IT’S All-Ireland final weekend with Armagh and Galway set to lock horns to get their hands on the Sam Maguire Cup. Gaelic Life is full of previews, columns, interviews and features ahead of the big game. We also have two special Gaelic Lives podcasts looking ahead to Sunday’s Croke Park showdown. They are available via […]
GERARD O’KANE: Hindsight is wonderful
July 19, 2024
BALANCE is a key word often used to describe how to obtain happiness in life. Too much of a good thing can’t be good for you while you need some sort of light at the end of the tunnel to keep you going. Well the last fortnight Derry football teaches us that balance and perspective […]
GERARD O’KANE: Short on top
June 21, 2024
IT was Brian Clough who famously said, ‘We had a good team on paper. Unfortunately, the game was played on grass’. Well the same can be said in a roundabout way for Derry on Saturday this week. Of all the teams Derry could have got in the draw, Mayo were maybe the best team on […]
GERARD O’KANE: It’s crunch time
May 24, 2024
MY last column opened with the lines “what a difference four weeks makes!” This was in reference to Derry losing to Donegal after beating Dublin in an exhilarating game four weeks previous to that. Derry had gone from such a high to a low in the space of four weeks that it led to wall-to-wall coverage. There […]
GERARD O’KANE: Laying down a marker
March 29, 2024
WELL, the leagues have finished for all but eight teams who will compete in the finals this weekend. The other 24 teams have had a week off from league fixtures and planning, but it certainly will not have been a week off from county duty as the Championship is rolling around next weekend again. On […]
GERARD O’KANE: Tyrone’s Harte breaker
February 2, 2024
THIRTY NINE years ago, Ian Paisley led the ‘Ulster says No’ campaign in retaliation to the provisions of the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement. Well at the minute, that slogan could be turned on its head to say ‘Ulster says Go’. We have just finished the first week of the National League and Ulster teams have taken […]
Changes at Cavan intermediate level
December 21, 2023
By Niall Gartland and Michael McMullan A NUMBER of Cavan intermediate clubs have announced new managers in recent weeks ahead of the 2024 season. Templeport, who bowed out at the quarter-final stage of last season’s championship, have appointed Paul Prior as their new manager. He has extensive experience, managing his native Ballinamore to Intermediate success in […]
Former Derry defender takes up manager post in Cavan
December 14, 2023
By Michael McMullan FORMER Derry defender Gerard O’Kane has been appointed as the new manager of Cavan side Killinkere. O’Kane, Derry’s 2002 minor All-Ireland winning captain, resides in Cavan and has been involved in coaching with Ramor United and has been heavily involved with Glenullin. The following year he also skippered St Patrick’s Maghera to […]
GERARD O’KANE: It’s time to unwind
December 1, 2023
FOR 95 per cent of club players, we are now well into the off season – or maybe party season as some would like to call it – though for those who did not make it to the latter end of their respective championships, this might have been the case for a number of weeks […]
GERARD O’KANE: Devlin’s presence is huge for Derry
October 6, 2023
By Gerard O’Kane IF only I had known then what I know now. That’s a saying widely used in many parts of life but in my last column where I talked of the changing landscape in Ulster for the forthcoming season, I was talking about the new appointments in Cavan and Donegal. Never in my […]