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I see Daithi's law is being put through Westminster. Good to see.

It is good to see and I wonder if a backroom deal has been done.
Scenario 1. Westminster agrees to Daithis law, taking heat off the DUP, the DUP announce that the new Protocol deal meets their seven tests and everyone back to Stormont ( very very unlikely)
Scenario 2. Westminster does a deal with Brussels, DUP object, no Stormont, direct rule from Westminster for the next two years minimum. This was Westminster addressing devolved matters which they said last week they would not do. First of many?

It looked a poor decision not to review the barge on Rashford when he was going through on goal, but that was balanced out by the Fred handball which is nearly always given as a penalty these days.

I'm pretty sure it was reviewed but it was outside the box so VAR can't do anything about it.

VAR should have been looking at it as a red card offence denying a goal scoring opportunity.

The strategy is to say no to everything. They'll still get plenty of votes.

Yup, council elections in May, NO,NO,NO!
General Election next year, NO, NO, NO!
Perhaps after that they may start to behave like adults but highly unlikely

The SDLP vote has dropped so badly they are now no longer eligible to be part of the government in Stormont ( if it ever gets going again ). In the most recent Lucid talk poll they are on the same level of vote as the TUV ( around 8% ). They are facing into a council election in May which could be very painful although individual councillors may well have a higher personal vote than the party itself.
The SDLP has to come up with a reason to exist, saying we are not Sinn Fein is not a reason. They need some big ideas and policies to differentiate themselves. They are slowly but surely circling the plughole of electoral oblivion, too many big egos with little talent. If they were wise they would push the socialist agenda more as they are never going to out nationalist Sinn Fein.
If they don't do something radical very soon they will be the equivalent of the workers party in 5 to 10 years with 3% of the vote all from pensioners who remember the troubles.

Yesterday started poorly but improved a lot in the second half. Glad to see us score a couple of goals and produce at least 3 other good chances. Paddy Burke and McGarry at full back looked good again but we struggled a bit in the half back line and midfield I thought especially with their runners. We also struggled on our own puck outs which is a concern because that's two weeks running. I don't know what the figures are but we look like we are only winning 30-35% of our own puck outs.
Still much brighter again in the second half so our spirit is good and so is our fitness. When we were 8 or 9 points down it would have been easy to roll over and take a pummeling so fair play to the players for digging in.
If we can score 2 or 3 goals against Laois in Corrigan I think we will win, heres hoping.

Is there anywhere you can get to see completed Transfers for from and to Antrim clubs? Just looking to see the movers and shakers!!

What did you hear! Spread the gossip

Down to Dublin on Sunday, hopefully a better day for hurling and hopefully we create a goal chance or two. We never made a mark on Kilkennys full back line on Saturday but in fairness Lawlor and Padraig Walsh in front of him were excellent.
Dublin are a grade above us and I will be pleasantly surprised if we come back up the road with a point. I think we were a bit lucky on Saturday, the cats left at least two goal chances behind them in the first half and while our second half comeback was encouraging to a degree we still struggled really badly on our own puck outs both short and long all day. We really need to get our primary possession sorted or we are going nowhere.

I suspect Greenwood will end up like Paddy Jackson and company from Ulster rugby. Won't play for United again as sponsors won't have it but will end up at a mid tier club in France/Spain/Italy next season with his contract with United fully paid up.

Suspended sentence I see. As unpalatable as it was it's legally the correct result.

In layman terms how come? Genuine question.

Id be interested in knowing the answer also

Plenty of people do time for causing death by dangerous driving. Is a heavy machine gun less lethal than a car? Kill someone by accident driving a car and do jail. Kill someone "by accident" with a heavy machine gun and walk free!!! Bollocks.

Charges against Greenwood dropped I see

Is that real or a twitter rumour? This comes up on twitter every three or four weeks

U-20s got some hammering by Dublin at the weekend in a friendly

Will the seniors get the same treatment from the cats at the weekend? Hopefully not but I think its fair to say that the Walsh cup was not encouraging. Are any of the Dunloy boys back for the weekend or are they having a break?

I'd be worried if I was a Chelsea fan. Spending all this money. It's not a viable financial model. In a year or two they could find themselves doing a Leeds if the owner gets fed up. This is were there should be proper safeguards but City have got away with it and looks like Chelsea will as well.

