Steelstown Brian Ógs 3-14 Trim 2-5 Derry club Steelstown Brian Ógs were a class apart in the All-Intermediate club football final. In truth, they’ve been a class apart all year. Some context. Since its inception in 2004, Kerry clubs have won six of this competition’s seventeen renewals so it was a fair statement two weeks […]

4 years ago

From the minute Sean Ryder let a big ‘wooooooh’ out of him on the steps of the Hogan stand, you knew this was going to be good. With a smile on his face and a cup in his hand, it was clear to everyone in Croke Park that Kilmeena’s All-Ireland junior winning captain was in […]

4 years ago

Martin O’Neill told us during the week that Mooncoin would be rocking for weeks if they were to win the All-Ireland junior club hurling title. He started to shake the place on Saturday. The young Kilkenny hurler put in a display for the ages on club final day that, buck-ended by a monstrous 70 yard […]

4 years ago

It’s a huge shame that Colm Galvin has had to retire from inter-county hurling. Along with his Clare comrades, Galvin burst onto the scene when winning an All-Ireland and three under-21 titles between 2012 and 2014. From then, until injury struck in 2019, the Clonlara man became one of the most influential midfielders in the […]

4 years ago

With a season of hurling and football behind him, Brian Byrne says he’d encourage anyone with the opportunity to give the dual dream a go. Noel and John McGrath have often talked about the freshness a mix of the two can bring and Byrne, along with his Naas dual-playing colleague James Burke, knows exactly what […]

4 years ago

There’s no waffling or plámásing out of Mark Keane. He says it as it is. He was delighted to score that famous goal in the Munster semi-final against Kerry because in his words ‘you can’t beat those lads enough.’ He remembers the abuse that, because he was Irish, was dished out to him in the […]

4 years ago

Ken Hogan remembers the ‘céad míle fáilte’ the Tipp boys used get down in Wexford and he can’t help but think that those were the days. Hogan played in a very different era to his son Brian and as he compares the past and the present, apples and oranges come to mind. That’s not to […]

4 years ago

Pick it out. Whatever TJ Reid can do, Amy Clifford can do just as well. The Ballyhale maestro dropped jaws with his minor miracle against St Thomas’ last weekend and while the Galway men could hardly believe it, the Oulart-the-Ballagh women must have felt just as shocked this time around. Because Amy Clifford’s finish was […]

4 years ago

It’s a sad day not just for Tipperary but for hurling in general. Having soldiered for years in the blue and gold, Paudie Maher has been forced into an early retirement. Over the course of a 13-year-career, beginning with minor and under-21 All-Ireland wins, Maher was one of the best players in the game. He […]

4 years ago

Class is permanent. Ciaran McDonald is 47 years of age, has been out of the inter-county game for 15 years but his left leg hasn’t aged a day. Along with his Crossmolina Deel Rovers team-mates, McDonald played in a benefit game for Kieran Cawley on Saturday night when, predictably enough, he brought that old thing […]

4 years ago

Practice makes perfect. If you were lucky enough to watch him in his prime you’d think that Paul Flynn was born to kick points. A smooth, effortless and graceful kicker, whenever the Fingallians man started to wind up the umpires were already reaching. Brackets and the 0-4 or 0-5 followed his name in almost every […]

4 years ago

It was in the dying minutes of the 2018 Cork county final when St Finbarr’s goalkeeper John Kerins found himself looking up at the sky. Unbelievably, the Barrs had gone 33 years without winning the big one and as the clock ticked and the big prize finally beckoned, it was around then when the significance […]

4 years ago

Joel Bradley-Walsh kicked 3-2 for Letterkenny IT in their narrow loss to UL in the Sigerson Cup last week. It was a better day for the Donegal college on Tuesday when, in a tight and tense affair against UCD, the same man kicked the winner that sent them through to the quarter finals of the […]

4 years ago

Martin McHugh was at the Sigerson Cup match between Letterkenny IT and UCD on Tuesday night and on the drive home, he found himself thinking about the standard of scoring in the game. The pitch was perfect, there was barely a puff of a breeze in the air and, while there were almost forty inter-county […]

4 years ago

Nicolas Redmond feels very lucky that, at the drop of a hat, he can go for a few pucks with the boys. That, without allowing for two and a half hours to get there, he can head off to training in his own time. That, without writing off the whole weekend, he can play a […]

4 years ago

Ballyhale Shamrocks 2-15 St Thomas 0-20 You wouldn’t have wanted anyone else standing over it. One of the best and most dramatic All-Ireland club semi-finals of all-time was won by yet another piece of TJ Reid ridiculousness. Injury time was up, Ballyhale were two points down and after TJ was dragged to the ground by […]

