miles
Then west for 1 mile
Then north for 1 mile 
In which direction and for how far should he walk to return to his starting point? 

3. What letter should appear next in this sequence? 
Z      W      R      K      ? 

4. On each row place a three letter word that can be attached to the end of the word to the left and to the beginning of the word to the right to give a longer word in each case. When completed, the initial letters of the three letter words will give another word reading downwards. What is it? 
HEAT          _ _ _          RING
RUM            _ _ _          SELVES
SET             _ _ _          TOTAL
FOR            _ _ _          MANIA
UNDER      _ _ _           MAN 

5. What number should replace the question mark? 
532 - - - 6
197 - - - 3
945 - - - 8
231- - - 4
768 - - - ?

6. The clock was correct at midnight. From that moment it began to lose four minutes per hour. The clock stopped one and a half hours ago showing the time at 18:40. What is the correct time now?  (The clock runs for less than 24 hours.)

7. Assume you are using a basic calculator and press the numbers in the order shown, replacing each question mark with a mathematical sign. Plus, minus, multiply and divide can each be used once only.  What is the lowest number you can possibly score?
3   ?  5  ?  4  ?  8  ?  9  =

8. Add a different letter to each of the following words (anywhere in the word). The result will be four words that are associated with each other. What are they?
PAR           LIE           ATE           RANGE

9. Car A and car B set off from the same point to travel the same journey. Car A has a start of four minutes before car B sets off. If car A travels at 55kph and car B travels at 60kph, how many kilometres will be travelled when the cars are level?

10. Replace the blanks in the following sentence with two nine letter words. The same nine letters must be used for both words.
The marquee provided the perfect place to  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _  and proved to be easily _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .

A quick puzzle

To start it off:

1 Seven seas

Let's see if we can complete this.

We'll number them left to right and top to bottom, so the first row is 1 to 5, second row 6 to 10, etc.

I've started it off with:

2 Village People
3 Forrest Gump

(As in Private Eye)

I don't understand why so many Mayo posters are adamant that Tommy Lyons shouldn't be selected as their new manager.

Y. Knott.

Well?

Anybody?

I just wanted to start a tread that wasn't about the world cup. Just for novelty value, like.

I thought we had rules about thread proliferation on a single subject, but we have six world cup threads so far. The main one has 38 pages and the fucken thing hasn't even started yet.

We have sweepstakes and lotteries. Next it'll be predict the colour of Wayne Rooney's vomit and where will Drogba lie down first. When did we ever have a sweepstake on the All-Ireland Championship on this GAA discussion board?

So I'm just providing this thread as a small gesture to offer some respite from the next four weeks (four weeks - Oh God!) of diving and whinging and scorer-kissing and cringe-making goal "celebrations" (F**K!) and effeminate hairdos and grimacing in pain when someone passes within two yards and the general ponciness overload that's coming our way, whether we like it or not.

So, if it's all getting too much for you, feel free to drop in here and get away from it all. Post about anything you like. Even the world cup, as long as it's negative, sceptical or hostile. All three would be better. Just for balance.

There seems to be some confusion over the number of muslim readers/posters on the GAA board. This is an attempt to gather definitive data.

Just participating in the competition for pointless, vacuous, moronic, who-could-possibly-give-a-shit? topic of the day.

It's been a good while since we had a comment about the proliferation of soccer threads on the gaabooard. Now that GNevin seems no longer to be with us, I just realised it was way past the time take another swing out of it.

At present on the first page of the Non-GAA Discussion section we have eight separate soccer threads (or what I take to be soccer threads from their titles):

- The Offical Glasgow Celtic thread – 470 pages
- The Official Thread of Chelsea FC- FA Cup Winners 2009 – 163 pages
- Official Gooners Thread – 346 pages
- Man Utd Thread:Bring On The Scousers 1351 pages. (yes – 1351 – that's not a typo)
- Next Celtic Manager ? - 2 pages (but it's only a few hours old – no doubt it will be in double figures before coffee time)
- The Official Mick McCarthy/Wolves Appreciation Thread – 6 pages (even Mick McCarthy doesn't have six pages worth of stuff to say about Mick McCarthy)
- The Official (no piss-taking) THFC thread – 74 pages
- la liga thread – 11 pages

That's eight out of twenty threads that are about soccer. The first four threads above each have more pages than all but one of all the GAA threads on the board (latest scores). That's a total of over 2,400 pages of soccer on the front page. All other subjects combined comprise 187 pages. One other sport is mentioned on the front page – golf gets 2 pages.

Is it really the case that of all the subjects in the universe available for consideration, discussion and debate, from the wonders of the cosmos to freestyle onion peeling, more than 90% of the attention of gaaboard members is devoted to soccer? More strangely, who can explain the phenomenon of a discussion board specifically dedicated to a particular sport that devotes most of its discussion time to a completely different sport?

I'm not complaining (this time) – I know there's no point, even though I find it irritating to have to wade through header after header on the one boring subject to find a post heading that might interest me (and infuriating to waste 5 seconds of my life opening a soccer thread disguised by its header as something interesting). I'm just puzzled. Can anyone help?

Joe Murphy in Passage collects for the rowing club lotto.