Match programmes also need to change. The neat diagrams displaying teams in a 6-2-6 formation belong with the bishops throwing in the ball
DONEGAL: Paul Durcan; Paddy McGrath, Neil McGee (0-1), Declan Walsh; Anthony Thompson, Karl Lacey, Frank McGlynn (0-1); Rory Kavanagh (0-3), Neil Gallagher (0-1); Ryan Bradley, Mark McHugh (0-2), David Walsh; Colm McFadden (1-6, 1-0 penalty, 0-5 frees), Paddy McBrearty, Leo McLoone.
They say Eskimos have 14 different words for ‘snow’.
Call me superstitious, but I’d be reluctant to launch anything at a place with Titanic in its name.
The journalist Adharanand Finn was shocked at the conditions he discovered when he entered the training camp of one of the most successful distance runners in the world.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. So, while on holiday in Madrid a few years ago, I did as the Madrilenos do and spent a night in the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas watching bulls getting slowly but surely stabbed to death.
A school team once failed to control their snorts of laughter when a PE teacher informed them that the secret to success in football could be boiled down to one word: “Hard work.”
Watching Americans watching golf can be an unsettling and sobering experience.
‘The bicycles go by in twos and threes —
There’s a dance in Billy Brennan’s barn tonight,
And there’s the half-talk code of mysteries,
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.’
Inniskeen Road: July Evening by Patrick Kavanagh
A few years ago the good people in Croke Park got so incensed about one of these columns that they sent a rather spicy letter of rebuke to my newspaper.
At an Armagh training session back in the day, joint-manager Brian McAlinden and Kieran McGeeney ended up glaring at each other.
In the not too distant future both Casement Park and Páirc Uí Chaoimh will be bulldozed to the ground and completely rebuilt.
My first ever training session with the Glen U12s was a slightly terrifying experience.
© Examiner Publications (Cork) Limited, City Quarter, Lapps Quay, Cork. Registered in Ireland: 73385.
