Tay pot

I’ll tell you what, that John Brennan, he’s my type of manager. Straight to the point, no beating about the bush. He does things his way or the highway and to be fair, that’s what you want if you’re looking to be sitting at the top table. Talking to any Derry lads, they’ll tell you he’s a players’ man first and foremost.

He reminds me of an oul uncle of mine who had his own way for everything. He used to boil eggs in a teapot. They never cracked or leaked neither.

A lot of managers these days bring a lot of science to the job. They can analyse everything form how many kick outs you win to how many time Mark Lynch kicks the ball with his left foot.

The theory is some lad shouldn’t be getting’ a telling off at half time if the manager’s looking at real information. Especially if the fella’s after making an awful balls of things just before half-time and that’s all the manager remembers.

Some lads are immune to that sort of stuff. They dunno what they’re gonna do next, or maybe can’t even remember what they done last.

From what I hear John has a good balance of the modern science and the old school approach. And talking of science, he definitely can play the oul percentages game himself. He sez during the week there, and I have to say he baffled the bejasus outta me but I couldn’t agree more, sez he:

“If ten players get over 50 per cent on the opposition ten players, then…You’re never going to get 15 players playing at 100 per cent.  If I could get 20 players at 80 per cent, if I can get 1600 per cent, we’ll beat anybody.  I’m not a mathematician, but I like working things out.  That has been my belief and it has worked down the years with me.  You’ll never get 15 100 per cents, but if you can get 20 at 80 per cent, you’ll beat anybody.”

There’s nothing like talking a bit of oul balls to confuse everyone especially the opposition and John’s right to do this so long as he doesn’t confuse himself. Anyway, do the math as the man sez himself.

I went up there last autumn to look at the Derry Championship Final. Like the rest of the country I expected Ballinderry to bate Eoghan Rua out the gate but not so. Them boys from Coleraine were fearless and lightning fast.

The Ballinderry forwards played mighty stuff but Coleraine deserved their win. And I mean who ever heard of GAA in Coleraine? Well they have now. Just shows you what can happen if you do things the right way, and whatever way it’s done up there, they’re doing something right.

From that match I’d pick out two fellas to watch today. Conleith Gilligan and Sean Leo McGoldrick. If Fermanagh want to have any joy they need to shut down Gilligan. He can get that shot away in the blink of an eye and bring other fellas in too. They might think with Paddy Bradley out things’ll be easy. And that Sean Leo fella -  someone tells me he might be playing corner back. Well if he is I hope the Fermanagh corner forward has his running boots with him and knows how to defend.

And what about Fermanagh? Well, they’ve had a bad oul winter with boys opting out and whatnot. My view is that’s their loss. Today’s all about the men that’s there. They got a great wee boost with Lisnaskea winning their All Ireland.  To be honest, that’s the only Fermanagh team I can see in Croker this year.

But sure what do I know?

Coming soon to your Club, IF she isn't already there.

It’s funny when someone gets the GAA bug. Sometimes it’s the oul boy, watching his son and heir kick points he never could. Sometimes it’s the ma standing in the rain, mascara sliding down the cheeks from a combination of rain and tears at watching wee Seamus or Conor kick the ball over the bar.

They can be heroic can youngsters, we know that. They can surprise us. On blitz Sunday yesterday I was commending one mother on the improvement of her wee lad in the third and last game. Sez she: “I gave him a good talking to after the last match…. Standing there day dreaming. I told him ‘Conor if I’m gonna come to these matches then you have to shake yourself’ so it’s about time.”

Well whatever she said to him, or whatever the coach did, it did the trick. Probably the most amusing acolytes are those girls, now mothers, who would have kept all matters GAA at arms length for fear of associating with mucksavages and boggers.

Some boys were tortured by shirt tuggers, but we’re talking those yokes that wouldn’t have had the decency to put you out if you were on fire. If you’re reading, you know who you are. One mother of two football mad lads was heard to declare: “We didn’t do the whole GAA thing when we were growing up.” Indeed.

‘Is that right,’ I pondered, as I watched her en famille in the family seven seater at the blitz. They were on a day out, a trip to the young fellas blitz before picnic lunch and then on to the club’s senior game up the road. The incessant rain didn’t make for great picnicking I’m sure but the presence of an iPad and a few DVDs in the car, sure any mammy and child would be happy with that. Bit of Facebooking, shopping and the odd tweet would pass the day. No need to get out into the rain unless absolutely essential.

