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When was this decided Longball?

I'm thinking its been a while since a club have had a pitch closed for such a long time. Who were the last?

We got done 3 years in a row by landlords keeping our deposits, so last year we cancelled our last months rent and said to him he could keep the deposit for that month. Meanwhile he had emailed us saying that he wanted us out 2 weeks early to repaint the house. We said that was fine.
About a week later he said he was coming up to view the house and would let himself in as we were all at work. He then emails us at midday saying he has just viewed the house and the walls were a complete mess covered in alcohol stains and we owed him £800 to repaint them, even though he had already stated that he was going to paint them, they were no worse than when we moved in AND my housemate's woman was in the living room all morning getting ready for a job interview and said that he definitely didn't come to the house.
He then spent the next 3 or 4 months sending us solicitor letters saying he was taking us to the small claims court. One of the lads is a trainee solicitor and dragged the whole process out and now we haven't heard from him since before Christmas.

72 of us heading down together. The journey will be an event on its own.

heard the Enemy aren't playing

Where are they floating? Down the Boyne?

anything for a free ticket to something 

Lads, I was at the game and saw the incident.

The ref couldn't have prevented it.
The ball was out of play for a goal kick. As our keeper was getting ready for the kickout, our FB and their FF were straight out in front of him standing still and then out of the blue this coward levels our full back.

The ref was waiting for the kickout and the incident took place between him and the ball, so he would have had a good view of it and sent the player off.

Their manager was straight on the field shouting that our man took a dive and wasn't touched! Meanwhile he's lying on the ground with his face all over the place.

Some of you may argue that plenty of boxing goes on on the field and that it shouldn't go to the police. But this wasn't a case of a scuffle breaking out between a couple of players during play (which happens a lot, but is usually handbags without many serious punches being landed)

This is a case of a guy standing beside another, thinking about what hes going to do and then just levelling him without warning or a chance to protect himself. It's assault and needs to be dealt with accordingly.

I'm aware newtown are trying to spread a new version of this story, you may take my word for it that the one above is correct. Two other Drumragh men were hit off the ball on Sunday, one of those received a broken jaw.

Didn't know they have been working for him for 6 months. It would make sense then for both Kate & Yasmina to be charging business meals to Sugar's account. Frigg that 'inside info'

Hard to know then who'll win it. I think Kate would be the better choice but then he doesn't always make the best choice and he doesn't like her 'roboticness' plus he might prefer Yasmina as she has shown entrepreneurship by starting up her own business and making good profit on her catering task.

Surely though, his opinion will be based more on the 6 months they've worked for him and not much on the 10 weeks on the show, so we don't know how they've performed in that time.

Either way, it doesn't matter, as I'm gona win it next year

defo, whats the odds on Yasmina to win, this, shoe in imo

lads, I have a bit of inside info from the beeb.

Yasmina had some people out on a business lunch on tuesday and charged it to alan sugars account. The guy that owned the restaurant rang the bbc saying that this must mean that Yasmina is his new apprentice, and he was going to the papers.
The people at the bbc (my inside info) had a lot of persuading to do so that he wouldn't go to the papers.

We knew this before yesterdays shown when there were still 5 in it.

I think you should all go and bet your houses on her to win.

I won't though, because that would be silly.

there would be no shortage of club teams willing to enter

I think the best thing would be for non club teams to enter. This way you generate an interest from groups of lads that no longer (or never did) play football, and usually play indoor soccer once a week. Get groups like that entering their own teams and you might get some interested in going and joining a club when the season starts.

Different people within the GAA have been mentioning the idea of Social Football for a while now but there doesn't seem to have been any action taken.
The indoor version could work. Probably wont though. I think the rules would have to make it fast paced like the game bingobus has played to make it an attractive alternative to just playing indoor soccer.


I think the idea of some kind of social league, especially in urban areas, is a runner. i.e;
•   run by the county board, current Senior/Reserve players can't play.
•   Therefore it'll be full of over 35's and lads that fell by the wayside in their teens and now want to play a bit of ball again but can't/won't commit to training with the Seniors/Reserves.
•   Small leagues, played over 6 weeks in the middle of summer. No refixturing(sp) of games
•   Teams could be 15,13, 11 a side.
•   Clubs could enter as many teams as they like, so everyone gets a game

I think it would be a good way to keep older guys involved with their club, rather than them just disappearing from the scene for a few years after they stop playing.
It might also stop the over 40s from all turning up at training the week before the reserve championship thinking they'll give it one more go!

