GAA journalist of the year 2011

[orangeman]

There are some fantastic GAA journalists out there - and most of them run their eye over these boards on occasion.


So who do you reckon deserves journalist of the year ?

There can be a regional winner and a national winner.


So who would you go for ?.

Personally I find Vincent Hogan's articles in the main very good.

[ONeill]

Hard to look past Kenny Archer.

[orangeman]

I llike this piece

Vincent Hogan: Industrial revolution bears fruit for Gilroy

By Vincent Hogan

Monday September 19 2011

Just as we imagined Kerry to be applying a last coat of varnish, Dublin surged to the Hill with scarcely credible tidings. This was their field, their day. So they met the Kingdom's victory dance with a round of buckshot and everything we thought we knew about hierarchy and lineage suddenly felt counterfeit. For Dublin's total fidelity to a workers' constitution induced palpable despondency in Kerry.

To win the closing seven minutes 1-3 to 0-1, the Dubs simply went to a place that maybe no old team could have access to.

They reclaimed Sam with a game plan so rigid, so non-negotiable, Pat Gilroy might as well have presented it to them leather-bound and stamped with gold lettering. The team in blue was insatiable, playing as if defeat might curse them all the way to senility.

And it felt less a team stretching for home in the end than a whole city reaching out to the glamours of its past.

In doing so, Dublin persuaded Kerry to all but abandon theirs. Jack O'Connor's team began fouling. Sporadically at first but, the clouds in their heads darkening, almost slavishly as the clock began to race. They panicked. Imagine. The world had been under an illusion that they wouldn't recognise the condition, let alone seek it out for refuge.

But industry made them forget themselves. The perfect articulation of Gilroy's creed.

When he took charge of Dublin, he understood there was no future in them trying to live a romantic existence while there was still breath in those silver-tongued rogues down south. The Dubs' best hope was to be dry and dull and maybe a little militaristic about their football.

So he decommissioned the notion that Sam Maguire might be accessible through wall-mottos and proverbs and phoney little shows of faux unity in front of an impatient Hill. For Dublin to win they, first, had to learn how not to lose.

Yesterday, they set the terms of engagement in a way that Kerry tried to rise above, but couldn't. By the mid-point, the Kingdom had claimed just three scores, albeit one of them was a drop-dead-gorgeous 'Gooch' Cooper goal set up by the mesmeric Darran O'Sullivan.

This just wasn't the game O'Connor's men had come to play.

Dublin's half-forwards hunted with dervish energy between their own midfield and half-backs and only two of their full-forward line showed an interest in hanging close to Brendan Kealy's goal. This was about the siphoning of traffic into areas where it suited Dublin to have numbers.

And yet, being honest, Kerry looked to have done enough to win. Their initial positioning of Kieran Donaghy at wing-forward was smart and, palpably, discomfited the city boys. And if Paul Galvin's 24th-minute arrival was almost certainly earlier than O'Connor might have planned, the Finuge man's presence clearly made Kerry a more coherent team.

It should be said too that Ger Brennan was lucky to escape a red card when his high elbow temporarily took out Declan O'Sullivan early in the second half. But, between the 54th and 63rd minutes, Kerry kicked four unanswered points that in a game of this intensity bore the feel of an epic harvest.

And it was the beginning of the end for them.

Immediately after Gooch had kicked the fourth, Declan O'Sullivan gave possession away to Cian O'Sullivan and, two passes later, Kevin McManamon was goaling in front of the Hill. Croker shook as if the sky itself was coming down. Which, to some degree, it was.

McManamon's goal changed everything. Suddenly, the younger, hungrier team was ardent and believing. The older, careworn side looked weighed down by time.

It wouldn't have happened in Dublin's previous life. Their old way was to throw a pair of dice on the table and hope for sixes. They used devour Leinster with football so free-flowing and open it left their supporters bloated with conceit. Then some big gun from Ulster or Munster would hunt them down like crims guilty of a parole violation and the grief and disbelief always made for interminable winters.

Dublin couldn't defend. Gilroy knew that every season would be another bounced cheque until he addressed the fact.

Remember his first Leinster Championship game? The half-time score? It read Wexford 0-8; Dublin 0-2. The Hill howled like a pen of angry coyotes. Dublin recovered to scrape a win but, soon, Meath belittled them with five goals. Gilroy was, palpably, on probation.

But progress came in gentle increments and the team that stands today at the summit of football will never be mistaken for Globetrotters with a Harlem twang. They hit hard and, on occasion, without reference to much scruple. They take liberties. Some of their fouling is, patently, strategic. They know when and where it pays to sin.

Bryan Sheehan's first kickable free yesterday arrived after 34 minutes. It was just about within his range and, though the kick dropped short, Galvin managed to snaffle a point.

But Dublin were being incredibly disciplined about where to draw sanction from Joe McQuillan. There were zones to foul in and zones to simply fill with bodies. It wasn't beautiful, but it was undeniably smart.