4 years ago

Ballygunner 2-19 Slaughtneil 1-18 They’re through to their first ever All-Ireland club final but don’t be looking for bonfires in Ballygunner tonight. TG4’s Marcus O’Buachalla asked Darragh Sullivan if it’ll be a special couple of weeks down in Waterford ahead of the final but the Ballygunner manager stopped that one at the source. ‘We’ll have […]

4 years ago

There is no stopping that man. When the Tralee Warriors basketball club was formed in 2016, Kieran Donaghy was one of its founding fathers. That was a time when, as only people with his drive and charisma can do, he brought Tralee’s rival clubs St Brendan’s and the Imperials together to give the town its […]

4 years ago

Dean Mason could shoot the breeze with the best of them. He sits down for one of his first ever interviews but it’s like he’s been doing them for years. The questions rain in but there’s none too difficult for a man who, at 21 years of age, has an answer for everything. You’d know […]

4 years ago

After Philip comes Pauric and after Pauric comes Mikey and Kevin. It wouldn’t be a Ballygunner team without the Mahonys. Their sister Emily is wing back on the Gailltír team that will contest next Sunday’s Munster intermediate camogie final and as you’d imagine, despite Philip and Pauric having moved on from the home house, it’s […]

4 years ago

Half five in the morning and Fintan Burke is out the door. It could be ten o’clock at night by the time he’s back. The young St Thomas’ defender is an electrician and, as far as inter-county GAA players go, he’s one of the busiest around. Things would be a hell of a lot easier […]

4 years ago

Michael Darragh MacAuley takes a sip of his smoothie. He runs his hands through his air, then stretches the arms out-wide and, as the sun beats down on him in the south coast of Sri Lanka, he’s doing everything except sunbathing. He kicks back in his chair – he’s in one of those beach-side bars […]

4 years ago

When he’s good, there are few better. Every so often Austin Gleeson takes it upon himself to remind us of how good he is. Moments of magic seem to come naturally to the Mount Sion magician who, having exploded onto the scene as a 17-year-old in 2014, when he stunned Cork with a wonder-goal in […]

4 years ago

He’s just 21 years of age but still, it’s easy to see why Dylan Casey was chosen to captain the Austin Stacks senior football team this year. It’s very much a case of a wise head on young shoulders because, addressing the media ahead of this Sunday’s Munster senior football final, you’d think he’s been […]

4 years ago

Alan O’Connor remembers the slogging. How could he forget it? It was the quietest January known to man, it was a batten down the hatches job but, in lock-down this time last year, the St Finbarr’s senior football team weren’t sitting on their hands. There was no end in sight and there were no fixtures […]

4 years ago

Terence ‘Sambo’ McNaughton says that, in his Laochra Gael episode which airs for the first time this Thursday night, viewers will see him opening up like never before about the speech impediment that dogged his life. Not even his wife and kids had heard this much and, after being put through an emotional ringer as […]

4 years ago

In Courtwood they thought Eddie Kinsella was going mad. They’ve thought that for a long time now Eddie says. Collins Ugochuwku was only in the country eight weeks but Eddie, the Courtwood senior football manager, was talking about starting him in the first round of the championship. The mad-man. Now this was no tiddlywinks with […]

4 years ago

Padraig Pearses 1-13 Knockmore 1-11 Hubert Darcy headed back to the goals with a rueful smile and, as the referee blew his whistle for half-time, you could tell by the head on the Roscommon man that he was itching to get back to normality. It was a bit of a novelty and it’s a story […]

4 years ago

It’s hardly any wonder that, when everything was up in the air, Eoin Doyle was the man to calm things down in Naas. It was eight weeks ago, on the back of a dispute in the build-up to the county semi-final, when Paul Kelly left his job and left the Naas senior footballers without a […]

4 years ago

There’s a presence about Paudie O’Brien. He’s a man you’d shut up and listen to. They say the quietest person in the room is the strongest and that old adage certainly rings true with the Kilmallock hurler. It’s not that he’s stuck for a word – far from it – it’s the lack of exaggeration […]

4 years ago

He’s asked not to take offence, he says he takes it as a compliment. As inter-county players go, Kevin McLoughlin is skinny and in an interview leading up to Knockmore’s Connacht final against Padraig Pearses, that’s what he’s asked about. Good job there are no hang-ups. There could be because no matter where you look, […]

4 years ago

Would you dive to win a free? In the quiet corners of a dressing room, would you encourage a team-mate to ‘go down if they have to’? You probably would, wouldn’t you? It’s well and good to go on about morals and sportsmanship but at the end of the day, and in the sanctity of […]

4 years ago

It was a moment that sucked you into the screen as, with Rob Cross patting him on the back to say commiserations, Raymond van Barneveld didn’t even turn to look. He had the head down, he was going through the motions and, as he packed up his darts, you didn’t have to be a body […]

