Kev would have been tucking into a nice plate of fennel washed down with a mug of goat’s milk.
[QUOTE=“caoimhaoin, post: 952854, member: 273”]Your ignorance is bemeausing. I can’t explain S&C to you over a forum.
I was talking about gormley re: over training.
And if rugby tackling is your pinnacle of Gaelic football then I’m glad you have fuck all to do with it.[/QUOTE]
Relax now, Kev. No need to pop a gasket. I said defining moment, not pinnacle. It’s not my fault if you changed the meaning of my words in your head. Defining in that the whole country was talking about it and it was a catalyst for a new rule. It was an example of how Cavanagh wasn’t missing at an important time, when his full back line was missing.
Fair enough if you were talking about Gormley re overtraining, look below and you’ll see it reads like Cavanagh.
No he wasn’t. And Cavanagh was well able to go missing himself at important times.
The game lasts for 70 mins. I would bring him on just before half time. He is the type of lad you want around at the end, bit he needs to be fresh. He’s paying for the over training he did all these years.
It’s good to see however, that you still refuse to take on board any alternate viewpoint but your own on any subject and shout ignorance at anyone who disagrees.
[QUOTE=“Juhniallio, post: 953046, member: 53”]Relax now, Kev. No need to pop a gasket. I said defining moment, not pinnacle. It’s not my fault if you changed the meaning of my words in your head. Defining in that the whole country was talking about it and it was a catalyst for a new rule. It was an example of how Cavanagh wasn’t missing at an important time, when his full back line was missing.
Fair enough if you were talking about Gormley re overtraining, look below and you’ll see it reads like Cavanagh.
No he wasn’t. And Cavanagh was well able to go missing himself at important times.
The game lasts for 70 mins. I would bring him on just before half time. He is the type of lad you want around at the end, bit he needs to be fresh. He’s paying for the over training he did all these years.
It’s good to see however, that you still refuse to take on board any alternate viewpoint but your own on any subject and shout ignorance at anyone who disagrees.[/QUOTE]
In the context of totti’s question it was obvious I was talking about Gormley.
Don’t see me using crude language as blowing a gasket, I use it all the time, it’s not an indication of anything.
You have jumped into a discussion/disagreement with 2 other people and have clearly misunderstood the context if a huge part if it. I agree with plenty guys in here and respect opposing opinions of quite a few. However I initially tried to show Totti he was looking at things in a narrow and biased way, he didn’t take the soft approach so that where it brought is. I questioned him on a few outlandish statements and he has boxed himself into this typical nordie chip on the shoulder it’s is against the world box.
I’m sure me and you, like most lads here, would actually agree on 90% of the stuff written here.
Anyone using phrases like S&C bollixology though is just bluffing. To not understand the importance of physical and mental preperation in the modern, without the need for in depth knowledge, is like saying a car doesn’t need petrol to run. It’s that ignorant.
Roll on Sunday 4pm when the Dubs get started on defending their Leinster and All Ireland titles by giving a Laois a hiding.
[QUOTE=“caoimhaoin, post: 953257, member: 273”]In the context of totti’s question it was obvious I was talking about Gormley.
Don’t see me using crude language as blowing a gasket, I use it all the time, it’s not an indication of anything.
You have jumped into a discussion/disagreement with 2 other people and have clearly misunderstood the context if a huge part if it. I agree with plenty guys in here and respect opposing opinions of quite a few. However I initially tried to show Totti he was looking at things in a narrow and biased way, he didn’t take the soft approach so that where it brought is. I questioned him on a few outlandish statements and he has boxed himself into this typical nordie chip on the shoulder it’s is against the world box.
I’m sure me and you, like most lads here, would actually agree on 90% of the stuff written here.
Anyone using phrases like S&C bollixology though is just bluffing. To not understand the importance of physical and mental preperation in the modern, without the need for in depth knowledge, is like saying a car doesn’t need petrol to run. It’s that ignorant.[/QUOTE]
The only outlandish statements were coming from you, pal. You then proceeded to wander off into a land of contradictions and lazy generalisations, 90% of people would not agree with you as you are a simpleton who can’t even agree with himself. You say one thing one minute and then a couple of minutes later you are contradicting yourself, doing this while promoting yourself as an expert and some sort of insightful genius really does marry delusion, arrogance and stupidity into a level that would pretty much be unprecedented in anything I have encountered in my life. I would like to think that you are a WUM but you really do seem to believe some of the nonsense you spout.
