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Can you meet a team in the qualifiers that you have played against already?

I thought it was in the small print that you can't.

You do have to feel sorry for them a little bit though. Every time the IFA declare victory, OWC and the Tele start celebrating. Even little EG fell for it this time... 

As somebody said somewhere, it's like the end of a boxing contest, two boxers both raise their hand in victory,  not a mark on one and handsome as ever, the other one battered to pulp like Jake le Motta.

They should have the Belfast T. listed first  (alphabetically) amongst the Indo's regional papers.

[hey gave about 25 minutes to Donegal-Derry on Sunday]

As I said elsewhere, they gave about 25 minutes to Donegal-Derry on Sunday. Of this, about 15 minutes were action, and ten discussion, or as they laughingly call it "analysis". Of this ten minutes, I'd say about three were spent talking about one fairly innocuous clout. That's 30% of the discussion devoted to one pretty minor negative event that constituted less than 1% of the game.

It's much worse than that.
RTE had about 9 minutes game time and 14 mins analysis.

The ref concurs with yours and Hardy's assessment.

But a yellow was dished just in case

[Any person holding apermanent nationalitythat is not dependenton residence in a certaincountry is eligible to playfor the representative teamsof the Association of thatcountry]

You couldn't script this drama, it just encapsulates Unionist mind set to a tee.

FIFA came out with a rewording of the Eligibility rule Article 15, and added in 3 new articles  nr 16 17 and an 18.

FIFA stated that there would be no change to the legality and that they were just bringing different bits of eligibility legislation together together.

Essentially  there is no change,

Irish footballers born in the North fall under Article 15

New Article 16 is about the conditions for  one nationality who can play for different countries, like the UK British passport holders.

Article 15 has been reworded as

Any person holding a
permanent nationality
that is not dependent
on residence in a certain
country is eligible to play
for the representative teams
of the Association of that
country.

You would think that is clear, that it could not be clearer that that is written as if they were thinking of Irish citizenship.
That the state of Ireland grants unconditional permanent citizenship to (almost) all people born in Ireland

BUT the the Belfast Telegraph
screams out   "Northern footballers to face tougher rules if they want to play for the Republic"

The IFA are in a cloud cuckoo land and think that FIFA have all of a sudden out of the blue ruled in their favour.

The BBC are kissing the arses of the IFA and think that FIFA have ruled in the IFA favour

The IFA and 99.99% of the OWC  are creaming themselves.


The FAI know that there has been no change.

It gets a bit Laurel and Hardyish the way the Tyrone Kerry scrap keeps breaking out all over the discussion board.

On the game discussion, it is a pity that the discussion gets sidetracked by incidents which some posters are obsessed about more than the game itself.
Sometimes incidents do matter, sometimes they are dwarfed utterly by the game itself.
I haven't got access to the RTE web site. I would love to see this whole game. It is rare that we see such a game and an underdog team rewarded for letting loose, clawing back an impossible margin, with the icing on the cake being two lovely strikes by Matty Forde.

Looks like we will have to wait a few days for the Meath lads here to recover their normal senses.

July 19th, Football championship Qualifier Round 1.
If we get beaten by Derry on the 21st June, as everyone expects, then that leaves Fermanagh with 4 weeks to prepare for a qualifer game. Should be enough time to erase the memory of a likely heavy defeat..

At worst, Fermanagh are going to perform to the death and stretch Derry.

What would the players want if they lose to Derry?
probably most would want a game as soon as possible, hit the ground running.
I think a 2 weeks gap would be optimum.

Besides the point but
could Wicklow not have made a serious attempt at getting promoted to Div 3?

Micko, after the game against Kildare, was buyont and declared that the real season started in May, league does not matter.
After this game he admitted that Laois were a sharper due to playing league div1 standard.

Regardless of how much you rate the league, the higher the division the higher the standard of opposition, the better it is to play against better teams.

Honourable mention to Robbie Keane for his wag Claudine Palmer.

The description doesn't sound so severe.
'appeared to be unwell and in an agitated state'

Unless he is displaying suicidal signs or is deemed to be a threat to society, he should be let out after he is seen by a doctor.

New favourites for the title after Sunday.

Derry leapfrog Tyrone,  to come in at 11/8
Tyrone out to 9/4

The highlights are a pathetic summary of the game. If I was from Wexford i would be pretty pissed off with the amount of the game shown for such a great victory for them. other games that were shown live were still given air time and, for me, there is too much time spent on punditry when key m,oments in a game like this go unshown. For instance Meath hit about 4 more crucial wides towards the end of the first and Cian Ward got through and essentially foot passed the ball to the keper - I would have liked to have seen that again among other things.

You can see the game in full, anytime on the rte web site, restricted to Irish residents.

Agreed about the Sunday game highlights, ca 10 minutes game time. They had more chat than actual game time. Then they accuse the refs of not using common sense.
The game isn't about effin incidents -  which the ref usually gets right or right enough.
We had a bare glimpse of Mattie Fords points.
I could have done with the super duper dimensional viewer being used to analyse the man's elegance.

On another point, could the Meath keeper not have flung himself and blocked the Wexford shot (for their 2nd goal) on the edge of the parallelogram?
It all seemed to happen in slow motion. I can't access the RTE site.

the churches have, since the beginning, refused the responsibility of proving their claims. They invented the concept of "faith" - i.e. belief without proof. Therefore religious beliefs lie outside the realm of rational debate and my claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the creator of the universe would be as valid as any priest's opinion about God when it comes to debate based on reason.

Same thing Hardy.
It's people willingness to believe in something, a blind faith.
Just because the proponents of a religious belief system give an amnesty for belief without proof, does not make it less absurd.
There is  a willingness by people to believe in something that calls for the suspension of rationality.
Rational thought would lead a person to investigate, not the belief in God, but the belief in the destructive dogma surrounding it.


I don't know about all of the Moon landings, the big one questioned is the first one where the proof is lacking. Where the offered proof has been ridiculed by photographers detailed examination of that evidence.
If you accept that the first moon landing happened then it's a belief system. You believe something where the proof that has been offered does not pass scrutiny.

I don't have a belief system about it, why should I?
It might have happened it might not have happened.

Wicklow did enough to be deeply disappointed at the end after sticking with their task, staying close enough then throwing away a few points.
I dunno why I am always looking out for the underdog.

Laois should improve.