What is the point of being in Division One if it’s just about staying in Division One? After Monaghan’s brilliant win over Tyrone on Saturday night, man of the match Fintan Kelly spoke with eir Sport. Now, remember, this is a county who had just gone and won three of their four games in the […]

8 years ago

When all is said and done, Jamie Heaslip could very well be remembered as the best 8 Ireland has ever had. We’re talking about a man here who sleeps in a high altitude tent during pre-season. A man who rails against overly processed foods, preaches the value of whole food nutrition, takes supplements before, during […]

8 years ago

A performance of talent. A performance of balls. A performance of heart.

8 years ago

The old enemies but one comes back into battle wounded. It’s hard to play down any confrontation between these two giants of Gaelic football but it’s even more difficult to see how Mayo can stop the Dublin juggernaut this early in the year with this many absences. Stephen Rochford and the second best team in […]

8 years ago

Where is the anger from Manchester United fans? Liam Brady didn’t even need the second half in Sevilla to decide how this game was going. Did anyone? United are a far, far cry from the trailblazing identity that once set them apart. They’re still one of the biggest clubs in the world, they’ll always have […]

8 years ago

It wasn’t quite Martin O’Neill levels but Jose Mourinho was in no mood to toss any bones in the direction of Tony O’Donoghue. I bet the RTÉ reporter wishes these managers would just produce better performances. I bet he hankers for a night when the audience at home are not baying for blood. He rarely […]

8 years ago

This time of year is a nicer way of life. It’s nicer when you get off the bloody training field and away from the miles and miles of sprints. A pre-season game is music to your ears. You can run when you want to, nobody’s taking it too seriously, and even the lad you know […]

8 years ago

Never, ever underestimate the power of sleep. It’s something that scares the shit out of athletes at any level, trying to hit the sweet spot of sleep and desperately trying to avoid sleeping too much. Recovery expert Tom Coleman once told us that every sportsperson should be looking at eight to nine hours of sleep […]

8 years ago

The reality for a place like Longford is that there are more hurlers in a lot of clubs than there are in the whole of that county. It’s been a tough start to 2018 for Colum O’Meara. The Galway native took up a project when he took up the Longford reins and it was never […]

8 years ago

Watching the scenes unfold in Wigan on Monday night, it brought back an old thought, if only temporarily – it’s easy to be classy when you’re winning. With all the arguments on the sidelines, the City fans allegedly throwing missiles at full time and the scuffles on the pitch, it just looked for all the […]

8 years ago

Just another manic Sunday. On Saturday night, Tipperary welcome Wexford to Semple Stadium for their round three clash in the National Hurling League Division 1A. Following what happened last year, expect the tension to be palpable. When the sides last met – Tipperary’s 11-point league semi-final win in April 2017 – Davy Fitzgerald, incensed at […]

8 years ago

When does a fracas become a melee? When does a melee become a fracas? What the f**k is a shemozzle? It’s the burning issue in the GAA world at present – right up there with the fixture crisis – but at least Tipperary are making strides to helping us define a melee. But can you […]

8 years ago

Here’s Tyrone looking at expanding their game plan. Everyone can see it, even Sean Cavanagh is talking about how the emphasis now is to develop their attack, and the introduction of Lee Brennan is giving them an out and out scorer and an extra body in the full forward line. The Red Hands have changed […]

8 years ago

Sergio Aguero is class but he’s not even been the best player at Man City this season. He’s not even consistently made the team – Pep Guardiola’s only weakness being his unrelenting want to see something no-one else sees and wanting to not see things everyone else sees. But the Argentine has still performed, of […]

8 years ago

It’s not always easy to take the side of Alan Pardew but, sometimes, you just have to swallow your pride and do the right thing. West Brom went down 3-0 at the home of the champions on Monday night as Chelsea cruised to victory and Alan Pardew’s new-look side had a very Daniel Sturridge feel […]

8 years ago

Robbie Henshaw will play no further part in the Six Nations. The Ireland centre, who suffered a shoulder injury against Italy on Saturday, has undergone a procedure and has been ruled out of the remainder of the championship. Irish Rugby confirmed the awful news on Monday morning after the medical team assessed the camp. It places […]

8 years ago

In 2016, it was Charles Darwin, in 2017 it’s Viktor E. Frankl. Whatever you think of Jim Gavin’s stone-cold persona or the Dublin players’ level heads and playing down of historic achievements, it all amounts to deadly effect. That effect amounts to success. Before the final in September, Joe Brolly and the other pundits were […]

8 years ago

Shane Walsh burns rubber when he gets going. It’s probably about time that Galway stop taking as much stick as they have been doing. Maybe it’s all relative, maybe it’s only February, but the bottom line is that Kevin Walsh’s side have played three games in the top tier of the National Football League and […]

8 years ago

“What the hell is going on with this fella?”