Very good article from Dara O’Se
[SIZE=6]Life in Munster’s hurling counties will always be tough for lower-profile footballers[/SIZE]
There wasn’t a big crowd in the Gaelic Grounds for the Limerick v Tipperary football match on Saturday night, not that there was ever going to be.
The action as far as most people in those counties were concerned was in Thurles on Sunday. You’d be hard pushed to find too many people who went to both. Maybe a few of the players went along to Semple the next day but otherwise you’re in real die-hard territory.
Tipperary and Limerick are hurling counties. Same with Waterford and Clare. I know it seems obvious enough to point this out but with the controversy around the Munster Council’s decision to seed Kerry and Cork in the football championship, I thought it might be no harm to say it again. There are pockets of football in each of them but there’s no point being mealy-mouthed about it. Hurling is their sport.
[SIZE=3]Plight of footballers[/SIZE]
There is lots of sympathy for the footballers from each of these counties but do you ever notice how most of that sympathy comes from other parts of the country? The plain truth of it is that these are players who first and foremost aren’t given the respect they’re due by the GAA people within their own county. The rest of us can cry all the tears we like for them but, until their own people take them seriously, they’re going nowhere.
The plight of the footballers in these counties always reminds me of the story about the Kerry hurlers years back. They wanted to make a right shape at it this one year and if they were going to do that, they needed more hurleys. So they put it to the county board, asking that their dispensation for the year be upped and they be given an improved budget for buying hurleys.
Word came back from the county board chairman himself, the great Dr Jim Brosnan. No problem, he said. Ye can have the extra hurleys. But ye’d want to go easy on them – if ye break them, there’s no more to go along with them.
It wasn’t fair then and what’s happening to the Tipperary, Limerick, Clare and Waterford footballers probably isn’t overly fair now either. But Kerry is a football county because that’s what the people want. And those are hurling counties for the same reason. Fighting your corner in the other sports is a brave battle to undertake but there’s no point pretending it will ever be anything other than just that, a battle.
[SIZE=3]Best adversary[/SIZE]
Nobody’s saying they don’t have good players. Of course they do. I played against Limerick midfielder John Quane for years and eventually played with him for Munster. You can be damn sure I enjoyed the Munster games more than the Kerry games. He was pound for pound probably the best adversary I ever had.
John was such a good footballer that he made you have to play outside the rules to get the better of him. You’d have to be at him, trying different things to put him off. You’d probably have to leave a late tackle on him here and there and maybe give him the odd clip. And he was well fit for that too. If you wanted a fight, he’d oblige you.
John Quane was an exceptional player and he went through his whole career without getting half of the recognition he should have. And on a purely personal level, that’s totally unfair. But what can ever change?
Seeding Cork and Kerry in the Munster championship makes it just about impossible for any of the other counties to win a title. That’s a reality. But the reality behind the decision is that the Munster Council chairman is from Clare. This came in under his authority. They can’t say they were under-represented.
And on a certain level, I can see the reasoning behind it. The Munster Council have a responsibility for their own patch and for their own sources of income.
When Cork and Kerry met in the final in Killarney last year, there were 36,000 people at the game. The previous year’s final between Cork and Clare only brought 9,000 to Limerick.
Now if you’re in charge of the Munster Council, those sort of figures only point you in one direction.
If your championship is only going to have one big day a year that people are going to turn out for, then it’s only understandable that you’d want it to be the final. It might mean a bit of disrespect towards the small pockets of football people in the other counties but I’d say the powers that be probably take the view that they’re well used to it.
[SIZE=3]Big deal[/SIZE]
Years ago, when I was just coming on to the Kerry team back in the early ’90s, one of the first matches I was called up for was a game against Tipperary. This was a big deal for me and I was probably getting a few notions about it. I remember calling in to P Sé to let him know my big news.
