Down Club Hurling & Football

[supersub]

martin cole is fully fit and has been for most of the national league also!

[Joxer]

Quick question.. When did Ambrose Rogers become a GPO?

[Square Ball]

Rest of the fixtures from the Down site

will be interesting to see how Aghaderg field 2 teams at the same time

Down SFL Division 1
Team 1 Team 2 Venue Date Time Referee Comment
Kilcoo  Burren  Kilcoo 19/05/2009 19:15 Leo Smith Round 6 
Rostrevor  Burren  Rostrevor 22/05/2009 19:15 Gavin Corrigan Round 7   
Longstone  Saval  Longstone 22/05/2009 19:15 Damien Laverty Round 7 
Clonduff  Mayobridge  Clonduff 22/05/2009 19:15 Ned Morgan Round 7 
Kilcoo  Bryansford  Kilcoo 22/05/2009 19:15 Barry Andrews Round 7 
Liatriom  Loughinisland  Liatriom 22/05/2009 19:15 Jim Burns Round 7 
Castlewellan  Warrenpoint  Castlewellan 22/05/2009 19:15 Mark Lynch Round 7 
Down SFL Division 2
Team 1 Team 2 Venue Date Time Referee Comment
Downpatrick  Glasdrumman  Downpatrick 18/05/2009 19:15 Paul Gelston Round 5 
Darragh Cross  Ballymartin  Darragh Cross 19/05/2009 19:15 Eamon Mc Elroy Round 5 
Carryduff  Atticall  Carryduff 22/05/2009 19:15 Peter Brannigan Round 7 
Downpatrick  Shamrocks  Downpatrick 22/05/2009 19:15 Gerard Brannigan St Johns Round 7 
Darragh Cross  Ballyholland  Darragh Cross 22/05/2009 19:15 Martin Rawlinson Round 7 
An Riocht  Ballymartin  An Riocht 22/05/2009 19:15 Ciaran Brannigan Round 7 
Annaclone  Kilclief  Annaclone 22/05/2009 19:15 Seamus O Hanlon Round 7 
Clann na Banna  Glasdrumman  Clann na Banna 22/05/2009 19:15 D Brogan Round 7 
Down SFL Division 3
Team 1 Team 2 Venue Date Time Referee Comment
Glenn  St Pauls  Glenn 22/05/2009 19:15 TBC Round 7 
Drumaness  Ardglass  Drumaness 22/05/2009 19:15 Gabriel Tummelty Round 7 
Dundrum  St Johns  Dundrum 22/05/2009 19:15 Alan Grant Round 7 
Teconnaught  Aghaderg  Teconnaught 22/05/2009 19:15 TBC Round 7 
Saul  Aghaderg  Saul 22/05/2009 19:15 PJ Cunningham Round 7 
Tullylish  Drumgath  Tullylish 22/05/2009 19:15 Leo Smith Round 7 
Down SFL Division 4
Team 1 Team 2 Venue Date Time Referee Comment
St John Bosco  Dromara  St John Bosco 22/05/2009 19:15 Declan Ryan Round 7 
Mitchels  Ballykinlar  Mitchels 22/05/2009 19:15 Brendan Rice Round 7 
Bright  St Michaels  Bright 22/05/2009 19:15 TBC Round 7 
ACHL Division 1 
Team 1 Team 2 Venue Date Time Referee Comment
Portaferry  Liatriom  Portaferry 20/05/2009 19:15 Cathal O Flynn   
Ballela  Bredagh  Ballela 20/05/2009 19:15 Frank McDonald   
Kilclief  Ballycran  Kilclief 20/05/2009 19:15 Laim Quinn   
Shamrocks  Warrenpoint  Shamrocks 20/05/2009 19:15 Ned Morgan   
ACHL Division 2
Team 1 Team 2 Venue Date Time Referee Comment
Warrenpoint  Carryduff  Warrenpoint 20/05/2009 19:15 David Carr   
Ballycran  Ballyvarley  Ballycran 20/05/2009 19:15 Sean Fitzsimons   
Clonduff  Ballygalget  Clonduff 20/05/2009 19:15 Paul Braniff   
Castlewellan  Portaferry  Castlewellan 20/05/2009 19:15 Hugh Pat McCusker   

[D4S]

Quick question.. When did Ambrose Rogers become a GPO?

Think it was around January.  After losin the spleen you're more susceptible to colds, flu, infection etc and county board offered him job as a GPO.  Saves him spending winter on a building site.  Great article in Sunday Tribune yesterday with him, pity we won't get to see him playin the Ulster Championship this year after his performances against Tyrone last year.

[D4S]

Loughinisland V Longstone tonight switched to Longstone.  Loughinisland unplayable, good decision by those involved at least the game gets played now rather than both teams having to carry a fixture in hand for a number of weeks!

