If you’ve been hit by Stefan Okunbor, then you’ll be experiencing something completely new and unique as while the rest of us stay in the present, you’ll be finding your way in the middle of next week. 11 hard but clean hits later and young Marcus Lentini from Coburg might just have thought he’d made […]

5 years ago

Seo libh canaig amhran na….COME ON TIPP! Or come on Wexford, come on Limerick or come on dA bleEdin Dubz. In the stands, it’s one of those electrifying moments you might only experience a couple of times in your life, as Amhrán na bhFiann reaches a  climax and grown adults scream at the sun. It’s […]

5 years ago

“The clubs are at the heart of our sport and we want the club players to have the opportunity to play at the highest level available to them.” Three weeks is all they’re asking for. The Camogie Association’s decision to cancel the 2020 All-Ireland club camogie championships has, predictably, gone down like a led balloon […]

5 years ago

There won’t be a tap done in homes all over the country this weekend, as the good people of the Gaelic games prepare to sideline themselves for what can only be considered a virtual marathon. A testing total of nine live games will be shown on terrestrial television and if that doesn’t scare you enough, […]

5 years ago

Ever since she returned home after a season scoring goals in Australia, Aishling Sheridan has been focusing on an Ulster championship with Cavan. When you consider that it was only a fortnight ago when she landed back in the motherland, the turn-around will be fast, furious and hardly ideal, but the Mullahorn player ensures us […]

5 years ago

Brought to you by Horse Racing Ireland Nothing signifies the start of summer quite like Tattersalls Irish Guineas weekend, and the sun is nearly shining at this stage. It’s been a long winter, what with lock-ups, lock-downs, any sort of lock-out you can think of, and while all-weather racing has been a decent appetiser, in […]

5 years ago

They say goals win games but modern-day hurling takes that reckoning to within an inch of its life. Welcome to the new age, home of the light sliotar and the thin rims, the refined hurls with the big bas and last but by no means least, those short, lateral passes that give the whole thing […]

5 years ago

What sort of a minor team had ye? It could be a team of late developers just as easy as it could be a team of underage sensations but it’s only when the last ball is kicked in the minor championship when you know that the fun and games are over, that you’re up with […]

5 years ago

354 days and you’re still here. A stalwart of the 12.00 scene.

5 years ago

It’s gotten to the stage now where you don’t even have to pass the ball to Gearoid Hegarty, you just have to hit it into his general vicinity. Until a player is hurling like their marker doesn’t even exist, until they’re going on as if this is under-12s and they’re senior, you could have no […]

5 years ago

As the ancient proverb goes, the quiet man is the most dangerous man in the room. It was during the 2019 championship, when after a couple of years on the fringes, Barry Heffernan bit the bullet and made himself undroppable. As Tipperary slipped in the back-door, the Nenagh Éire Óg club man left that reputation […]

5 years ago

If things stay going the way they’re going, then Jackie Tyrrell is worried for the game of hurling. You watched Tipperary-Cork on Saturday night and somewhere in between the skilful short-passes and the speculative long-range shooting, you found yourself staring at the screen in disbelief. Well if that’s a free, you’d say, then we might […]

5 years ago

You don’t need bells or whistles when Aron Shanagher’s in town. Forget the system, hand-passes can go to hell, don’t even entertain that runner off the shoulder and any way you like, you let that ripper of a thing into him. Just like they did in the good-old days, when full forwards did exactly what […]

5 years ago

If you’re good enough, you’re old enough. But now you’re talking about that same player, only this time they’re 15 years older…you’d better hold those horses for a second. Because while you might still be good enough, old man, there’s a good chance that you might not be young enough. As the old saying goes, […]

5 years ago

Just like Patrick Horgan with Cork or TJ Reid with Kilkenny, when you think Antrim hurling, you automatically think Neil McManus. So when Antrim make it to Joe McDonagh Cup final day, you reason that, unless his two legs are hanging off, then Neil McManus would be first name on the team-sheet just like he […]

5 years ago

Ciara Storey doesn’t want mountains moved, all she wants is a chance to play that Leinster semi-final her and her club-mates have qualified for. The Oulart-the-Ballagh player has won All-Irelands with Wexford and she’s won them with her club too, but she’s been playing this game long enough now to know that they don’t come […]

5 years ago

Tall-tale. A youngster grows up in a town of terraced council houses and tarnished reputations. All her life she’s been hearing that, being from a place like here, you couldn’t possibly amount to much. She looks around to see the drugs, the alcohol and the troubled minds but for Amy O’Connor, Knocknaheeny was never the […]