“Good man, good man,” he said. “And who are ye playing?”
“Tipperary,” I said proudly, laying it out there like the big man I now was.
“Tipperary, is it?” said Páidí, seeing his chance to take me down a peg or two. “Sure we used beat those fellas over the phone.”
Páidí’s thinking there wouldn’t so much have been about blackguarding Tipperary. It would have been about making sure I didn’t get a big ego now that I was playing for Kerry. But in its own way, it just tells you what the mindset is. These counties get very little respect.
It’s tough on them. They go through the same rigmarole as everybody else. They plough away for their whole careers and nothing comes their way because they don’t have the backing. Every cent spent on them is seen as a cent lost to the hurlers. And when it’s all over, they have very little to show for it.
Last weekend, I was in Manhattan with a group of former Kerry players at a fundraiser. I was there with a rake of the old greats – Bomber, Spillane, Ger O’Keeffe and all the rest.
We’re all old guys now, long retired and distant memories at this stage. And yet there we were, still knocking a weekend in New York out of it long after anybody should be giving a curse about us.
The Limerick and Tipperary players didn’t put any less effort in over the years but they’re not swanning around Manhattan on the back of it.
At one stage over the weekend, we all had to look through the biographies they had done up for us when we were introduced. One of the group – I’ll not name him, protect his innocence – was in like a shot.
Apparently his bio had him down for one fewer Munster medal than he’d actually won, as well as one fewer county medals. First world problems.
The players from those other counties spend all those years covering the same ground as the rest of us. They have to devote the same hours to it but without the rewards
All through my career, everybody who knew me knew that playing for Kerry came first. It wasn’t up for debate. I was able to turn to my wife, to my family, to my friends, even to my work colleagues and say, “No, I can’t help you there, I have training”. Or I had a match or a meeting or any number of things that had to be done for Kerry.
[SIZE=3]Prestige[/SIZE]
That’s all very well when you’re winning All-Irelands and Munster titles. When there’s a prestige to it and when it’s what the overwhelming percentage of people around you are devoted to. In Kerry, playing football for the county is the be all and end all.
People in Kerry find themselves in Waterville and they go and point out Mick O’Dwyer’s house. They go out onto Valentia and know where Mick O’Connell’s house is. They know that Tralee is Mikey Sheehy’s town, that Killarney is the Gooch’s. Wearing the jersey buys you some amount of patience from the people you impact upon.
I can’t imagine it was the same for the John Quanes and the Derry Foleys. Playing for the Clare football team or the Waterford football team doesn’t make you a big shot. If anything, you have people in those counties wondering are you half mad. Play football for Tipperary? Who does that?
The reality of it is that the biggest enemy of Tipperary football isn’t the Munster council and nor is it people from Kerry and Cork looking down their noses. No, the biggest enemy of Tipperary football is Tipperary hurling. Same with Clare football, Waterford football and Limerick football. Hurling beats them long before they come up against a Kerry or a Cork.
There’s no point looking outside the county for help or even sympathy. It suits us in Kerry for Limerick and Tipperary to be weak at football and good at hurling. It suits us for Clare to be All-Ireland champions and for Waterford to have a good young team on the up. More power to them, we say.
That might sound heartless but that’s what it is. Clare and Waterford are playing on Saturday night and what sort of crowd are you going to get for it?
[SIZE=3]Vast majority[/SIZE]
We can wring our hands all we like but the truth of it is that the vast majority of GAA people in these counts are happy with the way things are. Just as the vast majority of people in Kerry and Cork are happy with the way things are. Nothing will change because nobody wants change. Nobody apart from a small handful of footballers in counties where hurlers are the heroes.
You’d have to feel for them because it’s only an accident of birth that has them in this situation. But what else there say only, “That’s life”?
[QUOTE=“TreatyStones, post: 954375, member: 1786”]Very good article from Dara O’Se
[SIZE=6]Life in Munster’s hurling counties will always be tough for lower-profile footballers[/SIZE]
There wasn’t a big crowd in the Gaelic Grounds for the Limerick v Tipperary football match on Saturday night, not that there was ever going to be.
