Messages

13 - 7

Cork will not lose this.

Scores are too difficult to come by for Mayo as per usual.

Cork seem to be playing in 3rd gear

Armagh travel away to Derry and Down away to Donegal. It is quite likely that both teams will lose first day out as neither of them are that fae ahead of the opposition not to mention on championship day away from home.

10 - 7 to Cork

The potential of this Cork team is limitless.

Paddy Kelly is a class act, Paul Kerrigan is a goal machine while Donnacha O'Connor is maturing into one of the best players in the country.

Michael Shiels is becoming a great full back ..  now if they counld only avoid Kerry :-)

The better team on the day did win however I do think that the two teams are a long distance off Sam contenders on that performance.

For Down - full back line was exposed yet again and unfortunately James Colgan is too limited of a footballer to be occupying no 6. Midfield never got going and in the half forward line Kearney was anonymous and wee Danny lost posession too many times by running into cul de sacs of Armagh defenders. Clarke impressed for me at 11 buy John at full forward was totally out of the game and McComiskey simply did not deliver enough from frees or play.

Armagh looked a bit hungrier for the win and much much tighter in their back 6. They won midfield and created an awful lot of room upfront by their running. Also their scoring ratio to shots i guess was very high with McDonnell extremely accurate.

As in previous years reaching the final of a league title a few weeks before a Championship outing may well prove as only a scouting exercise for their opponents and both teams might suffer in their first round games?!

now now boys  tut tut  get your mickies back in your pants

Goals win games

11 v 14 now

Cork in the ascendency

Stephenite - and that was exactly my point in the original post

To be fair to Mike - Kerry was the county arguably most brutalised in the Civil War. Even before that in the War of Independence a lot happened in the county and right back to the eve of the Easter 1916 weekend when three men including the now famous Con Keating (The same Con Keating of Con Keating Park St Marys Cahirsiveen) was drown at Ballykissane pier on their way to Valentia Island from Dublin to guide in Roger Casement to Kerry Shores.

Another notable northern involvement in the War of Independence was the Ballymacandy Ambush of RIC men. 6 or so  RIC men were shot dead including their leader McCaughey from County Down as their cycled along the road from Tralee to Killorglin.

I would also strongly recommend Martin Ferris's autobiography to anyone in Tyrone who doubts the interest of Kerry people in the North. This man is from one of the most picturesque parts of Ireland and spend a lot of it in prison and hunger strike and gave up an Inter county career for the wee six.

We have all got to move on together north man southman comrades all! But also crucially catholic, protestant and and everything else these days. We have a duty to our games to make them as inclusive as possible without losing the true essence of what they are and that is the promotion of all things Irish.

Just a pet hate of mine and I am curious as to whether I am an odd ball or whether some people share my views.

Every two bit county game and many club games  I attend now plays our National Anthem before the start of the game. Surely this should be reserved for finals only to "create" a special event feeling. We should be proud of our nation and identity but we devalue it through this type of excessive overplay.

Moreover if we really want to attract people from the other community and make our games open to all we need to view this from their point of view. I remember going to a cinema in Banbridge years ago and at the end of the show they played God Save the Queen. I felt at the time that this was totally out of place and gratuitous and left me somewhat resentful. 25 years on I see striking similarities with that experience and many "non-event" GAA games where playing Amhran na bhfiann seemed out of place.

Maybe as I get older I am just getting uncomfortable with naked nationalism and becoming more republican in its true sense of the word.

Anybody got any positive experiences from this weekend showing good Gate Receipt processes??

Agree with you, but how do you know systems are not already in place?

Because of the two examples I have set out above.

Tony you are being disproportionately defensive. The analogy with priests is very good. Volunteers dealing with cash at gates or wherever should consider are they being put in a compromising position i.e. without a system or and a second or even third person to validate the cash collection process. Also there should be a code of conduct laid down by the Central Committee to the county boards and in turn onto clubs highlighting best practice.

Lets be honest our organise has always been excellent at collecting and handling money so the degree of deficiency in this instance would tend to suggest that they do not want to tackle and address the matter. A bit like that other thorny topic of paying managers at club and county level.

All we are asking for here is a top down approach to good cash management systems so that punters like ourselves know when we pay in to games that our hard earned money is recorded properly and going to its intended home. This should be a code of conduct that is applied across all county and club games and people should be encouraged to report instances where this did not occur.