+1
the rugby crowd are still very sore that the stadium they named in honour of William Petty-FitzMaurice, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne is now named after a company that is actually trying to provide jobs to the local community. If we ever needed proof that the rugby crowd still consider Westminister to be their ruling class this is it.
Richie Whitell sticking it to that uber cunt Martin Samuel and the Mail here for his woeful article
THIS is the story of two Jonnys, one from Dublin city, the other from Cavan town. Dublin Jonny is Jonathon Sexton, out-half for Leinster and Ireland; Cavan Jonny is Seanie Johnston, Gaelic footballer formerly with his native county and Cavan Gaels and now with Kildare and St Kevin’s.
At the age of 27, Cavan Jonny learned in late 2011 that after eight years in a county senior jersey, he was no longer wanted. That was rather surprising, given his stature as Cavan’s top forward over previous seasons. The parting of the ways was, according to local legend, down to that great catch-all, ‘personality differences’.
In order to pursue his inter-county career, Johnston sought a transfer to Kildare, sparking off a major controversy which raged for several months last year. Residency is a defining issue in inter-county transfers and the GAA were, shall we say, suspicious of Johnston’s bone fides concerning his new arrangements with Kildare.
Eventually, the transfer was approved and Johnston joined Kildare and St Kevin’s, but not before he had shipped heavy criticism from many and varied quarters. He was portrayed as an opportunist, working to wriggle through the GAA’s inter-county transfer rules, while walking out on the club that had nurtured him since he was a kid.
It was all very emotive and, frankly, deeply unfair. The reality was that his native county no longer wanted him and in order to pursue an inter-county career – surely a reasonable ambition – he had to leave his home club and move elsewhere.
Most relevant of all, Johnston was an amateur, playing purely for personal fulfilment, but that didn’t insulate him from bitter criticism, some emanating from senior GAA figures.
A year on, Dublin Jonny, also aged 27, is facing a career choice too. Unlike Cavan Jonny, who had to leave home in order to play at the highest level, Dublin Jonny can stay local and, in the process, earn up to €500,000 a year in basic pay from the IRFU. However, if he heads for France, his earnings could reach €750,000 per annum. That’s according to inspired leaks.
What to do? That’s one for Dublin Jonny and his advisors. Still, it’s a pretty nice dilemma and, no doubt, they will have fun dealing with it.
Now here’s the interesting thing. Even if Dublin Jonny spurns a €10,000-per-week (there’s also tax benefits for remaining in Ireland) deal to stay with Leinster, he can expect widespread support.
Instead, the IRFU would be crucified for allowing one of their finest talents to depart, even if there has to be a point when wage ceilings must apply.
Dublin Jonny certainly won’t be vilified for quitting the province and the structures that helped make him what he is. Nor will his loyalty be questioned. Instead, it will be a case of “business is business.” Dublin Jonny, now on €750,000 in France, would still be regarded as a heroic figure back home, a professional merely doing what’s right for him. Fair enough.
Yet Cavan Jonny, an amateur, stood accused of treachery last year, because he wanted to play at the highest level, an opportunity denied him at home.
Now, the contrast between Dublin Jonny and Cavan Jonny is irrelevant in rugby circles, but should jangle a few bells in GAA-land.
Nobody is advocating a free-for-all transfer system where players are allowed to cross county boundaries at will, but, in situations where it happens through a particular set of circumstances, the player(s) involved should not be treated as pariahs.
betrayal
In a broader context, the GAA world expects ridiculously high standards of its players, including their off-pitch behaviour. If a GAA player is seen sipping a glass of lager any time during the season, it’s regarded as a betrayal of club and/or county.
Yet, when professional rugby and soccer players have a blow-out, it’s seen as a necessary part of letting off steam. Again, the problem here rests with attitudes within the GAA to the perceived responsibilities of its top players. They are expected to train like professionals, without enjoying anything like the same amount of rest time; their entire lives are supposed to revolve around an amateur game; their every off-field move is scrutinised and, as Johnston discovered last year, the wrath of righteousness will descend if you’re deemed (irrespective of the facts) to be disloyal.