4 years ago

“He saved our life.” Cork’s Caoimhin Kelleher saved two penalties in the shoot-out to help Liverpool past Leicester and through to the semi-finals of the Carabao Cup. In a rare start, the 23-year-old seized his chance by saving spot-kicks from Luke Thomas and Ryan Bertrand as the reds kept their brilliant recent run going. It […]

4 years ago

Club GAA has never seen anything like Ballyhale Shamrocks. Above anything, football or hurling, that has ever gone before them, the small little parish in south Kilkenny is in a league of its own. Familiarity, it seems, would almost have you taking them for granted and that’s why, after yet another winter of wonder, it […]

4 years ago

“We’re never gone until the final whistle blows.” Eoin Cody says it because he believes it. And he proved it on Sunday afternoon when, with Ballyhale Shamrocks on a cliff-edge in Tullamore, he brought them back to the land of the living with a last gasp goal. It was incredible. It was so typical of […]

4 years ago

It’s been some 2021 for Stephen ‘Picky’ Maher. Having been chosen to captain the Clough/Ballacolla senior hurling team at the start of the year, he’s led his club not just to one, but to two Laois county titles. Those victories came within the space of three glorious months on the back of the of the […]

4 years ago

Noel McGrath had been on the receiving end of an off-the-ball belt from Paddy Leavy when a minute later, he made his way back to the Ballygunner man to settle a score. McGrath was clever enough not to use a hurl just a shoulder to hit Leavy back but the Ballygunner man went down and […]

4 years ago

It looked for large parts of this Euro under-23 cross country championships that, with the home crowd roaring him home, Darragh McElhinney was going to go on and win. He’d said in the build-up that it’d be a scowl not a smile if he’d won silver but it’s still so rare to see an Irish […]

4 years ago

Kilmacud Crokes have 4800 members, Clough/Ballacolla have 300 but on a wet and windy night in O’Moore Park, the Laois champions cleared up any confusion to show that you can only put 15 of them on the field. They had a mighty fifteen tonight. Call it David against Goliath, call it a shock, an upset […]

4 years ago

David and Paudie Clifford have become the ninth set of brothers to make an All-Star football team in the same year but it won’t be long before there’s another Clifford on the block. Ógie Clifford was born in September, a day after Kerry lost the All-Ireland semi-final to Tyrone and his father David says that, […]

4 years ago

Aaron Gillane scored 1-6 in the All-Ireland final, he scored 1-5 in the semi-final and when Limerick were in serious bother in the Munster final, he was the man that came onto save them. It’s a fair point that, for his petulant and unnecessary clip on Cathal Barrett, the Patrickswell man shouldn’t have been around […]

4 years ago

Portarlington are a club on the rise but it’s no surprise to anyone in Laois. Having won their first county title in 20 years back in August, they followed it up three months later to take the 2021 crown. Portlaoise were hammered that day and another big scalp was taken last Sunday, when they defeated […]

4 years ago

Tyrone clubs have a woeful record in Ulster. It’s an incredible statistic that, of the 52 Ulster club championships that have been played since the dawn of the competition in 1968, only one Tyrone club has ever won. That club is Errigal Ciaran and although they’ve won it twice, first in 1993 and last in […]

4 years ago

A number of players can count themselves unlucky to miss out on this selection but on teams like these, the competition is stiff and there are always going to be hard luck stories. So let’s not beat around the bush. At the top of the list of notable absentees is Seamus Flanagan. In a toss-up, […]

4 years ago

Kilmallock are the old dogs for the hard road. Patrickswell have arguably the three best hurlers in the country in Aaron Gillane, Diarmuid Byrnes and Cian Lynch but Kilmallock have the Limerick county title. The south Limerick men are an old team, by modern standards, but they didn’t look too old when they gave the […]

4 years ago

Up, up, up and away he goes. Darren Hughes is a big man, so is his brother Kieran but you’d need a teleporter if you wanted to beat Conor Glass to a throw-in. He wouldn’t be much taller than the Hughes boys but he has a bigger leap than everyone and to start Sunday’s Ulster […]

4 years ago

Rock street in Tralee resembled Dingle on New Years Eve but this wasn’t a march to the pub, this was a march to the county final. Which always calls for a day of rest down in Kerry, where football is a religion in itself, but the congregation was bigger this time around and the build-up […]

4 years ago

Kilmacud Crokes 1-13 Wolfe Tones 1-9 Paul Mannion’s left foot was the difference between Kilmacud Crokes and Wolfe Tones in Páirc Tailteann on Sunday. The three-time All-Star was in electrifying form for the Dublin champions, kicking scores whenever his side needed them in a performance that, from the start to the finish of this Leinster […]

4 years ago

It was a tough blow for Adrian Mullen when, last February, he tore his cruciate ligament in a League game against Clare. Before then, having made a name for himself as an underage sensation in St Kieran’s College and in Ballyhale, he’d taken to senior inter-county hurling like a duck to water. In Kilkenny they […]

4 years ago