The GAA thread - part deux

Ollie Canning has announced his inter-county retirement.

I really hope Loughnane fails miserably there. Losing a cracking player like Canning is a decent start.

This is related to the county final I presume with little brother not figuring in the squad either.

He released a statement saying it’s nothing to do with the county final but it’s obvious it does.

I knew that there was something I meant to post here. I then forgot it, saw that Bandage had posted something so figured he had got whatever I was going to get and guess what - he did.

Canning is a smashing corner back - the only player able to hold Eoin Kelly. Does that mean that Joe isnt playing for the county either?

Where’s Jack Flash when you need him? Is he logging in from Oz?

No word on Joe yet. I’m not sure if he’s part of their 35 man squad for the league yet. He only attended one training session before christmas and hasn’t been back since apparently.

He’s not part of the 35 man squad.

Liam Hayes was on Newstalk on Friday night previewing the National League - Christ almighty does that man talk some amount of shite.

  1. Surprised the Dublin - Tyrone game was a sellout, GAA must have spent loads on marketing.
  2. Been watching Dublin football for 20 years and they don’t have anyone with any creativity or class.
  3. Meath are crap
  4. Mayo are in the same boat as Meath and Dublin - they’ve nobody with any creativity.
  5. Leinster football was awful. Said the same last year and was proven correct - easily the worst of the provinces.
  6. Tommy Murphy Cup is a disgrace. Carlow got no say in it. When the interviewer pointed out that Carlow voted for the Tommy Murphy Cup Hayes said “but sure who listens to Carlow anyway - it wouldn’t matter what way they voted”

Some thoughts on the Dublin - Tyrone game:

Dublin will win nothing with Collie Moran at centre back. He’s lightweight, poor on the ball, offers nothing defensively or offensively from that role.

The changes in midfield cost Dublin the game. Fair enough in a league game but Caffrey withdrew Ryan against Mayo last year and it had the same disruptive effect as taking Magee off yesterday did.

Dublin badly need to finish teams off - even in the league. There were plenty of games last summer when the second half performance didn’t match the first and that culminated in the disaster against Mayo. Caffrey needs to work on his half-time team talk.

Fookin disgrace to see lads from Wexford taking all the tickets for a Dublin game. http://www.thefreekick.com/board/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif

Last night was smashing. Sitting in exalted company near Wexford stalwarts of the late 80s/early 90s Barry Kirwan and Cormac Jevons. Also spotted was the recently retired Senan Connell, Liam Hayes and Mickey Moran.

I can’t believe how brittle Dublin are. I accept it’s a lazy comparison but they actually do remind me of the England football team. They strut around at the start, posturing in front of the Hill, throwing shapes and quite frankly it’s pathetic.

Then when you need players to stand up and be counted they’re generally found wanting. They barely looked like scoring for the last 20 minutes. It was funny when Tyrone brought Conor Gormley (superb player) on and he spent the last 25 minutes belting Alan Brogan off the ball. They stepped it up and Dublin couldn’t live with them.

There was some cracking scores too (Connelly, Henry, and Keaney for Dublin in the first half and Cavanagh, Mulligan and Mulgrew for Tyrone in the second half). It definitely had a championship like intensity and it was fooking brilliant to be there. In fairness to Caffrey he said tonight that Magee was forced off injured and that was a big loss to Dublin but they can’t keep letting leads slip like this.

As I looked around at the start I got a little bit emotional. 82,000 Gaels watching top class GAA under lights in one of the best stadiums in the world. Mickey Harte is right. This is how we should be promoting our great games. Not crap, quasi, rubbish games against Australia. Proper fooking games of ball with great heart, courage and desire.

I’ll tell you one other thing.

Michael Hogan didn’t get killed in cold blood for cooonts from Old Wesley to drink frapuchinos in the bowels of his stand. They should stay the fook away from OUR pitch.

I’m not sure what’s going on with our footballers. I was at the 7-5 reverse to Wicklow and put it down to lack of match practice and early season cobwebs but you can’t be losing to fooking Waterford if you have any ambition. We had a rubbish League last year but there’s more riding on it this year with the new structures coming in for next season and it’d be embarrassing to go from League runners-up in 2005 to playing in Division 4 a few years later. Get it sorted Bealo.

Good to see the hurlers winning yesterday. Any win in Laois is a good win - it’s always a tough place to go! Pat Doran, son of the legendary Tony, got 2 goals and it’ll be interesting to see how the young players get on against Kilkenny in the final. It’s good to see we’ve got rid of the dead wood such as Doc O’Connor and lads like that anyway.

Wexford legend Padge Kehoe died over the weekend. 3 All Ireland titles as a player and manager for our victory in 1968. Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis.

Good win for Leitirm yesterday against Offaly. Won by a point but by all accounts played some fantastic football.

Christy Carroll though appears to have played his last game for the county which is a huge loss for us.

Best of luck to Ollie in his retirement. A Galway legend and a joy to watch in the number 4 jersey for the last few years. He’s a good while on the road but I thought he’d give it one more year especially under the new management. Hopefully he’ll get another one or two county medals before he hangs up his club boots. He may live to regret his decision if David Collins lifts Liam McCarthy next September.

The reason Joe isn’t on the panel is because he’s off to the US for the summer. Getting a nice payout to go as well from what I was told. He’ll be in the full forward line for the 08 championship I would think.

Thought both of them would start for Galway this year and give it one serious go but the county final fiasco may have something to do with it I would think.

As for your hope Loughnane fails Bandage, fair enough. So you’d prefer for the Cork Kilkenny stronghold on the All Irelands to continue than for someone different to come along and win it? One thing is for certain, even with all your blind optimism before the championship, Wexford won’t be breaking any stronghold.