Meanwhile, no such censure will apply to Sexton if he quits Leinster. That’s the difference between Cavan Jonny and Dublin Jonny when they play with a different-shaped ball.
Yes that’s woeful journalism alright.
It’s like a really shite Irish version of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
Slow news day for Breheny. hilarious comparison between a below average gaa player and a professional athlete at the top of his game. i don’t think anyone gives a fuck about gaa players having the odd few drinks either
I detest Breheny, a bluffer. every year he has shite articles like “if every county could have one transfer who would it be”
FUCK OFF
Is that Cavan Jonny is from Kildare & Dublin Jonny is from Dublin. :rolleyes:
The Indo today are reporting that HMV’s failure to stock the Love/Hate boxset hastened their demise :lol:
Lesson being, don’t fuck with Nidge or your business goes down the tubes.
While I would agree with the fact that Seanie shipped a lot of unfair abuse last year, that is an absolutely woeful article.
I actually laughed out loud at the gah players being too professional to drink bit.
Kevin Myers: O’Driscoll’s time as captain might be over but he’s still a true leader
A BAD few days for Brian O’Driscoll: replaced as Irish skipper on Thursday, out of the Heineken Cup on Sunday, and easing into his 35th year yesterday. Moreover, the new skipper, Jamie Heaslip, is clearly his own father’s son. Colonel Dick Heaslip is one of the finest and most scandalously under-promoted soldiers this Republic has ever produced. It’s not appropriate here to describe his achievements: suffice to say that his military career was defined by a heroic sense of duty. So I have no particular fears about the future captaincy of the Irish rugby team under his son. But it is, however, a terrible shame that the concluding period of the career of the greatest Irish player ever should have been so clumsily signalled.
Brian O’Driscoll has been the star of Irish rugby through the lunacies of the Celtic Tiger and the ignominies of financial ruin, and he treated those two imposters just the same. Moreover, he arrived on the scene as rugby was changing forever. I got an insight into the future during the South African World Cup in 1995, when I was staying in the same hotel as the New Zealand team. The white players looked like a cross between a giraffe and a Mormon elder, whereas the Islanders apparently had rhino genes. Each morning in the restaurant, via blank, untroubled faces, they assimilated vast amount of protein as silently as grazing herbivores. Every player rose from the table an inch taller, apart from the Islanders, who’d gained a stone each. Well, I thought: that’s that – Irish rugby can’t compete with these GM athletes.
However, by more modest European standards, Irish rugby has certainly changed. In the 1980s, on the tear in Dublin the night before a match, I decided to pop into the Swan pub, off Camden Street, where I knew the players always drank. Sure enough, at 1am, the team was there, skulling pints. I felt it right somehow that I should give them the benefit of my profound rugby wisdom. Instead of booting me up the backside, the skipper listened gravely to my suggestions and, having delivered my bracing team-talk, I resumed on my lunatic nocturnal odyssey.
These days, the players are probably tucked up in bed by 10pm, and not even the most drunkenly foolhardy of journalists would intrude upon their social gatherings. But if the idiot who assailed the team all those years ago was to return and give Brian O’Driscoll a piece of his lobotomised mind, he probably would get the same courtesy as in the 1980s. For Brian is clearly that old-fashioned thing, a gentleman, and a credit to his family and his teachers.
Quite simply, Corinth still flourishes while he plays on. Notice how, in repose, his face is always smiling. Though the victim of many criminal fouls, he is the author of none and never retaliates, no matter what the provocation. Moreover, he is a headline-writer’s heartbreak, for he only utters the most moderate opinions – even after the potentially homicidal attack on him in New Zealand that should have led to a brace of All-Blacks hanging by their thumbs in a shark-infested dungeon.
