Clearly you've probably seen this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Ro9f5pmhM
The Dubs in particular looked pristine against a competitive Cork, they're giving good value to their Eur12m sponsors. Donegal have been fatally wounded since the Ulster final, Mayo were all over them. The Monaghan Tyrone game was by far the closest but when Tyrone went 2 points up with 5 minutes to go, you just knew it was curtains, like trying to take a bone away from a pack of hungry rotweillers. For Monaghan, Finlay an important player was way off the pace, Clerkin improved things when he came on in the first half but Tyrone had stolen about 8 points by then, it turned in a game of 'what ifs' for Monaghan.
Kerry had an easy game, they can't be judged on that game, we'll have to wait until they meet the Dubs to see what they're about this year.
Of all the semi finalists, Tyrone look the weakest.
Clearly you've probably seen this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Ro9f5pmhM
Click on the link Bonnie, not so hard...
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Very little said about Eamon McGee's stamp - as nasty a thing as you'd ever see in GAA. Will he just miss a league match over it? Had Paul Galvin done it, they'd have cleared the schedules on the 9 o'clock news, Morning Ireland, Joe Duffy, every local paper in the country. The powers that be decided that the big talking point was Cavanagh's professional foul in a sport which doesn't have rules about professional fouls. Very cynical foul, but hardly the worst thing a Tyrone footballer ever did???
Brolly apologises to Cavanagh: http://thescore.thejournal.ie/joe-br...27402-Aug2013/
But after a week in which his comments have been dissected by the GAA world, Brolly says he made the call yesterday to apologise for ‘one line’ in the televised tirade.
“I rang Sean yesterday,” Brolly said on TV3′s Ireland AM. “I meant everything that I said, – everything that I said — and you know it is a cancer in the game and it’s destroying the spirit of the game, it’s permeating through to under-age levels and all of that.
“But I spoke to Sean yesterday and apologised to Sean for one line, which I hadn’t realised I said at the time. About ‘you can forget about him as a man’. What I meant obviously was as a man and how he conducts himself on the field. But it’s nothing to do with his private life.”
Brolly said Cavanagh accepted his apology and they moved on to discuss Tyrone’s semi-final opposition.
“We spent half and hour talking about the pros and cons of Mayo,” he said. “But that part of it… I meant everything I said but I didn’t mean to impute anything about his private life. It was most unfair and I appreciated that when I looked at it again so fair is fair and he was very gracious about accepting it.”
Was that a good game today or not?
The red was probably deserved but it ended it as a contest.
I love GAA, I love sports. But by god I'm beginning to lose faith in the GAA media. As bad as the football journos in Ireland are, obeying the rule of law from the motherland and all, in GAA it's becoming farcical. I listened to the match on Sunday (build up) on radio 1, watched it via Premier/Setanta on RTE and then listened to radio after. 2 thigns struck me that have been there non-stop this Summer.
1. Referee's ruin games
2. Players looking for hawkeye.
For the 1st point, it's codswallop, this crud of "soft yellow card", no, sorry, a yellow's a yellow. I'm a Dub but Liam Rushe should have gone, but the ref did what ref's are expected to do when they've already sent off a player. He copped out and gave him a yellow. Everything, everything from the media was about (before the match) "I hope the referee doesn't ruin this match and just lets it flow", it's crud and it has no place in sport.
The 2nd point, no, get rid of hawkeye, it's purely for increasing sponsorship and building "excitement", tm odd shaped ball sports. Hurling and football are exciting enough without this nonsense and it purely gives pundits and players more reason to whine.
Cork deserved to win on Sunday, they took their scores, Dublin didn't. But I am fast losing love for the sport when the pundits deliberately sit on the bandwaggon just to stick with the crowd. Groupthink wins again. No wonder FF are back in favour.
The "ref ruined the game" is a constant refrain across sport.
I love Hawkeye. Was it the Leinster final where, after a tight shot, we saw an umpire first reach for the flag, then suddenly change his mind and wave wide? Obviously hadn't a clue and guessed. Guessed wrong, as Hawkeye proved. Think the umpires were shown up twice by the tech in that match?
While Hawkeye hasn't been the difference between a victory or defeat yet, I can't wait for the day that it is. I've seen too many GAA refs and umpires make mistakes.
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
In GAA, I think the majority of the time its correcting bad calls, which is unarguably a good thing. It only takes a few seconds and it removes a very irritating aspect of the sport - Umpires not being capable of making such calls. I mean that in a non-acrimonious way. I don't think any person, in that position, would be capable of deciding if a tight shot was in or outside the post, especially with something like a sliotar, which is not only tiny, but mostly the same colour as the post. Hawkeye solves the problem and makes the end result fairer.
I only wish umpires can man up and tell the ref "I don't know" rather than just guess and get shown up 10 seconds later.
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
I think it was never more exposed than in 2010 when the umpire dithered and tried to tell the cheat, I mean ref, that something was up. Then the ref told him to put up his flag. Hawk eye wouldn't have helped another episode of Meath's cheating DNA, only honesty and "look, it was wrong, so let's just replay it" would have helped. I agree players will push boundaries, but why put the blame on officials - like Loughnane today saying that Pat McEneaney must leave hurling alone. So if it was a hurling man heading up the refs he'd have excused Henry Shefflin's late pull or Liam Rushe's swipe?
I agree fully with you, NFB, that umpires need to take a stand.
Came across this the other day: http://balls.ie/news/international-gaa-match/
I'd never realised that Brittany and Galicia had GAA teams made up (solely?) of Breton and Galician natives (rather than second-generation Irish and ex-pats).
You might think there’s no such thing as international GAA matches but by God it happens all right. Last weekend Galicia and Brittany faced each other in the second annual match between the two nations.
The Galician community in western Spain took to Gaelic football like ducks to water when Wences Zapata set up a club in A Coruña in 2010 after he fell in love with the sport while holidaying in Ireland. Corunna Breogan‘s popularity led to another football club, ‘Artabros de Oleireos’, being set up last year, and the pick of these two teams travelled together to the Inter-Celtic Festival of Lorient to represent the Galician nation.
The Breton region of France boasts a longer history of Gaelic games, with its first club founded in Brest in 1998. These days there are 11 clubs in Brittany and their best players were chosen to face Galicia, all hoping to avenge last year’s loss.
And that they did – beating the Galicians 3-12 to 1-8 in front of a crowd of over 400. Of course the result isn’t the main story to come out of this match; the obvious popularity of the idea makes us wonder if we might well we see a GAA World Cup in years to come?
In light of the above discussion on Hawk-Eye, the system has been stood down for today's senior hurling semi-final after it registered a clear point in the preceding minor game as a miss: http://thescore.thejournal.ie/hawkey...facebook_short
It's a bit much to have 2 hurling weekends in a row, can't they play the semi finals on the same weekend and get it over with?
I was there, I'm not sure what happened, caused a great deal of confusion. I'll wait on the official judgement before passing my own - I would suspect it was just an image error, but who knows? If Hawk-Eye is bugged, or not as reliable as indicated, then I can't defend it.
Edit: Not that I'm outraged or anything. The Galway minors deserved the win, and the ref seemed to help Limerick get as far as ET with that last free outside of the allotted injury time.
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
The GAA have made a statement saying one of the Hawk-Eye cameras was incorrectly set for football instead of hurling. Human error. Irritating, but its not the systems fault.
Their statement doesn't actually mention whether that means Limerick's "point" should have been awarded or not. I read the Minor team are appealing the result.
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
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