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[There's plenty of the Derry boys already with Celtic crosses...]

we could always get the boys to show the bradleys et al what a celtic cross looks like:-)

There's plenty of the Derry boys already with Celtic crosses...

[/b]where did they buy/steal them, was it the Ballintyrone boys sneeking arounf duffs corner to raid the ardbo and Moortown treasure chests?

Off the top of my head....

Enda Muldoon - All-Ireland Club, All-Ireland Under-21
Seán Marty Lockhart - All-Ireland Under-21
Kevin McGuckin - All-Ireland Club
Niall McCusker - All-Ireland Club
James Conway - All-Ireland Club
Gerard O'Kane - All-Ireland Minor
Barry McGoldrick- All-Ireland Minor
Patsy Bradley - All-Ireland Minor
Joe Keenan - All-Ireland Minor
Paul Young - All-Ireland Minor
Mark Lynch - All-Ireland Minor

90% sure a Sigerson medal is a celtic cross as well in which case you could add that for Gerard O'Kane, Mark Lynch, Fergal Doherty??, Paddy Bradley, Ryan Dillon, Joe Keenan?, Danny Mulholland?.

Plus the manager has All-Ireland Senior county and All-Ireland Minor.

we could always get the boys to show the bradleys et al what a celtic cross looks like:-)

There's plenty of the Derry boys already with Celtic crosses...

Mullan should be banned for that knee, what can be debated is the length of his ban and as said there is precedance for this type of incident already.

I agree he def should be banned. And his ban should be the same lenght as a man who did the exact same thing a couple of months ago!

[we should just accept Mullan's although I wouldn't be surprised if we did appeal it and I would be disappointed if we did as I think in a case like his where there is no ambiguity he should just take his medicine.]

I can see them appealing Fergal's ban. To be honest did he really do anything to warrant it? A still photo that 'appears' to show him eye gouging is not sufficient proof and unless it can be established that there is intent there (Like Quinlan against Leinster) then the ban shouldn't stick. I think we should just accept Mullan's although I wouldn't be surprised if we did appeal it and I would be disappointed if we did as I think in a case like his where there is no ambiguity he should just take his medicine.


Again I would like to reiterate that had we a competent match official who was capable of applying the rules properly and using common sense there would be no reason for any of this!

But sure Tommy McGuigan only got four weeks for the exact same thing! Where is the consistency there?

I'm right in thinking that these sanctions only affect county football and not club, aren't I?

effects both if more than 4 weeks i think.

Mullan should got 8 months

You're  some craic!

Why didnt Mullan get the same suspension as Tommy McGuigan? 

Doc and Mullan hit with two month bans after last week by CCCC.
Should be a long appeals/will he/won't he play affair.

link?

[Chuck]

Poor form that its not in your DVD collection already D4S, you can get for under a tenner, quality movie. Just to add a little more in the latest EMPIRE it interviews all the original cast, great read.

You'll never recoginse Chuck ...

Chunk..are u even a fan at all sligoian?? 

Typo , just like you cant even spell my name . Happens the best of us.

Aye, but i was being ironic. 

[Chuck]

Poor form that its not in your DVD collection already D4S, you can get for under a tenner, quality movie. Just to add a little more in the latest EMPIRE it interviews all the original cast, great read.

You'll never recoginse Chuck ...

Chunk..are u even a fan at all sligoian?? 

[Might]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Football_All-Irelands

Might get something there if you go through year by year.

Are you self employed, Doire Abu?

I wish!

Is Jonathon Curran in the tyrone panel or not?

Interview Brian and Tommy McGuigan

Brothers who know both sides of the glory game

Brian and Tommy McGuigan have never started an Ulster first-round match together but, as they tell Kieran Shannon, they've overcome everything from injury to unemployment to be ready for another go

IN the McGuigan family, Frank Senior is the resident smiling sceptic. He doesn't get all the fuss about these games with Armagh, either the one 25 years ago when he scored 11 points from play in the Ulster final ("It's just a thing that happened, history has no bearing on my life"), or the one in Clones in three weeks' time. "Sure does it matter? It's not a championship match! The Ulster championship is not there anymore!"

Brian and Tommy McGuigan hear that and smile at that but they don't nod because they don't agree. Tommy remembers Tyrone's first round last year. He came on in the replay, pointed a pile of frees only for a Benny Coulter goal to swing the game and walking off the field that night Tommy's two hands were planted on his head. When Brian Cody spoke to the Tyrone panel last summer, the part that really resonated with Tommy was the need to have a fear and hatred of losing. The one thing all sportspeople had in common, Cody said, was that they had all lost but not enough of them drew on that experience.

Cody told them to remember Newry, store how it felt in the pit of their stomach and then briefly resurrect it before a big game. Tommy McGuigan did. It worked and the key to it all was that it wouldn't have been such a powerful memory or emotion if the Down game hadn't been such a big deal to Tyrone.

That's why he can't wait for Armagh. It is championship and it's how Cody would view it too. "I've missed enough football through the years so I want to win everything I can while I can. To be honest, I'd hate seeing anyone else win it. If I see Derry or Armagh lift another All Ireland it would kill me. It would kill me if Armagh beat us in Clones. We never got to play in Clones last year and I've never played in an Ulster senior final."

