FORTY-four years after my first visit to Croke Park I decided it was time to sample the Hill 16 experience and watch the Dubs from the most revered terrace in Irish sport.
The sporting obituaries will be flowing for Jurgen Norbert Klopp as he enters his final week as Liverpool manager and some of them will be unfairly tinged with pessimism.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: we in the GAA world are our own worst enemies.
It feels irrational, unconscionable, an act of almost lunatic self-sabotage, as unthinkable as the curators of the Louvre facing the Mona Lisa to the wall, rendering her enigmatic and haunting smile invisible to the public.
The provincial football championships are a punch bag for every critic. Let’s look at what actually happened last Sunday.
On the upside of being an inter-county referee, you’re part of huge sporting occasions and the hobby should keep you fit. That’s about it on the positives.
LEINSTER SFC FINAL:
Hurling Man is having a meltdown.
When I write about specific subjects, I know I’m damned regardless of what my views are.
I’m going for Mayo and Kerry to get the business done today, with every likelihood that Clare could be on the receiving end of a sobering double-digit defeat at the hands of the Kingdom.
At the halfway stage of the Munster and Leinster round robins, the hurling landscape remains the same. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
There is an extensive catalogue of catastrophic boardroom decisions in Irish sport stretching back to the foundation of the state.
Ever since the space race, a story has circulated about how NASA spent billions of dollars developing a pen for their astronauts to use in space, while the Russian made do with pencils.
Ulster SFC semi-final
It will be fascinating to see whether Gearóid Hegarty’s relocation as a hurling Tony Cascarino was a once-off, while Dublin will be delighted to have Brian Fenton back on board.
Though the 2024 football championship has been up and running for nearly a month arguably the serious business only begins next Tuesday when the draws are made for the group stages of the Sam Maguire and Tailteann Cups, respectively.
In 1985, after 99 years in business, Coca-Cola, the world’s most iconic drinks brand, decided to change its secret formula for making the beverage.
One more point. One more miserable point for Cork in any of the matches against Tipperary, Clare or Limerick last year and Cork would have qualified from Munster.
Limerick’s supreme power, when lifted by John Kiely to their brilliant summer shine, has been a capacity to excommunicate their rivals from the church of hope.
The famous line ‘if you build it, he will come’ from Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams movie springs to mind as we anticipate this weekend’s first full houses in Championship 2024.
It would be the rhetorical equivalent of one of those high-summer David Clifford or Con O’Callaghan or Aaron Gillane detonations of genius that bring a glow of wonder to Croke Park.
A hot day. A big crowd. The tar melting on the road. The mountains visible over the stand. The smell of chips and burgers. The kids with ice cream. The green and gold and red and …
Like any great house reduced to a husk of its former self, a tottering listed building in need of urgent renovation, the inclination is to remember the rivalry between Dublin and Meath – broiling, volcanic, savage, elemental and electrifying – in …
Clare finally enjoyed an overdue change of fortune in last weekend’s Allianz League Division 1 final holding out against an archetypal Kilkenny rally to secure their first title since 2016.
Last Sunday I settled down in front of the television to watch the double bill of Allianz League finals. Just for good measure I had my iPad open to keep an eye on the two big Premier League games. I was in seventh heaven.
Jurgen Klopp needs to look into his Liverpool players’ eyes when they get into the away dressing room at Old Trafford today and remind them how they felt the last time they were there.
Ulster SFC preliminary round
A is for Antrim – Ireland’s second most populated county (651,322) last won the Anglo-Celt trophy in 1951 and last appeared in an UIster final in 2009. The legacy of the conflict haunts them.
Next Saturday’s league final pitches two teams together who are ravenous for some national silverware. Four-in-a-row Leinster champions Kilkenny will contest their fourth straight national final and, while they’ve lost the previous three to …
There is scarcely time to draw breath in this helter-skelter speed dating GAA season.
The 2024 Allianz League produced a multitude of talking points. But the question I was asked most often was, ‘What of Kerry?’
At his best, Martin Odegaard evokes an image of Matt Damon as Will Hunting, advancing before an MIT blackboard in a blur of superior intelligence, readily chalking the solution to an outlandishly complex mathematical theorem.
IF his job-spec does not require a Patrick Mahomes-like golden arm, still there is burgeoning evidence that Brian Howard’s role in unleashing the best of Dublin would win the regal Kansas City quarterback’s approval.
This is the day that could define the Premier League title race.
ALL the cogent reasons for scrapping the league finals will be swept away in a wave of emotion on Saturday evening when Leitrim footballers step onto the Croke Park sod for only the sixth time.
For Liverpool, there have been setbacks that ought to have been as devastating as a ship’s hull powdering on a jagged coral reef.
What happened to Liverpool at Old Trafford last weekend is the reason why I fear they might come up short in this season’s thrilling Premier League title race.
For a sports fanatic like me, the week before last was Nirvana.
Today’s previews come with a severe health warning.
As Clare line up Tipperary in today’s league semi-final, many are wondering if they’re the team most likely to trouble Limerick this year.
Really, we ought to have learned our lesson by now and ignore everything that happens in March when it comes to Gaelic football.
I know I’m like a dog with a bone, but I can’t stop talking about the GAA split season. I can’t let it go.
For some among the wounded Manchester United fraternity, Bruno Fernandes remains a beacon of hope, a rare point of coherence on the landscape of a tottering empire.
DIVISION 1
Football’s big three have experienced contracting fortunes in the opening weeks of 2024.
If they handicapped horse-whisperers according to achievement as they do their equine locomotives, Willie Mullins would ferry a weight so crushing it might have reduced even the winged and hypersonic Arkle to a crawl.
I spoke to an executive from one of GAA’s major sponsors during the week.
As Liverpool’s lyrical and dreamy poet laureate, John Lennon chimed in his celebrated 1971 love song to humanity, invited the world to visualise an existence without flaw, to Imagine.
Hurling and rugby don’t have that much in common, but when it comes to one of their springtime competitions, they do.