He mentioned there that he lost 3 minor finals in a row with a group from Antrim. Must be some spin up from Mayo to Antrim for underage training 2-3 times a week.
I thought Laurita is a Knockmore woman and Joe divides his time equally between there and Belfast?
They live in Ballina.
Ballina have razmatazz.
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They do indeed.
A Brolly team taking on Breaffy would be something.
Joe does a lot of underage coaching afaik.Hed be fuckin box office + if he was over a county team
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Joe does a lot of underage coaching afaik.Hed be fuckin box office if he was over a coun
Heâd be coaching lads how to do the 4x types of Dummys.
He wrote a brilliant article one time going through each one. âThe Mulliganâ etcâŚ
He said before he can only sleep the night if Lauritaâs there.
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I have seen Joe outside Gills at a few all ireland hurling finals
Joeâs home club in Derry are strong at hurling, I believe played a lot underage but not at adult
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Joe is a true Gael
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Joe hurled Fitzgibbon with Trinity IIRC
Youâd be expelled for Hurling back in the good old days.
My oul fella got a scholarship to trinity and went there and loved it, but at the time, bishop brown said âif you go to trinity, youâll go to hellâ
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That has to be a spoof
Itâs the RUC.They donât do humour
There was a lot of hurling done at Trinity in Joeâs time. Mainly hurling the Sigerson Cup and the contents of the Dublin University Boat Clubâs house into the Liffey, on one infamous night in 1990. Following which the amount of participants in the Sigerson Cup âweekendâ was cut in half as punishment.
Anyone post this up
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At 2am on April 19, 1977, there was a knock on the door of Strathearnâs pharmacy in Ahoghill. The family lived upstairs and often opened up at all hours of the night for a sick neighbour or a child that wasnât well. William Strath-earn (in North Derry we pronounce it Strayhorn) got out of his bed and shouted down from the upstairs window: âWhatâs wrong?â
The two men at the door told him they had a sick child at home and needed something to calm him. William told his wife he would go down. When he opened the front door of the shop, they shot him dead. Two serving members of the RUC, John Weir and Billy McCaughey, were later convicted of the murder and maintained it had been sanctioned by their superiors.
Strathearn had played football for Bellaghy and most of the extended family still live there. In 1984, his old neighbour Seamus Heaney wrote a celebrated poem about the murder. Heaney had long since moved to Dublin and was plagued by his failure to provide a voice for Northern nationalists. In the poem, he asks for forgiveness, writing: âForgive the way I have lived indifferent, forgive my timid circumspect involvement.â
The overwhelming feeling in the North is that the South turned a blind eye. As writer and historian Paul Larkin argues, the only explanation for the Southern response to anyone talking honestly about the North âis self shame â a phenomenon well attested in post-colonial societiesâ.
Or, as I put it in an interview with Virginâs Tommy Martin last week, a sense of guilt that comes from their having sat on their hands as the horrors unfolded in the North. Much easier to blame us than to call out the root causes. The truth is, of course, more complex.
When the Peopleâs Democracy marchers were batoned off the road at Burntollet Bridge outside Derry city in 1969, the pictures were broadcast around the world by the BBC and a primal roar of âWho will help us?â went up from our community.
Later that year, when loyalists, with RUC members observing, burned out all 60 terraced houses in Bombay Street off the Falls Road and many of the Catholic homes in nearby Kashmir Road and Cupar Street, the South opened its doors to the thousands of refugees, housing them in barracks, schools and private homes.
When John Hume said on Bloody Sunday that the Parachute Regiment âhave carried out cold-blooded mass murder, another Sharpevilleâ, revulsion in the South was universal. The Irish ambassador was withdrawn from London, all schools and workplaces were closed and a national day of mourning was declared.
Quickly, however, the Republic changed course, as charted in historian Brian Hanleyâs fascinating study, The Impact of the Troubles on the Republic of Ireland, 1968-1979 . By the end of 1972, Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act was being ruthlessly used by the Fianna FĂĄil government to silence nationalist viewpoints or any news item that might tend to glamorise âthe struggleâ.
In November 1972, after RTĂ reporter Kevin OâKelly repeated statements on air from an interview he had conducted with the IRAâs chief of staff SeĂĄn Mac StĂofĂĄin, the government promptly sacked the entire RTĂ Authority. Taoiseach Jack Lynch (a Corkman) replaced them with what one journalist described as âa collection of civil servants, party hacks and Corkmenâ.
