Messages

Sigurdsson trending on Twitter.

And not in a good way..

The cups like christy ring lory meghar  Nicky Rackard  if a casual sees that they dont have a clue what they mean or what level they are at can they not change it to something like all Ireland B  Championship or intermediate  or even all ireland plate all ireland vase etc why are the gaa obsessed with names.

Image trying to commemorate sporting greats for posterity by naming a competition after them... Madness I know.

Maybe someone in years to come will ask who was Christy Ring or Nicky Rackard and be told exactly who they were.

Would you prefer the LVD vans AI intermediate hurling final?

Buy at least you know immediately what the LDV trophy is. Why not rename the CR cup a the CR third tier cup or similar.

99% of GAA folk couldn't put Liam, Joe, Christy and Nicky in the correct order, so how are the floating punter meant to?

You forgot about Lory ya philistine ye..

I see where you're coming from as per the floating punter but any of the counties competing in them know only too well the steps of progression..

but for the ignorant on here I'll put them in terms of English Soccer.

Premiership           - Liam McCarthy
Sky Championship - Joe McDonagh
Sky Div1               - Christy Ring
Sky Div2               - Nicky Rackard
National League     - Lory Meagher

Couple of great games over the weekend.

First up, the Tipp v Limerick battle.

Tipp had a plan, get the ball in deep over the Limerick halfback line, central and let the forwards bat it down for the oncoming runners to attack and hey presto they'd two goals in the bag and were motoring all over the field with Limerick burning off a bit of dirty diesel. 10 points up at the interval and Shefflin saying they were home and hosed, it was in the bag for Tipp..

The introduction of 2 All stars at the end of the first half also gave Limerick a glimmer of hope at both ends of the field, Gillane a threat that wasn't there for the first 25 minutes and Tom Morrissey who went on to command the airways back there.

But the restart of the second half was pure power hurling and no little skill. Limerick were winning everything in their own half a power through the Tipp midfield and Lynch (who was fouled an awful lot IMO) started to exert an influence once Dan McCormack eventually picked up a card for yet another foul.
Kyle hayes goal was a thing of beauty, he started the run for it just outside his own 20 metre line before taking the ball on 50 metres from his own goal, sidestepping two Tipp lads on his way in on goal before drilling a ball low into the ground beyond Hogan in the goals.

Tipp tried to introduce fresh, younger legs but their race was run. A goal at the end for them put a bit of a gloss on the scoreline but they'll have to reconsider where this team is going for the short and intermediate term.

Much being made of the refereeing and TBH Gullane's slash back with the edge of the hurl on Barrett was a red all day long as was Flanaghans driving the hurl into Paudie Mahers head at the end. Further over the weekend we see another Kilkenny defender driving the head into a Dublin attacker and whilst the free was awarded, the red card should have followed.
For the Gullane incident at least Duignan on co commentary was entirely right to call it, but Cummins kinda skirted round the kilkenny one with a comment of getting his tackling technique totally wrong..
No shit Sherlock.

The Clare, Wexford game had a few penalty shouts, the first Wexford one where the referee didn't award was probably right as O'Connor was going down already but the Clare lad was probably intending to go for the ball but when O'Connor stooped down it was going for his head but he fended it off with his own hurl. The only cop out there was the throw ball. Free out for fouling the ball IMO.
Shanagher had a better shout up at the other end later on, but in fairness to the ref, the belt to the head he got from O'Hallorhan was to his blind side, but the umpires would have seen it clear as day.

With lads who are now baring down on goal throwing the ball up to bat it down to prevent being hooked, there are going to be more of these incidents and whilst I've a lot of sympathy for referee's you either enforce the rules that are there or change the rules. This "common sense" approach has proven that common sense isn't that common..

As for the sqaure ball shout, You'd need hawkeye or the likes to call them...

I think the heat is affecting some people.
The All Ireland SHC never had all of Ireland taking part.

At one point it did. Just that a lot of counties never bothered to enter it as that would mean trying to put a bit of effort into developing the game in their respective counties.

The cups like christy ring lory meghar  Nicky Rackard  if a casual sees that they dont have a clue what they mean or what level they are at can they not change it to something like all Ireland B  Championship or intermediate  or even all ireland plate all ireland vase etc why are the gaa obsessed with names.

Image trying to commemorate sporting greats for posterity by naming a competition after them... Madness I know.

Maybe someone in years to come will ask who was Christy Ring or Nicky Rackard and be told exactly who they were.

Would you prefer the LVD vans AI intermediate hurling final?

Forgetting the whys and wherefores of vaccinations etc. I would like to know what is deemed as a better alternative? I have no idea what is perceived to be a(viable) way out that's not a vaccine.

The UK way is to open everything up and let people get Covid by transmission.

