Thought this might be useful to have for fellow crypto-chuds in the diaspora or at home to vent and post interesting happenings. Also a potential backup or safekeeping in case any articles or uncomfortable trends try to get quashed as what happened with regularity during lockdown. Please don't be restrained on just news! Talk about culture, music, gigs, events, as gaeilge and more! Hopefully this becomes a cool outlet for lurkers here.
Beginning this thread with the most braindead D4 niggercattle slop saga to have ever braved the airwaves since "The Rubberbandits" compared themselves to Dadaism
At last, camogie players can choose to wear shorts or skorts after Thursday night's vote at Croke Park. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
Hallelujah, skorts-gate is over. “After 121 years, it only took the Camogie Association a little under half an hour to make history at Croke Park on Thursday night,” writes Gordon Manning, 98 per cent of the Special Congress delegates backing a motion allowing players the choice of wearing shorts or skorts. Gordon’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to track down the two per cent and ask ‘what were ye thinking?’
Joe Canning is wondering what the Cork hurlers were thinking when they played Limerick last weekend. Were they playing “a long game”, keeping their powder dry until they, possibly, meet Limerick again in the championship? If so, “that is a risky business,” says Joe, “if they don’t beat Waterford at home on Sunday their season is over”.
Mathew Costello is hoping there’s plenty left in Meath’s season yet, Gordon talking to the forward ahead of the start of his county’s round-robin campaign at home to Cork in Navan on Saturday.
In soccer, Gavin Cummiskey hears Colin Healy stand by his charge that the FAI’s outgoing chief football officer Marc Canham and its chief executive David Courell lied about the nature of his departure from his role as assistant coach to the Republic of Ireland women’s team.
Gavin also talked with new Shelbourne CEO Tomás “Mossy” Quinn, the Dublin All-Ireland winner who, having switched football codes, is now trying to guide the club through the challenges ahead, among them ensuring Tolka Park meets Champions League standards.
In rugby, former Irish captain Ciarán Fitzgerald tells Gerry Thornley about the “Spirit of Garbally” campaign, the aim to ensure that the name of his famous alma mater is incorporated in to the title of the new amalgamated Ballinasloe schools, Ardscoil Mhuire and St Joseph’s College, Garbally Park. For now, it is to be known as Clonfert College.
Gerry also has news that Leinster plan on hosting this season’s URC final at Croke Park ... if – and it’s a big one – they actually reach the final. First they have to negotiate a passage past Scarlets in the quarter-finals and, if successful, whoever they might meet in the last four.
Johnny Watterson, meanwhile, brings us the grim tale of the “Enhanced Games”, a sporting freak show with a cast of drugged-up athletes, which are scheduled to take place in Las Vegas next year. “A poorly designed drug trial with no ethical oversight, it will,” he writes, “be a ripping success if the athletes do better than Barnum‘s belugas and some don’t die.”
Shane Stokes has the latest from the Rás Tailteann, Cycling Ulster’s Odhrán Doogan slipping in to the yellow jersey on Thursday, while Brian O’Connor retraces the story of the redevelopment of the Curragh. “It is a modern facility, which, by most measures, is lovely to look at. It is also, by most measures, predominantly unloved.”
Beginning this thread with the most braindead D4 niggercattle slop saga to have ever braved the airwaves since "The Rubberbandits" compared themselves to Dadaism
Skorts-gate finally over as sanity prevails
Joe Canning questions Cork hurlers; Colin Healy stands by his grievances https://archive.ph/B3J9c
At last, camogie players can choose to wear shorts or skorts after Thursday night's vote at Croke Park. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw 
Hallelujah, skorts-gate is over. “After 121 years, it only took the Camogie Association a little under half an hour to make history at Croke Park on Thursday night,” writes Gordon Manning, 98 per cent of the Special Congress delegates backing a motion allowing players the choice of wearing shorts or skorts. Gordon’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to track down the two per cent and ask ‘what were ye thinking?’
Joe Canning is wondering what the Cork hurlers were thinking when they played Limerick last weekend. Were they playing “a long game”, keeping their powder dry until they, possibly, meet Limerick again in the championship? If so, “that is a risky business,” says Joe, “if they don’t beat Waterford at home on Sunday their season is over”.
Mathew Costello is hoping there’s plenty left in Meath’s season yet, Gordon talking to the forward ahead of the start of his county’s round-robin campaign at home to Cork in Navan on Saturday.
In soccer, Gavin Cummiskey hears Colin Healy stand by his charge that the FAI’s outgoing chief football officer Marc Canham and its chief executive David Courell lied about the nature of his departure from his role as assistant coach to the Republic of Ireland women’s team.
Gavin also talked with new Shelbourne CEO Tomás “Mossy” Quinn, the Dublin All-Ireland winner who, having switched football codes, is now trying to guide the club through the challenges ahead, among them ensuring Tolka Park meets Champions League standards.
In rugby, former Irish captain Ciarán Fitzgerald tells Gerry Thornley about the “Spirit of Garbally” campaign, the aim to ensure that the name of his famous alma mater is incorporated in to the title of the new amalgamated Ballinasloe schools, Ardscoil Mhuire and St Joseph’s College, Garbally Park. For now, it is to be known as Clonfert College.
Gerry also has news that Leinster plan on hosting this season’s URC final at Croke Park ... if – and it’s a big one – they actually reach the final. First they have to negotiate a passage past Scarlets in the quarter-finals and, if successful, whoever they might meet in the last four.
Johnny Watterson, meanwhile, brings us the grim tale of the “Enhanced Games”, a sporting freak show with a cast of drugged-up athletes, which are scheduled to take place in Las Vegas next year. “A poorly designed drug trial with no ethical oversight, it will,” he writes, “be a ripping success if the athletes do better than Barnum‘s belugas and some don’t die.”
Shane Stokes has the latest from the Rás Tailteann, Cycling Ulster’s Odhrán Doogan slipping in to the yellow jersey on Thursday, while Brian O’Connor retraces the story of the redevelopment of the Curragh. “It is a modern facility, which, by most measures, is lovely to look at. It is also, by most measures, predominantly unloved.”