More than that, Tommy remembers two years ago. If ever he needs to remember why every game is so precious the memory of that time is even more powerful than Newry.

This weekend two years ago the Tyrone panel headed off to a training camp ahead of their opening match against Fermanagh. Tommy went. Brian didn't. It was exactly a year on since he'd broken his leg and in his own mind he needed a game more than a talking shop away with Mickey and the boys so he togged out for the Ardboe reserves in Aghyaran instead.

That Saturday afternoon went well for Tommy. In an in-house game Harte had him on the team likely to start the next day. But just as they came back inside Tommy got a call from his girlfriend Diane. Brian was badly hurt, worse than before. Tommy cursed the heavens. Jesus Christ, what had Brian McGuigan ever done to offend you?

The same thought dashed into Frank McGuigan's mind when he saw his son running towards him and the dressing room with his hand up to his eye, screeching "I can't see nawthin!" Frank had just arrived and missed it. Brian had just kicked a ball and as he followed its flight, out of the corner of his eye an opponent came charging, catching him with an elbow. That's when everything went black. His eye, as his surgeon Dr Sharkey would later tell him, had effectively been "squashed".

So imagine being a McGuigan that week. Imagine being Brian, imagine being Tommy. All your life you've wanted to play senior for Tyrone, and at 24, you're finally about to make your championship debut. You should be thanking God. Instead you're cursing him. You're heading out to training and your brother can't even look up to say goodbye, might never be able to see you again. Mickey Harte picks you at centre-forward and hands you the number 11 jersey. Brian's jersey. You fill it with pride, scoring three points off All Star Barry Owens in a Man-of-the-Match performance, because you yourself are filled with anger.

"It was sheer anger and adrenaline that took me through that game. I was definitely angry with the boy who took him out and I suppose angry with God as well. 'How can this happen again?' I just couldn't understand it. That day I wanted to do well for Brian."

That was Tommy's last start that year. A few weeks later he broke a bone in his hand and was told he'd be out for six weeks. "That was just a knife through the heart. Because all Tyrone players know, once you get out of the team, it's wild hard to get back in. I came on with 15 minutes to go against Meath but at that stage we were beat. Another year gone."

For all his own frustrations that summer though, it was nothing to Brian's. While Tommy's hand was in cast, Brian had to keep his eyes down for three weeks. When friends would visit, he couldn't even look up; he literally had to keep the head down. When he had to eat, go to the toilet, he had to keep the head down. To watch TV, his family had to get a flat-screen TV positioned on the ground so that he could peer through the face-hole of the physio table and bed. If he lifted his head at all, the surgeon had told him, he could lose his sight for good.

"Jesus, a lot of thoughts go through your head, looking down at that yon floor," says Brian. "'How did this happen? Is this happening? Is this just a nightmare? Will you be able to see properly again?' You're not even thinking of playing football again."

Brian McGuigan has been through nine different operations these past three years but one was particularly frightening. He was at home that summer when a black shadow flashed across his vision. What he was seeing was the retina coming off at the top of his eye. His fiancée Jennifer drove him to Belfast where he was immediately operated on under a local anaesthetic. He was wide awake for the whole half-hour operation.

"I could see Dr Sharkey going right through my eye with all his knives and stuff, like something was piercing the jelly. I was lying there and my hands were shaking."

After six weeks without a word from his opponents McGuigan called the player himself. The lack of remorse and plausible explanation was stunning and galling. At first it was that he hadn't touched McGuigan. Then it was that McGuigan had been caught by these new gloves he'd got. McGuigan left it at that. He knew the guy didn't go out to blind him but he'd gone out to hurt him, the county man. In the end, McGuigan realised he had to forget and nearly forgive the guy otherwise he'd never recover at all.

What helped him move on was football and particularly Mickey Harte. "Facing that floor," he says, "even just kicking a ball around the garden would have been enough." But after a few visits Harte was talking about him playing for Tyrone. "A lot of managers," says McGuigan, "would just say, 'That boy's not going to be any use to us anymore.' But Mickey said 'Brian, you'll be back. I want you to be part of our plans.' That gave me some boost."

Harte will say McGuigan returned the favour. With 20 minutes to go in last year's All Ireland final, Tyrone needed someone to steady the ship, hold onto the ball, and no one was better suited to do that than McGuigan. When the final whistle went Brian headed straight to the dressing room to get his head around what had happened before running back out moments later to climb the steps of the Hogan. And to cap it off, there was Tommy, to lift the cup with him.

Tommy had to overcome his own obstacles to get up those steps. A year after winning the 2001 All Ireland minor title with the likes of Seán Cavanagh and Joe McMahon, he did his cruciate and even when he finally recovered enough to make the Tyrone panel for the 2006 McKenna Cup, he was cut a month later after the game in Casement in Armagh in front of 19,000.

