Quality.
Fair play to him 
any man who helps another has my respect
Cracking article in todayâs Sindo (I actually did pick it up at my parents house)
Get on board the Brolly bandwagon lads, itâs going all the way to the top.
The man is walking class. Pure heart.
Thought he was cut off repeatedly but that muppet last night.
You mug
Joe nailed it again in the Sindo* today. Along the same lines of what he has said previously - the win at all costs mentality is killing Gaelic football - but hard to argue with it.
Said that Mickey Harte should be sacked for what he has overseen in the last three years with Tyrone. Mugged off Jimmy McGuinness too.
Joe is a thoroughly alright sort. Years ago I thought he was a George Hook/Eamon Dunphy type pantomime villain who was controversial for the sake of it but I find myself agreeing with him nearly all the time these days.
*fell off the back of a truck and ended up on the parents coffee table this morning.
[QUOTE=âdodgy-keeper, post: 1118516, member: 1552â]Joe nailed it again in the Sindo* today. Along the same lines of what he has said previously - the win at all costs mentality is killing Gaelic football - but hard to argue with it.
Said that Mickey Harte should be sacked for what he has overseen in the last three years with Tyrone. Mugged off Jimmy McGuinness too.
Joe is a thoroughly alright sort. Years ago I thought he was a George Hook/Eamon Dunphy type pantomime villain who was controversial for the sake of it but I find myself agreeing with him nearly all the time these days.
*fell off the back of a truck and ended up on the parents coffee table this morning.[/QUOTE]
There is no way ye have a coffee table.
Middle class Ireland. :oops:
The neighbours got one so⊠:oops:
He stands head and shoulders clean above any of his contemporaries in broadcasting and journalism. Heâs pure heart with none them fit to shine his shoes.
He is the David McWilliams of GAA punditry. Can express radically contrasting views with seemingly no memory of the earlier view and no explanation as to why he was wrong in his earlier view
[I]
This is a pattern emerging all over the country. Scores from play are soaring in football. At the same time, scores from frees have reduced from an average of 10 per game to 5 per game. Meanwhile, in hurling, spoiling is continuing to flourish and frees are king. Portumna are probably the most devastating attacking force in the modern club era.
Make that âpotentiallyâ devastating. In the club final, they were forced once again to rely on Joe Canningâs astonishing free taking prowess. It is no coincidence that Joe, one of the great full forwards, has spent the entire season playing midfield for his club.
In football, a number of themes are emerging as a direct result of the new rules. Firstly, spoilers are doomed. In future, defenders will have to be able to defend the way they used to. Secondly, the blanket defence is dying on its feet. Its success depended on being able to body check and wrestle opponents in order slow them up in their own half, giving time for the sweepers to retreat. Even Donegal are now pressing up on their men, going man to man when not in possession. First Crossmaglen, then Dublin and Mayo have showed, pressing up on the blanket defence and going man to man kills it, hemming them into their own half and causing turnovers. This is precisely what Mayo did to Donegal last year.
A generation of so called defenders have been produced who have had to do little more than shepherd their man towards the sideline in partnership with a sweeper. This explains why Tyrone are struggling so badly defensively. Their development squads have used a blanket defensive template for a decade. As a result, these young men are hitting senior level and havenât a clue how to defend. The process of re-education has begun. It will take a while.[/I]
The defensive systems arenât the problem. Kerry and Tyrone both played defensively today but it was a very exciting and high scoring game. My main gripe with the game today is referees not punishing cynical tackling as teams break out of defence and the way certain plays keep getting away with bear hug challenges and swinging lads around the hips.
Refs have been, and always will be when monitored from within, the major problem with GAA.
There is a fear that if the GAA is hard on them you wonât get people recruiting. But what will actually happen is you get a different type of person wanting to ref (usually for the right reasons) like they have in rugby.
If they made it more lucrative as well theyâd do better.
Spot on. Spot fucking on.
Joe Brolly is a nordie cunt british bastard
Joe Brolly is the Saviour of the GAA. He will save it whether it likes it or not.
[SIZE=6]Joe Brolly: My own mother text me âyouâre not exactly George Clooney yourselfâ[/SIZE]
[SIZE=5]Free speech is difficult to uphold, but the odd slip is a small price to pay, writes Joe Brolly[/SIZE]
[SIZE=4]Joe Brolly[/SIZE]
PUBLISHED31/05/2015 | 02:30
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Joe Brolly and George Clooney
âYouâre not exactly George Clooney yourselfâ was the first text I got as I emerged from the RTE studio last Sunday. It was from my mother. The shape of things to come. Next up, Colm OâRourke: âMother Teresa, JFK, Michael Collins, the pope and Marty Morrissey. Youâve gone too far this time.â And so it continued all week.
Walking down from the school on Wednesday morning, a workmanâs van slowed, the window came down and the driver shouted, âBrolly, you ugly bastardâ prompting a roar of laughter from his workmates in the front.
Sometimes, sitting in the RTE studio, you forget the nation is watching. Marty Morrissey is a decent, good-humoured man. I should not have said what I did and when I apologised to him he was quick to accept it.
