A short puck-out goes wrong and the ‘keeper gets a bollocking. They’ll take it on the chin, most of the time, because even though they’re a risky business, these short puck-outs, it’s the business goalkeepers specialise in and it’s the business they live and die for. Westmeath under-20 goalie Conor Lynch watched his short puck-out […]

4 years ago

It could well be England’s greatest chance yet to end 55 years of hurt. England are through to the quarter finals of Euro 2020 and when you look at the way the draw has opened up for them, when you look at the teams standing in their way, you’d have to put Gareth Southgate’s team […]

4 years ago

Dessie Hutchinson jumped off the ground like a cut-cat and if you looked at Rory Hayes, you’d have seen a corner back who was only delighted to have gotten a rise out of him. We were a long way away, sitting in Semple Stadium’s Kinane Stand but it wouldn’t have taken a body language expert […]

4 years ago

Calum Lyons punched the air the moment it left his hurl because he knew that, even though it would have been the robbery of all robberies, even though this was  one of those days at the office, this was only a one-score game now. The same thing had just dawned on Brian Lohan and if […]

4 years ago

Clare 1-22 Waterford 0-21 Even the Waterford subs were smiling. You know that look, that shake of the head you give when something stupid is after happening. It was only ninety seconds into this Munster championship quarter final in a sunlit and disappointingly deserted Thurles, when Tony Kelly had the boys gasping. Gasping at the […]

4 years ago

Dublin 3-31 Antrim 0-22 If a team is to build with their back-line and then to kill with their half-forward line, then Mattie Kenny has all the ammunition he needs in Dublin. It’s hard to underestimate just how important it is for the Dubs, to have Liam Rushe back fit, fast and thriving, back where […]

4 years ago

A lot of fuss about sweet puck-all. Hurlers and their sliotars are like Christy Moore and his audience. Thick as thieves when things are singing but when something’s wrong, something’s really wrong. It was news to us when an Irish Examiner article revealed on Thursday that nowadays, it’s gotten to the stage where inter-county teams […]

4 years ago

Lee Gannon may have only joined the Dublin U20 hurling panel four weeks ago but in spirit, he’s been there all along. This is a man who, back in 2017, was in tears on the Croke Park pitch after the Dublin minor hurlers lost the All-Ireland final to Cork. This is a man who, fast […]

4 years ago

Aren’t they well looked after in Kildare, getting to play their club championship games for free! It seemed to take the GAA community by surprise on Saturday, when a tweet from former Mayo footballer Conor Mortimer led us to the conclusion that Kildare GAA charge players on their way into play League games. Coming from […]

4 years ago

Having ruled the cycling world at the 2020 Tour De France, it’s a shame that Carrick-on-Suir sprinter Sam Bennett has had to pull out of the 2020 edition, due to a minor injury. It was during last year’s tour when the 30-year-old Deceuninck–Quick-Step cyclist confirmed his place as the fastest sprinter in the business. As […]

4 years ago

Bryson Dechambeau is ready to rock with the driver, he’s raring, he’s tearing, he’s like a lion sizing up a zebra and there’s a second as you sit there on the couch, when time stands still. If there’s someone beside you, you’ll tell them to put the phone down, to get their head out of […]

4 years ago

Kilkenny 1-18 Galway 1-15 If there’s one thing every defender hates, it’s free-wheeling, grass-burning and neck-breaking pace. If there’s one thing every defender hates, it’s to walk onto the pitch, to look your marker in the eye only to find out that it’s Aoife Doyle, because it must be around then when it registers that […]

4 years ago

There was a half hour during Saturday’s back nine at Torrey Pines, when Rory McIlroy was playing the type of irresistible, show-stopping golf that gives him the reputation he has. We all have a doubter, there’s no point in saying otherwise, a critic or a non-believer in our life who says that, no matter what […]

4 years ago

By looking at him, you wouldn’t think John Maughan is 30 years in the business of inter-county management. The years have been good to him, you’d have to say, and though he’s forgot more than most lads have ever known about Gaelic football, he’s still preaching it the way he practiced it. Maughan played and […]

4 years ago

The worst part about it, having dozed through a long, drawn out weekend, will be work on Monday morning. It’s going to be slow Saturday and an even slower Sunday for the camogie players of Galway and Kilkenny, as they hang around, wishing away the hours ahead of a 7.30 Sunday night throw-in for their […]

4 years ago

Some will say it’s over the top. Others will say it’s where you need to be. Actimet is a health and fitness app that tracks players’ and athletes’ wellness, their energy levels, their training loads and with this information, it determines what sort of training sessions they are able for on any given day. The […]