In fairness to Chelsea they started like this under Roman before calming down and running a (reasonably) sensible policy, made a lot of money from youth players sales in the last 10 years. Current owner seems nuts but may well calm down although it does seem strange to completely dismantle a squad that won the champions league a couple of years ago. Plus the transfer fees are off the scale.

Anyone heard that Gortnamona have withdrawn senior hurling team? Heard it from 5 or 6 people from different clubs around place

That would be a shame if it was the case, I am pretty sure they have been in an intermediate final in the last 10 years. they beat Carey in a final a good few years ago.

He needs locked up somewhere - probably not jail but some other form of institution. If your kid(s) was there you'd be seriously thinking about taking them out.

You would be seriously thinking of giving that header a boot in the hole, disrupting the school for months, me me me, selfish p***k.

While Dunloy are receiving praise for their display yesterday, their negative tactics contributed to their defeat.

The withdrawal of the corner forwards into the middle third was obviously designed to reduce the Ballyhale threat and in the first half it appeared to be working to an extent as there was 2 points in it at half time, which should have been a point due to a very scorable chance down the right which went wide.

However, a lot of ball into one or two forwards was swallowed up by the Ballyhale back line and it was a case of robbing Peter to play Paul.  In order to play that game you would need a big hoor of a full forward in the Colin Fennelly mode which Dunloy didn't have.
One thing I did notice was that Dunloy missed a lot of their picks, possibly due to the heavily sanded pitch and as a result Colin Fennelly picked the Dunloy full back line's pocket to set up the goal to put Ballyhale into the lead which they never lost. a ball which should have been cleared 20 seconds previously.

Dunloy were certainly not overawed by their illustrious opponents and Ballyhale knew they were in a game. However as mentioned by manfromdelmonte a lot of aimless balls into a one man FF line was never going to yield scores and in the second half several Dunloy poc outs went down the left wing which were closed down by Ballyhale.

Obvious that Ballyhale were aware of the threat posed by the likes of Keelan Molloy and closed off the running game especially in the second half when Ballyhale reinforced their half back line leaving it difficult for the Dunloy runners to attack, a tactic employed by Slaughtneil in the Ulster final a couple of years ago and by Loughgiel in the Antrim semi final a few years prior to that, where Dunloy had no answer on both occasions.

With 10 minutes left I felt that Dunloy needed to change their set up and go man on man because they were never going to get past the Ballyhale half back line. That never happened.

Definitely one that got away. I reckon Mickey McShane in Slaughtneil is chomping at the bit for a crack at Dunloy next season should Dunloy get out of Antrim which isn't a given depending on what Loughgiel bring to the table.

Plenty of the younger Loughgiel contingent on the Antrim panel this year which looks good for them as part of their rebuild. Cushendall, I'm still not sure about and its about time that Rossa and the Johnnies stepped up to the mark in the SHC, because let's face it neither of those clubs are going to do much in the football championship

Hard to argue there and I'm sure the game plan was exactly that, contain Ballyhale's scoring threat and last 5/10 minutes push up, man for man if they were still in it. Ballyhale though tagged over 4 or 5 unanswered points in minutes to stretch it to 6 points then 7

Dunloy achieved two targets this year, getting to Croke Park and beating S'Neil, and when the dust settles and they look at it they will realise that its been a good year, some players were not fully fit some players were missing completely, so they have something to work on for the new season.

It should though ignite the other Antrim clubs who'll see it as a missed opportunity for them and a chance to get back there.

The road to Croker starts today for all the clubs up and down the country

Dunloy, historically play the two man FF line, but with the two lads centrally located, waiting to use the space out wide to sprint onto the ball, but for some reason yesterday when they did hit those spaces it was a Shamrocks lads sprinting out to it on their own. Hard to see from the TV why that was the case, but somewhere along the way tactics went awry.
Maybe it was Ballyhale pressure out the field, who knows!

Plenty of video analysis done by club teams
The Dunloy game plan would have been well dissected

I was impressed with the battling for ground possession and the flicks and blocking of Dunloy. It kept them competitive throughout the game.

Also the pitch is a disgrace. In better condition for primary school games than AI finals.
It was even worse for the junior/intermediate finals last week

Lots of games played in Croke during December and January is always going to be an issue and wear down the pitch. Also a lot of hard frost during the week before the match. This is the downside of playing all ireland finals in the depths of winter.