36 days with camogie and ladies football finals.
They would be going to those hospitals anyway at some point in the weeks after the final.
The Childrens hospitals in Dublin are a special tradition that will hopefully be kept.
Theres 4 or 5 Limk lads flying up from the Manor on Monday morning.
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Iâve the little fellow here who wants to go on Sunday, so Iâll probably end up bringing him along to it. Thereâs no great sense of occasion to it anymore though. Iâd be quite busy on the business side of things in July and itâs full on for parents with young kids then as well, so on a personal level I just wouldnât be making a weekend of it anymore the way I would have had in September.
Hard to justify making a weekend of it anymore when there is literally no point in being in the ground until 3.15pm on the Sunday.
I remember when the TV Coverage would be starting when youâd come home from Sunday morning mass.
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@cheasty, was there a piece with George Hamilton travelling to Dublin on board the Antrim team bus shown at around 12.47pm on the day of the 1989 AIF? Think the team travelled down the day before.
Theyâd always be outside the team hotels at approximately 12.30pm.
I think in 2004 Kerry were in The Dunboyne Castle while Mayo were in the more salubrious Berkeley Court.
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I donât know mate but George Hamilton was definitely involved in the coverage of the 1989 All-Ireland football final so quite possibly yes.
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July finals much better with kids. No rush back home with school the following morning. Can have a lie in on the morning. Head down to field for a puck around, no school.
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Youâll be hoping England wrap up the 4th Ashes test inside 4 days I imagine?
I wouldnât have to leave the Dublin residence until about 2.45 so 4 and a half days to wrap it up. Headingley would have been done and dusted well inside 3 if it wasnât for the rain.
Sigh
Youâd have cameras in the dressing room after as well
I thought Mayo always used to base themselves in Finnstown Castle in Lucan?
Itâs real first week in September weatherâŚ
I MISSED the 2013 All Ireland Hurling Final replay. It was played in Croke Park of a Saturday evening and Clare won their fourth ever Senior title.
Traditionally, the Hurling Final was played on the first Sunday of September. In 2013, that actually fell on the first day of September, so the decider went ahead a week later than normal.
There was a full three weeks between the draw and the replay, so the build-up in both counties and around the country was massive. The national and secondary schools âwere backâ so it was nothing only talk of hurling, hurling all the way -what a change from this week - youâd hardly know the final is on next Sunday!
Anyway, the week of the replay was also the week of the Ploughing Championships in Ratheneska in Laois - I was there on the Thursday, all ready in giddy anticipation of a Saturday evening replay under lights in Croke Park.
What do they say about the âbest laid plans of mice and menâ? So it turned out for me that weekend. A close family relative died and after the removal on the Friday night, I was asked to go under the coffin at the burial on Saturday morning.
I suppose I could still have made the game by tearing off up to Dublin immediately after the interment, but no, I stayed on with family and friends and watched the game on television alone, all alone at home that night.
Clare won a high-scoring game and all Cork fans thought back to the drawn game. We should have seen that out, only for Clare to get a late equaliser.
Later in that autumn of 2013, we visited Clare for a few days and took the advice of the great Seamus Heaney.
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
Indeed, it was just as the poet had written, exactly as he so perfectly described the Flaggy Shore in his poem Epilogue. Heaney was a proud Ulsterman but his weaving of wonderful words was and still remains like a great artist painting, a never to be forgotten scene.
That magical afternoon near the wild ocean was in October, 2013. In February that year Iâd lost a great friend, a great Clareman, and by all accounts one of the best hurlers ever seen. I speak of Jimmy Smyth.
For 19 seasons from 1948, he wore the Clare Senior jersey - all he won was an Oireachtas medal and a Thomond Feis Medal, but with Munster he won eight Railway Cup medals.
He worked for years in Croke Park. After he retired in 1988, he went back to college and got an MA with a thesis about the songs, poems and recitations of Gaelic games in Munster.
Through that passion, I got to know Jimmy. Along with the late Jim Cronin and Brendan Barry and Jimmy, I worked on producing The GAA Ballads Of Rebel Cork in 2001. Jimmy called here a few times and I just loved his company and ability to sing and recite poems celebrating our native games.
In the Spring of 2013, I was unable to make it to Ruan where Jimmy was buried. Now, a month after Clare were once more crowned All Ireland champions, I stood by his graveside in his beloved village of Ruan. I prayed a bit and cried a bit and then recited a few verses from Bryan McMahonâs Lament For Dr Tommy Daly.
On the windâswept Hill of Tulla,
Where the Claremen place their dead,
Four solemn yews stand sentinel
Above a hurlerâs head,
And from the broken north lands
From Burren bleak and bare,
The dirge of Thomas Daly
Goes surging on through Clare.
Beyond this place of toil and tears
Beyond this plain of woe,
There is a bourne in Paradise
Where all the hurlers go,
And there in prime theyâre goaling
And race across the sod
And thrill our dead forefathers
On the level lawns of God.
Since I first made my way to Croke Park on a September Sunday in 1972 -Kilkenny beat us that day - Iâve been luck to have only missed a handful of Hurling Finals. The end of summer, the schools opening, and the year beginning to wind down, meant always glorious September Sundays.
They were more than Sundays in reality - they were weeks of looking forward to and anticipating great games and seeing our heroes, our stars of our games.
You know, I loved to see Cork wining as anyone with Rebel blood in âem would, but oh, how I loved to see hurling from players all across the country. How I wish Iâd seen Waterford and Antrim and Laois and Dublin win, but hope springs eternal in every county where the clash of the ash is revered.
A week after the Hurling Final, the talk about the football would begin, and to tell ye the truth, those great September Sundays left a glorious after-glow right into October.
I recall Bryan McMahon talking to me at Listowel Races after we drew with Meath in the Football Final in 1988. âWisha,â he said, âtâwill shorten the winter for ye waiting for the replayâ!
In a biography of Jimmy Smyth published just last year, thereâs a quote from a beautiful letter written by him in 1996: âThe essence of the game is the friendships built up rather than the antagonisms on the field of play, I have the fondest memories with whom I held some stern moments on the field of play, we now meet and we donât have to be introduced, we know each other and have forged a friendship that will last a lifetime, we are at ease with one another and we donât have to go through any artificial ritual,â.
Yes, that sums up the essence of hurling for me, and to tell the truth Iâm so sad and forlorn this week coming up to Sunday. It used to be a festival celebrating our national, ancient game each September. On the Saturday in Kilmacud and at St Judeâs, 7 a side hurling teams from every county would gather on the eve of the final. Dublin can be heaven on a final morning as we all try and get in early to see the Minor Final - the young men of the future.
I say shame on them for downgrading the biggest day in Irish sport.
Truly, 2023 has been a public relations fiasco for the GAA. Starting with the Glen v Kilmacud Crokes Club Final debacle, the GAA refusing cash at turnstiles, and the GAAgo unmitigated disaster - and now, to cap it all, the GAA must appear before the Competition Authority - all self-grown, self-imposed, shambolic cock-ups.
Limerick or Kilkenny on Sunday? Not sure really. Kilkenny have heaps of titles but always want more, and Limerick have come to hurlingâs top table and are determined to stay there.
Sport with dash in it
Clatter and clash in it
Something with ash in it
Surely a game.
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Hard to argue with that.
And weâve the county final in a fortnight too.
Nice to get it all wrapped up early.
What a shock, written by John Arnold. Talks some rubbish.
Who the fuck is John Arnold?
Kevinâs da?
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