Lucky they’re young and supple. It was far from celebrating their Munster senior hurling championship triumph Mark Coleman, Darragh Fitzgibbon and their fellow youngsters were on Sunday and into Monday. Sure they’d another Munster final to prepare for on the Wednesday. And in this weather, dedicated preparation is absolutely compulsory. Beating the Banner to lift […]

8 years ago

Dublin demolished Westmeath on Tuesday night but it wouldn’t be enough for them to progress. And then there were four. It seems strange for any kind of Leinster championship to be in its last four stages without a Dublin representation. After a competitive group stage to the Leinster Minor Football Championship, that’s exactly the case […]

8 years ago

Donegal took a stand on Tuesday night. The county aren’t happy that Dublin will play two home games in the upcoming Super 8s while every other county in the championship is permitted to just one match in their home grounds. The Donegal county board issued a statement on Wednesday night seeking a meeting with the […]

8 years ago

These appear to be a likeable bunch of England players. Where certain members of our neighbours’ Rugby team often give off an arrogant, brash and rude vibe, the majority of England’s footballers are the complete opposite. Let’s not beat around the bush. Here in Ireland, many of us love to hate England and any reason […]

8 years ago

Diarmuid O’Connor died with his boots on in Newbridge. There was a ten second spell by the sideline in St Conleth’s Park on Saturday evening when Diarmuid O’Connor panned out on his back with his pounding heart the only sign of life in his jaded body. It looked for all the world as if that […]

8 years ago

Size matters. After claiming Mayo’s sizeable scalp at the weekend, the men of Kildare are growing into their white jerseys and they’re gunning for the Super 8s now. When you consider the Lilywhites lost every game in the League before going down to Carlow in the first round of the Leinster championship, it’s been some […]

8 years ago

G-Mac is facing an uphill battle to make it to the British Open now. The 38-year-old Portrush golfer hasn’t been in top form over the last while and that’s why he has to face into qualifier events like these. The 2010 US Open champion hasn’t hit those same heights since and that’s why he’s dropped […]

8 years ago

This is new territory for the men of Mayo. For the first time since 2011, Mayo’s championship dreams were ended prior to the dawn of July. For so long, the men of the west have been a fixture of the closing stages of the championship. Perennial contenders, this Mayo football team have brought not only […]

8 years ago

And then there were 12. It’s all hotting up now. Three rounds of the qualifiers have flown past us just like that and now a place in the Super 8s is only one game away for the last team’s standing. They’ve been walking a tightrope for weeks and now they’re nearly back on track. It […]

8 years ago

Never mind the game of the weekend, this sounded like the game of the year. The Kilkenny and Dublin minors played out an epic thirteen goal thriller in O’Moore Park over the weekend. The sides traded blows for a full hour in pursuit of the Leinster minor title and the final scoreline was an absolute […]

8 years ago

We were treated to an absolute feast of hurling at the weekend…again. Gaelic football has been in hurling’s shadow all year so far and if you watched the Leinster and Munster deciders on Sunday it was crystal clear why. That might change when the Super 8s roll up but as of yet, hurling has been […]

8 years ago

Two belters of games. As it stands, Kildare are the team of the moment. The Lilywhites stood their ground against the GAA last week and they got their reward. Their reward was a home venue for their clash with Mayo and they made the St Conleth’s Park advantage count on Saturday evening when they made […]

8 years ago

Jackie Tyrrell wanted to be back out there in the middle of it. He watched Galway and Kilkenny tear strips off each other for 73 minutes and the hair was standing on the back of his neck for hours after. On a day when defenders lorded the skies and ruled the deck, the Kilkenny legend […]

8 years ago

Kerry are on the road. Monday morning’s qualifier draw cleared up an awful lot of things about the Super 8s. The pinnacle of this Gaelic football season will kick off on the weekend of July 14/15. But first, the final round of qualifiers will have to take place. The Super 8s groups will then look […]

8 years ago

All roads lead to the Super 8s now. The Round four qualifier draw took place on Monday morning and now the Super 8s is edging closer than ever. With Mayo knocked out in Round Three, it’s fair to say the qualifiers has lost a bit of its allure but it’s going to be a thriller […]

8 years ago

It’s been some week for the famous O’Brien clan. After a brilliant three days of racing in the Curragh, the three O’Brien men were again standing tallest of all. Aidan trained more winners than any other handler over the three days. Joseph landed the biggest race of the whole festival in the Irish Derby and […]

8 years ago

It worked for him in fairness. If Kasper Schmeichel was trying to psyche himself up for the penalty that was about to be taken on him, it worked. If Kasper Schmeichel was trying to put Luke Modric off the spot kick he stood over, it worked. If Kasper Schmechel’s reaction to the penalty awarded to […]