5 years ago

2020 was more of a bypass than a busy street but as one of the lucky ones, Michael Quinlivan saw plenty. Having made it to Cambodia, Vietnam, New Zealand and then back to Croke Park, it’s fair to say that this full forward has had worse years. By the time he’d reached destination unknown, and […]

5 years ago

Kieran McGeeney spent the first half of his lock-down recovering from shoulder-surgery, a re-construction which he says was a long time coming. When you’ve had a career as a force of nature you see, and live a life that, even at 49, takes you in and out of the MMA octagon, these are the battle-scars […]

5 years ago

For now, he’s one of the best tight-heads in world rugby. Don’t be one bit surprised however, if some day in the future, that same guy lines out in a Junior B football match in Wexford. That’s Tadhg Furlong for you. We’ve all seen it, that piece of gold from an under-14 game in Wexford […]

5 years ago

The game took place in MacHale park but Gerald Kelly’s point was from another post-code. The hardest thing to believe is that, having blasted off from his own 14 yard-line, the Mayo goalkeeper didn’t just clear the Derry cross-bar but laughed at it on the way back down. Short puck-outs are the name of the […]

5 years ago

The 2019 All-Ireland semi-final is the last time Limerick lost a game of hurling. It was a day that felt so familiar, as a ravenous Kilkenny devoured all and sundry but now we’re two years on and with each passing game, it seems like more and more of a freak. That was a day when […]

5 years ago

“Joanne, I have a confession to make…” You can accuse Donal Óg Cusack of going overboard on occasions, you can call him head-strong or even eccentric, but one thing you can never accuse that man of is of sitting on the fence. Here is a pundit who, with a brilliant blend of articulation and conviction, […]

5 years ago

Cork 5-22 Waterford 1-27 If it was space you wanted, you wouldn’t have had to look too hard for it in Páirc Uí Chaoimh this Sunday and for Waterford, that was always going to be a dangerous situation. It’s hardly a revelation to say that when it comes to open-season hurling, there are few teams […]

5 years ago

Antrim 1-21 Clare 0-22 If you think Antrim are here in Division One of the National Hurling League, happy enough just to make up a few numbers, then you’ve got another thing coming. Just ask Brian Lohan and Clare, who travelled to Belfast hoping to hit the ground running and left with their heads in […]

5 years ago

When Dublin beat Galway in 2019, in one of the county’s best wins in recent times, the half back line was Shane Barrett, Sean Moran and Chris Crummey. All the best passing that brick wall. When Dublin were well-beaten by Cork in the Championship last year, their half back line was unrecognisable and hardly as […]

5 years ago

Chelsea drew 0-0 with Wolves in Thomas Tuchel’s first game in charge and if as a Chelsea fan, you were asked to describe the game in a word, you would have probably went with something like underwhelming. Grass grew during a match that saw Chelsea own the ball, to the extent that they had 79% […]

5 years ago

There will be no trip to South Africa for Johnny Sexton, who has been omitted from Warren Gatland’s British and Irish Lions squad. Dan Biggar, Owen Farrell and Finn Russell were selected ahead of the Dubliner, probably in that order, as a run of concussions and injuries appears to have denied the fly-half the opportunity […]

5 years ago

In the remote outskirts of nowhere, Sean Finn opened the mind and the body for another year. Go to beyond, then back some more and you might just find yourself in Doonbeg, in the west west coast of county Clare. It’s so quiet and undisturbed out there that you wouldn’t want to be the one […]

5 years ago

You’d need the two hands out if you wanted to count the number of inter-county managers who have an axe and want to grind it. John Maughan wanted a five-week run-in. Enda McGinley isn’t happy with the four. The chartered physio Joey Boland says that, in an ideal world, inter-county teams would have had eight […]

5 years ago

As nature heals and the gates to freedom open, the World Snooker Championship felt like a moment in time. Forever without a thought, scenes like these have been taken for granted but as the fans at the Crucible cheered and as the players smiled over the baize, you didn’t have to be in Sheffield to […]

5 years ago

I have a confession to make. I am completely and utterly deluded. Summer 2020, without the GAA, without training, without the Olympics, was a 5k free-for-all and I was stuck in the middle of it. In my capacity as an ex-cross country runner, you see, this was the stuff of dreams. It was a chance […]

5 years ago

When he speaks, he speaks with the full-blooded conviction he hurled for 20 years with. You won’t get too much out of him and he won’t knock you down with chat, but maybe that’s the secret. Before you know it, you’re hanging on every word and it’s only when he’s done talking, when you’ll turn […]

