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Lahardane ..... Not bad for a team unmentioned as contenders for the Mayo Junior title at the start of the championship.

I'm not so sure about that.
From my read of it, Kilmaine were strong favourites (a team playing league football in Div 2 against some senior teams) with Lahardane, Balla and Ardagh all more or less equal second favourites (all playing in Div 1C against mostly intermediate clubs).

"The question is whether the Irish economy has become so distorted by its tax regime that nobody knows what is happening on the ground. ... 'We now have an economy so intertwined in international tax and accounting stunts that they bring with them a serious risk.' He said the next reclassification could see an equally dramatic drop in activity.  "
FT:

"Tax experts said it was likely that Apple was taking advantage of the increased generosity of Ireland's tax deductions for intellectual property such as patents and trademarks. They cited as evidence the sudden appearance of close to $270bn of intangible assets in Ireland's national accounts."

It really belongs in the WTF thread.

But if a company buys a big asset for use in their trade, to drive profits in their trade, do you not think they should get a tax deduction for it? Since the invention of corporation tax, companies have received capital allowances for capital expenditure.

This is no different, other than on a much bigger scale and it's for the new e-economy. Apple and others are buying their patents, trademarks etc from havens and bringing them to Ireland.

As usual, the utterly useless business journalists in this country are focusing on sensational headlines rather than real issues. The most substantive issue in the Budget was a new 80% cap on IP capital allowances. How many here can say they read an article explaining the reality of what this does? Or heard an opposition politician talking about it? None I think.

What this means is that companies who spend money buying IP, can only use capital allowances to offset a maximum of 80% of their profits. However, the massive mistake Pascal Donoghue made (that no journalist or opposition politician seemed to notice) was that this only applies to future IP purchases and not to IP already here. So there are companies with first mover advantage who have paid humungous amounts for IP that will pay no Irish tax for a long time. That's utter nonsense tax policy.

Ironically, Apple have been the biggest lobbyists to Donoghue in trying to get him to make the 80% cap apply to all IP, which hopefully he will do before the Finance Act passes (although I have my doubts as there are others lobbying the other way).

Maybe i am missing a point here but why would Apple campaign for the cap to be widened to all IP ?

To be officially announced next weekend or during the coming week.
Enda had to talk to his new Employers (AIB) to see if they'd let him off.
They will so he's going.
I presume Joe K is going through lads these days to see who can or can't go.

It would have been a poor show if the lads sponsoring the football championships and producing documentaries on the sport wouldn't let their own employee play for their country.

Why would you chose to focus on the negative and incredibly unlikely scenario ?

Anyway, well done Enda Smith

There are lots of different criteria for a hurricane. None of that matters. All that matters is that this is certainly going to be a massive wind event for large tracts of the country... possibly the biggest wind event since 1961

After the last week, it feels like the Dubs have the ammunition for a siege mentality for next year. Maybe that was the plan

An interesting post about a super role model and a dig at Goochs testimonial..... ruined though by a couple of comments, the motivation for which I'm not clear

Poor aul John Small
His left jaw needing an ice bag despite it being the right side of his face that Donie Vaughans arm slid up against (after initially making contact with the top of his right arm).

At no stage during Smalls tackle on Boyle or during Vaughans tackle on Small was the left side of his face in contact with the opponent.
The disappointing thing with this image was that the "physio" (or whatever his role was) only applied the ice bag to the face when McQuillan came back on the scene after talking to his linesmen.

Anyone picking Cuxton ahead of Clarke seems to be doing so on basis of his better kickouts. The style of kick doesn't matter though.... it's whether your team retain possession. I don't have overall stats on that but I don't it is so clear cut. People also seem to be forgiving Cuxtons poor first half in the possession stats

Can you really mention Tyrone on the same breath as the other 3 any more?

Only last year Tyrone lost a quarter final more than Mayo won it. They aren't at the level of the Tyrone All Ireland winning teams however come next summer i would expect them to be there or thereabouts against both Mayo,Kerry where one side is in transition and the other about to go into transition.

