Great to see Elmohamedy celebrate on his own in front of the TV camera at the final whistle as all his teammates celebrated with each other in the background.
Steve Bruce back in the premier league! SAF can chalk those 6 points up already!
The Ferguson holdhold will be more seething than usual tonight. They looked safe most of the day.
[SIZE=4][FONT=Times New Roman]Teamwork will only take you so far. Then, the truly evolved person makes that extra grab for personal glory. [/FONT][/SIZE]
Brucey taking the lords name in vain.
Incredible scenes.
Watford deserved that. When Hull were 2-1 up in the other game Watford were not even attacking, they had accepted their fate and barely attacked. FFS they, at that moment in time, still had a chance of automatic promotion. The Watford fans and players appeared to not give a fuck and only woke up when Cardiff got it back to 2-2. Got what they deserved eventually.
Well done Hull and Steve Bruce. Feel awful sorry for that young Watford 'keeper all the same.
Was a nervous early afternoon today, but, fuck me, couldnât have asked for anything better.
Brentford v Swindon now on Sky Sports 1 in the League One play-off semi-final 2nd leg.
First leg finished 1-1, Brentford led 3-1 in todayâs game at Griffin Park but Swindon equalised in the 94th minute to send it to extra-time. Possible penalty shoot-out here - away goals donât count. Extra-time in its early stages.
Iâm backing Brentford for promotion now seeing as my beloved Blades made fools of themselves yet again at Yeovil today.
Swindon down to ten men.
[quote=âSidney, post: 768975, member: 183â]Brentford v Swindon now on Sky Sports 1 in the League One play-off semi-final 2nd leg.
First leg finished 1-1, Brentford led 3-1 in todayâs game at Griffin Park but Swindon equalised in the 94th minute to send it to extra-time. Possible penalty shoot-out here - away goals donât count. Extra-time in its early stages.
Iâm backing Brentford for promotion now seeing as my beloved Blades made fools of themselves yet again at Yeovil today.[/quote]
Swindonâs luck perhaps starting to run out, down to 10 now.
Fuck Sheffield Utd.
[quote=âmyboyblue, post: 768979, member: 180â]
Fuck Sheffield Utd.[/quote]
:mad:
Swindon keeper STEEPED there.
Wes Fotheringham saves Swindon again.
While a win for Liverpool legend Kevin McDonaldâs Swindon would be a vindication of Steve Stauntonâs Ireland coaching ticket, surely a trip to Wembley is the least those Bees supporters deserve after their travails of recent times.
And thereâs Dean Saunders getting sacked. 
Talk this morning that he may be recalled to Sunderland as theyâre without Rose as well as the suspended lads for their last game.
So he could conceivably get promoted to and relegated from the EPL in the space of 2 weeks?!!!?
Decent* article in the Examiner on the much maligned Paul McShane. Not sure where they lifted it from.
- Iâm not sure itâs all that well written but I do share the sentiment and I still despair at the abuse that was hurled his way when he was selected for the Irish Euro 2012 squad. It was as over-the-top as the plaudits that greeted his performance against the Czech Republic back in the day.
KIERAN SHANNON: Leave off the begrudgery and salute McShane
He still gets blamed for Paris nearly as much as Thierry Henry, just because Roy Keane once said he should never have let that ball bounce in the penalty area.
They tried to take the moment away from him. When Paul McShane notched the goal that sent Hull City back to the Premier League, Twitter lit up with the musings of the miserly, in both spirit and mind.
âCommiserations to Hull City on getting relegated next season,â remarked one twit. âPaul McShane in the Premier League? Youâre having a laugh.â
A Tyrone Gaelic footballer who has done nothing in sport compared to some of his more illustrious team-mates and indeed McShane himself joined in on the beating. âSurely Paul McShane will not be on match of the day (sic) next season?â
But then that player was pretty much saying what multitudes were saying on the same network. In the tweet of another twit, âIt will be a sad day if Paul McShane is playing in the Premier League.â Anyone with a real grasp of and love for sport could only think the opposite. Itâs a joyous day when Paul McShane is back in the Premier League because he personifies so much of what makes it so life affirming.
