This article was written last year. And here we are again… James McClean is not going to wear a poppy this November. He didn’t wear one last November and he’s not going to wear one next November. Three years ago (now four years ago), he explained why in a considered open letter that should’ve put […]

7 years ago

Declan Rice didn’t make the squad for the Moldova qualifier at home, five months after he had made his Premier League debut. And, listen, he was obviously good enough for the Ireland team in the months building up to his Premier League debut. If every country waited for players to make it in the richest […]

7 years ago

Gorgeous logo for a gorgeous kit

7 years ago

Earlier on Thursday morning, it seemed that most people were happy enough not violently offended by the 2018 All-Stars selection. The team is a good one full of deserving candidates but, gradually throughout the day, issues were taken. The shuffling around of a few positions was always going to pose questions. The idea was to […]

7 years ago

The morning of the official All-Star announcement is generally cause for journalists to buckle up and go dark. The selection committee are pelted from every single county because every single county has a player that they’ve watched all year and now he’s been ignored but the ‘Dublin-based media’. They’re hit with stats, reminded about a […]

7 years ago

The official 2018 PwC Football All-Star award winners have been announced. Seven Dublin players were honoured with Brian Howard receiving his first gong in this his debut season with the All-Ireland champions. David Clifford, Karl O’Connell, Padraig Hampsey and Rory Began join Howard in the first-timers list whilst Corofin’s untouchable full forward Ian Burke is the […]

7 years ago

Dublin SFC final Kilmacud Crokes 2-12 St. Jude’s 0-13 The Dublin championship on October nights really shows off the best players in the country. Anyone lucky enough to have ever witnessed Diarmuid Connolly under the Parnell lights with a St. Vincent’s jersey on will have seen some magic conjured and they’d have seen first-hand the […]

7 years ago

It’s hard to watch the St. Patrick’s celebrations and not be jealous. Club championships are a rare thing that will only be afforded to the lucky minority so, when you get your hands on one, treasure it. Caress it, kiss it, hoist it, love it. It’s difficult to explain to someone outside of the GAA […]

7 years ago

Ireland are taking just 26 players with them to Chicago and they’re leaving out a host of big names. Joe Schmidt’s side take on Italy in the first of their November internationals in Soldier Field with three further games to follow in Dublin. Ireland v Italy (Nov 3) Ireland v Argentina (Nov 10) Ireland v […]

7 years ago

Nine years Moyle Rovers have waited. Peter Acheson was never going to miss it. On Friday, the former Tipperary midfielder flew back in from Dubai for a third time in just over a month. On Sunday, they won the county senior football championship, Moyle Rovers 1-15 Ardfinnan 1-7. On Tuesday, he makes his way back […]

7 years ago

GAA Sundays in October. How could you beat them? Slaughtneil club men will have a rare winter off after their hurlers were beaten in the Ulster semi-final on Sunday and, with their footballers already put out of the Derry championship, it will be a strange provincial and All-Ireland series without the Emmets, in either code. […]

7 years ago

Magnus Breathnach, the myth and the legend. Never has any footballer had a more influential 63rd minute of a club championship final, never mind a goalkeeper. They’re calling it Roy of the Rovers stuff but Roy could only wish in his wildest dreams that he could one day be as great and as heroic as […]

7 years ago

There will be few better blocks witnessed than Conor Murphy’s for the rest of the year but TJ Reid isn’t one for sentiment. Inside the mind of a cold-blooded assassin, there’s just targets and raw execution. It’s nothing personal with TJ Reid, it’s just business and his is merciless and uncompromising. Whatever the madness surrounding […]

7 years ago

“This is a dictatorship.” The 2019 O’Byrne Cup kicks off soon but 10 of its games will take place in 2018. Eight of them in 2019. This year, Paraic Duffy’s new proposals were implemented across the inter-county calendar. Despite adding more matches to the championship schedule, the GAA shortened the football and hurling seasons by […]

7 years ago

The axe comes for everyone

7 years ago

Ever read Christy O’Connor’s book, The Club? Just a typical year in the life of a club player. Drama, fallouts, committee meeting after meeting. It’s scary how it resonates with you, reading the events of a hurling team in Clare. You see the same characters you know from your own club popping up in Christy’s. […]

7 years ago

Yeah, yeah we all know the counties of Ireland but how well do you know them with a timer counting down on you? There are 33 counties that enter the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship every year and all you have to do is write them down. But do it within three minutes. There’s probably going […]

7 years ago

The Gweedore players walked off the bus and into Mac Cumhaill Park on Sunday. Most of them were doing the usual mean stare ahead, looking big and tough, showing that they were fully focused on the task ahead. Eamonn McGee walked past unfazed, he looked down the camera lens, he’s seen all this before. Then, […]

