THE year ended with 16 year old Luke Littler humiliating ex-world champions and men three times his age at the World Darts Championship. He looks as though he was born with a beer belly and three kids, a laboratory baby made from Phil Taylor & the Crafty Cockney’s DNA. Like the very great ones, this is […]
REFLECTING the genuflecting of Ireland’s GAA journalists (if they could roll over and let JP McManus tickle their bellies they would), Cahair O’Kane wrote in the Irish News a few days ago that JP has been “trying for more than 20 years to spend his money meaningfully” and that “governments tend not to spend money […]
MANY years ago, I wrote: “It is only a matter of time before teams are investing in stealth and cloaking technology and bug sweeping devices. It will also become the norm to maintain 24 hour surveillance on the movements, phones, smart devices and computers of all players. Behavioural contracts will be the norm. Players will have […]
BEFORE the Connacht semi-final between Corofin and Ballina, an interesting thing happened. Ballina came out an hour before throw-in and started into one of those standard-form, laborious warm-ups that have become the norm. Then, about 25 minutes before throw-in, they went back inside. Finally, at twenty to two, Corofin appeared. They jogged in and out […]
DAVID Clifford. Scored 12 points in the Kerry intermediate final last weekend then missed the vital one at the end to force penalties. It’s all very well scoring the unimportant ones. What a loser. Used to be you could drive two miles to see a game of football. Nowadays, you have to drive 300 (to […]
RORY Beggan kicked a three in-a-row of gravity-defying points on Sunday to slay Kilcoo and didn’t get the Man of the Match. It was the most extraordinary display of long-range kicking I have ever seen. Add to that the fact that all of the kicks were under the most tremendous pressure with the outcome at stake, […]
AFTER 29 minutes of the Mayo Senior Football final on Sunday, co-commentator John Maughan said, “All I can do is apologise to the viewers for this really terrible spectacle. I’m not sure it’s going to get any better.” At half time, hundreds of people upped and left, leaving empty rows of seats in the middle of […]
WE have so many small boxing champions, from Rinty Monaghan through to Carl Frampton. Once, I was playing in a charity match in Belfast. Both teams were full of All-Stars and a few famous sporstmen from other sports. Paddy Barnes, the famous boxer, was on our team. He is about five feet tall. Before the […]
AT Liam Hinphey’s wake on Sunday, somebody asked his son Liam Óg what had finally done for the great man. He said, “The news about Mickey Harte.” The house was filled with kids wearing their Kevin Lynch hurling shirts. Many of the adults were wearing Kevin Lynch shirts and track tops. A Kevin Lynch jersey […]
DAVID Clifford is almost single-handedly keeping the game watchable. At the weekend, he did it again. In the intermediate championship semi-final against Austin Stacks, Fossa were a point behind with 30 seconds of injury time left in extra time. It was at this moment Clifford went looking for the ball. Like all the greats, what […]