4 years ago

After watching a game of hurling, Padraig Walsh finds it hard to sit down for any other sport. By hurling, he means camogie too and if to occupy himself he has to trawl back through the archives, back to when his brother Tommy was ruling the sky, back to when his sister Grace was winning […]

4 years ago

“The Waterford people just want to see a good, hard-working and honest team that they’ll support, like they always have done down through the years, through thick and thin.” Those were the words of Déise Bainisteoir Liam Cahill after his team defeated his native Tipperary by five points on Sunday afternoon and if a good, […]

4 years ago

If you were watching the Tipperary-Kilkenny game at the weekend you’d have probably asked the person beside you who’s that number eight for Tipp. You’d have probably said something like, God she has some engine on her, some engine. If the person beside you knew their stuff, they wouldn’t have been long informing you that […]

4 years ago

It will be like Las Vegas on St Stephen’s night, when Kilkenny and Galway meet in the half-way house of Tullamore to celebrate their joint-national hurling League title. It will be a momentous occasion, not just for players but for supporters and management alike, as they bask in the glory of what could only be […]

4 years ago

Cathal O’Neill and Colin Coughlan have the world at their feet, according to Gearoid Hegarty, who says that Limerick’s two Leaving cert students help to keep the rest of the panel grounded. Talk of back to back All-Irelands or indeed, of leaving a legacy wouldn’t wash with the two 18-year-olds who are chomping at the […]

4 years ago

Monaghan 1-21 Galway 2-17 Jack McCarron has pulled hamstrings, done knees and dislocated shoulders in a run of bad luck that sidelined him for the guts of four years, but the gift he has is something that not even injuries could hold down. It’s something that you never lose. If you’ve ever been lucky enough […]

4 years ago

Mayo 2-22 Clare 2-18 It wouldn’t have mattered if he had to do the divil twice, it probably wouldn’t have mattered if he had to do it three times, Clare were scoring a goal because big old Darren O’Neill gave you his word for it. You’ve heard it before and don’t tell us you haven’t […]

4 years ago

Brought to you by Gillette – Put your Best Face Forward with our new and improved blades. You could call it the point that changed the course of history. It’s hard to believe it that, given Gaelic football’s current state of play, there was a time when a Dublin team with Stephen Cluxton, with James […]

4 years ago

He was only a young fella at the time but from the moment his father said it, it hasn’t left James McCarthy’s mind. John was a three-time All-Ireland winner himself so when he told his son that “you’ve no right to be on a football pitch unless you’re fit,” it wasn’t the type of thing […]

5 years ago

Having spent the day calling each other every name under the sun, it cracked a smile when in the background of a TG4 interview, you saw Davy Fitzgerald and Darren Gleeson shaking hands and leaving it all behind them. It’s in this warrior game you see, where all is fair in love and war. It […]

5 years ago

Michael Carton grew up in the 1990s and he remembers it like it was only yesterday, when through a forest of bodies, Offaly’s John Troy broke free by stunning the ball off the ground and straight into his hand. It was a piece of skill so daring and difficult that it was the talk of […]

5 years ago

Did you ever think you’d see the day when a team would score 3-23 in a game of hurling only to lose by eight points? Did you ever think you’d see the day when a wing back would score 0-5 from play and not win man-of-the-match? Welcome to the new age where Calum Lyons stands […]

5 years ago

Galway 4-28 Waterford 3-23 They’d come a long way for this summer Sunday in Salthill but Waterford made it clear from the minute they stepped into the sun, that they weren’t here to admire the surroundings. This mission began long before the throw-in as if you looked at the warm-ups, you’d have seen Galway tipping […]

5 years ago

The crowds are shouting, the hurling is thrilling, Davy Fitz is fighting and if you stopped to look around for even just a small while, you will see that nature is healing. It’s good to be back here. Corrigan Park is one of those grounds that wouldn’t make sense unless the crowd was going mad. […]

5 years ago

Not content with making an example out of Conor McCarthy once, when criticising his post-match interview on eir Sport last Saturday week, Joe Brolly used his Sunday Independent column, eight days later, to take a second bite at the cherry. “Conor McCarthy scored a quite brilliant hat-trick for Monaghan against Donegal,” wrote Brolly, “then appeared […]

5 years ago

If you go back to the 2000s, you’ll find yourself in a time when there were only three certainties in life. Death, taxes and JJ Delaney catching opposition puck-outs. The Fenians club-man is no giant, but he had a method and a bravery that made him one of the best players the sky has ever […]

5 years ago

When the tide turned on Gaelic football, and everyone started to hate it there sometime around the 2010s, it usually came back to one of two things. Blanket defences were a God-forsaken eye-sore, a pandemic that originated in the Hills of Donegal and then swept the country until you wouldn’t see a ball without 15 […]

