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10th Dec 2014

BOD’s fairytale finish is Ireland’s top Twitter sporting event of 2014

SportsJOE contributor Conor McGregor features prominently in the annual list

Patrick McCarry

World Cup 2014, Six Nations success and Conor McGregor’s UFC triumph in Dublin all feature

The good folks at Twitter have crunched and compiled their numbers for 2014 and, from a sporting perspective, there is lots of interesting reading.

The most tweeted about sporting event of the year was Ireland’s nail-biting triumph over France, in Paris, which clinched the Six Nations championship. The match was tweeted about more that 210,000 times here.

Brian O’Driscoll’s sent out a picture of his boots and Irish jersey hanging in the dressing room after his final match. The post received over 39,000 retweets.

#BOD was the Irish person that trended most in 2014. Other sporting personalities on the top 10 list included McGregor (No.5), Eamon Dunphy (9) and Cork City’s Colin Healy (10). Healy may have broken into the top 10 after scoring a spectacular overhead volley for Cork in August.

Six Nations aside, the top sporting hashtags of the year were the World Cup and the All Ireland final while #UFCDublin came in fifth.

Conor McGregor with Diego Brandao 19/7/2014

The top 10 for all people (not just Irish) again included O’Driscoll, in fifth place, while Luis Suarez (2), Lionel Messi (3), Oscar Pistorius (4), Robin van Persie (6) and Neymar (9). All finished behind Mr No-Show himself, Garth Brooks.

Top Twitter event, in Ireland, of 2014 was this season’s Love/Hate finalé while Kerry and Mayo’s first clash of their All-Ireland football semi-final was a close second.

The FootballJOE quiz: Were you paying attention? – episode 10