And plenty of folk do enjoy him clearly 
, far more enjoyable than the Sunday game for analysis
Cantwell/RTĂ is only a cod these days
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An Irish sporting weekend brimming with mouth-watering GAA offerings saw an average of 940,400 viewers tune in to The Saturday Game Live on RTĂ2 as Tyrone broke Mayo hearts in the All-Ireland Football Final. 75% of those watching TV at the time were looking at The All-Ireland Final, with viewing peaking at 1,064,800 at the end of the game. In addition, there were 149,000 streams of the game on RTĂ Player.
Jesus I watched the first part of the Joe brolly VM interview with Tommy Martin it was riveting stuff. Iâve heard a few interviews with him before and he brought up stuff I never heard him say. Basically said he was badly physically abused at home and more or less threw both parents under the bus as well as insinuating his aul lad had killed people in the troubles and breaking down in tears as he said it. Talked about the effect the abuse had on him as an adult and how the republican âcultâ in dungiven meant he could do nothing about it despite an aunt saying they should have got him out of there. I thought he had always spoken very well of his parents before. Also had some interesting comments on the north beyond the ones that were reported. All in all a seriously fascinating character.
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It must be a possibility that Joe and Laurita are hatching a shakesperian plot to get to the Ăras. Itâs too perfect with her Biden connections etc.
I think I heard him a few years back saying he was always anti RA, or anti violence, while being obviously very much a republican and from a republican family. I could be wrong there.
Itâs bizarre.
He seemed to be very close to his father up until a few years back but he seems to have had some midlife crisis and burned bridges with a lot close to him. Itâs worth listening to a podcast he did with Dion Fanning a few years back that youâll probably get on YouTube. He said at the time he had no relationship with his family anymore, his marriage clearly broke down around this time and his behaviour was becoming every more erratic - much more nasty and personal jibes at people on TV, that creepy video in the strip clubs etc.
Hard to know what the full story is but I find it odd youâd see him around with his father so much and talking so warmly about him in interviews and then suddenly a few years later itâs a different. Thereâs definitely a vindictive streak in Brolly though, I think he is capable of pursuing agendas out of spite and with little grounds of fact. He did this with Kieran McGeeney a number of years back where Jamie Clarke had to conduct an interview after he left the Armagh panel and basically say Brolly was lying through his hoop about comments he made on Crossmaglen and Armagh.
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whatâs this?
Maybe Joeâs biggest problem is the utter simpletons online who constantly use him for their own twisted ends while not even hearing or reading what he said.
Iâll tell ya this, there are serious demons in that head of his. Raging, fire breathing monsters of demons.
A video doing the rounds of Brolly 3/4 years back in a strip joint going around rubbing the arms and legs of a few women.
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I lost respect for Joe many years ago when he was talking on air about the CCCC and he said whatever solicitor the GAA had appointed to it was a terrible solicitor (canât remember who it was, that wasnât the point). Joe obviously just had some personal grudge against this poor man. It was just such a blatant abuse of his position that I canât let it go.
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Iâd imagine Brollyâs parents would have been fairly old school, with strong Roman Catholic beliefs and Joe leaving his wife, wouldnât have gone down well with them causing strain on Parent/Child relations.
Sure wasnât his mother an anti-abortion fundamentalist. Possibly the father too.
found that, heâs like a lad in a K-Hole
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This was the bit I lost any respect for him.
He went for McGeeney in a completely fabricated and vindictive way. He tried to use Clarke to do so and fabricated a conversation against him so he could make out that Cross players had no interest in playing under McGeeney and he was holding Armagh back. There have been loads of very personal and OTT attacks on players and managers in the GAA around that time.
Brolly was always controversial but there used be a line there with them, he could be harsh and critical but more and more the attacks were getting more personal and seemed to be based on grudges rather than reality. He said some terrible things about Mickey Moran too, a lot of these completely made up.
Heâs had some breakdown in his life, thatâs his own personal business and I do hope he gets on top of his troubles but his actions and comments in the past 5/6 years have been embarrassing at times.
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He had something big against McGeeney going back years. I remember reading a Brolly article about McGeeney, talking about KMcGâs friendship with Conor McGregor, KMcG getting into martial arts and saying that McGeeney should quit football for good, that he wasnât a proper team player and should just go do MMA basically. I think McGeeney was still at Kildare at the time but I canât remember exactly. I remember thinking âthatâs a bit harsh, he captained a team to the All Irelandâ. Brolly never tried management donât forget.
Clarke comes across very well there BTW.
Whatever about McGeeneyâs limitations as a coach and manager, one thing I think which is beyond any doubt is the the respect players who have played under him have for him. He wouldnât be in the Armagh job 7 years down the line without any silverware if he did not have huge support from the players. The Kildare players were fuming when he was removed.
Like a lot of others, Brolly has a bee in his bonnet about him - maybe itâs the money he gets from the GAA and maybe heâs right to do so. Itâs the way he goes about things though that is no nasty and vindictive, itâs the fact he fabricated a completely made up story, put other people in the firing line in doing so and showed no remorse over it.
Heâs done it with a lot. Criticism can be harsh, Iâve no issue with that as long as itâs accurate but when it goes into the very personalised and made up territory to purely settle grudges then thatâs embarrassing.
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Funnily enough, I have met a few young folk from Derry who would be fairly religiously conservative. Is it a Derry thing?
Mcgeeneys Armagh are one of my favourite teams to watch , really express themselves as a football team ⌠probably to their detriment âŚ
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There plenty in Kildare wouldnât have much time for KMG
Certainly not on the playing side though, maybe at board level or club level.
And I think they should look at where Kildare football has fallen to since he left.