Angry Fans
I HAVE TO say Richie Bennis’s comments about Dan Shanahan (that he didn’t score any goal today) were well below the belt and shows he is only the front man for this team. Let him do the PR stuff from a distance but no more.
I’ll give the bould Richie the benefit of the doubt… this time. Overall, he has been a shining light of enthusiasm in this year’s championship and maybe he just got a bit carried away in the heat of victory. However, a winning manager specifically slagging off a great player on the losing team on TV is not good form. Especially, when Dan had had picked off four points and sportingly shook hands with almost every Limerick player and mentor.
SHOVE THE bog ball, what a game! What that Waterford team has done for hurling and what I hope Limerick will do yet. It was heartbreak and joy encapsulated in one.The game of the Gaels was the winner today.We live for sporting spectacles like today. Only love is sweeter.And Waterford, I pray, are going to come back angry next year. Please, Lord, give us more. It broke my heart to see John Mullane, but especially Paul Flynn, go off. God bless Limerick, but especially God bless Waterford
In fairness to the Gaelic football lads, the Kerry v Monaghan game was most enjoyable and made for a really great day out in the Ceann Arus. Fair play to Monaghan who were focussed and skilful, unlike many ‘under dog’ football teams who seem to mentally freeze when they run out the tunnel in Croker.
THE LAST KERRY V Dublin game in 2004 was awful. Kerry never got out of first gear and the Dubs were totally awful.They got only three scores from play. I hope this one is a classic but it has all the hall marks of being another bad game.
We all hope your gloomy prediction is off the mark but you could be right – unfortunately. But is there any other panel in either football or hurling on the entire island that has to put up with more nonsense from their fickle ‘fans’ and local media than the Dubs? I fear it’s all going to come crashing down around their ears.
I’ M SICK OF the carry-on you’ ve to put up with just to follow the county team. Now, I’ ll have to trawl the country cap in hand for an All-Ireland ticket. First round of the championship they’re offering you a dozen tickets. Now they won’t want to know you.At least if you’re a season ticket holder at a Premiership club you’ve a guaranteed right to access to FA Cup final tickets. In the GAA they can’t even offer a semi-final ticket to club members while at the same time they’re selling them to the public through Ticketmaster. It doesn’t make sense.
The current way of selling tickets through Ticketmaster seems to have made things worse rather than better because the good tickets go through the county boards and leftovers are sold online. Funny enough, though, I think it’s time for the GAA to go the whole hog – and offer 90%+ of tickets for sale directly to the general public. The enthusiastic fans will always win in that scenario.
TWO DAYS BEFORE an All Ireland hurling semi-final and Limerick Live 95FM had a fellow on promoting some rugby sevens tournament in Old Crescent.This is on the main morning programme. It’s a disgrace.The hurling got about five minutes before that.WE AREA HURLING COUNTY. Munster rugby ain’t got no history, apart from beating a half strength New Zealand team thirty years ago.
Mickey Mouse? Is he sponsoring rugby in Limerick now? After last Sunday, though, even if Angelina Jolie took up rugby in Limerick I’d say she’d get less air time than Richie Bennis. Richie probably has better legs than her too.
DERRY MATCH put back a few minutes again to get the drunken Dubs fans in for the start of the match. Message to the GAA. Stop bending over backwards to the Dubs. If the match is due to start at 3, then start it at 3. This doesn’t happen with any other team in Ireland.
For a change, the real delay on Saturday wasn’ t late arriving Dubs fans. It was the rather long speech by the victorious Roscommon hurling captain and their lap of honour. The game started a few minutes after three o’clock and I wouldn’t begrudge Roscommon their few minutes of glory. It isn’t easy promoting hurling along the banks of the Shannon.
BETWEEN ‘ THAT’ SONG and the guy who is constantly ‘on’ about the museum, health and safety and ‘the chime that will proceed emergency announcements’ and so on I’m usually fit to kill someone by the end of a game, win or lose! Message to the GAA bigwigs. Just because the song was attached to a good cause, it doesn’t make it a good song. It is vomit inducing. Terrific way of emptying the ground after a game.
