Messages

Very sad news. Far too young. Condolences to his family and the people of Kerry.

I also believe that he was, just like his brothers, an IRA operative, who was taking information in and out of the prisons under the cover of his professional duties.

Why do you believe this?

He was from a family with exceptionally strong republican leanings. Three of his brothers were in the IRA. It is stretching credibility, therefore, to believe that PF didn't at the very least have pro IRA views. If he disapproved of his brothers' activities or of the IRA generally, he could very easily have taken steps to distance himself from them and from the political situation in the north. He was an educated man. He could've practiced a different branch of law, he could've relocated, he could've done a number of things. Instead he immersed himself in high profile cases involving IRA personnel. A man in his position, going in and out of the prisons with unsupervised access to IRA people, would've been very useful to the republican movement. Again, it is stretching credibility to believe that this wouldn't have occurred to the IRA leadership, or that they wouldn't have asked him to relay information back and forward. This could have been done without too much risk to himself, since they were hardly likely to compromise such an important operative by asking him to smuggle in explosives up his backside. He was only being asked to talk and listen, which he was entitled to do with his clients in private. Clearly the establishment thought he was up to no good, despite what the British government is saying now. Remember, it was senior RUC officers - not special branch grunts - who briefed Douglas Hogg before his infamous comments in parliament. There was and is no hard evidence of PF's activities, but then the same could be said of Gerry Adams. Who thinks he wasn't in the IRA?

It doesn't matter what you believe. There was no evidence of what you say and I assume if there was he would have been arrested. What happened is that people who "believed" like you and who were in a position supposedly of law and order decided to execute a man in front of his wife and children.

I am going to buck the trend here and say the following. I think Eugene McGee is one of the good guys and I think he writes well about GAA affairs and was a good selection to lead this project. I think the team went about this the right way. The asked the fans what the thought and everyone of us was free to answer the questionnaire they laid out. How many on here moaning about the changes took the time to fill it in?

I think there is a lot of good in these rules. I think the mark is a great idea and it was a joke it was abandoned in a previous attempt. I know I like to see a big man soar through the air and catch a ball under pressure. I hate to see that man then get mauled by 5 defenders and get done for over-carrying. Fielding is a spectacular skill of the game which the rules should  protect. We see less and less fielding these days.

The yellow card for an "intentional" foul is fine in theory. My fear is that the standard of refereeing is so absolutely brutal that the use of "cop on" to determine what is intentional and what is not is unlikely to work. The problem is that the referees the GAA promotes are whistle happy, by the book types. Just go to some U21 games this year and you'll see this is where the GAA tries them out and often ruin games in the process. I think the idea of giving a guy an early shower for pulling and dragging off the ball is good but I can't see our referees implementing it properly.

The countdown clock is long over due. I hate it when you see the board go up for 2 minutes of injury time, 90s of which is wasted by a freetaker or another injury and the ref just blows it up exactly on 72 mins.

I'm a bit baffled where the calls for 70 minutes in club games came from, I can't imagine the survey put that forward as a problem.

Its a shame that something could not have been suggested to curb the scourge of the handpass abuse but I can see how putting a rule in place that could be implemented would be very difficult.

In general I think the GAA should give these rules a good chance in the league even when the inevitable moaning from Mickey Harte starts. Our game has become ugly and boring and I think we need to try and bring the skills of the game to the fore and stop teams of racehorses becoming the norm.

Its called competition and if it weren't for the likes of Ryanair good old aer lingus would be charging you 500 euro return to London.