Kerry weren't exactly indifferent to the dark arts either and, if the game lacked the counterbalance of grace, it more than compensated with the sheer depth of its intensity. When McManamon's goal was followed, quick as drumbeats, by points from Kevin Nolan and Bernard Brogan, Dublin seemed to have it won.

But then Donaghy's impossibly audacious 70th-minute altitude score looked to have secured the GAA an extraordinary autumn windfall. The escape to a replay would have gone down as a typically Kerry signature on the epoch. Cool heads and calm hearts pulling it from the fire.

Calm

Only thing was they weren't cool and they weren't calm. If anything, Kerry had begun to over-heat.

In the brewing maelstrom, Dublin's adherence to structure and shape and a code of selflessness in respect of the collective, now gave them an unstoppable, machine-like form. They swept forward in a stern, blue wave and the wonderful McManamon drew a free from Barry John Keane.

Bernard Brogan reached down to hug the St Jude's man, then invited his goalkeeper to join them. Stephen Cluxton came ambling up like a defendant reluctant to enter the courthouse early. McQuillan told him to hurry, at which stage he kindly broke into a pall-bearer's stroll.

The earth itself seemed to whistle as Cluxton lined up the kick. He nailed it, the whole place suddenly convulsing. Dublin's field. Their day.

Gilroy's worker's constitution all but carved in stone.

- Vincent Hogan

Irish Independent

[Hardy]

Hard to look past Kenny Archer.

He's chubby OK, but that's a bit harsh.

[DuffleKing]

Fair difference between article of the year + journo of the year.
Quite partial to michael foley

[Orchardman]

Love the guys that write the good long in depth interviews, cause i know how hard it must be to get good information from the 'say nothing' breed of county footballers. Guys like ewan mckenna have done good stuff, can't remember the other names of the tribune writers, but they were good.
Tom humphries can do it the odd good one, but has a lot of  annoying features that he throwes in.


On another note, my father still buys the sunday world, i can't stand it and would never buy it. But has anyone ever noticed how crap that guy roy curtis is? He doesn't say anything controversial or thought provoking, but his style of writing is terrible, you would need to read 2 or 3 of his articles to understand what i mean.

[heffo]

Tom humphries can do it the odd good one, but has a lot of  annoying features that he throwes in.

He certainly can 'do' the odd good one and I'll also agree that he has a few annoying features about him.

[muppet]

Tom humphries can do it the odd good one, but has a lot of  annoying features that he throwes in.

He certainly can 'do' the odd good one and I'll also agree that he has a few annoying features about him.

I was a big fan. But now I recycle my own phones.

[borderfox]

Love the guys that write the good long in depth interviews, cause i know how hard it must be to get good information from the 'say nothing' breed of county footballers. Guys like ewan mckenna have done good stuff, can't remember the other names of the tribune writers, but they were good.
Tom humphries can do it the odd good one, but has a lot of  annoying features that he throwes in.


On another note, my father still buys the sunday world, i can't stand it and would never buy it. But has anyone ever noticed how crap that guy roy curtis is? He doesn't say anything controversial or thought provoking, but his style of writing is terrible, you would need to read 2 or 3 of his articles to understand what i mean.

I couldnt agree more. His style is full of crap analogies and terrible attempts at creating jokes which you can see the punchline coming miles away. Terrible journalism.

[theticklemister]

I like Paddy Heany of the irish news, very witty and teels it as he sees it. Worst of all would be Mickey Harte same shite, different week. (Not just cause he is a tyrone man now!!lol)

Benny Tierney cheers me up as always say he should never have made county. Football each week!

Brollys piece in Gaelic Life which is replicated in the Derry Journal which week can be classed as a 'Sinn Fein' rant!!!

Paddy Heaney is by far far the best that's why he got going to Australia with the irish team recently!! Honourable mention to Karl O Kane, he needs to spk his mind more often however.

Forgot about oul Spillane, believe it or not I really like his stuff he gets under the finger nails of the elitist within the GAA heirachy and tells it as it is. He recently said about the brown enveolpe brigade and in his column he stated that within a week 2 junior clubs and a senior club apporached with from cork and 2 of them were offering brown enveolpes. And I also hate Tyrone which makes me and big Pat share a common cause!!

[Minder]

I don't mind Michael Foley but I can see him typing and thinking "Fcuk Michael dis is great stuff altogedder".

[theticklemister]

Sorry mucker, I blame this damn blackberry!!!!!!

I see ye have edited yer post after yer first posted it........... Did ye make a grammar mistake also!!!

[Farneylawd2011]

The Irish News i think is the best paper for GAA news and the Irish Daily Star
If i had to pick from either 2 it would be the Iirsh News because i was like reading Niall McCoy i think great journalists who does not miss one bit of detail of the game.

[mountainboii]

McCoy can be quite corny at times.

[bennydorano]

McCoy can be quite corny at times.

Are you here all week?

Heaney is about the best I read regularly, although he's got a very annoying trait of slating players/managers/whoever for not being compliant in regards to interviews - in either requests or genuine participation.  I'd say he's covered this ground half a dozen times this year.  Imagine them having a different agenda to Paddy like?