Celebrity LOI fans

The following are regular celebrity spectators at Turner Cross for home games
The Frank and Walters Rock Band,
John Creedon RTE Radio 1 DJ,
Trevor Welch TV3 sports commentator,
Tony O'Donoghue, RTE sports commentator,
Roy Keane

The word "Celebrity" being spread a bit thin on the thread....:p

I think there might be another equally valid reason why celebrity Tony O'Donoghue is often seen in Turner's Cross.

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Originally Posted by nr637

The following are regular celebrity spectators at Turner Cross for home games
The Frank and Walters Rock Band,
John Creedon RTE Radio 1 DJ,
Trevor Welch TV3 sports commentator,
Tony O'Donoghue, RTE sports commentator,
Roy Keane

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has Trevor Welch left TV3 as I never hear of him anymore? I seen him on setanta last year and I know he does his gig with 98 fm.

He still does bits for TV3 but I think he's full time in radio now.

A piece in the UK's Times newspaper on Arthur Mathews' support for Drogheda United and the League of Ireland: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ir...72d3fcd920a641

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Originally Posted by Garry Doyle

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“When I think about it, following Drogheda down through the years is probably one of the most worthwhile things I have ever done in my life,” [Mathews] said. “I don’t want to over stress the idea that I am one of their most dedicated fans – because I’m not. But I can’t understand how any football supporter wouldn’t want to see something on their doorstep. Why be an armchair fan rather than an actual one?”

The usual answer is because the standard of Irish football is poor, no matter how much we’d like to pretend otherwise. Say this to Mathews, though, and he shoots you the kind of look that Father Jack gave to Ted when he discovered his bottle of whiskey contained …. ‘feckin’ water’.

“If English people had that attitude when the football league started up, then no one would have gone near it,” Mathews said. “The truth is that so many Irish sports fans are fair-weather supporters, event junkies who’ll go and see a team if they are doing well but who’ll hop off and do something else with their lives if they’re struggling. Even GAA fans are fairly fair weather in their mentality.

“In this country, it’s seemingly too hard for Irish people to do anything that requires any kind of vision. I mean if more people supported their local team, then more money would go into it, which in turn, would lead to better players and better facilities. Even something as basic as that seems to float over people’s heads. There has to be a leap of imagination. Real Madrid or Barcelona wouldn’t be winning the Champions League if they were playing in front of 1500 people. It’s crazy that a city the size of Dublin does not have a team with an average support of 20,000 people. Burnley have that and there are only 75,000 people living in that town. There’s just a lack of imagination prevalent everywhere in Irish society. It’s the same reason RTE wouldn’t have made Father Ted.”

Instead Mathews, Linehan, Dermot Morgan and Ardal O’Hanlon pitched their idea to Channel 4 and almost overnight their lives changed.

Theirs was the sort of success story he couldn’t ever have seen happening in League of Ireland football – until last year came around and Dundalk went on this crazy adventure through Europe that had the dual effect of uniting rival League of Ireland clubs behind them while converting new followers to the church.

“I’m a Drogheda fan so supposedly, I’m meant to hate Dundalk,” Mathews said. “But it’s not like that in the League of Ireland. Instead, whenever I meet someone wearing a St Pat’s, Shamrock Rovers or Limerick jersey, it’s like coming across a fellow survivor from a Japanese prisoner of war camp. You know what I mean? Watching our teams over the years is like those who built the bridge across the River Kwai – the ultimate test of our spirit and endurance.

“We’re regularly told our football is rubbish but Stephen Kenny’s Dundalk side – as well as Cork last year – proved that it isn’t. They didn’t just boot it up to the striker and hoped for the best. They played brilliant stuff and put the Ireland team to shame in the process because even though I like Martin O’Neill, he doesn’t seem to trust his players to play.

“But Stephen Kenny does. And I loved that about their games last year. I loved going to Tallaght for the matches against Zenit St Petersburg and Maccabi Tel Aviv and then going home and watching the highlights on TV, and listening to Steve Bruce and Tim Sherwood discussing Dundalk in the same breath as Roma or Inter Milan. It was great we were part of something big because when you’re in the League of Ireland, you feel like you part of a minority cult.”

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Originally Posted by nr637

The following are regular celebrity spectators at Turner Cross for home games
The Frank and Walters Rock Band,
John Creedon RTE Radio 1 DJ,
Trevor Welch TV3 sports commentator,
Tony O'Donoghue, RTE sports commentator,
Roy Keane

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You could add in Morty McCarthy from the 'Sultans of Ping'. He's never without his City jersey when doing a gig.

Is Morty still living in Sweden?

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Originally Posted by El-Pietro

Is Morty still living in Sweden?

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AFAIK, yes. But they still do a few gigs. There's was one in Whelan's in Dublin before Christmas and Morty was, of course, sporting a City jersey.