The action as far as most people in those counties were concerned was in Thurles on Sunday. You’d be hard pushed to find too many people who went to both. Maybe a few of the players went along to Semple the next day but otherwise you’re in real die-hard territory.
Tipperary and Limerick are hurling counties. Same with Waterford and Clare. I know it seems obvious enough to point this out but with the controversy around the Munster Council’s decision to seed Kerry and Cork in the football championship, I thought it might be no harm to say it again. There are pockets of football in each of them but there’s no point being mealy-mouthed about it. Hurling is their sport.
[SIZE=3]Plight of footballers[/SIZE]
There is lots of sympathy for the footballers from each of these counties but do you ever notice how most of that sympathy comes from other parts of the country? The plain truth of it is that these are players who first and foremost aren’t given the respect they’re due by the GAA people within their own county. The rest of us can cry all the tears we like for them but, until their own people take them seriously, they’re going nowhere.
The plight of the footballers in these counties always reminds me of the story about the Kerry hurlers years back. They wanted to make a right shape at it this one year and if they were going to do that, they needed more hurleys. So they put it to the county board, asking that their dispensation for the year be upped and they be given an improved budget for buying hurleys.
Word came back from the county board chairman himself, the great Dr Jim Brosnan. No problem, he said. Ye can have the extra hurleys. But ye’d want to go easy on them – if ye break them, there’s no more to go along with them.
It wasn’t fair then and what’s happening to the Tipperary, Limerick, Clare and Waterford footballers probably isn’t overly fair now either. But Kerry is a football county because that’s what the people want. And those are hurling counties for the same reason. Fighting your corner in the other sports is a brave battle to undertake but there’s no point pretending it will ever be anything other than just that, a battle.
[SIZE=3]Best adversary[/SIZE]
Nobody’s saying they don’t have good players. Of course they do. I played against Limerick midfielder John Quane for years and eventually played with him for Munster. You can be damn sure I enjoyed the Munster games more than the Kerry games. He was pound for pound probably the best adversary I ever had.
John was such a good footballer that he made you have to play outside the rules to get the better of him. You’d have to be at him, trying different things to put him off. You’d probably have to leave a late tackle on him here and there and maybe give him the odd clip. And he was well fit for that too. If you wanted a fight, he’d oblige you.
John Quane was an exceptional player and he went through his whole career without getting half of the recognition he should have. And on a purely personal level, that’s totally unfair. But what can ever change?
Seeding Cork and Kerry in the Munster championship makes it just about impossible for any of the other counties to win a title. That’s a reality. But the reality behind the decision is that the Munster Council chairman is from Clare. This came in under his authority. They can’t say they were under-represented.
And on a certain level, I can see the reasoning behind it. The Munster Council have a responsibility for their own patch and for their own sources of income.
When Cork and Kerry met in the final in Killarney last year, there were 36,000 people at the game. The previous year’s final between Cork and Clare only brought 9,000 to Limerick.
Now if you’re in charge of the Munster Council, those sort of figures only point you in one direction.
If your championship is only going to have one big day a year that people are going to turn out for, then it’s only understandable that you’d want it to be the final. It might mean a bit of disrespect towards the small pockets of football people in the other counties but I’d say the powers that be probably take the view that they’re well used to it.
[SIZE=3]Big deal[/SIZE]
Years ago, when I was just coming on to the Kerry team back in the early ’90s, one of the first matches I was called up for was a game against Tipperary. This was a big deal for me and I was probably getting a few notions about it. I remember calling in to P Sé to let him know my big news.
“Good man, good man,” he said. “And who are ye playing?”
“Tipperary,” I said proudly, laying it out there like the big man I now was.
“Tipperary, is it?” said Páidí, seeing his chance to take me down a peg or two. “Sure we used beat those fellas over the phone.”
Páidí’s thinking there wouldn’t so much have been about blackguarding Tipperary. It would have been about making sure I didn’t get a big ego now that I was playing for Kerry. But in its own way, it just tells you what the mindset is. These counties get very little respect.