5 years ago

Don’t get lost in the one percenters. It’s when you’re travelling from Dublin to Wicklow or from Dublin to Wexford, rushing out of work only to sit in traffic, all in the name of a gym session that you could twice as easily and twice as quickly have done in the gym down the road. […]

5 years ago

It’s fair to say that, in picking Kristina Troy as captain, the Meath management team made what you’d have to call an inspired decision. What do you want in a captain? You want a player who, as well as being able to tell their teammates that they’ll have to put their bodies on the line […]

5 years ago

David Tubridy has played in Division Four, he’s won Division three and from where he stands now, in the Division Two semi-finals, he’s eyeing up the promised land of the top tier. Some trek. Should Clare pull off another almighty shock, and beat Mayo on June 12, it would mark a remarkable achievement for the […]

5 years ago

It would take me wouldn’t it, to leave those feckin’ sunglasses in the car. To see fans back in the Athletic Grounds on Saturday evening, to see them back in Corrigan Park on Sunday afternoon, to see them saying to their father, their brother or their mother beside them that that was some score wasn’t […]

5 years ago

Nowlan Park is a lovely place to go. The pitch itself, is one of the finest in the country, the stewards and Kilkenny county board personnel are so welcoming that they’re handing you out snack bars and bottles of Energise before the game and on a day like Sunday, with the sun shining and the […]

5 years ago

Kilkenny 2-27 Wexford 0-23 Tom Dempsey and Billy Byrne are standing in front of me, and the boys agree that it wouldn’t be an easy day to play in that Wexford full forward line. Mikie Dwyer and Lee Chin are the lone-rangers today, as the sun shines and the grass glows in Nowlan Park but […]

5 years ago

If you want something done, you ask a busy man. If you’re a busy man by nature, then don’t be lying idle just because you’ve a game at the weekend, and some wise fella told you to keep the weight off the feet and to rest the legs. For 15 years, Damien Hayes hurled for […]

5 years ago

Things are moving well in county Offaly. With enough soul-searching and controversies to do them the next 20 years and with so many rock bottoms hit that they were at nothing only building quarries, for Offaly GAA, it looks like the dog days may finally be over. Offaly, that once magical county with its long […]

5 years ago

Alan Connolly won’t be taking his place on the Cork team for granted because he can’t even take his place on the Blackrock team for granted. You need only look at Tadhg Deasy. He didn’t make the Rockies’ starting 15 for their county final win over Glen Rovers but is now in with the big […]

5 years ago

The ball moves back to Wexford’s court and you might call this one a hospital pass. On the back of a flurry of statements and accusations – none of which explained how two Clare players were identified by the HSE as close contacts of Wexford Covid cases – Clare county board have come out to […]

5 years ago

They might come from different counties and play in different positions but Paul Murphy and Patrick Maher have always seen life through the same eyes. There is no love lost between Tipperary and Kilkenny but that’s just another way of saying that there’s a deep and mutual respect. Between the pair of army men who […]

5 years ago

Paul Murphy knows what Seamus Flanagan, Kyle Hayes and the Limerick boys are going through because he was once that soldier. Go back to the 2016 National Hurling League and you’ll find yourself in a time when Kilkenny, just like modern-day Limerick, were hurling’s kingpins with a big red target on their backs. Kilkenny wore […]

5 years ago

When it comes to the Covid free-for-all that has Clare and Wexford staring each other down, a whole host of explanations, statements and accusations just aren’t adding up. Clare are saying that two of their players were identified by Wexford as close contacts of a Covid case. Wexford are saying that they did not identify […]

5 years ago

Just when things were starting to pick up again. It would take a heart of stone for the eyes not to light up and for the hairs not to stand, as you look around the pitch in Ballincollig, in Ballybay or Ballybofey to see the crowds gathered, the balls flying and the buzz back. It […]

5 years ago

When a person tests positive for Covid-19 in Ireland, they will be asked by a contact tracing team to identify those they have come into contact with, and to what extent that contact amounted to. Ever since we’ve gathered our bearings on the subject, the GAA has been classed as a casual contact activity. Unlike […]

5 years ago

Waterford 1-22 Limerick 0-21 Patrick Curran will wake up in the morning with a big red bas-mark across his chest. It will come in the shape of Kyle Hayes’ hurl, but whatever Curran will be feeling, it certainly won’t be pain. He who laughs last, laughs longest and having scored three stunning points, full of […]

5 years ago

It was the David Clifford Con O’Callaghan show and of a wet, windy Sunday, it was a joy to be sitting in front of the television. Not too dissimilar to ourselves, you’d have the impression that Niall Scully was delighted to be a part of it. Scully, that long distance runner of a Templeogue man, […]

5 years ago