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leaving plenty of leeway for getting around things

And that there unfortunately is the mentality that has things in the state they are throughout the GAA..... when the facts are a team completely broke the rules of a competition (which isn't even being debated) and yet were still allowed to progress in the same competition.
As for the 3 reasons the appeal was rejected...do you know what these are because its actually quite embarrasing and they have nothing to do with the rule or sorry 'guide' that was broken.......

In fairness Insider and having nothing against Mostrim specifically, but the fact that they were allowed to play in that final makes the GAAs decision to rescind Diarmuid Connollys red card look like a very minor thing altogether. The GAA rulebook is a complete farce.

Thats a kind of funny video if you look at the 2nd and 3rd incident. Better qualify this by saying I reckon McQuillan is an absolute shite referree!!) and would have been supporting Mayo (spent many a happy summer with the cousins in Kiltimagh!!
Incident 2 just after the foul Cillian O'Connor runs in and pushes Connolly over and Joes answer is to bring the ball forward for Mayo...Incident 3 Connolly does the pushing just after the foul and Joes response........bring the ball forward for Mayo. Connolly should have known his number was up after that!!!!

Its a rather poor video anyway...In the 1st minute alone there are 2 or 3 other incidents of wrongdoing by Mayo players that the 'editor' seems to have missed......

In terms of yesterdays "match" in Croke Park, what an absolute farce.

The GAA have created a monster and a monster needs a lot of food to be fed. In this case, food equals money.

This monster called Dublin is obese. Started to gain weight about 10 years ago and now is a food addict. Its now so big it can barely move. Thats why it always has all of its games at home.

Longford on the other hand is anorexic.

Something must be done by the GAA now before Longford dies. Lets spread the food around a bit more.

We are supposed to be an amateur organisation here. Lets make it fair or at least fairer.

Take Dubs out of Croker for a start. The monster needs to get some exercise.

Longford voted to keep the Dubs in Croker this year. Along with every Leinster county, bar Laois.

1976 championship:
Dublin 5-16 Longford 0-7

1988 championship:
Dublin 4-15 Longford 0-9

2005 championship
Dublin 2-23 Longford 0-10

Smaller counties have been getting hammerings from bigger counties since the inception of the inter-county system.
To say its a modern phenomenan down to money is just nonsense.
Should never have been a live on TV match though

Longford have had many decent underage teams in recent years. They are far different than the 70's and 80's and even the last decade. No one can question that their standard of football is far higher than before, yet they are 27 points behind Dublin. There has to be a reason for it.

Jack Sheedy would be the main reason from what I saw yesterday.

If  Harte, McGuinness or Fitzmaurice had been in charge of Longford for a period of time there is now way they would have taken a beating like that.

Its a great and worthwhile discussion lads but Longford unfortunately are a very poor barometer to be using to base any decisions on. Couple of good points made above and they can be answered easily.
Insider I think you are wrong when you say missing players wouldn't have made much difference. I don't for one second believe last Sunday was a true reflection of the state of Longford Football.
  In 2 minutes with very little thought I could pick a team of players in Longford who are not on the panel for various reasons but mostly by choice who I would expect to beat the team Longford put out on Sunday by about 15 points. Even the retirements are a bit of a red herring. As Dessie Dolan pointed out if Paul Barden was a Dublin footballer would he have retired this year..I would say not a chance but he had one year under this regime and obviously decided it was going no where quickly enough to convince him to put the effort in for another year.
None of this is to demean the efforts of the lads who put the effort in and some of them are excellent footballers. But as has been said Longford have been extremely competitive at underage level for the last 10 or 15 years. Last Sunday was no way an indication of the level of ability of footballer in Longford but may very well be a reflection of the county board and management set up. As Laurel said earlier it was mentioned during the game on Sunday  that 8 lads left the panel at the start of this year. A county the size and population of Longford cannot afford to be missing half of its best players. Maybe if they were in a competition they had a realistic chance of winning then more lads would commit but its been a long time since there has been such a malaise among longford players with respect to representing their county and I'm not sure it would make a big difference to be honest

Its interesting as it was very clear from his various times on co-commentary on Shannonside last year that the current Killoe manager is no big fan of the Jack Sheedy regime......I'd say those 2 lads were made felt like heroes when they went back to club training!!!

Disappointed to be missing this due to other commitments but about 70 of my Singapore Gaelic Lions colleges are at the games including 8 men and 6 ladies who were selected to play on the Asian representative teams. Also a couple of other teams playing in more "social" tournaments. Lads from here have put in a huge effort over the past 6 weeks preparing so hoping it goes well although there are likely to be a few very strong outfits.

There's a definite problem with this in Cavan. When junior clubs don't want to be seen to be in Div. 4 so Div 1b has to be created you can see what the mentality is. And now you regularly here lads in Div 1b teams just referring to being in Div 1....its not really you know. It seems important how your team is perceived as opposed to how good it actually is.

Only watching the highlights now and a very mute point at this stage but could Arbeloas push into Sterlings back after about 5 mins which looks like a certain foul have been actually a red card...if he doesn't push him he looks like he's in on goal. Could it have influenced the ref not giving the foul??? Otherwise 15 mins in now and Liverpool doing great....think they'll take it!!!

I'd love to see the state of me in a suit after a day of 37 degrees in KL....couldn't even wear my banisteor t-shirt on Sunday because of the rancid smell of sweat coming off it from Saturday. ...was dire. Funny seeing lads taking off their jerseys between games and hanging them on a railing to try and dry the sweat off them!!

Its a brilliant weekend. I'd never have believed how seriously it's taken until I came out here. I've trained teams at home and there is no difference in what goes on out here Just far more work involved getting pitches and the whole organisation of the weekend trip is phenomenal.  We have a tour coordinator who will probably sleep for a week!!!.  3 times training a week, only it's in 30+degrees. All geared towards 1 weekend. I've been in co. Final dressing rooms and there was every bit as much tension with our lads on Sunday. Thankfully we kept the best till last.
ladies final was seriously tense. And our B team losing the intermediate final on a sudden death pt after xtra time was tough. A lot of them lads would have trained as much as the A team.....

Not in it....managed to stay out of the limelight although the camera was very close during our game. Is it possible to get a copy of any of the finals? Second highlight for me was a few quiet pints with the bomber on Friday night in a less than quiet part of KL!

Won my 1st tournament as an international manager this weekend. Its a piece of cake....dunno what Roy Hodgsons problem is!! Great weekend in Kuala Lumpur at the Asian Gaelic Games.....

Really annoying what has happened with the Colmcille minors. Saw them training and playing quite a bit when home during the summer and could not speak highly enough about the job Mickey Harkins and the lads had done with them. Have never seen anything like the numbers at training but if you know Mickey then you don't miss training!! Although I'm pretty sure if he hadn't done such a goo job with them then there may have been a bit more flexibility shown . I took a quick look through Northern Gaels (who I'm sure will easily win the minor) results this year to date and Colmcille came by a distance the closest team to them so far. I'm sure its a fact not gone unnoticed in Clonguish who already had 2 cracks at them.

Ah right.....funny the 2 gents I was talking to never mentioned it although they were both more aggrieved by  the state of one of the colmcille forwards after the game. One referred to 4 "open wounds" from the abuse he took during the game. Thought maybe it was referring to umpires ignoring this.

What's the reference on hoganstand to the umpires in the dromard colmcille. Know the colmcilles aren't too happy with Pa... (one player nominated him for ice bucket challenge) but nothing about umpires has reached this side of the world.