And the championship build up begins in earnest with JackFlash back on the scene!

I hope you get routed. I hope that smug prick fooks up massively on the line and I hope RTE call in Anthony Daly and Cyril Lyons and they savage him for his tactical ineptitude. You’re damn lucky you were too chicken to enter the Leinster Championship cos we’d have smacked your dirty, unwashed asses back across the Shannon.

I see Marty Morrissey has volunteered to act as a mediator in the row between Davy Fitzgerald and Tony Considine. Hilarious stuff. What a clown.

Also Pat Mulcahy isn’t in Cork’s 30 man squad for the NHL. jackflash will be happy enough I guess. Not a great fan of Pat’s is jack.

Matty Forde was sensationally axed by Wexford yesterday.

He was awful against Wicklow in the O’Byrne Cup and though I wasn’t at the Waterford game last week, I believe he was going through the motions there too. He better react positively and come back with a better attitude.

Important win yesterday with 2 away games coming up now. It seems like every season we have 4 away and 3 home games for some reason. Anyway, we need to finish in the top 4 to avoid playing in Div 4 next season so we need to build on yesterday and start getting some wins.

After getting to the Div 1 final in 2005, we only had 1 win and 1 draw in Div 1 last year and began this season by losing in Waterford so we really need to up things to avoid drifting back to the mediocrity of previous seasons. The players are there to have another good crack at Leinster - they need to go and do it though.

Can second division teams this year get promoted at all or is the best ye can hope for division 3 next year? On the other side of things can division one teams drop to division 3 for next season or are the current splits preserved for 12 months?

From today’s Indo, thought we’d seen the last of this joker. Even his family probably don’t care that he’s back:

‘Doc’ back to cure Wexford hurlers’ ills
Thursday February 15th 2007

WEXFORD have received a major boost with the return of David ‘Doc’ O’Connor. after a three-month world trip. The big corner-back arrived home on Sunday and trained with the Wexford panel on Tuesday, but his return to the starting line-up is likely to be delayed for a few weeks.

The Slaneysiders will be without Declan Ruth, Paul Carley (shoulder), Darren Stamp (three broken fingers), Kevin Cavanagh (hernia) and Willie Doran (groin) for Sunday’s NHL clash with Waterford at Wexford Park.

The visitors will be without Paul Flynn, Tony Browne and injured duo Eoin Murphy and Dave Bennett.

Cork introduce two newcomers, Patrick Cronin (Bishopstown) and Eoghan Murphy (Erin’s Own) for their Pirc U Chaoimh fixture with Offaly, who will be without defender David Franks (groin) and will give full-forward Joe Brady a fitness test tomorrow.

Limerick, who introduce newcomer Mike Fitzgerald (Doon) at wing-forward, won’t be able to call on defenders Seamus Hickey (knee) and Gavin O’Mahoney (thigh) as well as forwards Brian Begley (groin), Pat Tobin (shoulder) and Donncha Sheehan (pneumonia) for the Nenagh clash with neighbours Tipperary.

WEXFORD (SH v Waterford) - D Fitzhenry, M Travers, R Kehoe, P Roche, D Lyng, K Rossiter, C Kenny, T Mahon, R McCarthy, M Jacob, E Quigley, M Doyle, M Jordan, R Codd, R Jacob.

Are Dublin finally captialising on years of development of underage hurling or was today’s result just a blip for Kilkenny?

Dubs stun Cats with draw at Parnell Park
18/02/2007 - 16:45:47

Dublin 2-13 Kilkenny 0-19

Dublin’s hurlers made a mockery of the bookmakers’ odds as they came agonisingly close to a memorable National League win over Kilkenny today.

The reigning league and All-Ireland champions were priced at 1/100 to triumph at Parnell Park, but a late haul of 1-1 from Kevin O’Reilly grabbed a deserved draw for the Dubs.

After John Kelly’s goal and a brilliant sideline cut from Joey Boland, it took six unanswered points for the Cats to lead 0-13 to 1-4 at half-time.

Eddie Brennan, who shot 0-9, and Eoin Larkin continued to lead the scoring for Kilkenny before substitute O’Reilly’s late penalty strike.

That’s an excellent result for Dublin alright. Kilkenny always take the League seriously having won the double last year and won 3 doubles in the last 5 years so you’d have to take that result at face value.

Seriously considered making a trek down to Wexford yesterday but was pretty happy I didn’t in the end. Another demoralising hammering and it’s only the first proper game of the season. 10 wides in the first half, no score from play until the 35th minute etc etc.

Went down to Wexford Park yesterday, same old story. Could tell within minutes that weve made no improvement. Couldnt catch, couldnt pass, couldnt shoot. The scoreline doesnt even come close to reflecting Waterfords dominance either, we shot over a few points after they had really relaxed and that took the bad look off it (imagine thinking a nine point defeat doesnt look bad says it all about Wexford hurling at the moment!!). Its gonna be tough season.

Not holding out much hope for our footballers this year either, Matty cant even get his game at the moment!

Tony Griffin is missing Clare’s Munster Championship campaign to go on a round the world charity cycle. I think he’s Canadian based, doing some really complex PHD or something and trained on his own last year and came home then for a couple of months in the summer to play. This year he must have just felt it was too much hassle though. A good player, they’ll miss him.

Missed your earlier post rock on the divisions this year. I’m not totally sure but I think the teams who finish last in 1A and 1B go to Div 3 next year. It would logically follow that if you top 2A and 2B you’d get into Div 1 but again, I’m not totally sure.