Can’t Go On
Reports emerged over the weekend that Jon Rahm’s new £450m deal with LIV Golf was six times the entire 2023 revenue of the breakaway league. In his annual report to Convention, PGA county secretary James O’Monahan has described the situation as “unsustainable”. Galway, meanwhile, have revealed that their spending on county teams this year was just under €25m. Kilkenny footballers’ expenses came to €11.30.
The Contract
Life in Clarinbridge has changed ahead of 2024. The local travel agents are hoping for a Christmas surge now that leaving the village between January and November is banned. The bars have all had to shut since prohibition was reintroduced. Connaughton’s AppleGreen is flying it though with the Limerick lads having to travel up and down for training now. Players have quickly gotten used to logging bowel movements on the app at least.
Unsolicited
Hurling in Cavan, Fermanagh, Leitrim, Longford and Louth was treated by Croke Park like a Luis Rubiales kiss. A GAA spokesperson said: ‘We’ve done nothing wrong. They asked us to do it. Who even told them they could hurl in the first place?’ After being socially assassinated to the point where even the GPA eventually remembered to make a statement, the GAA relented.
Poor lad
Cristiano Ronaldo has been stuck in his ringside side now for over a week, waiting for Conor McGregor to stop talking at him. Ronaldo has remained silent on whether he accept the invitation to join McGregor for a riotous night out in Dublin.
Wasn’t as bad as you think
The night of the All-Ireland final, the team at The Sunday Game nominated Mick Fitzsimons – winner of a now-joint record ninth All-Ireland – for the man-of-the-match award. His direct opponent scored 0-2 from play and assisted 1-2. David Clifford’s pass for the goal was a superb piece of play off his weaker right foot. Clifford was judged by his own ridiculously high standard. Of RTÉ's website and six major newspapers, The Irish News’ Kenny Archer was the only one that gave him a 7. The others all gave him a 6. It wasn’t his best day and there were wides he normally wouldn’t kick but what other forward would have been given a 6 and had his man nominated for man of the match after scoring 0-2 from play and setting up 1-2?
Who needs enemies
When Rathmore returned home from Dublin on an open trailer after winning the All-Ireland intermediate championship, their friends and neighbours were naturally out to greet them. In the middle of January. With snowballs. The players got pelted and were helpless to do anything about it.
This will bring a smile to your face. All-Ireland Intermediate champions Rathmore get pelted with snowballs by their clubmates upon returning to Kerry.
— Adam Moynihan (@AdamMoynihan) January 17, 2023
With friends like these... #GAA pic.twitter.com/6wBECUHefe
Twistedness
The DUP and the Norn Iron Fudball Supporters Association insist that they want Euro2028 to happen in the north but that it should not, under any circumstances, involve a new Casement Park. They seem incapable of wrapping their heads around the inextricable link between the two. It reminds me of a story about my two uncles when they were younger. One wanted to wear the other’s shoes to a dance. After much persuasion, the owner of the shoes offered an olive branch. “You can wear them, but you can’t walk in them.”
The right stuff and the wrong call
Whether it was legitimately for the reasons they tried to outline or not, Celtic FC’s timing to ban the Green Brigade days after a mass organised display of Palestinian flags in Parkhead was a terrible look. The Celtic fans showed they were made of the right stuff by ignoring the club’s direction and going their own way.
Counting class
Kilmacud’s abacus skills let them down at just the right moment in January. The Dublin and Leinster champions’ home ground of Croke Park is closed this weekend for the rematch with Glen but they’ve confirmed that they’re now absolutely sure football is 15-a-side. Ground staff in Newry have been installing an electric fence at their dugout that can only be turned off once the player leaving the field has sat down.
Could you translate that
Great sadness enveloped Ballinascreen with the passing of club legend Benny McPeake earlier this year. His life was full of dry humour and in the days and weeks after his death, his friends and family took comfort in the craic and the stories. The standout one was from when he was playing for Derry U21s under Chris Brown. They were playing Donegal and Brown had the players well warned that their opponents had players from the Gaeltacht who would use the Irish language as a weapon to disguise their communication. “Within a few minutes there was a bit of a collision and one of the Donegal boys turns around and goes ‘go on ya f***ing b****** ye’. And Benny shouts over to the sideline: ‘Hi Chris, could you translate that?’” recalled his old team-mate Don Kelly, the tears tripping him.
Caviar or what now
“Sometimes you have to eat s*** for others to eat caviar further down the track.” Eddie Jones, who landed in a pile of it (not caviar) when he took the Australian gig and quickly figured the best way out was to drop his own trousers, add to it and see if the Japanese still needed someone.
When’s the next bus
Colm O’Rourke said that the Tailteann Cup “has a lot of resonance in Meath because the Tailteann Games were held there. You had chariot racing, spear throwing, pig wrestling – a bit like Dunderry on a Saturday night.” Will we go a run? Meath would end the season as winners of the Donal Óg-sponsored Also Rans Grand National, fending off The New Down Way on the home straight.
Niall Donnelly’s jib
Asked by my colleague Neil Loughran about the origins of his nickname ‘Jib’, Trillick’s Niall Donnelly gave the most Tyrone answer in the history of Tyrone answers: “Santa Ponsa, 2006. I was prone to running about the hotel room with not a pile on, so Gary McKenna used to shout at me ‘stop running about with your jib out’. So ever since I’ve been called ‘Jib’.”