The girl concerned probably didn’t quite make it out of the car to watch either game. A quick glass of  chardonnay was quickly uncorked to dispel the Ford Galaxy Cabin fever when she arrived home that night and got the sodden kit off and into the wash.

Aside from the obvious assets, GAA moms can offer great amusement with their lack of understanding of the game and their extreme annoyance when young Colm can’t kick the ball for love not money. Also they tend to be blind to the fact that as soon as their BMW 5 series rakes out of the gravel carpark at the pitch, their beautiful, impeccably turned out son behaves like a chimpanzee eating a bumper pack of skittles. Of course when mammy’s there butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth but when she gets her fragrant self offside asap he turns into a space cadet.

But let’s be positive, these ladies can bring a lot of glamour to the sidelines and with a little education and a poke in the right direction, they may end up making the sandwiches and washing a few jerseys. Now for girls who wouldn’t have looked at a GAA man when they were younger , let alone do ‘the whole GAA thing,’ it’s a whole new ballgame.

Kevin McGuckin's boots as worn when Ballinderry won their only All Ireland. Auctioned for £42,765 a few years back to fund a midge killing project on the Lough shore.

In this the part of our special finance edition, we’re going to take a look at how your club can make money in these shitty times.

First of all, default, disappear, emigrate, down tools. The resort of last resort. If things genuinely offer nothing here then foreign shores are the traditional was to escape the midges. And times are hard. . .

Gone are the days when folks paid exorbitant amounts of money for a pair of boots worn once in Croke Park or not at all.

Gone are the days of the massive ticket draws where club apparathickos would spread out across the land like the D Day invasion force in Saving Private Ryan, taking out would-be donations one by one, town by town, village by village, hamlet by hamlet, farm by farm.

Gone too, lustily large donations by uber wealthy developers, pulling up in their SUVs and 4 x 4S, firing a brown envelope out the window and driving off. These same boys are hoping intead someone would drive up to them with a brown envelope to pay for the train to NAMA or the flight to their summer residence in Dubai/Florida/La Manga.

Gone are team sponsorships of underage shirts, overage shirts, ladies football shirt fronts. The cash isn’t there anymore. And there’s no way to get it back.

Gone too in some cases the bloody clubhouse, bought, built and paid for with money that sat on wshifting sands. Now some clubs replace the letters CLG with NAMA on their crests.

Gone is much of the social fabric we grew up with. Is there time to grow it back? We are proposing a new way to do that. Talking Balls is sponsoring a Dragon’s Den type activity where clubs with good ideas will come along and pitch their ideas to a select group of investors.

The investment team, the GAA equivalent of Sean Gallagher and the boys will cast a beady eye over proceedings and then pump safe money into the proposals that are the most sustainable and socially desirable.

Schemes that harness the working opportunities within each communities and allow opportunities and genuine prospects for development.

Sounds good doesn’t it. Well at least it’s an idea, and there’s not too many of them about these days either. Everything else is gone. The hope seems gone. Young people gone, sitting in Sydney or New York. The money. Gone.

But, as yer wan says in her song, “It’s not about the money…”

Drink, Drugs and Sausage Rolls recognises that students behave in ways that would make their parents toes curl from remembering the way they too behaved when they were students.

Remember those times when an innocent daughter found the family photograph album and  asked her dad why he had a traffic cone on his head, a can of beer in each hand and a strangely long cigarette a-dangling from his puckered lips?

Well now she can recreate that scene all for herself. And it won’t be a bother to her and her mates. But in the interests of offering some designs for life, Squareball and Ulster GAA offer some insights through the brilliant campaign, all gained from experience of course and from close observation of Studentis Hibernicus at work and at play.

Here’s a sample of what you can expect:

Ah yes, life on the beer as a student. So many bars and so little time. Here’s our guide to having a great time but minimising your chances of: getting your stomach pumped / getting a good kicking / getting arrested / getting pregnant / catching a disease you didn’t want / suffering blinding hangovers / developing a humungous beer gut and / or bingo wings and a big arse / wasting loads of cash.