8 years ago

Those Rebels are on the rise. Cork have won Munster for a second successive year but if captain Seamus Harnedy’s reaction to his county’s 54th ever Munster triumph is anything to go by, this is only the start of it for this Cork side. They’re into an All-Ireland semi-final now but they’ve been here before […]

8 years ago

What a day of hurling it was. The Munster championship went the way of Cork while Kilkenny and Galway will do battle again for the Bob O’Keeffe Cup. Despite a scorched Semple Stadium pitch, the Munster decider lived up to its lofty billing. Clare began like a house on fire with John Conlon delivering a […]

8 years ago

Sure couldn’t Michael Buble have stood in to ref it? Galway and Kilkenny couldn’t be separated in their Leinster final on Sunday afternoon and they’ll do battle again for the Bob O’Keeffe Cup next weekend. On the back of a bruising Round-Robin campaign, a replay will have been the last thing either Galway or Kilkenny […]

8 years ago

Paddy Deegan is tough as old boots anyway. Kilkenny and Galway’s Leinster final in Croke Park was as scrappy as it was hard-hitting. But with the intensity so high it seemed like the pair of those went hand in hand. Nothing came easy in this provincial decider between the Tribesmen and the Cats where every […]

8 years ago

A battle for the ages. Out of all the sub-plots in Kilkenny and Galway’s Leinster final tussle, the most eagerly anticipated was undoubtedly the meeting of Walter Walsh and Daithí Burke. Kilkenny’s 6 ft 5 inch Tullogher Rosbercon tank Walter Walsh is one of the most physically imposing hurlers in the game. A Leinster rugby […]

8 years ago

The Rebels have made it two in a row. Cork delivered a barnstorming second half display to overpower Clare down the home stretch in the Munster senior hurling final in Thurles on Sunday afternoon. John Meyler’s men started slowly in Semple Stadium, but when the stakes were at their highest the likes of Patrick Horgan, […]

8 years ago

Pure Munster hurling. There’s so much riding on this one. Cork and Clare have a hurling rivalry that stretches back years. We all remember 2008 when the same teams were so fired up for a Munster championship clash that all hell broke loose in the tunnel going out to the game. That same tension, that […]

8 years ago

The home of hurling is widely renowned for having the best pitch surface in the whole of the country. Generally like playing on a carpet, Semple Stadium is perfect for hurling. The sliotar rarely if ever takes a stray hop and it leaves hurlers with no excuse for taking a bad first touch. It really […]

8 years ago

Alan Cadogan hopes to be back in action in a couple of weeks time. Emlyn Mulligan has heard the three letters that every GAA player dreads on three separate occasions in his career but he’s still fighting. Call him stubborn, call him whatever you will but the truth is he doesn’t know what he would […]

8 years ago

The Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby Festival is here. The sun will be beating down, the crowds will be out in their droves, some of the best race horses in the country will be taking to the Curragh over the next three days for an absolute feast of horse racing in the Kildare track. The […]

8 years ago

The start of a new chapter for Shay Given. Despite not having officially hung up his gloves yet, legendary Irish goalkeeper Shay Given is already taking his first brave steps into the coaching world. The 42-year-old Lifford native was released by Stoke at the end of the 2016/2017 season and he hasn’t been on the […]

8 years ago

‘Tis some weather we’re getting recently. The temperatures in west Tipperary are higher than they were in Ibiza this week. The sun is splitting the stones, there’s barely a cloud in the sky and we haven’t seen a drop of rain in a long time. Pitches all over the country are scorched like they’ve never […]

8 years ago

Just when you thought things might be a little bit different for once. Come on lads, this is England we’re dealing with. The English hype-train was noticeably quiet coming into this World Cup. Noticeably because in comparison to a whole lot of them getting ahead of themselves and building the coverage around their team up […]

8 years ago

What a kick in the teeth. Senegal have been one of the stories of the World Cup so far. The African side took the World Cup by storm when they defeated Poland first time out. Their joyous celebrations after that game endeared them to onlookers far and wide. Manager Aliou Cisse leads the laid back […]

8 years ago

How would a player not want to play in an All-Ireland quarter final in Croke Park at their own level? Emlyn Mulligan has been down for long enough. He’ll keep coming back because as he says himself he knows no different but wouldn’t it be no harm if it was a little bit different? Let’s […]

8 years ago

Every single Garda in the Newbridge cachement area will be delighted with this one. CCCC Chairman Ned Quinn’s biggest worry about holding Kildare Mayo in Newbridge was that the reduced number of tickets would lead to crowd troubles. He fears that ticket-less supporters would be so hell-bent in their pursuit of a golden ticket that […]

8 years ago

Wooly has let rip like never before. The Kildare Mayo storm gathered so much momentum from Monday to Wednesday that the whole championship was under threat for a while. Something had to give as Kildare and the GAA stared each other down at loggerheads. With neither looking like taking a backward step, this whole mess […]