8 years ago

The coach is wrong, but why would you tell them? GAA training drills vary from boring to unreasonable, from fun to pointless but the one constant which most managers would care most about getting right is whether or not they’re tough. You can be doing a shit drill but it wouldn’t matter as long as […]

8 years ago

Ryan McMenamin has never been afraid to speak his mind. Obviously he marked out a reputation for himself on the pitch as someone who likes a bit of ‘banter’ but he selected his victims carefully. Since his retirement, the GAA world has started to learn more that, actually, the Tyrone legend is a deep thinker […]

8 years ago

Eamon Dunphy doesn’t help. Wes Hoolahan doesn’t need to be as good as Messi or Zidane to fit the argument of those who say he should’ve played more games for Ireland. All he has to do is be good enough to play for Ireland. Is he better than some midfielders in the Irish squad? Is […]

8 years ago

There goes Wes Hoolahan. There goes the exact sort of player that everyone in Britain and Ireland has been crying out for since the Spanish football revolution. There he goes with 42 caps. An international career basically squashed into four and half years, two campaigns and, even then, underused. Held back. There goes the best […]

8 years ago

Thank God for Clare. When every second conversation about the GAA these days is simply descending into championship restructure chat, a club from the Banner County is trying to come to the rescue. Cooraclare have put forward a motion that could just pave the way for a complete restructure of the entire football championship. The […]

8 years ago

“Seamus would definitely be playing for Donegal now. Definitely.”

8 years ago

This is where we’re at with the fixtures in the GAA. A member of the Dublin senior football panel will not play for his college on Tuesday night because he is said to be focusing on his county. DIT head to Austin Stack Park to take on IT Tralee in the Sigerson Cup quarter-final but […]

8 years ago

This would make a serious team

8 years ago

Buckle up. Keep the boiled water simmering on the hob, stack the fridge and upload a Google image picture of a faraway land to your social media accounts to pretend like you’re not in the country because, let me tell you something, you’re going nowhere on Saturday. 12.30pm Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal Premier League BT […]

8 years ago

You might even say it was the best kick of the day… Whatever about Johnny Sexton’s immortal drop goal in Paris, Patrick Doyle – and certainly no-one in the Knocknagree club – will ever forget his 45′ in Croke Park. The All-Ireland junior football championship heads for Cork after a Fintan O’Connor-inspired outfit beat Westmeath’s […]

8 years ago

Johnny Sexton won’t have to buy a pint for a while but, right now, the entire country wants a bit of him. For any GAA fans out there, you might remember the end of the 2016 All-Ireland final when Cormac Costello came off the bench and kicked three points as Dublin saw off Mayo in […]

8 years ago

There’s no place like home like the county Tyrone, in the village that they call the Moy. Sean Cavanagh’s All-Ireland count keeps rising. When the Tyrone legend hung up his inter-county boots this year, the eulogies all followed the same pattern. His 15 years of service were marvelled at but not more so than his […]

8 years ago

The GAA archives aren’t great. It’s hard enough to get a team sheet from the noughties never mind a clip from the 90s. It’s hard to keep track of records and compare everything fairly because: a) formats constantly change and b) the records are shite. So if you Google something as simple as ‘fastest goal […]

8 years ago

There’s a rural club in Derry that has some set instructions listed out in one of the changing rooms for players to bear in mind before games. They read like a little list of classroom rules. Don’t sleep in That’s alright, you don’t want footballers showing up to games groggy or with their body clock […]

8 years ago

A new era for a proven gem. Michael Lyster’s 35 years as anchor of The Sunday Game will come to a close at the end of 2018 and Joanne Cantwell is the chosen one to take over. RTÉ announced that the Dubliner will host the nation’s flagship show after rising through the ranks and really […]