Surely surely you know realise that Mayo in semi-finals and finals versus earlier in the seasons are 2 completely different beasts. They plan to peak for semis and finals and have got it fairly consistently right.
There is simply no way on earth i would compare the Mayo performance against Tyrone last year with any of our performances v Dublin in past few years or v Kerry in 2014.

Yes I was amazed myself when I found out that was the rule!

Me too ..... but according to John Fogarty (Examiner gaelic games correspondent), the rule was applied in the minor match.
In any case, i don't recall the ref putting up his hand for advantage for the initial foul which makes the failure to give the penalty even more bizarre.

The rule causes immense frustration in club football. My (adopted) club were relegated. In the relegation playoff, we were trailing by 2 points with a few minutes of normal time to go and the opposition were playing all 15 players within 40m of their goal. A blatant foul on one of our lads on 20m attacking line but ref puts hand up for advantage.... our player manages to re-cycle the ball after the foul and we keep going all way back to 45 to get control of possession again. 5 secs elapse as we end up turning over the ball on 45m line. One of our lads fouls opponent out of pure frustration. Ref awards the free for that and then goes to book the for the first foul on the 20m line.

If the rule keeps is left as is, then players are going to have to be coached into fouling the ball (throw it) when they know they have advantage so that they get the free they want .... same as a scrum half or outhalf in rugby deliberately knocking on when he wants the penalty instead of advantage.

The simple answer is Mayo play in a Province where it's possible to win one game and find yourself in the last 12

Not in past 2 years

Re the penalty incident ..... here is the rule

"If, during the advantage period, another foul is committed against the team which received the original advantage, then a free kick/puck will be awarded for the "second" foul if it is considered more advantageous than the original"

No matter what way you slice and dice the incident, it should have been a penalty.

Yeah and Tony McEntee is with Mayo for the love of the game. Give me a break, they spend the most on Senior football preparations and they have and spend so much money they can afford to throw away expensive GPS units.

Anyway, Wolves don't lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.

Can you send me a link to the Dublin accounts that gives a break down in their spend ? .... its freely available for Mayo.
Yes, Mayo spent more in 2016 (presuming the unpublished Dubs accounts are believable) albeit ~€580K was on travel expenses. Dubs could only have spent a small fraction of that on travel money (but of course i can't check to confirm)...... and yee didn't have a junior team in an All-Ireland final, nor U-21's getting to and winning that final, nor hotel expenses for the many trips to Dublin, etc, etc

If it was a couple of lads that done this for a bit of crack so as to be able to share the image with a few friends on Facebook or wherever, then i would have no issue ... no matter how viral it went.

However, a commercial entity doing it to ultimately improve their bottom line is a step too far for me

What is natural talent ?!

Kids born up until the end of probably the 1950's didn't have access to the nurture that kids do today.
Kids born pre ~1990 didn't have the range of hobbies that all compliment one another in skill, agility, fitness, coordination, development, etc. that kids do today
Kids born pre probably ~2005 weren't exposed to the level of coaching, etc from GAA investment in that area than kids born before that .... (notwithstanding that some counties are more equal than others in terms of the money received per registered player)

And (strange one for last) kids born pre probably ~2000 didn't have parents who were clued into which hobbies were the ones to focus on if you wanted your kids to excel at football (or at least its something i've noticed in past couple of years with young lads doing dancing and gymnastics for a few years because of the agility, coordination, fitness etc that they get from them)

All these advantages i believe help create a higher level of what we call 'natural talent' than what the average kid born 20 years or more ago would have had. Of course genetics play a part but i am more of the belief of 90% phenotype and 10% genotype.


Now you have to counter all those benefits against the more sedentary lifestyle of most kids today. But there are plenty of kids who don't have that sedentary lifestyle and have different hobbies every night of the week that all compliment one another and will culminate in them being bloody good footballers ..... meaning i reckon in 10 years time we will be looking at matches saying the skill level has never been higher (albeit with Pat Spillane on the Sunday Game still claiming that his Kerry team were the greatest ever ..... having successful gotten his hands on and destroyed all copies of Kerry v Dublin in the '77 semi-final lest people would actually watch it and realise how sh*te football was back then )