7 years ago

They say you don’t choose your club, it chooses you. The same could be said for greatness. It isn’t a choice. It’s a calling. No field in Irish culture houses as many heroes and as many role models as the football fields of this country do. Kids all over this place grow up inspired by […]

7 years ago

Ach, sure it’s not even surprising anymore. Masita make good jerseys and the Viking Gaels kits never fail to impress. Hailing from the GAA’s biggest parish of Noway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Estonia, the Viking Gaels are a Scandinavian force and their striking knitwear is ever more powerful than the football and hurling played on the […]

7 years ago

Joseph Anoaʻi got real for a second. Whatever you think of the WWE, however snobby your view of it, you shouldn’t deny that there are serious athletes with serious character at play. At its worst, it’s just an entertainment show too obviously scripted and over-dramatic but, at its best, it is escapism, it is unifying […]

7 years ago

James Horan, the new rules, Mayo Mick. Aidan O’Shea is a straight-talker at the best of times but, with a word association game, he gets to the point even quicker. 60 seconds, 20 topics, one of the most recognised GAA players against the clock. O’Shea was promoting the new Heinz Sports Club which will support […]

7 years ago

There were only about a hundred seconds on the clock at Lansdowne Road when something was so obviously out of place. A young Preston attacker making just his third appearance in international football pulled out, back to goal, actually looking for the ball. And it wasn’t just lip service either, or a half-hearted obligatory show […]

7 years ago

Unleash The Punisher. James Murphy is a full back. Big, tough, uncompromising, he’s an immovable anchor manning the last line of the Sean McDermotts defence. But the Monaghan man isn’t just a human wall standing tall and strong. No, he’s got more to his game, more to his body. He’s a steam train too. So, […]

7 years ago

Tipperary will always be the last ever under-21 All-Ireland champions but Cork’s individuals rule the roost. Four counties have been recognised in the under-21 team of the year for 2018 with Galway and Wexford players joining Tipp and the Rebels on the All-Star 15. Six Cork players make the cut: goalkeeper Ger Collins, Niall O’Leary […]

7 years ago

Ireland had three attempts against Denmark. One of them was on target – Cyrus Christie’s long range effort in the 71st minute. Of of them was Jeff Hendrick’s chance – a one-on-one gifted because every Danish player had stopped to allow for Harry Arter to receive treatment. Hendrick took the ball from Delaney though as […]

7 years ago

We’ll never know if he knew what was happening or not. We’re in the fifth minute, Harry Arter has gone down with an injury. The Danes have pulled up and they’re about to be sound and kick the ball out of play so Arter can receive treatment. Not on Jeff Hendrick’s watch. The Dub nicked […]

7 years ago

“Alien to him”. Keith Andrews has played enough times in central midfield for Ireland to know a fish out of water. Heck, he spent most of his international caps alongside Glenn Whelan – he’s familiar with an uncomfortable midfielder. But Martin O’Neill’s set-up for the Denmark game on Saturday night surprised everyone. When the team […]

7 years ago

Eddie Alvarez is set to get the payday he deserves. One of MMA’s good guys looks like he’s about to take his business away from Dana White and the UFC and link up with Japanese promotion ONE Championship. The 34-year-old who boasts a 29-6 record in the pro game fought only in July there but […]

7 years ago

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The thing about club championship final is that there’s a place for everyone. Sure, it’s sad when your season ends prematurely and you’re not part of the big day but it’s also just so damn good lying back with your feet up, clinging to a hot drink, […]

7 years ago

I sat looking into space in the changing rooms at half time. It was one of those team talks that don’t register at all because you’re still trying to decipher what happened out there and you’re wondering where those 30 minutes went and how did they go by so fast. I genuinely couldn’t remember anything […]

7 years ago

It’s Tuesday already and, still, you’d be hard pushed to take your mind off the events of Saturday night/Sunday morning. Remember after Father Ted kicked Bishop Brennan up the arse and sent him on his way to Rome? The bishop sat open-jawed and stunned on the plane and through a meeting with the Pope contemplating […]

7 years ago

The sad reality is that a lot of clubs probably do more push ups than they do kick passing at training. It’s an easy way to bring players to their knees and, in fairness, when they get that sort workout in the bank, it is a good thing – mentally more than anything. Push ups […]

7 years ago

The GAA is nearly a stage performance at this stage. This is how you behave, this is how you walk, this is what you say and, no matter what, if you want to be a real man you don’t go near “that soccer rubbish”. “Sure ye couldn’t f**king watch it.” There are other ways to be […]