Sorry for kinda hijacking your thread

bingobus, to get a grant from the sportscouncil etc, you first need to have raised X% of what size of grant you're looking.

Not sure of the figures. But raising 200k yourselves as a Club, along with a good business plan put forward to the sports council, might be as good as raising £1million

(you probably have to raise much more than that for such a grant, but you get my point)

Loads of Clubs have had really ambitious projects over the last 10 years or so. I was at an Ulster GAA Club Development conference a couple of years ago and a guy from donaghmore was talking about their Development project which was going to include a community centre,gym, clubrooms, retail outlets etc which seemed really ambitious for a GAA club. He was showing us this image on his slideshow and i think most people thought it was just a clipart image until he pointed out that it was actually what they intended to build!Check their website http://www.donaghmoregfc.com/

My own club have also been involved in a very ambitious development project

At the start of the decade we played on a parish owned pitch with basic facilities. Since then the Club have purchased 16 acres of land in an ideal location just 3 miles out of town and started to develop facilities.

A massive amount of fundraising was involved. We ran a draw in 2001 to purchase the land and then a much more ambitious one in 2003 at £100 a ticket with the first prize a 3 bed detached house in Omagh. The draw was limited to 3000 tickets and all were sold.

At the time this was extremely ambitious. I don't think many other clubs had tried it at that stage, although many have copied the format since.
Considering we had a membership of 400 odd, we were relying on selling tickets to alot of outsiders. I think you'd have a lot of trouble running it at the moment.


http://www.drumraghgfc.net/2009/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=294

If any of the Drumragh/Clarkes posters are about, what was your reserve score to
night?

Called off very late in the day due to a waterlogged pitch

Where have you been hiding lately supersarsfields?

They made him captain of the Reserves.
He's been devoting much more of his time to studying the great motivational sports speeches of our time, looking for inspiration for his pre match talk with the boys, before making his way to the bench 

Lads,
How do you go about researching this kinda stuff?
The oul fella wanted to look into it a while back aswell, but when he told his only living older relative she told him not to bother. So he didn't.

I assume you have to go searching for birth certificates in libraries and public records offices etc but are there any good websites to help you do it from here? I've seen loads that you pay to sign up for, have any of you used them? The only free source I've found online is for the 1911 census but it only covers antrim, down, Dublin and kerry.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/
Have any of you ever researched yours, starting off in tyrone?

You won't be 'miles behind' going into final year so don't worry. Quite a few people don't do placement year (supersarsfields done one and failed it mysteriously!) Although obviously some of your classmates will have gained skills that will be useful in final year. You'll notice the main advantages of a good placement year with plenty of experience when you're finished and applying for jobs.

If you don't get a multimedia/web design related placement, try and get a placement in another IT area. It'll still look good on the CV.

If you end up getting a crap placement or working in asda for the year, there's one obvious thing for you to do; start designing websites for people. You'll earn a bit of cash and start putting together a portfolio to show off when you graduate.

Well, you reduce ticket prices? That'd be the easiest answer
If that particular fixture comes up, some people in the GAA will be just expecting Dublin to help fill Croker. But obviously not all of 'the dubs' who fill it for the football are interested in hurling.

If the GAA are serious about promoting hurling in Dublin, then they need to attract a sell out attendance for such a fixture.

I think all ticket prices have already been set for this year? Just the same as last year, I think.  So they couldn't really offer a reduced rate ticket price just for this game that isn't being offered for other fixtures. They already offer fairly good family tickets for games, maybe they could increase the number of family tickets available? For people that aren't involved with a club they should make it well know when they are available on ticketmaster.

What they really need is a good marketing team. When Tyrone played Dublin at the first game under lights at croker, there were loads of tv and newspaper ads which got everyone talking about it. There wasn't as much pr for the game this year and there was a slightly smaller turnout.

They need the main sponsors to help promote the games more. Get the Guinness hurling cubed games being played outside croker on more match days. Vodafone had some class billboards adverts for the dubs around the city last year, maybe they could put up more with some of the 'star' Dublin hurlers on them, just to increase interest

I wouldn't mind it too much provided they found some way of sorting out parking and transport, but that seems near impossible

The plans in the Irish News don't show the car parks, but the ones in Gaelic life show a carpark on the other side of the motorway with a bridge linking over to Casement.

I think the spot on the other side of the motorway has some existing GAA pitches on it? is this council land or a GAA club?

Have to say that the 'day out' in Clones is a much better experience, but maybe if this goes ahead they'll put more effort into making Casement more enjoyable, more bars, entertainment on the street, l hector leading a mexican wave etc