It’s tough on them. They go through the same rigmarole as everybody else. They plough away for their whole careers and nothing comes their way because they don’t have the backing. Every cent spent on them is seen as a cent lost to the hurlers. And when it’s all over, they have very little to show for it.
Last weekend, I was in Manhattan with a group of former Kerry players at a fundraiser. I was there with a rake of the old greats – Bomber, Spillane, Ger O’Keeffe and all the rest.
We’re all old guys now, long retired and distant memories at this stage. And yet there we were, still knocking a weekend in New York out of it long after anybody should be giving a curse about us.
The Limerick and Tipperary players didn’t put any less effort in over the years but they’re not swanning around Manhattan on the back of it.
At one stage over the weekend, we all had to look through the biographies they had done up for us when we were introduced. One of the group – I’ll not name him, protect his innocence – was in like a shot.
Apparently his bio had him down for one fewer Munster medal than he’d actually won, as well as one fewer county medals. First world problems.
The players from those other counties spend all those years covering the same ground as the rest of us. They have to devote the same hours to it but without the rewards
All through my career, everybody who knew me knew that playing for Kerry came first. It wasn’t up for debate. I was able to turn to my wife, to my family, to my friends, even to my work colleagues and say, “No, I can’t help you there, I have training”. Or I had a match or a meeting or any number of things that had to be done for Kerry.
[SIZE=3]Prestige[/SIZE]
That’s all very well when you’re winning All-Irelands and Munster titles. When there’s a prestige to it and when it’s what the overwhelming percentage of people around you are devoted to. In Kerry, playing football for the county is the be all and end all.
People in Kerry find themselves in Waterville and they go and point out Mick O’Dwyer’s house. They go out onto Valentia and know where Mick O’Connell’s house is. They know that Tralee is Mikey Sheehy’s town, that Killarney is the Gooch’s. Wearing the jersey buys you some amount of patience from the people you impact upon.
I can’t imagine it was the same for the John Quanes and the Derry Foleys. Playing for the Clare football team or the Waterford football team doesn’t make you a big shot. If anything, you have people in those counties wondering are you half mad. Play football for Tipperary? Who does that?
The reality of it is that the biggest enemy of Tipperary football isn’t the Munster council and nor is it people from Kerry and Cork looking down their noses. No, the biggest enemy of Tipperary football is Tipperary hurling. Same with Clare football, Waterford football and Limerick football. Hurling beats them long before they come up against a Kerry or a Cork.
There’s no point looking outside the county for help or even sympathy. It suits us in Kerry for Limerick and Tipperary to be weak at football and good at hurling. It suits us for Clare to be All-Ireland champions and for Waterford to have a good young team on the up. More power to them, we say.
That might sound heartless but that’s what it is. Clare and Waterford are playing on Saturday night and what sort of crowd are you going to get for it?
[SIZE=3]Vast majority[/SIZE]
We can wring our hands all we like but the truth of it is that the vast majority of GAA people in these counts are happy with the way things are. Just as the vast majority of people in Kerry and Cork are happy with the way things are. Nothing will change because nobody wants change. Nobody apart from a small handful of footballers in counties where hurlers are the heroes.
You’d have to feel for them because it’s only an accident of birth that has them in this situation. But what else there say only, “That’s life”?
He had a very good article last week on the Ulster Championship as well, must go dig it up.
[SIZE=6]Laverty cut from same cloth as Canavan: the small man with attitude surviving in Ulster[/SIZE]
[SIZE=5]In the hardest provincial championship of all, you need a harder edge regardless of your size[/SIZE]
Tyrone[/URL] v [URL=‘http://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_organisation=Down&article=true’]Down[/URL], Down v Tyrone. Two games in six days, both of them tense and physical and hard-fought all the way. Real [URL=‘http://www.irishtimes.com/search/search-7.1213540?tag_organisation=Ulster&article=true’]Ulster Championship stuff, maybe some of it the kind of Ulster Championship stuff that we get on our high horse down south about from time to time. Pity about us.
Tyrone came through it in the end, but good and all as they were, the player who stood out to me over the two games wasn’t Seán Cavanagh or Peter Harte or Niall Morgan. You couldn’t watch those games without your eye being drawn to the Down forwardConor Laverty. At least I couldn’t.