"I was marking Aaron Kernan and this kick-out came our way. I thought, 'Right, this is my ball' because I had a few inches on Aaron but he won it instead. I was on another ball and [Francie] Bellew just blew me off it. And this was only the McKenna Cup. Clearly I wasn't doing enough. I was too light and too weak for inter-county football.

"When Mickey cut me that time, he'd said, 'Look, I want you to go back to the club, work hard and if you've come on which I think you will, you'll be in for good next year.' So I knuckled down. Our brother Frank would be big into the gym and himself and our physio Louis O'Connor showed me how to do weights and plyometrics and all that and thankfully Mickey was as good as his word."

Even last summer when he was a starter Tommy was working on his game. Every Tyrone player at Harte's behest met up with the performance consultant Caroline Currid and in Tommy's sessions with her they identified three areas for improvement. The first was his ball winning; he needed to work on his leg strength and speed to get out to the ball ahead of his man. Second, his point taking, which, an off day against Mayo excluded, he visibly succeeded at. Another was frees. "Before I'd have put too much pressure on myself. 'This HAS to go over!' She taught me to relax and take a few deep breaths and think more 'This IS going over!'"

The result was that Tommy McGuigan entered last year's All Ireland final as one of the best corner-forwards in the country but even then something was nagging at the back of his mind. He'd had five goal chances throughout the championship and fluffed them all. "The week before the All Ireland Kevin Hughes said in training, 'I swear I'm going to score a point with my left foot and you're going to score a goal!' I says to him, 'Aye, some chance, the way we're going!' But Hub was right. I know [Brian's wife] Jennifer there could have got that goal but I got it and Hub got his point."

A few months later the man who scored the goal that won the All Ireland couldn't even get work. That really rankles with Frank Senior. He appreciates Tommy works in construction and that it's a tough time in that business but ... "Can you imagine a Kerry or Dublin player not able to get work if they'd just won the All Ireland?" he bristles. "You can have 82,000 pay in to watch you, and Club Tyrone and all the blazers and supporters slap your back after you've scored the winning goal but if Tommy there was on the side of the street with no work, not one person in Tyrone outside his family would be worried."

There is something quite jarring about the idea of this level-headed, hard-working, mannerly 26-year-old who had Croke Park rocking last September had no income for two months when every man who made it rock with a try or a goal this spring would be earning six, seven, figures a year. Tommy himself is a lot less animated about his predicament than his father but he admits in that quiet way of his, that it wasn't easy. It isn't easy.

"It does get to you, not working. It affects your football too. You're miserable during the week and going to training, with no money coming in. I've got some work now, doing a job for a friend in Belfast, but the money wouldn't be great and it's a long haul, leaving the house at half-six and not getting back 'til quarter-past six to go out training again. But that's the nature of the job and there's nothing written down that Mickey Harte or Tyrone have to get me a job. Look, you play Gaelic. You're raised knowing you're not going to get money out of it; you play it for the love of the game. It does cross your mind to emigrate. Our mother is American so we're American citizens and there'd be good jobs there. But when people say 'Why don't you go?', I say 'Football.' Some people don't understand but I missed out on enough football and All Irelands in my early 20s and I don't want to miss any more."

Brian's missed out too these past three years. He probably will never be the player he was around 2003 and 2005 but the class is still there and the fear is gone. The surgeon told him that he has more chance of damaging his good eye than hurting his bad eye again. People now come to him about the eye and take advice and inspiration from his discipline and example. Life is good. He's running Forbes' bar now just down the road, got married to Jennifer there in March and the five days honeymoon in Rome aside, hasn't missed a single training session since February. He hopes to start against Armagh. Tommy and himself have never started a first-round game together.

In Caesar's time they talked about being wary of the Ides of March. The McGuigans have learned to be wary of the start of May. But now that it's passed they intend to appreciate every moment in football they get.

And as we watch them, so should we.

kshannon@tribune.ie

The McGuigan Clan

Tommy McGuigan

The forgotten hero. So forgotten that despite scoring the vital goal that tipped the scales for Tyrone in the All Ireland final he couldn't find work for two months after.

Brian McGuigan

The Championship's X Factor. Any time this man has played the last 20 minutes of Tyrone's last championship game of the year, they've won the All Ireland. To win that last All Ireland, he had to look down towards the ground for three full weeks otherwise he'd have lost his sight. Now, for the first time in three years, he has a clean bill of health and is eyeing another All Ireland.

Frank McGuigan

The greatest Tyrone player never to win an All Ireland. This year is the 25th anniversary of his immortal 11 points from play against Armagh – and his horrific car crash that finished his career and nearly killed him.

http://www.tribune.ie/sport/article/2009/may/10/interview-brian-and-tommy-mcguigan/

Mickelson at 10s isnt bad.

I remember at school (a catholic grammar) we were having different "weeks" i.e. French week, Spanish week and so on.  When it came to Irish week of course there was a tri colour hung in the main foyer.  A protestant teacher said he was offended by it and the principal decided he was right and removed the flag.  Complete disbelief around the school. Petition was started and a few of the teachers signed it, which didnt go down very well.  Some things just beggar belief!

Even made the Irish News sure!