WITH six rounds of NFL action played and one to go this weekend, only one of the 32 teams has secured a place in a league final – Down. At the other end of the table, just three teams – Monaghan, Offaly and Fermanagh – have already been relegated. That leaves 28 teams still in the mix, and remarkably, […]
GERARD O’KANE: Back with a bang
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January 23, 2026
BY the time this column is published, county managers up and down the country will be like the referee from the original Gladiators show, John Anderson, roaring: “Gladiators, are you ready?!” This is exactly what will be echoed across the changing rooms during the final inter-county sessions on Thursday and Friday of this weekend. After a […]
GERARD O’KANE: Memories to last a lifetime
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December 19, 2025
AS we move closer to Christmas Day and the temperature is starting to fall, the average temperature is around ‘Two Degrees’……or so it was in Glenullin last Monday. Even though it’s 11 days since my own club’s victory in the Ulster Intermediate Championship final and I usually try to look forward in my columns, I […]
Gerard O’Kane – How the cards fell
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October 25, 2025
I COULD nearly copy and paste a few articles from the last four years about this time of season and my club Glenullin, but that would do an unfair service to those involved in the senior team and set-up. Having just won the Derry Intermediate championship for the third time in four years, a lot of […]
GERARD O’KANE: The pros and cons of different club championship formats
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September 26, 2025
LOOKING across the respective county championships in Ulster, it’s a case of the cream always rises to the top. With the exception of St Eunan’s, Letterkenny in Donegal, all of the other eight counties still have their favourites standing at the quarter-final or semi-final stage. Yes Enniskillen Gaels in Fermanagh have already been knocked out, but given Erne […]
Ballyhaise boss hoping to have learned lessons ahead of rematch
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September 10, 2025
By Michael McMullan BALLYHAISE manager Gerard O’Kane is hoping his side can learn from defeat ahead of this weekend’s Cavan Championship rematch with Kingscourt. Just 16 days before the sides lock horns in Sunday’s quarter-final, Kingscourt were nine-point winners when they met in the group stages. “If you ask if you asked 10 people outside of […]
Handling the hand pass
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September 6, 2025
As the FRC try out new potential handpass rules in the off-season, Shaun Casey chats to Gerard O’Kane about their necessity AFTER a full inter-county season, and with the club championship now underway in most counties, the ‘new rules’ brought in by the Football Review Committee at the start of the year have all been […]
GERARD O’KANE: The GAA season remains alive
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August 28, 2025
‘SOME might say’ that the GAA have sold their soul a little due to the fact that the split-season means that the county game is wrapped up before the end of July in football and hurling with ladies football and camogie being finished up in the two weeks after. It means there won’t be a […]
GERARD O’KANE: Crunch time for Galway and Derry
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May 30, 2025
JUST when the GAA seems to have got a few things right, they might just go and undo it all again. When these new group stages came in last year there was commentary around needless games, about how it’s set up for the stronger sides and will lead to some dead rubbers and too many […]
GERARD O’KANE: Panel depth – A defining difference
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April 11, 2025
WHEN Jim McGuinness was with Donegal in his first tenure they placed a lot of stock on the third quarter of games. They would have come out of the blocks all guns blazing at the start of the second half and gave everything they had. Suddenly they had scored maybe 1-4 or 1-5 on the […]