There’s something about a small man holding his own in an Ulster Championship match that makes you smile. Up there, it’s a land for big beasts. Everybody knows the terms of engagement and in fairness to them, everybody is okay with it. You either man-up or you ship out. Everybody has to pay the same price to get in the door.
They don’t discriminate in Ulster. They never have. When I was playing, you could see it in the attitude that somebody like Peter Canavan carried around with him. It was clear as day when you played against Canavan that the reason he was still standing and still going strong was because he had learned how to handle himself after years of punishment up north.
Bit of attitude
He always came at you with that bit of attitude. You’d be playing Tyrone in a league game in Killarney and sure as anything, Canavan would have a row started inside 15 minutes.
You’d hear a roar from the crowd and there he’d be, rolling on the ground with the corner-back and the ref going in to tell them to settle down.
If it went on for any length of time, you’d head back up the pitch to investigate. And in your head you’d be going, “Ah Peter, come on now. ’Tis only a league game and ye’ve a long way to go home when it’s over. Calm the head”.
I found it funny in a way, as in here you had one of the best players in the game – maybe the best at the time – and his first order of business in a league game in March would be to look for agitation. Not for the last time, I realised they’re a different breed up north.
Laverty is cut from the same cloth. In the drawn game against Tyrone, he spent a lot of the opening half buzzing around the Down forward line, looking for trouble. He dropped back into midfield a couple of times as well, just to see if he could annoy a couple of the Tyrone players.
When David Coldrick moved a Tyrone 45 up 13 metres, it was because Laverty was mouthing at Morgan and trying to put him off. He got a yellow card later on as well for a foul on Cavanagh. He’s like the neighbour’s dog that comes around yapping and biting at your ankles, but every time you draw the boot to take a kick at him, he’s gone. He annoys the hell out of you but you have to admire the survival instincts.
Most dangerous
No Down player contributed more over the two games against Tyrone. He was Down’s most dangerous forward as they came back in the first game and he more than held up his end of the bargain again last Saturday. You didn’t need a psychology degree to watch him and see that the aggression and attitude is all part of what makes him such a serious player. It was the same with Canavan when he was playing.
These guys have spent their whole life going into games feeling they have something to prove. Defenders have tried to bully them, managers have maybe overlooked them in favour of bigger lads when they were younger.
It’s all fed into a mindset whereby they feel that they have to go out with a hard edge to survive. They’ve been kicked and pushed around and they’re going out there like the fella in the movie Network – they’re mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore.
Because if they do, they just won’t survive. Managers won’t want to know. You take somebody of Laverty’s build and weight, a player who if you catch him right with a shoulder you can put him into the stand. Or, like Páidí Ó Sé said in that documentary years ago, “thrown out over the sideline like a sliced pan”.
Managers can’t take a chance on somebody like that unless they know there’s a good well of bitterness and gumption inside them that just won’t take no for an answer.
I remember looking at Canavan away back and just going, “Where does he get his balls?” He was totally fearless. You could see he had decided long ago that the best way not to be bullied was to make sure everyone knew he wasn’t one bit afraid. If somebody wanted to go at it, he wasn’t going to disappoint them. As well as his genius on the ball, that was what always made me think that if there was a transfer market, he’d be top of my list.
That hard edge comes from the Ulster Championship. You go away back to Paul Donnelly throwing James McCartan’s boot into the crowd in 1994. They don’t care if you’re big or small – you’ve got to survive.
People down here can give out about the Ulster Championship all they like but it’s the only one left that really matters. Only for it, what would we be watching in the early months of the summer?
The reason it matters is that the people up there don’t give the players any choice. This is the Ulster Championship and what are you going to do? Hide? Wait for later in the summer? No chance. Not up there.
I played in plenty of games in the early rounds of Munster against the Waterfords and Tipperarys and Clares where there was a bit of belting going on from fellas who saw this as their big day to make an impression. What you’d find was those would be games for the mullockers like me to take a few clips and give a few back.