Comeback
Katie Taylor and Stephen Cluxton were the big comeback stories of the year. The day before Taylor pummelled Chantelle Cameron back into her box and scolded the world for doubting her, she went full Cluxton, saying: “I hate all these press conferences, there’s nothing to say.” Cluxton, nine-time All-Ireland winner, didn’t speak even after collecting his seventh Allstar award later in the year. Not that anyone was in the slightest bit surprised by that. He had been gone for 827 days and was 41 when he reappeared like Lazarus for the warm-up against Louth. Dublin don’t win the All-Ireland without him.
Listen up FAI
Pick a number. Any number under the civil service one. Pay your CEO that number of Euros. Just that number, not a higher one. That’s all there is to it.
Making us feel old
Discovering that 16-year-old Luke Littler (born aged ten) was in fact still in his mother’s womb when Barney won his last world title in 2007 was a tough one to take at the end of the Christmas season. Talk about being made feel old.
Unfortunate timing
It was really unfortunate for Nickie Quaid’s optician that right in the middle of an All-Ireland semi-final in Croke Park and with Galway on a good run, the Limerick goalkeeper’s contact lenses should let him down. John Kiely said the notion that it was a deliberate ploy was ‘utterly laughable’ and ‘absolutely ridiculous’. Just rotten timing, I guess.
Time to try the Milford genie
There are less than two miles between Armagh’s training base in Callanbridge and the monument to William McCrum in Milford. He was the man who invented the penalty kick in soccer, before the GAA did what it does best and robbed the idea. Kieran McGeeney might direct his players to give Willie a good rub in the hope it will bring them some luck.
The moment VAR broke
“Well done boys, good process.”
“Wait, wait, wait. On-field decision was offside. Are you happy with this?”
”Yeah. Offside, goal. Yeah.”
… “Oh f***”
Live a little
Ryan O’Toole could easily have fisted the ball over the bar and dragged Tyrone into extra-time but with his brashness on full display, the Scotstown man drilled it through the unsuspecting Niall Morgan’s legs and sealed victory in one of the best games of the year.
Dodgy boxes
GAAGO is, in their own words, at war with the dodgy box. Counties that enjoyed a big revenue driver since Covid took a big hit this year as the popularity of the hooky Firestick coupled with the demand on GAA club games ripped their income to shreds. For some counties, you’d have sympathy, but for those that began price-gouging their streaming services, rub it up them.
Technique
Neil McGee’s throw-ins need a bit of work if the evidence displayed on the Swedish Discovery Channel is anything to go by. The Donegal legend was penalised for a foul throw in a local league game. The short film that emerged is doused in north-westerly beauty, from the landscape to the language.
Pettiness
Universitario secured the Peruvian Primera league title with a 2-0 win away to rivals Alianza Lima in their answer to the Clasico. With Universitario’s celebrations of a 27th title about to begin upon the final whistle, every light in the stadium was turned off by the hosts. Lima, who would have drawn level on 26 league titles each if they’d been victorious, were barbed by Universitario on social media when they posted celebratory picture with a lightbulb in the middle and the caption: “Say goodbye to unforeseen events, don’t be left without electricity in the middle of your celebrations. Purchase our anti-blackout bulb and avoid embarrassment at home. Remember that it is 27 times more powerful than a traditional one.”
A dog or a dictaphone
Jack O’Connor paid an unwittingly handsome tribute to the media in the run-up to the All-Ireland final, saying that he marginally preferred us over a canine that can’t talk back. “It is all-consuming, certainly this week, but very enjoyable. I tell you, I’d rather be dealing with it than be up the side of the mountain talking to my dog and regretting things we did and didn’t do.”
Flight path
Brian McGuigan spent half-time in the Derry-Kerry semi-final looking up flights to Australia. New manager Mickey Harte is understood to be planning the McKenna Cup parade later this month into Ballinderry through Moort’n and Ardboe. That’ll show them.
— brian mc guigan (@brianmcguigan7) July 16, 2023
Luck of the draw
There has been mass public unrest over lesser situations than the one Cavan find themselves in. When the 2024 Allianz League fixtures were released, the Anglo Celt’s sports editor Paul Fitzpatrick outlined that it would be the 21st time in 24 years that the county’s first football match would be away from home. A right disadvantage in a 7-game campaign, as he noted.
Winter hurling
It’s a sport not at its most fluid in the squalid December rain but the weekend of the All-Ireland club hurling semi-finals will live long in the memory.
We’re never getting that time back
For almost six whole minutes, and a combined total of 77 passes, Roscommon kept the ball towards the end of the first half of their Group Stage Without A Snazzy Name tie against Dublin. That felt like the very tipping point in the debate around football as a spectacle. Since those six minutes, there has been almost universal agreement that something has to change.
Always delivers
The Ulster Club series never lets us down. This year alone we had Scotstown v Glen, Scotstown v Trillick, Scotstown v Kilcoo, Glenullin v Ballyhaise, Cushendall v Portaferry, all classic encounters. Even when it wasn’t great, you still had dramatic finishes in Glen v Naomh Conaill, the Donegal champions’ win over Gowna, Cullyhanna’s intermediate final win over Ballyhaise. They’re such special competitions.