Green and Red

Hi Willie Joe, sorry but I have to piggy back on your site again. Once more Spalpin has hit the nail firmly on the head as regards Henry’s handball. Brilliant. I once loved soccer but when they continued to play the 1985 European cup final even as the bodies were stacked up , I decided that there was something ugly in the mindset of those that ran the game, hucksters and gangsters.
We should give thanks this morning that for all its faults and calumnies the GAA is still a game that the common man can feel a relationship with. Bearing that in mind, we need to make sure that we dont kill what has made the game great. Talk of Champions league formats and other tinkering will put us to sleep. Even the back door is creaking.Anyway well done to Spalpin and well done Willie Joe.

Hear, hear, ontheroad – I thought An Spailpin nailed the point about soccer perfectly. (For anyone who hasn’t see this piece – here it is). I’d like to know how many Irish soccer supporters would be as outraged when they see players they regard as heroes at club level – such as Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard – diving for a living, week in, week out.

I’d be careful, though, trying to claim the high moral ground. There’s loads of cheating in Gaelic games too – Aidan O’Mahony’s dying swan act springs to mind as do all those off-the-ball incidents and Tyrone’s win-at-all-costs approach. The difference with soccer, I guess, is that cheating reaps such enormous dividends, giving the low number of scores in any game, and so the rewards from cheating vastly outweigh the risk of punishment. (You could argue that the same applies to off-the-ball belting and general cynical play in Gaelic but the rewards for such behaviour aren’t as immediate or as spectacular is they are in soccer).

BTW, my good pal Gerry over at UnLaoised also has a sensible take on the fallout to Wednesday night’s events.

Just read unLaoised. Wonderful. I agree with his take on the politicians jumping on the bandwagon. Grubby shower. Of course you are correct about us not grabbing the high moral ground and if we see the amount of appeals that are entered over pure thugs getting away with stuff based on a tecnicality then we too cannot say too much. However I do believe that the ordinary 5′-8″ still has some influence on the so called top tablers.

Seeing as we are off the point (late Nov being GAA hibernation) does anyone else feel that our govt ministers taking this matter up show them up as a drowning bunch grasping at anything which floats down the river past them? The mess we are in is our own fault- we voted these clowns in, and tolerated cr4ppy running of our country for too long.
Enuff of that. Garrycastle look very good as possible Leinster contenders. Also impressing are Portlaoise, (assuming they overcome Clara) Our Connacht reps would be rated as fairly even with those two? I think the Wesht will have a good shot at it this year.