You’d be going into games like that saying to the likes of Colm Cooper that this was no day to be standing in front of the train. Wait for the Cork game, Gooch. This is no day to die. We want no Robert Emmets today.
Ulster players don’t have that luxury. You die every day up there because if you don’t, they won’t give you the chance to die the next day. It’s what makes them what they are. Let’s box I used see them in the International Rules panel and they’d be mad for action. It’s like that famous Kieran McGeeney quote. If you want to play football, let’s play football. If you want to box, let’s box.
That wouldn’t have been the way with all of us from down south. I remember a game in Croke Park one year where I was sitting on the bench beside Derek Savage. It was coming up on half-time and the game was starting to get a bit spiky. The Aussies were throwing their weight around and the hits were coming later and later.
Paul McGrane got absolutely opened and came walking off with blood streaming – I think he needed about 10 stitches in the end. The management were up in the stand and they had a runner down on the sideline relaying messages to the bench. He came over in a big panic and was going, “Derek! Derek! You’re in! You’re in!”
Now, Savo wasn’t expecting this. I think he presumed that with things hotting up out there and with McGrane being the one that was coming off, they’d be coming looking for me or someone like me. He looked at me and he looked back at your man, clearly not fancying it. “Ah Jesus,” he said. “Sure it’s nearly half-time!”
Conor Laverty strikes me as the kind of fella who’d have been up on his feet even before the runner landed over to us. It wouldn’t matter what he was facing going onto the pitch, he’d be like the lads in Gladiator. Ready for whatever comes out of these gates.
All the Ulster teams seem to have a couple of small guys in the side. Be it Ryan McHugh with Donegal or any one of Tyrone’s half-a-dozen corner forwards. None of them go missing, they all get right into the middle of the action. They do what they have to do and they’re a great feature of the hardest championship of them all.
In fairness, when you look at the Donegal-Derry game, it took a big man to settle it.Michael Murphy is one of the few players in the country that can decide a game in the space of a few minutes. He had a hand in Leo McLoone’s goal and the two points that followed it were top drawer.
The sideline ball that he pointed reminded me of a golfer who needs an eagle lining up a second shot on a par five. This wasn’t a hit-and-hope job. It wasn’t a matter of doing his best. This had to happen.
You could see Jim McGuinness going over and telling him to stop looking around for somebody else to play it to and just do what he does best. So he looked at the posts, took a few steps back and nailed it.
It was a great piece of management from McGuinness because I think sometimes Murphy doesn’t quite get how good he is. That was a fair distance out and there aren’t many players in the country who should be taking a pot from there. But when you have a talent like his, that’s what you should be doing with it.
2 excellent articles. Derry Foley, jaysus there’s a blast from the past.
If he was still playing you would treat them as yerra type eulogies of other counties before Kerry crushed them, but they seem an honest and interesting view of what is going on elsewhere. He’ll keep schtum about Kerry the coont.
The ulster article is a load of cock. He’s arse licking there. The Munster one is good alright.
Don’t bite @Il Bomber Destro
Go on bite @Il Bomber Destro.
I think he perfectly encapsulates the inferiority complex that exists with some counties outside of Ulster, I’m not surprised the article antagonises someone as bitter as you.
It doesn’t antagonize me at all, it might be good if it did. Just full of cliched back slapping and some lame stereotypes.
His articles generally lack football insight and tactical awareness, it wa always obvious he’d struggle in management. He is good for old tales etc, but as an analyst, an absolute load of shite.
He took one player from the weekend and based a whole article on his size.
Any small inter county forward has had it hard, it’s awful lame stereotype rubbish. He’d only have to go up the road to Tralee and North Kerry where some o the games greatest forwards got the heads boxed off them, and that’s before they got out on the field.
Believe it or not I think a lot of dis service I done to excellently skilled northern footballers by tripe like that. Conor Laverty is a good footballer because of himself and those who brought him up and coached him. Not 'cos of some dopey corner back swinging out if him.
The article about Munster was more straight forward and truthful.
[QUOTE=“caoimhaoin, post: 954594, member: 273”]It doesn’t antagonize me at all, it might be good if it did. Just full of cliched back slapping and some lame stereotypes.