The guide also points out that while weight gain is not inevitable, you will not be happy to learn that the average weight gain for freshers is fifteen pounds – yes that’s more than a stone of lard deposited on your ass, gut, chest (male and female)!

It’s enough to make any student want to leave for University a day or two early in anticipation. But, it is a realistic and helpful guide to what students can expect. That and stacks of craic.

At least in the old days the ref was safe!

This week resident expert Ger Manas recalls his memories of schools football and wonders if it’s the same game at all.

I was invited along there to speak to one of them McRory Cup schools to talk to the young lads about my experiences in football down the years and to give them bits of useful advice. I was told not to let on which school it was in case they would all be looking me. Not that I have a problem with that. It’s funny nowadays the way young lads is coached and trained. These buckos were sittin’ in a lecture theatre – they were bigger than I remember cubs a few years back and they were all gluggin’ away on big bottles of water or that Lucozade sport shite. The dentist toul me not to be drinking that cos number one it was rottin’ me teeth – what teeth I have that is – and also I was getting’ a fierce oul gut on me and I’d been off the drink. The granddaughter’s friend is one of the nutritionists and she was tellin’ me that a youngster drinking that stuff and doing no exercise can put on a couple of poun’ a week thanks to all the carbohydrate in it. If I see the grandsons drinking any of them things now I would give them a boot in the hole and tell them to drink water. Was good enough for me da and it’s good enough for me.

Anyway these lads – them all f***in long legs, big forearms, the hair all cut up short and shining with brylcreem or whatever shite they puts on it nowadays were louchin’ about. They looked like they’d been sponsored by a white trainer company – every man wearing an O’ Neills shirt of one sort or another – the club, the school, one of the Universities you name it. Pile of county development lads, county minors – the odd gobshite that I knew by the look of him would maybe be lucky to be the water boy. The more I chatted to them the more I thought it’s me should be doing the listenin’ here.

They started asking me about burnout and I told them I thought is was a load of shite if fellas had the balls and the wit to tell coaches and mangers they wouldn’t be doing all they were lookin’ them to do. You wanna see the manager fella lookin’ at me. I think he was the bad cop in the good bad routine. He wasn’t too happy that I had maybe suggested that lads shouldn’t be doing all the manager might want them to do but when you think about it players operate on different cycles and unless ye understand that ye are wasting yer time. Take the Derry minor lads, they require a different approach when they report back to Maghera or wherever than a few lads that’s been sittin’ on their hole since the league ended. I remember the da of a player that had won an all Ireland minor med a few years back telling me that he and another lad had asked the school McRory manager for two weeks off as they were knackered and wanted to enjoy their win. Not a f***in bit of it, yer man had them running the roads along with a load of other boys till the lights went out- the lads eyes the da said were like black coals in his face and after that he kept pickin’ up injuries here and there. Nothin’ serious you understand but enough to rule him out of playin’.

I was chattin’ later to a couple of fellas that played McRory way back in the eighties and it brought me mind back to some of the goin’s on then. At the time I had done a bit of work with a McLarnon team in Donegal and we played these lads in a friendly. Turned out the match had been set up as a morale raiser before some do or die f***in clash in the McRory – you know the sort – and our boys were the lambs for the slaughter. The other team had been playin’ dung and their manager thought cannon fodder would be the remedy. Well you could nearly predict what happened. At half time the McLarnon school was batin’ the McRory school and their lads started to take it a bit thick. The ref for the second half was a civil big lump of a PE teacher from the McRory school and at one stage he sent one of his own players off and then toul him: ‘OK ye can stay on but don’t do it again….’ Course yer man does do it again but nothin’ happens. Next thing on a kick out the McLarnon school lads bursts the big midfielder from the other school and a boxin session breaks out. Well the big midfielder lad had done a bit of oul boxin’ in his day and he lines up three boys in a row and wham – bam bursts the whole lot of them right on the nose on after another. Next thing, the first lad made a go to tackle him from behind – now at this stage you understand both sets of subs and supporters and all were tearin’ in for a piece of the action, twas great craic boys getting an afternoon out of school for this. Seeing the lad about to level his team-mate from behind, the other midfielder runs up behind this young lad and takes off and kicks him as hard as he could in the hole. Well, that was the end of the row – everyone started laughing and the oul ref you never seen a man as happy to blow a whistle.

