Donny Doherty diary in the Irish News

[give her dixie]

Pure dung so it is.

[ONeill]

They're heavily promoting it too. I hope it isn't some young lad as the criticism is harsh.

[RadioGAAGAA]

Give it time and it might come good.


I have to admit I don't mind it too much.




Does that confirm I'm slightly mad?   

[cville]

Goodness but it is purile stuff and the 'top of the morningness' is very very poor. To be truthful though this is the latest misjudgement by the IN and it has to go. There was an Australian guy who worked there while he was going round the world (Todd R Nicholls) (Why do journos insist on the needless fecking initial?) and he is now back in Oz and has an article every week .. no need! pure irrelevant shite! Maeve Connolly? Now that was bad crap from NYC. Sometimes you can smell the egos coming off the pages of the Irish News ...  etc

[Mourne Rover]

Cville, most of those who read Todd R Nicholls are under the impression that he is from New Zealand rather than Australia, which is a bit like mixing up Ireland and Britain, and that his column appears one a month rather than every week. Are we talking about the same person here ?

[red hander]

There's no doubt people in the IN read this forum as you see threads in here followed up. Maybe a few of their sports boys will pass on the universal derision they see on here to the editor ... it is utter, utter crap. 

Like O'Neill, I would feel sorry about it if it was a youngster doing it, but at least he seems to be using a pseudonym.  And as a young journalist it will help him to learn, unlike the kid out of BIFHE a couple of years ago who was doing work experience at the News Letter and they tasked him to cover a football game that was the back page lead ... the kid got the score wrong and it was printed

[Hurler on the Bitch]

Ref the above ... the 'kid' covered a Linfield v Glentoran seconds' final and got the score wrong!!!! He said Linfield won 2-1 and described their imaginary goal in detail - what an imagination!!!! Don't know if yous are old enough to remember the magazine 'Far East' ... ? Well, in response to giving a quid a month to the 'Black Babies' we got this mag in school and the highlight was the inane phonetic ramblings aof a kid who had to thank us for the money etc.. I forget his name but it was absolute shite about a kid in Uganda and he was "eturnally gratfool to us in Arelund" (Pudsy) sorry to say that this Donny gut ranks up there in the crass and shiteness of that mag... an insult to the readership I think.....

[No1]

It's there today again. 

Heaney, I know you are reading this - PLEASE MAKE IT STOP, it's making my eyes bleed.

[ONeill]

I read today's effort. I had to lie down after. Brain hurting.

[john mcgill]

Irish News This is sad

[Square Ball]

can anyone post todays "article"

[time ticking away]

i think todays article is the best so far. i thought the other two were horrible though

[Lecale2]

i think todays article is the best so far. i thought the other two were horrible though

Come on Noel you can change it!

[Out in Front]

Donny's Diary (well, the best of the bits we can safely print)
Fitness a piece of cake... yum
Donny Doherty

Christmas is cancelled and it's time to turn fat into fit, buns into guns. Our talented (and shattered) new columnist, Donny Doherty, finds that when the going gets tough, it's, erm, tough to get going...

Saturday December 22 – 8:45pm
Just back in from the gym. A power weights session as our new trainer calls it. Lieutenant Jackie McCafferty is his name, all the way from Co Cork but now based just over the border in Finner Army Camp.
He looks like an average country priest. He wears his hair in an impeccable side parting and has a walk that is closer to a run, but when he explodes he is like the Sergeant Major from Full Metal Jacket.

He is not the sort of man that you can have the craic with. On his first night back in October he scared the life out of half the boys.

"Let me get a few things straight before we start," he told us.

"I do not care about football. It is the poor relation of hurling and that is all it will ever be."

Yes, he's an effin' hurling snob on top of everything.

"Skill wise, most of ye boys would not make the junior 'B' hurling team in Bantry.

"But I'm not worried about skill, I'm not worried about kicking points or making blocks. My job is to make ye fit. Fitter than ye have ever been before. And by the look of some of ye, (he had paused and stared straight at me), "I have a lot of work to do..."

Anyway, that was two months ago and, since then, a hamstring injury has meant I have hardly trained. Tonight was the first time I have done the weights session and tomorrow will be the first time I do a full session on the grass. Apparently they have been brutal so far, we will see.

Tonight's weights were a piece of cake though. If I keep going like this, I will have some serious guns come Paddy's Day.

Sunday December 23 – 7:55am
Sweet Jaysus, I can't lift my arms, my thighs are burning and every time I take a deep breath my chest feels like it's going into spasm.

Every part of me aches and training starts in less than an hour. I have a sense of impending dread in the pit of my stomach. I almost feel physically sick at the thought of what lies ahead of me.

Sunday December 23 – 12:30pm
Just home from training and I have never felt worse. It was brutal. At the start of the session, Lieutenant Jack told us that we had a 30 minute run at the end, but that was after 45 minutes of ball work first.

Well, the ball work was only 20 minutes old when I was wishing I had stayed in bed.

When you think of ball work, you normally think of nice little fist passing drills or some conditioned games. But no. Not in Lieutenant Jack's mind. He had something else up his sleeve:

"Stamina can be built up with the ball lads. And balls can be built up with hard work."

Twenty minutes later we were doing shuttles with the ball. There was four cones placed in groups of four at different intervals between the

14-yard line and the 50 in a line in front of us. Lieutenant Jack was barking out orders:

"OK boys. First cone and back to endline, third cone and endline, second cone and endline and fourth cone and endline."

The whistle blew.

Micheal had taken off like a hare. He's one of the fittest in the team and is always first up to do things in training. As I watched him gasp for air as he came back from the fourth cone, that sense of dread in my stomach returned.

If he was finding it tough, I knew it would kill me. By the time the shuttles were over I had been to four and back so often my head was spinning.

My legs were giving up, and hanging over me like a black thunder cloud was the thought that still to come was the 30-minute run.

As the balls were bundled into the nets, we were herded to the far corner of the pitch. 'In the name of Jaysus', I thought. Thirty minutes. The self-doubt started. After ten minutes, there were three clear packs.

The 'fit' boys, the 'middle of the road' boys' and the 'trying to stay perpendicular' boys. I was in the latter section. I just kept the head down and just tried to make it to the next corner. As the minutes ticked by, I started to get lapped and the gap between me and second last began to widen. Every time I passed Lieutenant Jack he had a little nugget of advice for me.

"That's a serious big ass you're carrying, young Doherty," and "Come on, Doherty. I hear ye were top scorer last year. Can ye imagine how much ye would have scored had ye been fit," were just two pieces of encouragement that I can remember. When the whistle finally blew, I fell to my knees. It's not that I was particularly out of breath; it was just that my body was broken.

Sitting here now, writing this, the body feels marginally better. An ice bath followed by a hot shower helped a little.

But the mind is seriously messed up. I have let myself go. Too much drink, too much crappy food has meant I am totally out of shape. But worse than that, I feel like a right royal screw-up. Two good games against dodgy opposition during the summer and I thought I was Trevor 'effin Giles.

I could see it in the eyes of my team-mates earlier: "Look at the state of Donny. The next big thing gone to pot already..."

Truth is, as I drove away from training, I felt like I had let them all down and it was – and is – a crap feeling. I have to get things back.

Sunday December 23 – 9:30pm
Four missed calls from the boys. They are out in Joyce's, at the Christmas draw, as are all my family. Me? I couldn't go. I would feel like too much of a fraud. I barely got through training this morning and the last thing I need is a feed of pints. No, the drink can wait. Time to train. Time to get fit. Time to play football.

[red hander]

'Time to train. Time to get fit. Time to play football.'

Time to get out of journalism...