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Was a pity to not lift the McGurk Cup yesterday. Starting the year with silverware of any sort is never a bad thing- preseason or not.

Poor first half left far too much to do, but Down did well in the second half to bring it back within touching distance, and there were moments where they showed what they could really do when they took their chances.

Good performance from a very young team. Ultimately, using the McGurk Cup to give new players exposure and experience to senior inter-county hurling is a wise decision, and hopefully we will see some of those players make an impact in the league.
And getting an away win over Antrim in the process is never a bad thing. 

On a side note, it's good to see Donegal hurling doing well, and can't say they didn't deserve to win yesterday. McGurk Cup is a great opportunity for Ulster counties. The better counties like Donegal/Tyrone/ Armagh get, and the more competitive they are with  Down/Antrim/Derry, it will act as a catalyst for reinstating the Ulster Hurling Championship, which will be good for Down in the long run. It was disappointing to not get the win yesterday, but can't begrudge Donegal one bit.

Good to start off our Kehoe Cup campaign in Leinster with a win over Meath. No doubt both teams will look very different by the time they meet in the league, but good to get a good win over them today, nonetheless.

All in all, you can't be too disappointed with how the McGurk campaign went, and hopefully we will be able to say the same about the Kehoe Cup. There's a great opportunity for the Down hurlers this year. Hopefully we hit the ground running.

yes,
    A very young team out in the Conor McGurk cup final but TBH I don't think any showed anything to be troubling the senior panel, very turgid stuff.
If you get an opportunity like that you'd have thought you'd be busting your balls to impress. I didn't see that from any really and the game petered out well before the end as Down had no goal threat or ball winners up the park.
A short puckout to a lad on his own 20 metre line, maybe one other pass out and then launched up the park and gobbled up by the bigger Donegal defenders, repeat ad nauseum.

It's looking like Pierce Smyth will be holding onto the No1 jersey for the foreseeable as Viper has an eye issue.

Kildare next week will see where we're really at.

Here's a goodin... Pack of paracetamol is about £1 if not less. These, along with dozens of other cheap medications are available for free on the NHS.
By the time it goes through a health centre, admin staff, GP, script printed, collected and gets sent out to the pharmacy of choice, that £1 costs the NHS (us) £58.
The system is broken beyond belief.
Great for acute issues, anything else, a disaster

My Dad was put on paracetamol by the GP, but every once in a while we'd forget to drop in the repeat prescription for the clinic to process through the chemist, so I'd bought a box of the very same paracetamol over the counter, but get this, his carers weren't allowed to give him that paracetamol as it wasn't prescribed by the GP.
I shít you not.

If anyone thinks GP's are overpaid, why is there a shortage of them and the younger ones are taking off to the South and over to GB FFS.

You'd pay a plumber more than a Junior Doctor at the minute.

Couple programs on last night was only half listening but heard one bit where a Fujitsu employee went in and fiddled figures..... How this isn't an out and out crime is more than I know

They were "fixing" bugs on live systems and in doing so messing up the figures but were telling the sub post masters that no one else had access to their terminals.

[the country is a mess, corruption, unemployment, poverty, lawlessness, regular blackouts..]

Best of luck to South Africa as the ICJ hearing starts this morning.

The evidence is overwhelming but you know that there will be some barrier or technicality thrown in here to stop this proceeding, or to delay it for years. Either that or the ICJ will be accused of being Anti Semitic.

Mentioned it before, SA would need to look at itself as well, the country is a mess, corruption, unemployment, poverty, lawlessness, regular blackouts..


But yeah, I suppose it has to start somewhere and might encourage other countries to get behind them 

you did mention it before and I was wondering why? it doesn't matter which country referred Israeli Genocide to the ICJ, or what problems you perceived that country to have it pales in comparison to Genocide.

I'm for it and said in both posts, but this is a country that you wouldn't let your worst enemy stay in, on the international stage it just wouldn't bring enough clout with it to actually bring attention, It needs to be the Swiss or France or the UK to really step up and file those charges

Quite a lot of those issues you highlighted about SA also apply to the UK, but in relation to bringing this Genocide hearing to the ICJ it really shouldn't matter the background to the country who's rightly bringing this to light.

The West have turned a blind eye to this particular genocide.