Straight Red Card. I think the ‘Special Olympics Theme’ is a very moving piece and appropriate for the stadium. By the way, I think Saint Michael’s Scouts Band from Enniskillen have been playing a superb arrangement of the National Anthem before the recent games in Croker. The announcements? They’re necessary and they’re done by Aonghus MacGrianna, one of RTE’s most talented newscasters.
THE ‘SUNDAY GAME’ is all wrong, full stop.They need a better presenter. Pat Spillane is simply not up to it. He was much more entertaining as a panelist.As a presenter he is stilted and adds nothing to the debate. He never allows panelists to develop their views (those that have any). He is not built for presenting – Sunday night’s performance was par for the course.The highlights are very badly put together.The level of discussion is also, in the main, pretty poor. There are no controversial views, little insight. It’s just a series of platitudes.The solution would be to bring Lester back to the night shift, with somebody else hosting the afternoon show.
Ah yes, our weekly angry rant about ‘The Sunday Game’. I think the big difference between Pat and Michael is that the Galway man ranges more comfortably over both hurling and football. Spillane just doesn’t ‘get’ hurling and so lacks credibility. On the positive side, the more I see Anthony Tohill on air the more I like him as a football pundit.
How can RTE have a Derry fan and Dub-hater on their panel?
My criticism of Joe Brolly would be for the very sarcastic comments he made about the goals missed by Derry sub Eoin Bradley. No player should have to put up with comments like that from a respected county man of his own live on RTE. Colm O’ Rourke is not a ‘Dub hater’, but he needs to stop using ‘We’ and ‘Us’ whenever Meath are playing if he is to retain credibility as a pundit.
SEAMUSIN HIS WIFE and their gaggle of kids were stopped by the Gardaí at the bottom of Clonliffe Road at 2pm on Saturday.Their bags were searched and they were forced to dump several cans of Coke (of the cola variety). Seamusín got a bit thick with the Guard and asked him if they were going to stop the stocious drunk fans that would be arriving an hour later. There was, as I expected, the usual quota of drunken loudmouths in the ground and plastic bottles of drink were on sale within the ground. Not for the first time I am impressed with the Guards’ ability to act the heavy with the law-abiding citizens and to turn a blind eye to groups that would tell them to go ‘eff off’.
I WAS ONTHE Hill today for the first time at a Dublin match.As a non Dub, I didn’t expect to be greeted with a red carpet and champagne but the abuse and ignorance of some of those on the Hill was unbelievable. I know there is a lot of genuine supporters on the Hill too as I got chatting to some fairly sound knowledgeable lads but there was an influx of pure scum five minutes before throw in. A gang of lads spent the time firing drink bottles, drink cans and flag poles down at us.Then one of the really brave members came down stood behind us trying to get a reaction. For a solid ten minutes he called us English soandsos and told us to go back to England. It wasn’t really the time of place to give the lad a geography lesson.When we didn’t respond he blew hash in our faces.The self same fella, when the Derry keeper Gillis made a fine save in the first half putting the ball out for a 45 shouted ‘ Corner!’
Many of the younger Gardaí on big match days don’t seem to have the training or experience – nor take the time – to distinguish between a family on a big day out and a bunch of drunken thugs. Unless the Gardaí and the GAA get their act together about the Dinneen Hill 16 we’re on the way the Premiership-style segregation of fans there. But what about the ‘happy clampers’ and their big yellow boots who seem to delight in pouncing on out of town cars around Croke Park?
EARLY ON SUNDAY, sopping wet from a thunder shower, I asked myself ‘Why am I getting wet on Row MM of the lower Cusack?’ ‘Were there no design engineers used when constructing the stadium?’ ‘With all the money Croke Park are raking in, why isn’t there a retractable roof on this stadium?’.An hour or so later and all is forgiven. Shocks and Donie are banging in the goals, and Limerick are on their way to an All-Ireland final.
After last Sunday in Croker, I’m afraid the only people going back to the drawing board will be Justin McCarthy and the Waterford county board in the hope engineering an All-Ireland title win.
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