GAA Clichés and Dublin Legends

But not Donal O’Grady.

“Lording it” is a good one but I’d much more associate it with half-back lines, particularly in hurling.

“They’ll be there or thereabouts.”

The last one was used multiple times on last night’s edition of “The Championship”, hosted by Brian Carthy, feturing a theme music borrowed from Sunday Sport from the early 1990s, which airs on RTE Radio 1 at 10pm on Fridays, and which I heard for the first time this year when I was doing a bit of work out in the shed last night.

If you like your analysis to be bland, twee and of the sort that 78 year-old women can enjoy, you’ll love it. Last night featured an all-star cast of pundits that featured Martin Storey, Paddy Christie and GAA correspondent for the Irish Sun, Gordon Manning.

Martin asked “why isn’t it a double header in Thurles on Sunday?” - cc: of @mickee321.

Brian then turned the subject to Damien Comer. “A hard man to mark certainly, even for great defenders, and you were undoubtedly one of those, Paddy.” Flattery will get you anywhere.

A lovely feature of “The Championship” is the unrivalled access to “official sources” it gets, the sort of access reminiscent of the Champions League magazine programme that RTE show on Saturday afternoons during the association football season, which generally features an interview with some high up mandarin in UEFA, who says absolutely nothing of interest.

Last night’s edition featured a short interview with “Uachtaran Cumann Luthchleas Gael, John Horan”.

The Uachtaran was of the opinion that the attendance at the Kerry-Galway game wouldn’t suffer due to it clashing with the World Cup final.

The Uachtaran believes that sort of people who are interested in the Kerry-Galway game are not necessarily the same people who are interested in the World Cup final, and that “our games can compete against any counter-attraction”.

The Uachtaran also belives it’s time for a two-tier football championship, but that the provincial championships should be kept.

Afterwards the panel put forward the idea of having a two-tier championship but still allowing the winners of the second tier a route back into the first tier championship, so there would be tiers, but in effect no tiers.

Tremendous fare indeed.

“Seascapes” afterwards put the icing on the cake and I very much enjoyed the feature about the re-enactment of an incident 500 years ago when Prince Ferdinand of Hapsburg unexpectedly sought refuge in Kinsale when he was caught out at sea in bad weather travelling from Spain to “the low countries of Germany”. Prince Ferdinand was very grateful to the Kinsalians and toasted their health and the Lord of Ireland, King Henry VIII, as we heard during the re-enactment.

That segued into the start of “Late Date”, being temporily hosted by Aonghus MacAnally. Great to hear Ireland’s “Voice of Snooker” back on the airwaves. He started off with “Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes” by Paul Simon and told listeners how as he was driving to Montrose, he stopped near the RDS to see if he could hear anything from last night’s concert by the same artist. He couldn’t, but he informed us that the aire was heavy from the acrid smell from the gorse fire on Bray Head.

Wonderful stuff.

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“Theres nothing easy in the Super 8’s”

Ger Canning towards the end of the second match of the Super 8’s in which Dublin had a relatively easy win over Donegal and after Tyrone beat Roscommon by double scores in the first match.

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He obviously wasn’t watching the first game

“around the house” is a martyism which is beginning to grate.

Every word uttered in this promo

Tactical eye injuries are all the rage on tfk now.

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Pulling a Nicky

“Throw off the shackles”.

ie. “Galway need to throw off the shackles if they want to win this game.”

“They were at sixes and sevens”

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Last night’s edition of “The Championship” with Brian Carthy (fáilte is chéaid) featured an all-star panel of Colin “Collie” Moran, Austin O’Malley and Tomas O’Flatharta.

Collie made the point that the Dublin hurlers didn’t bring the same intensity to their clash with Wexford in the Leinster championship that they had for their clash with Kilkenny the prevoius week, and thought this sort of drop off in intensity could be a factor for certain teams in the Super 8s this weekend.

Austin believes that “sleep is the silver bullet of performance”. How right he is, in every respect.

Tomas imparted to the viewer his fascinating expertise built up over several different failed managerial tenures with low to mid-ranking inter-county football teams.

I listened to about ten minutes of this before switching off.

I then re-tuned in to RTE Radio 1 about half an hour later when I nipped down to the shop to buy a packet of fags and caught most of “Seascapes” via earphones.

Presenter Fergal Keane was at some maritime fair in Drogheda, at which some Scousers of pensionable age who used to work years ago on some tugboat which carried rocks from some quarry were talking about how they had restored the tugboat and now go out on regular excursions. They had tremendous old-style Liverpool accents like The Beatles.

Then Fergal talked separately to a Geordie and some other English chap who buy up old RNLI boats (cc: of @Funtime) in order to restore them.

Some chap up in Donaghadee is “the go to guy” for getting advice if you want to restore such boats. He regularly helps people who restore such boats and runs two such boats himself.

These boats can be bought for anywhere between 5 and 15 grand sterling, but apparently restoring them can be “a money pit”. Our English interviewee was lucky that the boat he bought, which saw service between 1956 and 1987, was in particularly good condition when he bought it.

It was a pleasant walk listening to all this, which was sadly interrupted when I arrived to the shop to find I had forgotten my wallet, and thus, there would be no cigarettes. But the resulting clearing of my lungs sort of tied in with the calm, healthy maritime feeling that had descended over me.

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“Newbridge is a tough place to come to”, says Ian Burke.

“We’re just taking it one game a time.”

Dublin fans have travelled ‘all the way’ to Healy Park.

You’d swear Dublin fans never leave Dublin or something. They spend their summers invading the coasts of Louth, Wicklow and Wexford.

You’ve a few yerras spent 9 hours travelling to Clones and back and they don’t get a mention.

Marty called it a ‘nationwide tour’

:smile:

Some of Kerry boys won’t be home til well after midnight at best

I saw something tonight I’ve never seen before. Young lads in Galway city with hurleys. I suspect I was in the parish of Rahoon.

We’re passionate about East Coast football.

I’d like to hear Seascapes do a feature on this, actually.

James McCarthy with a ‘brilliant finish’ there according to Tomas O Se even though he butchered it and got lucky.

Joe Brolly says it was down to his ‘single minded application’

They lads are on form tonight

He got lucky he came up against such a shit keeper

Injecting pace into attacks and electing to shoot are two phrases that have irked me.

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