Many pleaded guilty and paid the "shortfall" rather than risk trial and imprisonment.

How many more quietly paid multiple small  "shortfalls" to regularly balance the books and are out of pocket with no record of the money lost.

Watched that Panorama program last night on this, horrific what these people were put through and all along both Fujitsu and the Post Office executives knew there were issues with this Horizon software which incidentally during the tendering process came bottom in 7 of the 9 criteria set out. The one they did top was cost.


Surely criminal proceedings need to be initiated against those who willingly lied in court or allowed others to willingly lie in court to protect the "brand".

One lad committed suicide by walking in front of a bus over being wrongly accused of stealing FFS.

The whole thing is f**ked. Can barely get near a GP never mind anything more serious.

I don't mean to sound like the smug fella abroad who shits on everything at home but I gave this example to a few lads at home (both North and South) and they genuinely didn't believe me. Spain is hardly a world leader in healthcare but the contrast with home shocked me.

Anyway, around the middle of August I slipped quite badly on the stairs down into my basement. They're concrete steps with a faux marble tile and a slipped quite neat the top. Managed to land the small of my back at a near perfect 45° angle onto the 90° cut of the step and then slid the whole way down to the bottom, about another 17/18 steps, bouncing the back off each one.

I was crocked for a couple of days. Getting up and sitting down was painful. Couldn't sit for more than 45 mins or so without needing to stretch out and lie down. A huge bruise on my back from my kidneys on round and the down the top of my arse cheeks developed. Being the idiot I am, I found myself getting a little bit better and a few weeks later I went on a stag. Was sore, but ok. Another few weeks later was feeling a bit of pain, about a month or 5 weeks after the fall. Decided I'd go to the doctor, for reassurance if nothing else.

Now I live in a back of beyond town in the arse end of nowhere about an hour outside Barcelona. Population a couple of thousand, max. We have our own little mini health centre with about 1.5 doctors and some nursing staff. It's a branch of a bigger centre in the nearest "big" town, population about 35,000. I decided I was going to go to doc late on a Tuesday night, so I used the public healthcare app to leave a note for reception to ask for an appointment. I got a call about 8.20 on the Wednesday morning asking what the story was and after telling her, had an appointment with the GP around 11.15. He did a few checks and figured I was largely fine and that pain and discomfort were all just deep tissue bruising and inflammation, but would need an x-ray to make sure no fracture in the coccyx. Booked me an x-ray that afternoon at the health centre (specifically not a hospital, like a massive GP but also has gynae care etc) in the equivalent of, I guess, a county town, population about 70-75,000 and a follow up for late on the Thursday morning to go over the results. Maybe a 20-25 minute drive from the house. Turned up on time, x-ray done, back home barely over an hour later. In for the results with the GP the next day, got the all clear, he prescribed some anti inflammatories and home I went.

So in the space of about 40 hours of having decided I wanted to see doctor, I'd seen my GP, had an x-ray, gone over the results, got my tablets and was back home with my feet up.

I have private health insurance through work, and pay for the rest of the family to be added to it. We almost never use it. Pregnancy and maternity care all through the public system.

Did you not have to pay €50 to the GP?   

What an absolute f**k up, and just another miscarriage of justice on a biblical scale, and the Brits have a good few. Never have I know a TV series to promote such a backlash. Hope to god they get justice.

Why have Fujitsu not been sued over this foe faulty software?

Think the bigger scandal in all of this is, why the feck it took a TV show to get them to do something about stuff they all knew anyway. Shows the pure ineptitude and worse of these people supposedly running the place.

This is a decade, if not longer scandal and at the heart of it was the privatisation of the Post Office, the tendering out of a software project to Fujitsu who have donated generously to the Tory part, but all parties have to take responsibility at some point in this fiasco.

Is it a prerequisite to be a PT now that you have to sit in an ice bath for a few minutes every morning and tell the world about it?

I was saying this a while ago. They'd sicken you.

Ice baths aren't a new thing though. The rugby ones were at it 30 years ago and then it slipped into the GAA clubs not long after. I remember mortar tubs landing up to training and filled with ice cold water. A fella in Lurgan had the ice bath and a membership thing for years and I loved it. But of course PTs come and sicken your hole about it and put you off it altogether.

