The Anti-Rugby Football Thread

Yes

A nation united in bitterness. :clap:

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Oooft

Cc Neil Francis

What a time to be alive

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I went for my usual jog in the local forest that same evening. I was the only one there. The place would be jammers when the rubby is on.

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Forest dwellers hate rugby but love soccer

Cave dwellers also.

No, see the 12th thread - the Neanderthals love rubby.

Different breed up that way.

You had the Tom Brady top on early this morning pal and its not even preseason.

Poor ol Una Healy is back on the market

Cc @carryharry

He was dumped. Country Music the new kid in town.

He was dumped because he was milking outside the bucket

My old friend has filled me in, mate.

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Una Healy is a national treasure and is better off without him.

Has she been taking a spin on a wagon wheel?

She’s back living with the mother in Thurles.

You gossiping little bitch

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Portlaoise Rugby

GERARD SIGGINS

Stradbally is lucky to gain a club like Laois

Cricket commentary

Gerard Siggins, Cricket commentary

August 9 2018, 12:01am, The Times

Ireland’s central plains have been a cold house to cricket over the past century. Perhaps the peatlands were not ideal to develop the hard pitches required but the development of artificial surfaces in recent years coincided with a small improvement in fortunes.

Eight clubs play in the counties without a coastline that are governed by Cricket Leinster. Laois are the best of them — second in Division Four and a win over Clontarf thirds on Sunday will leave them well placed for promotion.

That game, however, will take place in a mood more of mournful resignation than celebration. For 33 years after the Portlaoise club was reborn in the rugby club grounds in Togher, the cricketers are on their way out.

The club has had a peripatetic existence, passing through Tullamore and Portarlington before settling in the rugby grounds under a licence agreement in 1985.

The Portlaoise club enjoyed a degree of success but the new century led to an upsurge in fortunes on and off the field. Like the national team, the Celtic tiger brought established talent and unprecedented numbers of cricket fanatics to the region. Renamed Laois, they won the Senior Two Cup, the premier competition for teams outside the senior league, in 2004 and 2008.

They developed new talent, too, and the youngsters David Murphy, Phil Blackley and Omar Rasool were picked for interprovincial sides. Needing greater tests, Murphy left to open the bowling for Pembroke for several years. He is now at Oxford University and has played for Warwickshire second XI this summer.

“We’ve nearly 100 members now,” Rasool, the club secretary, says. “We’ve three senior teams and will probably have a fourth next year and we’ve enough youths now to enter the leagues.”

Portlaoise was the first town in Ireland to elect a black mayor when Rotimi Adebari took office in 2007. At the time he said, “Portlaoise is a town that looks beyond colour, creed and religion . . . but integration is a two-way process and involving or engaging members of the ethnic communities in local activities is the way to go.”

Rasool, a medical student who was born in Letterkenny and has lived in Portlaoise for 15 years, points to the inclusive atmosphere at the club.

“We’re a model for diversity,” he says. “Our first team has players from Ireland, England, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan and India, and our second team is mostly drawn from the Asian community.”

Perhaps the club’s finest hour came in 2016 when they reached the final of the second-tier All-Ireland National Cup, losing to Rush. That same year Roland Bradley, Laois’s major-domo, was also the first president of Cricket Leinster from a club outside the capital.

Last week Bradley wrote a heartfelt posting on the Cricket Europe forum announcing the club’s departure from Togher and recalling its great days there.

“There was great pride taken in turning rugby outfields into a very acceptable cricket ground with an artificial that had plenty of TLC,” he wrote. “Clubs from all over Ireland and beyond visited Togher and hopefully were always made welcome and will remember the place with fondness.”

The departure is not of their own volition and is a sensitive issue in the town. The cricketers say there was a deterioration in their relationship with some rugby committee members, which came to a head with an email from Ciaran Reilly, Portlaoise RFC secretary, informing them that the rent would be increased from €2,500 a year to €10,000. This week, Mr Reilly told The Times : “That’s not true, [the cricket club] chose to leave.”

Whatever the ins and outs, Laois Cricket Club has had to find a new home and next season they will be playing 10km away in Stradbally. The new ground is situated on land owned by Thomas Cosby, host of the Electric Picnic music festival, but not on the main estate, which would be inaccessible for six weeks every summer. Instead, Laois will play behind a delightful hostelry, Napper Tandy’s, whose facilities have been made available for teams to change.

“We will spend 2019 finding our feet and seeing how it works out but Stradbally is a very picturesque village, a lovely place for families to visit,” Bradley says. “The ground is off the middle of the main street and there are some excellent coffee shops to visit and a playground. Togher was a distance from Portlaoise and had nothing around it for visitors.”

The move brings the game back to a village where the game was played for more than a century on Cosby lands. The county has already produced two Irish internationals, including Ken Hope, from Portarlington, who plays for Pembroke, and George Brownrigg, a first-class cricketer with Sussex. There may be more on the way, with Rasool excited about the prospects of Liam Guppy and Jacques Chidley.

The club has always been welcoming and look forward to entertaining on what they now see as home. It still has characters such as Eddie Harvey who, while umpiring, once appealed with the bowling side when Bradley was clean bowled — and then gave him “not out”. Harvey took five hat-tricks for the club, perhaps because he insisted on keeping his money and fags in his pocket, finding the jangle of the change a useful distraction to batsmen.

When the sun goes down over Togher for the last time and the stumps are finally drawn, there is an undeniable feeling that Portlaoise’s loss is Stradbally’s gain.

fuckin cunts

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The rugby and cricket clubs Monkstown FC and Pembroke have been in dispute for years over their jointly held grounds.