7 years ago

Dana White was in for a tough press conference on Saturday night but he sat and answered every question and he stayed around for some more. He wasn’t shirking responsibility or hiding his disappointment. He explained everything as best he could and he gave an honest assessment of the situation. He wasn’t teasing rematches or […]

7 years ago

Khabib says sorry. He says sorry to the Athletic Commission and… to Vegas. Apart from that, he can’t see the problem. He’s in the business of respect, he says. McGregor’s actions in the build-up to UFC 229 were not respectful to Nurmagomedov so he cannot understand why he was asked about jumping the cage and […]

7 years ago

Anarchy. Dana White confirmed that the Nevada Athletic State Commission are withholding Khabib Nurmagomedov’s purse but not Conor McGregor’s. Three men were arrested from the T-Mobile Arena after they scaled the Octagon after the UFC 229 main event and assaulted McGregor. The Dubliner was hit from the side and then behind as he recovered from […]

7 years ago

Dillon Danis claims he’s a better wrestler than Khabib Nurmagomedov. But it would’ve taken something a lot more than that to draw the UFC lightweight champion out of the Octagon in his finest moment. Khabib retained the belt, he made McGregor – a phenomenon of the sport – look ordinary and he went back for […]

7 years ago

“That was disgusting.” Joe Rogan absolutely nailed it after chaos erupted after the UFC 229 main event. “There were two things that were disgusting: Khabib jumping into the crowd to fight Dillon Danis and Conor McGregor being hit from behind.” Cowardly. Conor McGregor is a lot of things. He talks the talk, he riles people […]

7 years ago

You should lose faith in the suits right about… now. Five proposed rule changes for the football league in 2019, three of them totally and utterly insane. Two of them you can just about make peace with, three are cringeworthy, and all five have massive, obvious flaws. Do you know when someone is so stupid […]

7 years ago

The sky blue is no more. 10 years is too long for a powerhouse of colleges football to wait for a reunion with the Sigerson Cup. Since 2008, Jordanstown – and now the Ulster University – have been seeking a return to the big time. They got back to the final in 2011 and 2014 […]

7 years ago

Club championship, holy God. This is what it’s all about. Seconds that define seasons. Moments that will remember a career. Yet again at the weekend, it was all on the line all over the country. The champions were being dumped out, the favourites were shown no respect and four weeks after any kind of inter-county […]

7 years ago

Another weekend, another giant-killing. It’s been quite a club championship up and down the country with favourites falling, Goliaths dying, and underdog dreams living to fight another day. In Tyrone, there’s no lip service paid to any given Sunday. Just four teams remain in the senior football championship and that means there are two cracking […]

7 years ago

They call it the place where the blanket was manufactured. They say the entire county is still infected from the McGuinness bomb and that football there is in quarantine. Its high winds along the Atlantic coast means hand passing thrives there and that long kicking is a bigger risk than it is anywhere else. But […]

7 years ago

The path is clear. James Horan and his second coming has a touch of inevitability about it now after Mike Solan withdrew from the race to become Mayo manager for 2019. The Mayo county board were set to meet both Horan and Solan to discuss their prospects, their plans and their backroom teams after the […]

7 years ago

Yes, we like a list or two. We like quintessential GAA characters and we like the raw Irishness that exudes from Gaelic pitches and changing rooms all over the country. We like the toughness. And we like the quirks. Well, sort of. It’s not all about the lads on the pitch though. Sometimes, there’s more […]

7 years ago

Football is alive and well. Last seen flourishing in Antrim, happy and healthy. They enjoy their ball in the Saffron county, so much so that, on Tuesday night, All Saints Ballymena and Tír na nÓg Randalstown amassed a total of 76 points, sharing 19 goals and 19 white flags and treating the spectators to an […]

7 years ago

Moy Tir na nOg will appeal the decision of Tyrone GAA. The county CCC ruled that it would not take any further action on the Sean Cavanagh incident and expressed its satisfaction that the referee had seen and ruled on what had happened. Cavanagh sustained concussion and a number of facial injuries in the Tyrone […]

7 years ago

The boom is back. Expectations are grand in Tipperary – they always are in a land as proud and prestigious as the Premier county – and there’s only one man all-too-happy to carry the mounting weight on his tirelessly enthusiastic shoulders. Liam is back. And Liam could be coming back to Tipp yet. Liam Sheedy […]

7 years ago

Informed, information-based analysis. That’s what RTÉ are going for. You might think that will require a drastic overhaul but they’re the the demands that new Head of Sport Declan McBennett has put on pundits to get a chair in any RTÉ Sport show – online, on radio or on television. And the Monaghan man has […]

7 years ago