As well as having the imperturbable temperament of a Buddhist monk on beta-blockers, he possesses the most perfect rugby physique: his low centre of gravity propels him through tackles and enables him to shift direction in a microsecond. His energy-bursts are simply explosive and his tackling heroic. But these physical attributes would be nothing without a footballing brain of the purest genius, which enables him to unlock what the rival coach passionately believed was an impenetrable defence. No other Irish rugby player – not even the great Mike Gibson – ever had the vision that Brian has.
This is not an epitaph to a wonderful career. It is mid-afternoon still. Great glories might await us before nightfall. But it is reasonable to wonder how much greater would Brian’s rewards have been had he been in a better team, with a more ruthless philosophy. How many matches have been lost through indiscipline? The Mormon giraffes of New Zealand, conversely, pick up yellow-cards as often as cats consume cabbage. Moreover, we have been too content with that meaningless bauble, The Triple Crown, when the only worthwhile achievement is the Grand Slam, especially when beating France away. And beating France in Paris almost single-handedly was how Brian O’Driscoll burst on to the international stage.
Since then, we have seen the Heineken Cup laying almost greater claim on rugby-loyalties than the Six Nation Championship. Certainly, the rugby is often better, but not with Brian O’Driscoll. He always plays to the very limit of his ability, for Leinster, for Ireland, or even – if he were asked – for the Kingstown Presbyterian Ladies’ Sewing Circle in the Miwadi Crocheting Cup. He is, simply, a natural competitor. Yet that said, I believe what drives Brian most of all is patriotism in its purest and best sense, and you can’t say higher than that. Oh, and his day is not yet done. Not by a long chalk.
Brian O’Driscoll has been the star of Irish rugby through the lunacies of the Celtic Tiger and the ignominies of financial ruin, and he treated those two imposters just the same.
:lol: :lol: Myers!
Jaysus when he mentioned colonel dick I thought he was going to bring 1916 into it somehow. He is nearly always a good read though.
Cononel dick :lol:,sounds like a character out of a bad 70s porno
Gerry thornley had a piece in the times there today or yesterday ad the comments underneath corrected rakes of inaccuracies. How these guys get jobs…
Reminds me of my favourite Brian O’Driscoll story, have I mentioned it before?
[quote=“Il Bomber Destro, post: 451598”]Reminds me of my favourite Brian O’Driscoll story, have I mentioned it before?
This actually reminds me of a story, maybe a few of the lads can vouch for it.
bobbysands81’s (off the huddleboard) friend (or brother) kicked the shit out of Brian O’Driscoll one night in Dublin. Anyway. One weekend O’Driscoll was out shopping with his woman, the one with the funny eyebrows, and turned around to this middle aged woman when his partner was fussing over the shopping and said “women eh?” (or something along those lines) to which the woman replied, “aren’t you that rugby player?” to which O’Driscoll smiled, the woman retorted “my young fella kicked the shit out of you”.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:[/quote]
I’d nearly feel sorry for you sometimes
Racing sources leave Sexton’s future shrouded in mystery
<a class="" href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/images/2013/0126/1224329304815_1.jpg?ts=1359163176]<img height=“340” src=“http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/images/tile/2013/0126/1224329304815_1.jpg?ts=1359163176” width=“360” alt="1224329304815_1.jpg?ts=1359163176]Jonny Sexton: his big move to Paris club Racing Metro is reported to have hit a snag.
GERRY THORNLEY, Rugby Correspondent
RUGBY: Jonny
Sexton’s whereabouts next season remained shrouded in some mystery last
night after sources very close to the Racing Metro hierarchy maintained
that although they were impressed with the Leinster and Ireland
outhalf, he would not be joining them next season, not least as he would
be “too expensive”.