McShane nearly quit football a couple of years ago. He was at his seventh club in eight years, wasnât getting a game, not even a hello from his club manager. âI was really contemplating it,â heâd tell reporters last weekend, âjust getting in my car, getting on the boat and going back to Ireland because it was just wall after wall that I kept hitting.â
Even there he wouldnât have much respite. In this country heâs become a public punch-bag.
Someone went to the bother of putting up on YouTube a nine-minute nightmare reel of the defender with the intentionally-ironic title âMcShane: The God of this eraâ.
Another website deemed him the worst player to ever play for Ireland. A so-called comedian tweeted that one service was âas unreliable as Paul McShaneâ.
Itâs an increasingly-common phenomenon of Irish life and sport. If you want to gain a cheap laugh, have a pop at a footballer playing in England. Paul Green â ha, ha, ha. Conor Sammon â ha, ha, ha. And Paul McShane â ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! To this day he still gets blamed for Paris nearly as much as Thierry Henry, just because Roy Keane once said he should never have let that ball bounce in the penalty area.
But as McShane has pointed out, someone as skilful as Henry had to handle that ball to keep it in play. If McShane had tried to get a boot or head to it, people would have wondered why didnât he just let it go out.
People who know the game would know that. But most people donât. They think professional footballers have it easy, that theyâre so much softer than their rugby-playing counterparts who donât make a fraction of the money.
Thereâs a reason that rugby players donât make a fraction of the money soccer players in the Premier League and Championship do. Only a fraction of people play rugby compared to soccer. For any player to secure a professional contract in his 20s with a Premier League or Championship club in England is harder to do than secure a place on the British and Irish Lions. Paul McShane is in a higher percentile of football players worldwide than Donncha OâCallaghan is in rugby. Yet compare how one has been lionised while the other has been ridiculed.
Contrary to the stereotype, professional football is not a soft, cushy business. As McShane once observed, âItâs not a nice industry. Itâs a horrible business.â
And itâs a hard-nosed one. To win that next contract, to stay in the game, to survive, you have to be talented, thick-skinned, resilient.
Most of us at some stage in our lives dreamed of playing professional football, went to school imagining ourselves being another Best, Dalglish, Cantona, Rooney, whatever generation we were, the Match of the Day theme-track accompanying our stepovers and piledrivers along the way.
But only an elite, select few ever make it over there. Like Paul McShane from Greystones, County Wicklow. Think of how exceptional he must have been to be signed Manchester United, to play on their FA Youth Cup winning team. To be selected for Ireland at 20 years of age when his performance against the Czech Republic had the scribes hailing him as another Kevin Moran.
As the years have shown, McShane has proved to be no Kevin Moran. Heâs been a journeyman pro. But thereâs no shame in that and that journey has now taken the man back to the Premier League. Though his contract expires in the next few days, Steve Bruce has already said McShane is the first player heâll be offering a new contract.
âHeâs had some stick and a difficult couple of years,â said Bruce, âbut he never gave up and has a big heart.â
âI still have that hunger and drive,â McShane himself said last year.
â Iâm just an honest lad.â
Scorn not his honesty. Instead rejoice that heâll be back on Match of the Day, the show we all wanted to be on but just werenât as good as him.
[quote=âRocko, post: 770198, member: 1â]Decent* article in the Examiner on the much maligned Paul McShane. Not sure where they lifted it from.
- Iâm not sure itâs all that well written but I do share the sentiment and I still despair at the abuse that was hurled his way when he was selected for the Irish Euro 2012 squad. It was as over-the-top as the plaudits that greeted his performance against the Czech Republic back in the day.
KIERAN SHANNON: Leave off the begrudgery and salute McShane
He still gets blamed for Paris nearly as much as Thierry Henry, just because Roy Keane once said he should never have let that ball bounce in the penalty area.
They tried to take the moment away from him. When Paul McShane notched the goal that sent Hull City back to the Premier League, Twitter lit up with the musings of the miserly, in both spirit and mind.
âCommiserations to Hull City on getting relegated next season,â remarked one twit. âPaul McShane in the Premier League? Youâre having a laugh.â
A Tyrone Gaelic footballer who has done nothing in sport compared to some of his more illustrious team-mates and indeed McShane himself joined in on the beating. âSurely Paul McShane will not be on match of the day (sic) next season?â
But then that player was pretty much saying what multitudes were saying on the same network. In the tweet of another twit, âIt will be a sad day if Paul McShane is playing in the Premier League.â Anyone with a real grasp of and love for sport could only think the opposite. Itâs a joyous day when Paul McShane is back in the Premier League because he personifies so much of what makes it so life affirming.