[Mickey Linden]

Quick question.. When did Ambrose Rogers become a GPO?

Think it was around January.  After losin the spleen you're more susceptible to colds, flu, infection etc and county board offered him job as a GPO.  Saves him spending winter on a building site.  Great article in Sunday Tribune yesterday with him, pity we won't get to see him playin the Ulster Championship this year after his performances against Tyrone last year.

Does anyone have a link to the Ambrose article or could someone please post it up here? Cheers.

[Minus15]

are there any other games from last friday night going ahead tonight? Also anyone know the attendance yesterday in enniskillen?

[corn02]

10,000 I think Minus.

Anyone have Down minor panel plus clubs?

[spiritof91and94]

are there any other games from last friday night going ahead tonight? Also anyone know the attendance yesterday in enniskillen?

Bryansford v Rostrevor
Castlewellan v Mayobridge

Are these still *starred* games? Dont see why they should, best training is matches!

[Joe Umbrella (hey)]

Quick question.. When did Ambrose Rogers become a GPO?

Think it was around January.  After losin the spleen you're more susceptible to colds, flu, infection etc and county board offered him job as a GPO.  Saves him spending winter on a building site.  Great article in Sunday Tribune yesterday with him, pity we won't get to see him playin the Ulster Championship this year after his performances against Tyrone last year.

Does anyone have a link to the Ambrose article or could someone please post it up here? Cheers.

He will never walk alone
Ambrose Rodgers is back from the brink and plans to follow in his late father's large and legendary footsteps with Down this season
Ewan MacKenna

Hard-knock life: Ambrose Rodgers in action against Wexford last summer, a game that saw him lose his spleen after an innocuous looking clash Small world, eh. In the midst of a controlled panic, Ambrose Rodgers lay on a bed in the Mater hospital, a nurse on one side squeezing a bag of blood frantically, a doctor on the other preparing his gifted hands for an after-midnight surgery. Rodgers held his late father's mass card but as the energy drained away, the card slipped from his grasp and feathered to the ground. The surgeon picked it up, had a look at the picture and smiled. There in the middle of it all was a moment of peaceful amusement as Professor Gerry McEntee – consultant general surgeon and former Meath footballer – stared at the late Ambrose Rodgers snr – farmer, father and former Down footballer. Small world.




The two had played against each other when Rodgers snr symbolically left the bench towards the end of the 1991 All Ireland final but his most vivid memory of "that warrior" was a league game in Navan when Mick Lyons and Rodgers had gone toe-to-toe like two suicidal boxers yet still shook hands at the end. He peered down at Rodgers' son and told him, "He's watching here, I better not screw up". Rodgers jnr managed a weak smile.




That day last August had begun with Rodgers following in the warrior's footsteps and making his first appearance at Croke Park. He'd been there before as a squad player yet never got to kick a ball. But as Down sunk below the surface against Wexford in their last-12 clash, Rodgers managed two points from midfield before an innocuous looking clash with Brian Malone left him feeling winded. "I just went back into the changing rooms after the game. I wasn't feeling great and was feeling very warm. I went into the toilets to get my head together, sat down on the floor, and all of a sudden this sweat came on me."




A couple of teammates asked why he'd taken a shower in his gear such was the perspiration before the medical team took him away for further observation. "I thought maybe I tore a muscle but they knew better so next thing I'm in the back of an ambulance. I went in for the scan. The pain was building even though I was on the drip and I knew something wasn't right because I was passing blood at this stage. Gerry told me I had ruptured the spleen and they were going to try to repair it."




At eight that evening he went under the knife for the first time. A few hours later the spleen tore open completely and Rodgers lost more than a couple of litres of blood. "He got lucky," says McEntee. "Firstly the injury happened towards the end of the match. If it had been earlier there might have been a temptation to leave him sitting on the sideline. Secondly, the Down people had reacted quickly. There was a serious amount of bleeding into the belly and things were done in a quick time frame. If that doesn't happen, something like that could be fatal."




Nine months on and 24-year-old Rodgers is sitting in a Newry hotel, fresh from an early morning in his new job. You ask to take a look at the exterior remnants from the operation and the scar is surprisingly big – a far-from-straight line dug deep across his stomach. "It was a rush job because it just burst open. My first game in Croke Park. I'll definitely remember it," he jokes. The side-effects are a lifetime of antibiotics and an increased susceptibility to infection, mainly colds, and having worked as a bricklayer before, he wasn't looking forward to cold winters on the site. But the county board came in earlier this year and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Now he has a job teaching football to children around the county.




That he's deemed a big enough name to do so, and considered one of the best ball-winners in the province, is something typically and uniquely GAA because as an eight-year-old back in 1991, he woke up a couple of days after the All Ireland final to see the Anglo-Celt and Sam Maguire side-by-side at the bottom of his bed.