There is a much bigger picture. In his brilliant 1945 essay âPolitics and the English Languageâ, George Orwell warned of the grave threat posed to honest discourse by political correctness. He said that if the trend towards resorting to safe clichĂ© instead of honest opinion continued, we would reach the point where if someone did say what they actually meant, it would provoke moral outrage.
Years later, on Christmas Eve, the writer and social commentator Keith Waterhouse wrote a newspaper column viewing the Nativity through the eyes of three wise social workers who had followed the star to Nazareth. When they arrived at the stable, they were so appalled by the conditions in the holy manger that they made an emergency application to the courts and the baby Jesus was promptly taken into care.
Read more: Selfie respect - Marty Morrissey the centre of attention at ladies GAA awards ceremony
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âIt is unsurprising that in The Irish Times last week Jim McGuinness chose to mount an attack on what I see as RTEâs free speech ethosâ
The beauty of RTE is that, unlike other broadcasters, its ethos, up until now at least, permits us to be fearless. The deal is simple. Speak your mind. Let the dice fall where they may.
Bill OâHerlihy, God rest him, kicked off for the soccer lads. Michael Lyster throws in for us. The result is real, unpredictable debate. The sort of debate and philosophising that happens in our own homes, or in the pub or in GAA clubs around the country. The sort of stuff that goes to the heart of the matter. Sometimes raw, sometimes over the top, sometimes angry, sometimes funny. That is to say, real.
In stark contrast to the Rose of Tralee world created by other broadcasters, where everything is nice and the only sentences uttered are safe cliches. Think BBCâs Match of the Day or Sky, whose policy is to keep the Premier League sweet and never rock the boat. Richard Scudamore and his boys can rest easy in the knowledge that a word of criticism will never come their way. It doesnât matter how ghastly the Premier League becomes, or that England has by far the worst grassroots facilities of any comparable European soccer nation.
The fact that soccer players live like rappers, while kids in council estates donât have a pitch to play on, falls outside the rosy myth that the BBC and Sky are happy to foster.
Sky have a similar approach here. The GAA hierarchy will never be challenged. Nor will the GPA. Itâs like watching young mormons. If nothing is said, nobody can be unhappy.
It is unsurprising that in his column in The Irish Times last week, Jim McGuinness chose to mount an attack on what I see as RTEâs free speech ethos. As we saw when he managed Donegal, Jimâs guiding principle is control. He dominated nearly every aspect of his playersâ lives. When he met the squad for the first time in 2011, each man was presented with a typed behavioural contract, drafted by a solicitor. The agreement was described as âlegally bindingâ and contained penalty clauses. It was the beginning of a dictatorial masterclass. Playersâ mobile phones were confiscated after team talks on the morning of big games. An atmosphere of paranoia surrounded the squad.
Jimâs use of the word ârespectâ in his column struck me. When Kevin Cassidy, a great servant of Donegal football, gave some innocuous inside information to respected journalist Declan Bogue, he was promptly dropped. At his press conference after the 2012 All-Ireland final, Jim humiliated Bogue. When Jim entered the room and saw him there, he sat wordlessly, fiddling with his watch. After a long silence, he stood up and walked out, leaving the 40 or so GAA journalists bemused. Soon after, a Croke Park official approached Bogue and told him apologetically that McGuinness would not come back in until he left the room. Bogue did and, shame to say it, his press colleagues stayed on. Easier to be controlled than to speak your mind.
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Marty Morrisey and TG4 presenter Fiona NĂ Fhlaithearta
Jimâs achievements are extraordinary. He is an extraordinary human being. But he ought not to be above scrutiny. On RTE, he wasnât. We have lauded his teamâs achievements, while decrying some of the behaviour, the style of play and the profound damage that this style is doing to the game.
Read more: Brolly gets a yellow card for his âuglyâ jibe at Marty
At various times we have taken the domineering managers to task. We have strongly criticised the GAA or the GPA when we believed it was justified. But we also praise players, or teams, or the Association when we see fit.
We are right. We are wrong. Sometimes we fall out with each other, sometimes with the viewers from some county or another. The night I lost my temper with Tyrone and SeĂĄn Cavanagh is something I could never see happening on Sky. Theyâd have said, âWell, Big SeĂĄn did what he had to doâ or âhe showed all his experience out there, what a player he isâ. When Sky tell us to âBelieve in Betterâ, what exactly do they really mean?
The problem the modern GAA hierarchy has with RTE is exactly the same as Jimâs problem. They want control. RTE could come to us and insist that we do not criticise the GAA. They could tell us such criticisms could cause serious problems when the rights negotiations come up again. But they do not. Instead, they hold the line.
Freedom to say what you think is a difficult thing to uphold nowadays. Balance has virtually replaced the impulse to go with your gut. We are lightning quick to moral outrage. The hammering of every slip-up is a national past-time. Most of the press is already just social media. The remainder is coming under serious pressure to succumb. Whether youâre a politician or a teacher or a broadcaster, it is better not to say what you really feel. Much safer to use a clichĂ©.
If things continue the way they are going, the media will soon be as real as the Rose of Tralee. It is time we started believing in better.
Sunday Indo Sport
Marty Morrisey
Now thereâs a real man.
Excellent piece again from Brolly