I dunno if things like that happen much anymore at schools matches. I know the lads from both schools in my day got a quare bollockin’ and were well warned. But sure ye have to do these things from time to time. When I told the lads I was talking to the other day about this story – they looked confused – it was as if I was from another planet and another time – and I suppose in a way I was.

This was a first-class performance by the Northern ladies who will move up to Division Two in 2010. There was a mix-up with the scoreboard in the final quarter, but both teams agreed with referee Joe Kennedy’s tally following a nail-biting finish.

Down, after playing with the wind in the opening half held a 0-7 to 1-1 lead at the changeover, but with Laois emerging strong in the second half they had their work cut out. The Laois goal from Sarah Cuddy put her team in a formidable position at the break.

However, Catherine McGourty brought her A-game, chipping in with a massive 11 points tally (four from play), and with centre back Lisa McCrickard and full back Fionnuala Carr rock solid, they withstood the pressure when the O’Moore County rallied with a second green flag from Sarah Ann Fitzgerald.

Meanwhile, Kildare won promotion to Division Three following their 3-7 to 1-10 Division Four victory over Westmeath in the curtain-raiser also at Donaghmore Ashbourne.

President Joan O’Flynn had to contend with her big match day nerves before presenting her first trophy of the year to her adopted county. Westmeath came into the decider with a win over the Lilywhites earlier in the league, but in a keen contest, Kildare managed to hold out for their three point triumph despite intense pressure in the closing 10 minutes.

Kildare got off the mark with three first half goals that yielded them a 3-4 to 0-4 interval lead. The impressive Susie O’Carroll at wing forward, Ciara Tallon and Cliona McSweeney, they all found the target in the 2nd, 15th and 25th minute. While the forward line was on target up front, the Kildare defence was staunch, in particular the experienced Melanie and Reitin Treacy and Niamh Breen in the corner.

However, a goal from Joanne Walsh six minutes after the restart put Westmeath right back in contention and with Dinagh Loughlin in fine point scoring form the Lake County set about reducing the margin.

O’Carroll scored Kildare’s final point on 50 minutes, and for the remainder of the game goalkeeper Tanya Johnson and her rearguard had to withstand huge pressure as Westmeath closed the gap to three. But, Kildare held out for the trophy in a tight finish.

Looking back over Liz’s period in the hotseat, it has been interesting to say the least, with a few curious outbursts. Readers of Talking Balls will recall her giving the local broadcasters a good caning over their coverage of foreign sports whilst all the while failing to broadcast mna na hEireann ag imirt.

Liz’s time in charge also included a curious demonstration at the All Stars last year where a troupe of semi-naked men with man boobs drummed furiously up on the stage, as the All Star award winners looked on, slightly bemused. At the same awards ceremony some of the unsuccessful nominees were a little disappointed at the absence of the usual kitbag of gear – that despite requests from the organizers that they provide their sizes in advance.

It has long been a bugbear of Talking Balls that camogie suffers in comparison to Ladies football. Talking Balls prefers camogie to the peile every time, but you have to hand it to the ladies footballers – they really have their hands on the big balls when it comes to PR and television coverage. One experienced TV exec told us: “Camogie needs to look at the way its presented, take a look at other games and sex itself up a bit to remove some of the starch.”

One of the motions to the CamogieCongress highlights the perception problems that camogie has with itself. The motion put forward by Ard Comhairle proposes that “every club affiliated to Cumann Camógaíochta na nGael is required to purchase two adult tickets for the All Ireland Camogie finals in Croke Park.”

This is a particularly camogie-esque approach to marketing their own game – not for them the intention to market the occasion as an irresistible and ‘must see’ occasion for camogiers the length and breadth of the country. Instead, we have this ridiculous school-marmish Thatcheresque dictat.

The other matter of note is the inauguration of new uachtaran Joan O’Flynn of Kildare (originally from Cork). Ahead of the weekend’s clár, craic, ceoil agus cúirtéireacht, Joan commented, “I am honoured and excited to lead Cumann Camógaíochta na nGael for the next three years. Camogie is a thrilling and exciting game. . . We want to build on the progress already made. I want to develop our thriving club scene and expand playing opportunities for players of all ages and abilities.”

Indeed. It’s a long way from Tipperary, but we’ll see what happens.