Ashley from the Frank and Walters was a neighbor of mine for a while, and is an absolutely sound guy. He still goes to games frequently. It must be a drummer thing.

Ash is lovely. Loves Cork City and has no problem stopping for a chat about football. I used to run in to him a lot of those free Murphys gigs and we'd moan about whatever poor result we'd had recently.

Noonan was at the EA cup final last year but doubt he'll be back after some of the comments thrown his way. Saying that he does have a brass neck, p###k.

Always surprised we don't see more politicians at the Market's Field, even Councilors and the like. A thousand or so voters to possibly make an impression on. I mean, if you're turning up to every funeral going, why not the League of Ireland?

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Originally Posted by topfan

Noonan was at the EA cup final last year but doubt he'll be back after some of the comments thrown his way. Saying that he does have a brass neck, p###k.

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Didn't know he was there, but anyway, disappointing to hear that people were abusing him. What does that achieve? Apart from possibly make him say 'fu*k that, no more dealings with Limerick FC for me." That will either have no impact or a negative impact on us.

I remember watching the Heineken Cup/CPL finals in a pub (the Old Quarter maybe?) in 2010 I think and he turned up to watch the football (and do a bit of a canvass, obviously). Is he a football man?

I'm surprised that I've never seen The Rubber Bandits in a Limerick jersey.

With the team doing well these days it'd seem like an obvious thing for one of them to wear for a bit in a show.

Nicky Byrne was at the Rovers game on Friday and has previously played in charity games involving Rovers. For and against I think.

Yeah, was there with the kids one night and they recognised him.

The extraordinary story of how Derry's European game against Benfica at the Brandywell in 1989 only went ahead due to an intervention from Martin McGuinness: http://www.the42.ie/martin-mcguinnes...99960-Mar2017/

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Originally Posted by Paul Keane

DERRY CITY FOOTBALL club lost a lifelong supporter with the passing of Martin McGuinness who once went to quite extraordinary measures to help the club in a time of difficulty.

McGuinness, whose brother, Paul, and son-in-law, Sean Hargan, both played for the club, was personally contacted when an apparent explosive device was found in the cemetery next to the Brandywell hours before their European Cup clash with Benfica in 1989.

The incident is recounted in the book Gods versus Mortals, which chronicles League of Ireland teams in Europe, though McGuinness declined to comment when contacted ahead of its publication in 2010.

The former IRA commander did reference the bizarre incident in a 2001 interview with the Observer Sport Monthly, however, under the headline ‘My Team’.

“Some senior representatives of the club came to see me and said there was a major problem,” McGuinness said in the article. “They explained that explosives had been found in the cemetery close to the ground.

“The club’s view was that if the British Army and the RUC were brought in they would, as they usually do, make a meal out of the whole thing, stretch it out for a week and inconvenience everybody.

“The game would have been called off and that would have been a disaster from Derry’s point of view. This was pretty much the biggest game in Derry’s history remember.

“Myself and some of the club’s directors went up to the cemetery. I remember them hiding behind the headstone while I tied a rope around the device which, I think, was a substantial device of maybe 100lbs, and pulled the thing out.

“Nothing happened but it was a device of some description. We opened a manhole in the cemetery and threw whatever material was in it – I don’t know if it was explosives – down the drain and flushed it away. Between the directors and ourselves we managed to avert what would have been a disaster for Derry City.

“The game went ahead; we lost 2-1. No doubt if it had been left to the authorities, the game would have been cancelled.”

Ian Doherty was Derry chairman at the time and recalled the remarkable incident in Gods versus Mortals.

“To tell the absolute truth, I asked, ‘Is it gone?’” said Doherty. “‘Yes, it is gone’, was the reply. So I said, ‘I just don’t want to know about it’. What could I do? I only know what I was told at the time that the device turned up.

“Somebody went to Martin McGuinness when it happened. He decided, and I hold no brief for Sinn Fein, (to dispose of the bomb). If he did that, in all the circumstances, it was a decent thing to do, a courageous thing to do.”

Following McGuinness’ 2001 interview, it was claimed in media reports that the device was originally planted by the provisional IRA and aimed at an army patrol.

Tim Dalton, who played in goals for Derry against Benfica, said the players thought it was a hoax at the time.

“As far as we were concerned, it was a hoax,” said Dalton in the book. “I didn’t think at that particular time that somebody would have wanted to follow through with something like that. Maybe I’m being naive but it wasn’t the impression we got at the time. So, did it phase us? Not in the least.”

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So McGuiness took what he thought was a substantial and viable explosive device and put it into the city's public drains system ?!

Jesus - that's an appalling thing to do. It could've blown up anywhere randomly between there and the river (including under the Brandywell stadium itself), and/or hit one of the bridges or a boat when it ended up in the river.

Tackling it was definitely courageous, but putting it into the drains was just madness.

Yeah, it could have detonated and killed nobody.