We had 2 old bath tubs in the showers in 1997/98 filled every night after training with ice. Not sure it ever helped everyone but it was always a bit of craic. We have an ice pod now,  small one,  that we fill with really cold water and sometimes ice and it does help from what I can tell.

As for the PTs some good, some bad, you can get everything the do on YouTube but are you motivated enough?

Being a bit more agricultural down our way we'd a big fúckin cattle water trough full of ice and lots of other shit back in the day and as I nearing the end of my days I think it did me a lot of good in keeping the aches and pains at bay.

We now have our own cryospa and it gets a fair bit of use between ACL ops (another two lads had the op in October last year) and hip ops which are a thing at the minute for us and cost a bloody fortune.

One in Fermanagh too but he is a Fermanagh guy.

Disappointing result against Down. The team out wasn't too bad either. We're missing quite a few this year - we will get stronger but not *that* much.

Its not an overly strong team Tommy, and we have better than that to come into the game.

This year certainly in the league we have a free shot.. Maintaining McCarthy cup status will be the priority..

Nets will be an issue to resolve with Elliot away for the year, he's been a big part of that defence and will be missed, a difficult position to fill

Looked like a strong enough Down team in the first half, but they emptied the bench from half time on and would be happy enough with the win all in.

We run a "fitness" camp every January and February, Ballygalgets biggest loser it's called.

At it's peak we'd over 200 people paying £5 a week to be put into groups of 10 or 12, assigned "motivators" who'd take them on walks, runs, boxercise etc etc with weekly weigh ins and at the end of the 10 weeks the winners, male and female were those that lost the most weight. There was also a team prize for the overall best team who won the most Sunday morning challenges..


Our neighbouring clubs got in on the act and they run similar schemes at various times of the year and make a few bob from them as well.

But out of that has sprung up a cottage industry of personal trainers doing well for themselves off the back of it. One of our camogs runs boot camps where she's takes 20 people for 6 week blocks, does the before and after stuff and the last time I was talking to her she's thinking of packing in the day job.
Another of our lads got into the spin, kettle bell HIIT stuff as well as a bit of massaging and he's doing well, so well he hasn't the time to be our medical man the bollox..

Middle aged women in particular have money to spend and they go for this stuff in a big way.

Good win for the Down hurlers last night up in Dunsilly vrs Antrim. It's only a preseason competition but beating Antrim is never a bad thing.

I hope Sean O'Neill from our club had a great game 

If this is appealed the competition will be put on hold pending a result and with the league starting shortly afterwards it's very unlikely it will ever be finished

The appeal can only be about Jim's suspension, not the losing of the two points, that's a given as the lad wasn't 18 before the start of 2024.
Clear breach of the rules right there, no comeback from that.
Not knowing the rules shouldn't cut it.

[For Breach of lower Age Limit:(i)Team Penalty:On a Proven Objection – Award of Game to Opposing Team.On an Inquiry by the Committee-in-Charge – Forfeiture ofGame without Award to the Opposing Team.(ii) Player: For breach in any Grade – 2 weeks Suspension.(iii) Person(s)-in-Charge of the Team in which thebreach is committed – 8 weeks Suspension.]

For Breach of lower Age Limit:
(i)Team Penalty:
On a Proven Objection – Award of Game to Opposing Team.
On an Inquiry by the Committee-in-Charge – Forfeiture of
Game without Award to the Opposing Team.
(ii) Player: For breach in any Grade – 2 weeks Suspension.
(iii) Person(s)-in-Charge of the Team in which the
breach is committed – 8 weeks Suspension.

Jim's only grounds for appeal is that he's not the person in charge of the team, so the county secretary is looking to take the fall for this one and probably rightly so.

Joey Carbery is leaving Munster at the end of the season

https://www.rte.ie/sport/rugby/2024/0108/1425423-carbery-to-leave-munster-and-ireland-in-the-summer/

He's made from glass.

Talented enough lad, just didn't work out for him with injuries etc etc.

I'd JJ Hanrahan in the same bracket, boy wonder through U20's and all that, but never really cut through at senior international level.

Palestinians to Rwanda?  Thoughts

The exact same thoughts as moving Israelis to Eastern Europe.