Coronavirus - Close the Airports

Sidney just wants stuff on the telly before all else

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I have no doubt that the GAA can handle the debt because they have been debt free for some time. (All debts being within the association) But the combination of lockdown and poc means there’ll be no capital expenditure anywhere else.

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Interesting

It’s only fiddler’s change to Sky in any case

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And they’re getting fuck all viewers from it

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It’ll be a necessity in both a financial and general popularity aspect. If sport comes back in, say, September or October, the GAA can’t afford to simply cancel the All-Irelands for 2020, because other sports will be straight back into their marquee competitions. Club championships and the All-Ireland championships could be run off simultaneously. The demands of inter-county managers for exclusive access to players can take a backseat to the effects of a global pandemic, for one year at least.

No hurling championship during the summer is going to be one of the hardest things about this whole bullshit scenario.

The gaa might not have any choice but to reach for the biscuit tin in order to ensure minimum disruption going forward. They will also get maximum cooperation from government sources funding as the gaa are seen as a fundamental part of our dna

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For people from.munster

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True. I don’t know the answer but I’d imagine TV money is fuck all vs gate receipts.

Same but worse with the LOI there’s no point in them playing unless they get gate money

Top level sport will eventually turn upside down. We already have a winter World Cup coming up, a World Snooker Championship scheduled for August, an Olympics and Euros in an odd year, so holding the All-Ireland finals over Christmas seems logical.

The Ryder Cup will return to odd years which will bring some semblance of normality to a world gone mad.

You’d be surprised lad. They’ve serious overheads in Croke Park. There’s a few hundred coaches alone To be paid without anything else

Especially Limerick when we look like we’re capable of slaughtering all before us! :sleepy:

The black economy will be fine.

I only use Twitter for NFL, m8. (BTW it’s #draftszn soon)

I’m basing it on conversations with family in USA, Canada, England and far North Monaghan, as well as my own observations of the Australian reaction.

Yes, I’m using the Nwoko clan as a global benchmark; sue me.

That doesn’t seem a very scientific guide. Next.

From somewhere I was reminded of this work of art in these sad times. A poem of an article

neighbour of mine died recently after a few years of ill health. He was a quiet man who never married but was good to the mother and was cherished by nephews and nieces and lived in a cosy house in the quiet hills above Lough Allen.

I felt I knew him, although for more than 20 years we never spoke more than a few words. He farmed the fields all around our house and he passed along the road every day.

In November fog he would drive past our front door, up the hills, with bales of hay sticking out of the boot of his Volkswagen, to feed the cattle that waited for him in the fields.

He was a fine-looking man, thin and supple with dark hair when we first met, though he had grown grey in recent years.

The summer sky is full of sound, from the exquisitely booming bittern to the call of the curlew, but there was no sound as delicious as my neighbour’s tractor in a field of grass as he sat steering and twisting his head to watch the rake toss the mown grass into perfect lines behind him, and later the thump of hay bales being piled into the red galvanised shed where our cat moved in his wake as she hunted for field mice.

Closed every neighbour’s gate

He never allowed rushes grow on his fields, and when he brought his cattle to lower ground for the winter he closed every neighbour’s gate on the way, so that there was no danger his cattle would intrude on someone else’s land or green lawn.

He drove slowly, his hand out the window, gently banging the outside of the car door to nudge the animals further down the lane, animals that were as calm and quiet as himself. I often noticed how friendly the cows were as they stuck their heads over the fence like warm, furry pets to be touched by a human hand.

And, like many rural men, he wasn’t given to overexcitement. He’d raise one finger from the steering wheel to salute me. If I whispered my enthusiasm for the good weather as we passed, he might agree, but he would cautiously add: “Will it last?”

I suppose nothing lasts forever.

There has been much written about the brutality of rural life, but as someone who fled from middle class Ireland long ago to find refuge in the wild hills I have to say that the wilderness has been for me a gentle place, and the tenderness and dedication of country people to their dogs and goats and cattle has often humbled me.

When a farmer dies in the countryside there is a strange emptiness in the fields. They grow ragged with rushes, and without paint the galvanised sheds turn to rust, although nothing rusted on my neighbour’s land.

Grass shaved to yellow roots

I remember one summer evening when he had finished work and the sloping grass had been shaved to its yellow roots, I saw him alone on the brow of the hill, his work done for the day,

He was having one last look at the field. And the smoke from his cigarette dissolved in the air around his head. And I knew that he was well satisfied with his work and proud of his land.

The little church in Arigna was so full for his funeral that I couldn’t get in, so I stood with dozens of other men outside, a dry day in November, with the slanting sun cutting into our faces as the coffin was shouldered towards the cemetery.

People were there to witness the closure of a simple life. To celebrate a quiet man who walked deeply on the earth and loved its colours.

On my way home at night, for 20 years, I would always pass his house and see lights on inside and if I saw an extra car in the driveway I knew his brother or sister was probably within, chatting at the range, and that he would never let them go without ladening them with vegetables from his abundant garden.

But there will be no one to tend his garden now, and his fields are empty, his cattle taken elsewhere. His tractor will never come again up the hill on a summer’s evening.

And the house where there was always a light in the window at Christmas will be dark this year. Those who live in the hills above Lough Allen have lost another solitary man. But all across the west of Ireland it is the same – one by one, the lights go out.

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That’s simply beautiful.

The GAA will be fine. The accounts are online. Look them up.

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Lads reckoning the GAA deal matters a fuck to SKY too :joy:

It’s chump change lads.