McShane nearly quit football a couple of years ago. He was at his seventh club in eight years, wasnât getting a game, not even a hello from his club manager. âI was really contemplating it,â heâd tell reporters last weekend, âjust getting in my car, getting on the boat and going back to Ireland because it was just wall after wall that I kept hitting.â
Even there he wouldnât have much respite. In this country heâs become a public punch-bag.
Someone went to the bother of putting up on YouTube a nine-minute nightmare reel of the defender with the intentionally-ironic title âMcShane: The God of this eraâ.
Another website deemed him the worst player to ever play for Ireland. A so-called comedian tweeted that one service was âas unreliable as Paul McShaneâ.
Itâs an increasingly-common phenomenon of Irish life and sport. If you want to gain a cheap laugh, have a pop at a footballer playing in England. Paul Green â ha, ha, ha. Conor Sammon â ha, ha, ha. And Paul McShane â ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! To this day he still gets blamed for Paris nearly as much as Thierry Henry, just because Roy Keane once said he should never have let that ball bounce in the penalty area.
But as McShane has pointed out, someone as skilful as Henry had to handle that ball to keep it in play. If McShane had tried to get a boot or head to it, people would have wondered why didnât he just let it go out.
People who know the game would know that. But most people donât. They think professional footballers have it easy, that theyâre so much softer than their rugby-playing counterparts who donât make a fraction of the money.
Thereâs a reason that rugby players donât make a fraction of the money soccer players in the Premier League and Championship do. Only a fraction of people play rugby compared to soccer. For any player to secure a professional contract in his 20s with a Premier League or Championship club in England is harder to do than secure a place on the British and Irish Lions. Paul McShane is in a higher percentile of football players worldwide than Donncha OâCallaghan is in rugby. Yet compare how one has been lionised while the other has been ridiculed.
Contrary to the stereotype, professional football is not a soft, cushy business. As McShane once observed, âItâs not a nice industry. Itâs a horrible business.â
And itâs a hard-nosed one. To win that next contract, to stay in the game, to survive, you have to be talented, thick-skinned, resilient.
Most of us at some stage in our lives dreamed of playing professional football, went to school imagining ourselves being another Best, Dalglish, Cantona, Rooney, whatever generation we were, the Match of the Day theme-track accompanying our stepovers and piledrivers along the way.
But only an elite, select few ever make it over there. Like Paul McShane from Greystones, County Wicklow. Think of how exceptional he must have been to be signed Manchester United, to play on their FA Youth Cup winning team. To be selected for Ireland at 20 years of age when his performance against the Czech Republic had the scribes hailing him as another Kevin Moran.
As the years have shown, McShane has proved to be no Kevin Moran. Heâs been a journeyman pro. But thereâs no shame in that and that journey has now taken the man back to the Premier League. Though his contract expires in the next few days, Steve Bruce has already said McShane is the first player heâll be offering a new contract.
âHeâs had some stick and a difficult couple of years,â said Bruce, âbut he never gave up and has a big heart.â
âI still have that hunger and drive,â McShane himself said last year.
â Iâm just an honest lad.â
Scorn not his honesty. Instead rejoice that heâll be back on Match of the Day, the show we all wanted to be on but just werenât as good as him.[/quote]
Thats a nice piece, thanks for posting it Rocko. I like McShane, heâs âmuch malignedâ as Puke would say*, but heâs an honest sort and I hold no malice towards him. The tweets mentioned are symptomatic of modern day Ireland sadly, we have one such poster in our midst who gets his jollies hoping another, solid if unspectacular Irish pro who never fails to answer the call to play for his country, has his legs broken.
Anyone whoâs played sport will appreciate a lad with the heart of McShane and comment sadly, that its a shame some of the more talents fuckers wouldnât have his commitment.
The link to the rugby boys is well made too, theyâre pretty much bullet proof in this country and while I admire much of what they do, the adulation they get in the press and free rides elsewhere is ridiculous.
*TM Ger Canning