Meanwhile, OâKelly was arrested, charged with contempt of court (he refused to hand over the interview tape) and sent to jail. Minister Gerry Collins told the DĂĄil âan undue amount of time had been given to these people who represent nobody but themselves, giving viewpoints which are clearly unacceptable to the vast majority of Irish peopleâ.
Fianna FĂĄilâs George Colley, expressing the general feeling of the house, dismissed âall this claptrap about the freedom of the pressâ. That same month, the government proposed an extraordinary amendment to the Offences Against the State Act, which shifted the burden of proof on to the defendant in terrorist cases and allowed a suspect to be convicted by a judge on the word of a senior garda.
A youthful Mary Robinson, among others, denounced the proposal, but it was carried with an enormous majority. Fine Gael abstained (which continues to be its policy on the North to this day), and the journalist Mary Holland described the atmosphere in the DĂĄil bar as Fianna FĂĄil celebrated victory as âbeing like a Kilburn pub on a Friday nightâ.
Through the 1970s, repression became entrenched. GardaĂ had a free hand, official Easter commemorations were banned and a culture of fear gripped RTĂ. In October 1974, current affairs programme 7 Days broadcast a special on internment featuring interviews with former internees and their families, interspersed with footage of British troops attacking anti-internment marches. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the Labour-Fine Gael coalition, Conor Cruise OâBrien, suspended the head of RTĂ current affairs Des Fisher and members of the 7 Days team, declaring the IRA was âin spiritual occupation of RTĂâ.
As the legendary civil rights leader Fr Denis Faul put it: âDue to government control of RTĂ, people in the South seem to care little about the plight of the minority, but loyalists can pour out their hate for Catholics on the station.â
The result of this was the extraordinary situation that momentous events in the North affecting the nationalist community could only be watched on the BBC or UTV. As the film director Neil Jordan wrote in Hot Press in June 1977: âIs it not amazing to have to turn to ITV News at Ten to find out what is happening in Ireland?â
No wonder it was noted that British diplomats regarded Irish government policy toward the North in âa very positive lightâ, a quote attributed to the British ambassador of the day, Walter Robert Haydon.
In 1976, when the government proposed the draconian Criminal Law Jurisdiction Bill and OâBrien suggested newspapers could be prosecuted for publishing material âdeemed subversiveâ, it was described as a âcharter for torturersâ. When President Cearbhall Ă DĂĄlaigh (so concerned was he at the content) referred the bill to the Supreme Court before signing it, he felt he had no option but to resign after being viciously attacked by Minister for Defence Paddy Donegan.
The people of the Republic had and have an emotional connection to us. However, the establishment closed ranks against us. Hanley gives a good example of this. When The Wolfe Tones released The Men Behind the Wire in support of the internees, like any other song supporting the Northern nationalists it was banned by RTĂ in accordance with the censorship laws (Section 31). But it sold more than 100,000 copies in the Republic and was No 1 for five weeks.
The early years of the Troubles were easy for Southerners because we were the good guys. However, once the Provos were up and running and the bombings and atrocities were in full swing on all sides, it was more difficult. Massacres of Protestant workmen. Indiscriminate pub bombings. How are people removed from these events meant to figure out what the truth is? How can they be expected to take sides?
When I arrived in Trinity in 1987, I was amazed by the general apathy. But, to be honest, once I was in Dublin a few months I almost forgot about the North myself. It was no longer my daily routine.
These events have to be experienced viscerally in order to feel the rage and powerlessness that we felt. My view is that we were let down, not by the people but by the establishment.
This is clear from the extraordinarily repressive regime that was put in place. Instead of being honest about the North, being firm but fair with British and unionist leaders and maintaining a humane stance, successive Fianna FĂĄil and Fine Gael governments not only abandoned but vilified us, stigmatising all of us with the taint of Provoism.
It is, of course, time to move on. However, as Nelson Mandela often pointed out, moving on is only possible when we teach the past honestly.
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Iâve said it before on here but the Hanley book is well worth a read.
Must check it out
Heard him on a podcast last year (canât remember which one it was) and he was very impressive
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