THE vast roar that greeted the throw-in merely symbolised the triumph of hope over reality that grips the viewer. Immediately, the game settled into the familiar pattern, the endlessly rehearsed formula where nothing is unpredictable. So, both teams began the ‘you score a point, we score a point routine’, which has almost become a gentleman’s […]
ARMAGH must be Clare, not Donegal. Gaelic football has become two dull defensive formulas competing soullessly, with all the emotion of a game played on X box. The resemblance to modern soccer is uncanny. Everyone looks the same, plays the same, sounds the same. Great sport, in the end, is about courage, imagination, intuition, self-expression, science […]
NOTHING happened in the Donegal Galway game. Just two dull defensive formulas competing soullessly, with all the emotion of a game played on X-Box. In this type of game, a mistake or a fluke decides things. Galway got the fluke, a weird goal that gave them three points out of thin air that they didn’t […]
After Galway had beaten Sligo in this year’s Connacht semi-final with a last-minute goal, Padraic Joyce was asked why his team had been so listless. He said, “It’s very hard to motivate these players to play on a Saturday evening.” The good news for Padraic is that Galway don’t have to play Donegal in Croke Park […]
CIARAN Foran, Dave’s brother from the great Dublin team of the ‘90s, taxied me to Croke Park on Saturday. “Where is your wife from?” he said. “Mayo,” I replied. “I was the first man that ever wore white shoes in Mayo,” he said. “I wore white loafers with a tassle on them at a dance […]
IT was as if the last eight weeks were a bad dream. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, our boys woke up on sunday morning in their own beds, their mothers waking them up with a cup of tea and buttered toast. There were very few Derry fans at the game in Castlebar. I […]
MAYO’S efforts against Dublin in the modern era have been as successful as Enoch Burke’s court cases. Another Mayo man who seems to be cursed. Yet, for all those defeats in big games, Mayo remain the most popular and entertaining team in Gaelic football. Like a happy labrador lining up in the traps against a […]
AFTER a lot of rumours had done the round this week that the players had ousted Mickey Harte, and that Enda Muldoon was taking over until the end of the season under the discreet supervision of Rory Gallagher, the Gaelic Life’s Niall McCoy brought the gossip to an end. Niall tweeted, “Mickey Harte remains Derry […]
AFTER Donegal walloped Tyrone on Saturday night in Ballybofey, I got my traditional after match Whatsapp from the great Donegal forward Tony Boyle. After every Donegal game, he sends me a picture of a pint of Guinness settling in front of him, in bars from Clones to Derry and Dungloe. The message underneath is always […]
THE night of the Ulster final, when they arrived home with the cup, Jimmy McGuinness stood in front of his players and addressed the huge crowd. “These next three games are massive for us. Really really big games. And we have got to put them front and centre. These players are a different animal now. […]