Its amazing the snobby attitude people have to flying, I'd love to know where it comes from. For example you can get a bus eireann bus from North Donegal to Dublin and it will probably take you 3 hours. You won't a seat reserved and you get a smiley stewardess or free coffee. Would you pay 30% more for that luxury. But come to flying and we get all this shite about aer lingus being better garbage. I fly at least once a week to europe. My first port of call is always Ryanair as they are the cheapest (i wouldn't even bother compare the others anymore as i've never found them cheaper). I've had one flight late in 3 years and I've never had my bag go missing. Thats all I care about. I also fly aerlingus to some places like stuttgart or munich. They are fine but again 30-50% more expensive. You get the same shite about bag size, charged for bag check ins and weight of bags. The only difference is you get a seat number - fantastic. Lufthansa charge 70% more and they give you a seat number and a piece of cake.

The recent case of the ill children is bullshit. What is the ryanair worker supposed to do, tell them its ok to have heavy bags as they are ill. What if they are blind, crippled, old - do you think the worker should just make it up as they go along. Unless the people in charge of this group live on Mars they will know that all airlines have weight restrictions. Its to do with fuel consumption and the like. Should people with no luggage pay for those that choose to bring anything they want? The media love having a go at one of Irelands most successful companies and i don't get it.

[should of]

It . All the connacht counties should of got 2 million each

FFS this is reacing epidemic proportions - now even got as far as Sligo

It's worse than I thought. I did a search of gaaboard for "had of". It returns 15 pages of hits! "Could of" and "should of" give 9 pages and "would of" 17 pages! That's 483 times somebody typed "would of". I wouldn't HAVE dreamed that was possible.

Forget the apostrophe campaign. This is totally out of control. There's only one thing for it. A league table of offenders is coming.

What are you on about, most people from Meath can't spell their name.

Where is Evil Genius?

A few pages ago he clearly said what he thought of these protesters and it was along the same lines as everyone else so why is everyone looking for him to come on again and say the same.

I think a legend too.

You've got to make the most of what you've got and he sure did. Not the greatest ability wise by any stretch of the imagination but for sheer effort you could barely match him. Did left back and left midfield in 2002 as Ian Harte was useless.

One of the worst footballers ever to pull on a republic shirt, zero pace limited ability amazing how he got so many caps.

What sort of a nasty little man are you. No pace, he had lots of pace in his prime. Gave huge commitment and always left everything on the pitch. To give so much and have arm chair experts like you belittle his achievements is just nasty.

From a poster on hoganstand

1. A O'Meara
2. M Brady
3. R Dunne
4. D Barkey
5. K Meehan
6. A Clarke
7. D O'Reilly
8. G McKiernan
9. O O'Connell
10. K Tierney
11. C Mackey
12. M McKeever
13. M Reilly
14. D Givney
15. E Keating

Barkey was sent off near the end for 2 yellows. Mossy Corr came in for Keating who picked up an injury in the first half, and M Dunne came on for Mackey.

Cavan beat Louth 2-14 to 0-12 in the Fitzsimmons cup Shield today. No other details at the moment.

I bet those people in the Kent photo think that the film "This is England" is a training video.

Eh more like Dads army!

Cavan were actually the First county in Ireland to have a 3G pitch, but its hardly a Centre of Excellence when most Counties have 4/5 training pitches.

Cavans 3g pitch is no different than what's in ballyhaunis. Its just a pitch and plenty of games have been on the 3g in breffni so its not just a training pitch.

Was down in ballyhaunis at a match few week ago, its a fantastic pitch and its huge however no one there could figure out who was really going to get the use out of it.

Abebooks.com is the place to go with international and home sellers. Getting them on time for Christmas might be your biggest problem.

I see they are trying to burn the Tricolour, lets see how that plays out when viewed in the US and UK proper where such sights are generally viewed as the preserve of wacko Al Qaeda types.

This rabble are showing the true face of Unionism. They sulked over Home Rule, they sulked over civil rights, and now they sulk over a piece of cloth, democracy is not in their DNA.

I've often wondered where do loyalists get tricolours to burn and those boyos in Egypt and Iran, where to they get the US flag to burn. It almost implies someone on their "side" is actually making flags to burn them.  In any case Mayo, they be burning tricolours regularly in the 6, its a hobby some of the loyalists have like you might collect stamps.