8 years ago

They shouldn’t give a damn about any of this. The most advantageous part about being the best is that you don’t have to engage in the sort of petty arguments that don’t really matter anyway. When everyone else is paining themselves to come up with intricate ways to plot your downfall or to take the […]

8 years ago

And there’s no better man to say it as it is. Ruby Walsh is a proud Kildare man. One of the Lilywhites’ finest sons, the champion jockey was born and raised in the parish of Kill near the county’s border with Dublin. Horse racing has taken Walsh all over the world from Pretsbury Park to […]

8 years ago

All roads lead to St Conleth’s Park now. Amongst all the madness, you’d have to feel for the Mayo players the most. If the Kildare lads were in limbo, the Mayo players were in no-man’s land altogether. Three days before a crunch qualifier clash, it was completely out of their control where the game would […]

8 years ago

The GAA have taken two steps back. The GAA bowed down to Kildare, now it looks like they’re bowing down to common sense too. Because in fairness, what would be the point in dragging Cavan and Tyrone down to Dublin for a qualifier game? Kildare were victorious in their stand-off with the GAA that stretched […]

8 years ago

The saga is over. After all that, Kildare and Mayo will do battle in Newbridge at 7.00 on Saturday evening as they were originally supposed to. After an entertaining back and forth between the Lilywhites and the GAA, the organisation have finally taken a step back. Saturday 7pm #KildareVsMayo, we understand!#NewbridgeOrNowhere — Kfm Sport (@KfmSport) […]

8 years ago

Hurling folk are hurling folk. Laois, Westmeath, Kerry and co. didn’t agree to drop down into the tier two Joe McDonagh championship at the beginning of the year. They were forced into it. “We didn’t really get an opportunity to voice our concerns…There wasn’t really any consultation,” said Kerry manager Fintan O’Connor on The GAA […]

8 years ago

Standing their ground. It was hardly surprising that uproar followed the GAA’s decision to nab home advantage from Kildare on Monday morning. Now being reported that Kildare are refusing to play in Croke Park https://t.co/CcMWkR38mi — GAA JOE (@GAA__JOE) June 25, 2018 The luck of the Monday morning qualifier draw had granted the Lilywhites home […]

8 years ago

It’s going to change next year, but right now that doesn’t matter a damn to Kildare. The Kildare hurlers won their first Christy Ring Cup since 2014 on Saturday. After winning what was a second tier hurling competition in 2014, the Lilywhites failed to secure a spot in the All-Ireland championship for 2015 after they […]

8 years ago

Fair play to them for this. The team drawn first shall have home advantage. That’s one of the rules of the qualifier draw. Kildare were drawn first on Monday morning, but seeing as it was Mayo that were drawn after them, the GAA are trying to take this home advantage away from Kildare. The reason […]

8 years ago

Home advantage is bloody crucial in knockout games. The rules of the GAA are that the county drawn first out of the hat receive home advantage. Think about the players and the management who love playing in front of a home crowd. Think about the season ticket holders. Think about the fairness. Instead, two qualifier […]

8 years ago

The Super 8s are only three weeks away now. The provincial football championships are a farce and they have been for quite a while now. The average winning margin of the three finals that took place at the weekend was fifteen points. Leinster and Munster are the worst of the lot. Dublin cantered to an […]

8 years ago

Hardly a fair reward for being one of the best teams in the championship so far. Donegal won four games on their way to their first Ulster title in four years. Four tough, uncompromising games. First of all, Declan Bonner’s men, emboldened by their fast, free-flowing attacking system, dispatched of Cavan easily after pulling the […]

8 years ago

It didn’t look good at the time for John Small. The Dublin defender was issued with a straight red card shortly after his introduction to the field in Dublin’s Leinster final victory over Laois. That straight red card looks set to keep him out of Dublin’s first match in the Super 8s. After being introduced […]

8 years ago

It was so near yet so, so far for Sweden. After 94 minutes, everything was rosy in Sweden’s garden. They were tied one apiece with the reigning world champions and they knew well that a draw would be enough to effectively eliminate Germany from the competition and enough to secure their progress to the last […]

8 years ago

It was a feast of football on Saturday. There were seven do-or-die qualifier games taking place in grounds across the country with 14 county’s seasons on the line. The Munster senior football final took place between old rivals Kerry and Cork on a sun-kissed Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Each one of the qualifier games went according […]

8 years ago

Fire in the belly boy! The Munster final began like a house on fire. Kerry vs Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh of a sunny Saturday evening, we knew there wasn’t going to be defensive football. There were no blankets, there were no screens. These two counties are too proud to admit defeat by going defensive, […]

8 years ago