His articles generally lack football insight and tactical awareness, it wa always obvious he’d struggle in management. He is good for old tales etc, but as an analyst, an absolute load of shite.
He took one player from the weekend and based a whole article on his size.
Any small inter county forward has had it hard, it’s awful lame stereotype rubbish. He’d only have to go up the road to Tralee and North Kerry where some o the games greatest forwards got the heads boxed off them, and that’s before they got out on the field.
Believe it or not I think a lot of dis service I done to excellently skilled northern footballers by tripe like that. Conor Laverty is a good footballer because of himself and those who brought him up and coached him. Not 'cos of some dopey corner back swinging out if him.
The article about Munster was more straight forward and truthful.[/QUOTE]
He’s 100% correct on Laverty, what makes him such a good player is his attitude, he is a very spiky character who won’t be pushed around despite being very slight, the analogy with Canavan is also very good. Canavan was a magnificent footballer but I’m sure you could find a handful of players from his generation who were more skilled, what made Canavan the best around was his mentality and temperament.
How many forwards with the same frame as Laverty are excelling in intercounty football these days? I’m not surprised you failed to understand or even try to take on board quite a salient piece by another person. It’s only a few days ago where you were hanging off the back off a flimsy article and fabricating stories about a player who was nominated for an all star last year so you could justify the rubbish you were spouting. I also note that you left that debacle fairly quickly after your lies were exposed.
[QUOTE=“Il Bomber Destro, post: 954597, member: 2533”]He’s 100% correct on Laverty, what makes him such a good player is his attitude, he is a very spiky character who won’t be pushed around despite being very slight, the analogy with Canavan is also very good. Canavan was a magnificent footballer but I’m sure you could find a handful of players from his generation who were more skilled, what made Canavan the best around was his mentality and temperament.
How many forwards with the same frame as Laverty are excelling in intercounty football these days? I’m not surprised you failed to understand or even try to take on board quite a salient piece by another person. It’s only a few days ago where you were hanging off the back off a flimsy article and fabricating stories about a player who was nominated for an all star last year so you could justify the rubbish you were spouting. I also note that you left that debacle fairly quickly after your lies were exposed.[/QUOTE]
I stopped cos you were boring me and I had made my point.
Everything else you posted is absolute bollix. Plenty other slight players have gone and had brilliant IC careers without acting the hard man. It’s just little man syndrome, dress it up any way you want, but that all it is. They’d be far better off putting all their energy into footballing.
[QUOTE=“Il Bomber Destro, post: 954597, member: 2533”]He’s 100% correct on Laverty, what makes him such a good player is his attitude, he is a very spiky character who won’t be pushed around despite being very slight, the analogy with Canavan is also very good. Canavan was a magnificent footballer but I’m sure you could find a handful of players from his generation who were more skilled, what made Canavan the best around was his mentality and temperament.
How many forwards with the same frame as Laverty are excelling in intercounty football these days? I’m not surprised you failed to understand or even try to take on board quite a salient piece by another person. It’s only a few days ago where you were hanging off the back off a flimsy article and fabricating stories about a player who was nominated for an all star last year so you could justify the rubbish you were spouting. I also note that you left that debacle fairly quickly after your lies were exposed.[/QUOTE]
Canavan was the most skilful player I have seen.
[QUOTE=“caoimhaoin, post: 954601, member: 273”]I stopped cos you were boring me and I had made my point.
Everything else you posted is absolute bollix. Plenty other slight players have gone and had brilliant IC careers without acting the hard man. It’s just little man syndrome, dress it up any way you want, but that all it is. They’d be far better off putting all their energy into footballing.[/QUOTE]
Name them.
You stopped because it was a lie, you made something up on a whim to suit your flawed argument and got called out on it. You said he was destroyed by Mayo after half time despite his direct marker and Mayo’s best forward only getting a point from play out of him which was a terrific long range effort if I recall correctly.
Skilled may not be the correct term I was looking for there but players who had the all round game to be better forwards (speed, power size) yet Canavan was the best of his generation and I think Darragh O’Se is correct in saying that it was due to way he was able to handle himself.