Paris-based sources of The Irish Times close
to the Racing Metro president and benefactor, real estate magnate Jacky
Lorenzetti, quoted him as saying Sexton “will not come to the club
because he is too expensive. As a player he is very interesting and as a
human being he looks very well balanced and a very good man, but he
will not come”.
A second French source, also well connected to the
hierarchy within Racing Metro, confirmed as much, and it is understood
French sports daily L’Équipe will this morning also report that Sexton
will not be joining the club.
Word having spread like bushfire
from yesterday morning that Sexton was leaving Leinster to join Racing,
the IRFU announced at lunchtime that the 27-year-old would not be
renewing his contract with them from the end of this season.
Philip
Browne, IRFU chief executive expressed his disappointment at this turn
of events in wishing him well and forecasting that he would remain “a
vital cog” for the Irish team.
“While we remained in the fight
right up until the last possible moment to keep Johnny in Ireland with a
very strong offer, ultimately, following negotiations with the player’s
agent,” (Fintan Drury) “we had no option but to take the decision that
it would not be in the best interest of Irish rugby to chase the
reported financial incentives being offered.”
Tough decision
Ireland
coach Declan Kidney said last night: “Everybody has to make decisions
and I respect that. But Jonny would be a proud Irishman, Leinsterman and
St Mary’s man and I don’t think that’s ever going to change,” and
regarding Sexton’s future Test career, he added: “As long as he’s
maintaining the standards he’s playing at I’d see him being able to
develop even more as he’s just coming into his prime. I don’t think that
should affect his international career.
“It will put a bit more
pressure on him travelling and access to him and it will open the door
for other fellas to showcase themselves too.”
Leinster coach Joe
Schmidt spent three seasons with Clermont and commented: “The offer he
has received is exceptional, even by French standards, but I know that
it was still a tough decision for him.”
Racing were reputed to
have offered Sexton €750,000 per annum, while the IRFU had apparently
upped their offer to €450-500,000-plus with bonuses – thereby eclipsing
Jamie Heaslip as Ireland’s best-paid player – though with tax breaks
this still came some way short of the Parisian offer.
However,
French sources also said this would have been in excess of the €700,000
net Sebastien Chabal received from Racing when he was the France’s most
popular player .
While, a goal-kicking out-half of Test quality,
Sexton would demand a higher salary than any other Irish player and were
Sexton to end up in French club rugby next season, this team-mates
would understand.
Until two years ago, it is believed he was still
earning less than €100,000 per annum on a provincial contract, and at
27 he has a relatively short window as one of the game’s high earners.
Coming
on top of their painful Heineken Cup exit, were Sexton to leave it
would leave a cloud over Leinster’s plans for the next two seasons.
With
the likes of Leo Cullen and Brian O’Driscoll unlikely to continue
playing beyond next season, and Schmidt himself only contracted for
another season, the likes of Rob Kearney and Cian Healy (out of contract
at the end of the season) along with Heaslip and Seán O’Brien (out of
contract at the end of next season), might wonder if Leinster would
continue to be a top European contender.
The IRFU had pushed the
boat out on Sexton, and pay their leading players better than the Welsh
or Scottish Unions and even the English clubs, but could not compete
with €750,000 per annum.
That said, they need to begin
re-negotiating contracts sooner than the end of the November window, and
if they had offered this week’s deal, and over three years, as far back
as last August, they may have kept their man. Then again, maybe not.
This
presupposes that Sexton does ultimately leave, and if so where to.
French clubs are not permitted to announce new signings until March, and
Racing are believed to have signed the Welsh pair of Jamie Roberts and
Dan Lydiate, and Northampton props Soane Tonga’uiha and Brian Mugati.
Sexton
and Drury, along with their French agent (as obliged by French club
rules), are believed to have met with Lorenzetti and the incoming Racing
coaches, Laurent Labit and Laurent Travers (currently at Castres) last
Sunday week.It could yet be that Sexton does indeed end up in Racing,
but for the moment this has been thrown into doubt.