8 years ago

The reason Martin O’Neill got such a backlash after his most recent interview with Tony O’Donoghue was because everyone in the country wanted to draw a line in the sand. There was an opportunity there to put Denmark behind and get the nation reenergised by what is to come but the manager got tetchy with […]

8 years ago

The greatest victory of the peace process is that it allowed everyone from every community to live in harmony in the one place with their own identities. That might not seem like a lot to ask in today’s world but, for a piece of land that only signed an agreement 20 years ago to officially […]

8 years ago

So, five months after playing his last game at Croke Park, Sean Cavanagh is heading back to Croke Park. Some people are just attracted to the Colosseum. It calls on some of its warriors and, no matter what, the most daring of them answer its call. Cavanagh bowed out of a distinguished inter-county career last […]

8 years ago

Sure what could possibly go wrong? A draw in the GAA is always a long shot – by the bookies standards anyway – but a draw in the GAA is not that uncommon. Just ask Mayo. Honest to God, at any level, in any county, back to draws in the GAA and you’ll be getting […]

8 years ago

A puncher always has a chance. It wasn’t a good year for Donegal in 2017. They went into the Tyrone Ulster semi-final with hopes of an ambush and they were brushed aside in an exercise that really separated them firmly from that top bracket. Then they were trimmed by Galway and kicked out of the […]

8 years ago

Arsene Wenger isn’t a bad spud. His philosophy might be too romantic nowadays, he might not have aged too well as a manager of one of the biggest clubs in Europe and he might be easy pickings for criticism every single year but he still talks a great game and he still holds his class […]

8 years ago

No-one really gives a toss about how Ireland played in 1990. This might sound stupid but sport isn’t really about winning and losing, it’s far bigger than that. It’s about moments that transcend all that, moments that can last forever. It doesn’t matter that Ireland lost to Poland in Warsaw a few days after beating […]

8 years ago

It’s probably one of the loveliest traits of being human that we never really get caught up on. The idea that great men want to sacrifice themselves for the good of others, there’s something so simple and so beautiful in that. Even some of the best players who’ve reached some of the highest highs, there’s […]

8 years ago

You’d nearly be better off, in the long run, in a lower league. One of these teams, for example, is going to Euro 2020. Georgia Kazakhstan Latvia Andorra Belarus Luxembourg Moldova San Marino Azerbaijan Faroe Islands Malta Kosovo Macedonia Armenia Liechtenstein Gibraltar They’re all in League D of the Nations League and the playoffs for […]

8 years ago

We’re going to try and make this as simple as possible but it really isn’t easy. The Nations League starts in September. There are four leagues – there are four groups in each of those leagues. If you’re in League D, C, or B, you can fight for promotion to a higher league – they […]

8 years ago

Poor Tommy Murphy. One of the greatest men in GAA history. One of the finest players. A proud Gael. His memory was disrespected somewhat not by the Tommy Murphy Cup, but by the snide sneers that followed the mere mention of that competition. It was disrespected by how the tournament was treated and how little […]

8 years ago

It’s been a long road. From the GAA player in Killybegs to the average St. Catherine’s footballer. From taking a shot – one shot – in a one-off friendly with Sligo Rovers to not getting a chance in the League of Ireland before lighting it up, attracting Everton and going on to become the best […]

8 years ago

Anything to stay away from a football

8 years ago

All anyone wants is regular fixtures at a good time of year. The only addition to that demand is that those same people can have their best players when they need them. Teams can find themselves in relegation danger because they’ve had to make do without their county players for most of the season – […]

8 years ago

Growing up in Armenia, Henrikh Mkhitaryan always dreamt of making it to the Emirates Highbury. When he joined Manchester United 18 months ago, he was only hoping to use it as a stepping stone to Arsenal. When he won the Europa League last season, he was secretly wishing he’d get to play in it again. […]

8 years ago

Poor Alexis. Can you blame a man for wanting out of Arsenal? Really though. It’s the same thing every year, it’s the same problem every year and, actually, they’re just getting progressively worse. This season, they don’t even have an FA Cup run or a hammering by Bayern Munich to look forward. Arsene Wenger is […]

8 years ago