5 years ago

Shane Lowry will die a happy man, if he lives to see Offaly winning an All-Ireland. It was in December last year, the day Limerick won a second All-Ireland senior hurling title in a row, when Shane Lowry’s mind drifted back home to Offaly. His home county’s fall-from-GAA-grace has set him back as much as […]

5 years ago

There’s a part of Liam Griffin’s Laochra Gael that Colm Parkinson simply couldn’t believe. It comes early on in the programme when, recalling Griffin’s first speech as Wexford manager, George O’Connor grades it as a 1/10 effort. “Who’s going to tell us about stats and what you should and shouldn’t do,” O’Connor remarks of his […]

5 years ago

By the age of 21, Niall McNamee was living two lives. Debts, demons and an uncontrollable compulsion meant that of a Saturday, this gambler could have lost the price of a car. The Sunday, he’d lace the boots, leave those problems in the dressing room and he’d kick 0-10 for Offaly. The most depressing thing […]

5 years ago

Oisin McConville runs his hand through his hair. You couldn’t but admire what happens next, as for the following half an hour he speaks with the straight-up self reducing honesty, of a man who’s never seen a bush he wanted to beat around. You find a spade and this man will call it. It’s probably […]

5 years ago

2014 was the worst year of Maurice Shanahan’s life. A zipped up bag of demons weighed so heavily on the Lismore and Waterford hurler back then, that he saw no way out. All his life, hurling was his game, it was his passion but when he zipped the bag tighter and the walls caved in, […]

5 years ago

Let the good times roll, let the bad times never return. Halle-flippin-lujah. After a winter that seemed like it would never end, locked down and without a game to go to or a round of golf to play, it really was twiddle the thumbs time. Thankfully, the storm has passed and the good things are […]

5 years ago

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. It says it all about the Kildare man, that a surname isn’t even necessary. Up there on the same level as DJ, Roy and Rory, when it comes to horse-racing, Walsh will always stand alone. Time flies and it’s hard to believe that it’s almost two years since the greatest national […]

5 years ago

What could possibly go wrong? With the sun shining, the grass fresh and low and suddenly, with teams back training like it was 2019 again, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was all a dream. Having spent all this time under house arrest, looking out the window only to breathe a what if, it’s hard […]

5 years ago

Conal Keaney picks up the phone. That he might fall behind he has only 20 minutes to chat. Things are good. He’s retired now but you wouldn’t know it, not by the shape of him, not by the busy schedule of a man who hasn’t enough minutes in the day. Business has taken him to […]

5 years ago

Far away from Tipperary and on Australia’s Gold Coast, Orla O’Dwyer is taking it all in. The celebrations of an AFLW grand final win with the Brisbane Lions are on a breather, pub nights turned to beach days, before the party gets going again with the club’s awards night this Friday. This is the life, […]

5 years ago

For Munster fans, the dream goes to the back-burner. It’s been quite a thrill for them, watching one of their great heroes light up the French coaching ranks and in fairness, you couldn’t blame them for putting two and two together. Two and two made five here though, Ronan O’Gara having signed a three year […]

5 years ago

Sean Cavanagh looks around the room and there’s no doubt in his mind that it’s the craziest thing he’s ever seen. A few lads were cut open and if they weren’t cut open, well then there was another lad coming to cut them open. Others were scratched and their bodies were spattered with blood, all […]

5 years ago

Henry De Bromhead was only coming to terms with a barnstorming Cheltenham when he went and won the Aintree Grand National. It really has been a sensational season for the Waterford trainer, who having been the subject of more victory interviews than he could ever have imagined, says that his well of superlatives has by […]

5 years ago

Tottenham Hotspur have become the third English football club in the last six years to sack Jose Mourinho. After a particularly dismal run of form in an altogether inconsistent season, Spurs have followed in the footsteps of Chelsea and Manchester United in parting ways with the Portuguese maestro. With no win in their last three […]

5 years ago

What’s that you ask? The smell of championship Sundays, that’s what that is. The darkness is behind us, ahead, there is light. Society is slowly but surely beginning to open up here in Ireland, with golf on the way back, with restaurants and hairdressers not far off but for many of us, it won’t be […]

5 years ago

Pick that one out. Still in pursuit of her first win on the LPGA tour, Cavan’s Leona Maguire may have her best chance yet this weekend in the Lotte Championship in Hawaii. The former World amateur number one shot a stunning round of 65 on Friday afternoon at the Kapolei Golf Club, which puts her […]

5 years ago

If for some reason you were driving through Cashel in the early hours of this morning, you’d have had to notice the kitchen lights in the pitch black, the families huddled around the tele, and you might just have guessed there was an AFLW grand final taking place. It’s not all the time the people […]

5 years ago