It's f**king stupid.
It risks creating a new variant.

Exactly and then we run the further risk of current vaccinations not working on any new strains...

It's a big gamble and it looks like its being taken to give the hospitality sector a chance of getting some money in before the winter hits.

Shít gets real this weekend;

1st round qualifiers

Laois v Waterford
Clare v Wexford


2nd round qualifiers bye
1. Cork
2. Galway

Cork's last all Ireland was 2005. Hard to believe. In retrospect, the 2006 final was a watershed.

2020 U20 AI under their belts last week, gave Clare U17 hurlers a fierce beating last night as well, 40 odd points in it!!!

They've got their act together at underage it seems.

Antrim Minor hurlers beat Carlow by a point last night in the Peadar O Liathain cup. 1-13 to 1-14

Down play Meath this Saturday in the same competition.

Scholes was a top player. Being English he'd get a bit of extra hype, but his shy demeanour kept him from being seen as a fancy-dan player and kept him under the public radar. So he often got away with stuff that a player like Beckham would never get away with.

Oh yeah, for a midfielder - he had a shite tackle!

I liked Scholesy as a player, he was neat and tidy on the ball, but was easily bullied off it and shíte is being kind, he put in a few downright dangerous tackles in his day.

He was good but I wouldn't consider him great.

Welcome to Nazi Germany

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/0714/1235091-hospitality/

Absolutely disgusting. Hopefully any restaurant that asks for prove of vaccine is boycotted.

yes, and put a star above their doors while you're at it.

They're inadvertently vindicating every killing by the IRA by doing this.

They don't care.

The spin that this is an amnesty for their soldiers will sit well with their gammon voting base.

The fact that it's an amnesty for everyone else who committed a crime here in the name of the troubles will also walk scot free will not be part of the headlines...

they need to bury the story that the state forces were murdering scumbags and not the peacekeepers they like to portray them as.

British establishment doing what it does best.

The more staunch England supporters are more often from the smaller industrial towns and cities where supporters don't have a big club side to follow in Europe. Mostly those areas would have been Brexit leaning with a strong sense of English nationalism and all that tends to go with this ie greater propensity for racism, anti immigration etc. One thing that has struck me watching England games in recent years is the absence of Union Jacks at matches. Skip back a couple of decades and you would have seen the England section filled with Union flags whereas now its nearly all St George crosses. I think the hooligan element has subsided but not disappeared completely, there is still an undercurrent of far right supporters bubbling under the surface, just that they find it harder to travel abroad to matches due to increased security and intelligence.   

The small industrial towns where social deprivation and poverty are rife have been told for years by the media that their issues have been caused by immigrants and those pesky Europeans won't allow us to do anything about it.

This racist undercurrent was tapped into for Brexit and was seen as a winning formula and Boris and his crew have kept the myth alive and thrive off it.

They will reap what they sow as the wee man with the sandwich board on in Newtownards would say.

That adds up a bit more. I didn't think we had a fielding issue.

That's disgraceful if that is how it panned out. Shows little respect for the lower tier either.

All these competitions are being run off on a week by week basis so there was probably no free slots and these lads would have had to isolate for 10 days.

Down now play Meath this Saturday with the final the following wednesday night.

Why not invite other lads into the panel? You'd be no worse off.

Full Celtic Challenge panel to bring lads in from

Was there not something about "tier 1" counties not being allowed to play lads in the Celtic Challenge and also the championship proper (Leinster in this case) ?

If they'd have pulled lads from the Celtic Challenge panel those lads then could no longer play in the Celtic Challenge..

Possibly but you would like to prioritise minor team over Celtic Challenge if you have the 2 teams. We only enter u17 Celtic Challenge, its our level

Derry aren't tier 1 and IIRC can play the same squad in both the Celtic Challenge and the respective championship.

Down have done it for a few years pre covid.

For all the talk and all the attempts to blame Southgate, the defeat is on Rashford more than anyone else.

Eh? He played 1 minute in the game, help me out here on that one

He handed the initiative back to Italy. Missing his penalty after Donnarumma already committed to his right hand side was inexplicable.

That was the game.

He played one minute ffs . You taken penalties in a European final before?

England didn't press on after scoring and allowed the Italian team to dominate.

But yeah, it's think Rashford lost the game

Quite harsh that, no?

The actual game was 120 minutes of which Rashford played 3 or 4 minutes.

The deciding penalties are a lottery as we know. Can't remember the team, might have been Switzerland who took unbelievable penalties to put France out, yet the next game vrs Spain also went to penalties and you'd have thought it was the first time some of them had ever taken one.

Over the 120 minutes Italy were the better team and deserved to lift the trophy and that's not anti-English bias, that's based on Pickford being much the busier of the two keepers.