"My Dad came in and left them there for me to wake up to. Great memories to have. I suppose I don't have too many of him playing for Down, they have begun to go. But I remember him carrying me into the changing room [in 1991]. Being lifted over the wire and someone being told to carry me over to my dad. I'd have seen more videos of him with Down in the 1980s. Makes me very proud, knowing he was one of the legends of football, in my eyes anyway. A great incentive for me to do something with football. I've the jersey he wore in that [All Ireland] final at home and the last jersey he wore for the club. Just little things."




His best memories shared solely between him and his father were midweek nights at home watching Manchester United in the Champions League. They'd been transfixed by the '99 final less than a month before Ambrose snr died of a heart attack. He was still playing for the Longstone club at 39 and was at a function the night before. "It was sudden, he just died in his sleep. We were just... It was just... It was an unbelievable thing, watching, listening to the ambulance crew trying to bring him back. In fact the night before, my last memory of my Dad is him coming home with Mum. I'd have been up and was there when he was doing this and that before going to bed and I was glad I was up.




"I'm glad we were all there when he took his last breath too and that he died in his own house, the house he was born in. I just feel lucky he was my Dad. He was a farmer and we rent out the land now because I'd hate to see something he put his life into empty. It's all something I've learned to deal with. I wouldn't have been going well at football after he died though. I hadn't the same interest and lost a lot of confidence. I never played county minors and Ross [Carr] was the manager. He never picked me. Paddy O'Rourke took over and I was on the county panel at 19. He was the one that brought me on. And he was great because he told me to be my own man, that I had to play my own game. Don't get me wrong, it's great to carry on the torch and it'd be great to do a decent job and achieve what my Dad did. Maybe win a few trophies along the way."




A decade on and his friends can joke about the similarities away from football. He's sure the nose is taking the same crooked shape with each game he plays and while the hair might last a little longer, it's being cut closer on each trip to the barbers. "A decade next month," he says. "Time flies. It was my mum that held us together, she's a very strong woman. I like to think I turned out well and only for her that wouldn't have been the case. Suppose with the week that's in it people here will look at all the time Down have been hiding and say time flies as well."




And today is the first step to changing that. This time last year he was coming back from cruciate damage and didn't start Down's opening game against Tyrone, however his introduction in the drawn game and subsequent 1-1 made him a constant thereafter. This championship, he's again coming back from injury but the growth of his importance means there's no waiting around on the bench.




He likes to think that being the last side to beat Tyrone shows they are as good as anyone on their day. He likes to think too that they have the right blend from 27-year-old 'veteran' Benny Coulter to himself and Aidan Carr and Dan Gordon a couple of years younger, down to the latest wave of under-21 medalists coming through. But days like Armagh in last year's Ulster semi and the recent Division Three league final against Tipperary make him only too aware of a talented group's habit of switching off.




"We passed it around too much. We had enough possession to win against Tipp but were going nowhere. It summed us up a little. Same against Armagh. We didn't follow what we were asked to do. We tried to run the ball against a physical team. But we have good footballers and I feel we can compete with the best. Last year was the first time we played football in August since we won the All Ireland. It'll take a lot of work before we are contenders but to get to the Ulster final would be a target. We think we should be there but one day at a time and Brewster Park will be buzzing."




He sits and muses over the game ahead. And after all the agony in his life, he contemplates what ecstasy might some day be like.




emackenna@tribune.ie


May 17, 2009

[DownFanatic]

10,000 I think Minus.

Anyone have Down minor panel plus clubs?

J Deeney - Downpatrick
R Doran - Glasdrumman
S McNamee - Mayobridge
D O'Hanlon - Kilcoo
K McClorey - Mayobridge
C McClean - Kilcoo
P Boyle - Castlewellan
C Mooney - Rostrevor
N McParland - Glenn
C Clarke - Bryansford
R White - Ballyholland
P Quinn - Ballyholland
M Bagnall - Glenn
R McGarry - Warrenpoint
D McKibben - Bryansford

From what I can remember of the rest of the lads:

Kieran Maguire - Aghaderg
Ollie McClean - Kilcoo
Neil Murray - Bryansford
Danny Savage - Bryansford
Michael Ireland - Longstone
Ryan O'Hare - Ballymartin
David McEntee - Burren
Connor Toner - Burren
Paddy McKenny - Loughinisland
Mark Haughey - Shamrocks

[corn02]

Cheers DF.

[Dubh driocht]

Minors also had you man Mc Kinney (?)/Mc Kenny from Loughinisland DF ?

[D4S]

HALF-TIME
Longstone 0-6
Loughinisland 1-1

[southdown]

Keep me updated D4S.