Blog Sat. October 30 last one Oct. 5.
The Coming Weekend’s Sport;
Boyle
GAA have two very important games this coming weekend, both finals.
(So,
from GAA Notes on realboyle)
Boyle LGFA
Intermediate Final.
The
Ml. Kerins & ‘The Well’ -sponsored Intermediate Ladies will play St Dominick’s
in the Championship Final this Saturday, November 6 at 1.30pm in Elphin. Your
support would be very welcome. Note that gates will be in operation for this
game with €10 standard admission and €5 for concession entry (cash only).
Boyle
won their place in the final following a win in a thriller of a semi-final v
Eire Og on Sunday the 24th. Boyle had a comfortable lead at half
time on the score of 2. 7 to 0. 4 though playing against the wind. Eire Og were
much more decisive in the second half and whittled Boyle’s lead down to 2
points. With virtually the last kick of the game Eire Og were awarded a penalty
but the taker’s shot came back off the post. The final score was Boyle 3.7 Eire
Og 1.12. I would not know anything about the team they meet in the final only
to say that the vibes are that St. Dominick’s are a rising club over all
aspects of GAA activity. Boyle have some fine players in Suzie Keenehan,
Isabelle and Sophie King, Saoirse and Roisin Wynne, Megan McKeown, Caoimhe
Cregg and Kate Harrington with the team manager being Vincent Flanagan. Quite a
few well known surnames there in a Boyle GAA context. So every good wish to
this team on Saturday.
2021 Division 1 U17 Championship Final Boyle v Roscommon Gaels
The
minor team, which you will have heard me talk about before, take on a strong
Roscommon Gaels side in the Division 1 Championship Final on Sunday, November
7th, in Hyde Park, at 2:30pm. This could be a cracker with two highly skilled
teams and little to divide them. In terms of favourites I am reminded of an old
timer when asked what he thought the odds were for an upcoming big game put it
at 60/50. That is nearly logical in terms of this game also! I referred to the
Boyle team after their fine win over Michael Glavey’s/ Eire Og in Kilbride as a
real exhibition of quality football. While they dipped somewhat in their win
over Clann na nGael they still took a big scalp there also. So I look forward
to this game with great interest. Boyle have won only three, that I know of,
minor titles over the decades. They were in 1938 and ’39 and 2011 with a Donie
Smith led team. So we wish the team and manager Shane Spellman and the other
team mentors the very best in this final. I know that a migrant from Boyle to
Spain will be glued to some device to follow the game’s progress.
Masters Final
“Good
luck to Club Men Lochlainn Conboy and Seamus Kane as they prepare to line out
against Cavan with the Roscommon Masters in the GMA Plate Final on Saturday,
November 6. The game is set to be played at 2pm in the Fr Manning Gaels GAA
Grounds, Drumlish, Longford”. (per Boyle GAA Notes)
County Finals
I
watched both of the county Intermediate and Senior football finals. The
Intermediate final between St. Faithleach’s and St. Dominick’s was very
disappointing. The quality of the football was poor. While I always like to say
that players do not go out to play poorly (except you’re Harry Keane) and the
conditions were bad also this certainly reflected all that. The game went to
extra time by which time I had migrated to milking the cow.
The
county needed a good game and it came in the senior final between Clann na
nGael and Padraig Pearses. While there were the usual mistakes, slipping and
sliding, loss of possession et al there was some fine moves and scores
especially the two Pearses goals. Pearses thoroughly deserved their win. They
had the better all-round team plus substitute options and the Daly trio are a
formidable force for their team. So now South Roscommon has three top teams and
an emerging St. Dominick’s while the North-West is still struggling to leave
their mark on the Fahey cup.
It
was good to see my old pal Patrick McKiernan from Ballyfarnon as the man with
the whistle and fair play to him for doing a good job and working hard to
progress in this challenging occupation.
Athleague Take County Hurling Title;
This
was a pretty unique final in the sense of the two teams contesting it,
Athleague
and Tremane, come from the same parish. The final third of the parish is Fuerty
which is a tad more into football though many of the hurlers here are also
members of the Fuerty football team. Tremane is a small club in terms of size
but had a really top era in the seventies, once toppling Kiltormer of Galway in
the Provincial championship. Their top player is Niall Kilroy of the county
football team. He was the only stand–out player for Tremane in this final also.
Athleague is regarded as the old heart of hurling in Roscommon and its wins go
back to the early 1900s’. My father, Pat Conboy, played hurling with Athleague
and football with Fuerty away back and was a dual player with Roscommon. I
played hurling with both Athleague and Tremane and had a rare outing at senior
level with Athleague once. But in those years I was more a wandering soul being
in England and spending summers in the U.S.
I
wandered off there also. Athleague won but the standard was so very
disappointing that I will not go into any detail on it.
COP (Conference of Parties…not a lot of people know
that. It is a very 'humble' title for such an enormous gathering of the great and
the questionable)
This
hugely important get-together of the supposed influencers within this little
planet of ours is ongoing in Glasgow until Friday the 12th of this
month. The lead stars will just take their bows and then the workers (as in
bees) will try and achieve changes that might save the world. It is surprising
that the old standard sign from Hyde Park, London. proclaiming ‘The End is
Nigh’ is not blowing in the wind of Scotland. One participant interviewed by
RTE suggested that she had a “Front row seat to the end of the world”. I also
heard the Irish Minister for Agriculture Donegal man Charlie Mc Conalogue
waffaling on with bull******** to top RTE presenter Sarah Mc Inerney about
methane, the national herd and protein etc. I do not know how these
well-briefed presenters can wear this ongoing cruelty.
My
star (of) COP is David Attenborough
who is to the world of nature what Shakespeare is to the English language. He
will leave a legacy of film documentaries that could be stacked up in parallel
to Hamlet, Macbeth and so on. Then there was the absence of the princes of
India, Russia and China. That is like Manchester United playing with Ronaldo,
Cavani and a goalkeeper. Even Bolsonaro of Brazil got someone to sign him in. An
old Dáil trick.
Hopefully
no more collecting the tyres from Green Street to Felton. The prospects seem as
if it is all on a knife edge. A big issue here is with farming reducing the
‘national herd’ which produces an inordinate amount of methane. Senior people
look at their offspring but looking at the very young generation it is worrying
to think what kind of a world we leave them. Fair play to Greta Thunberg for
ringing the alarm bells and embarrassing the knobs.
A
snippet of information that I overheard that interested me was as follows. The
third largest contributor of greenhouse gases is…THE PRODUCTION OF CONCRETE. Not a lot of people know that
either.
Television Viewing
My Sports Highlights of this Year so
Far.
Perhaps
I watch too much television but (of course) it is the medium of our time. What
do I watch? As you would expect I watch a lot of sport and a lot of sports.
Probably the sports event of the year for me so far has been the Solheim Cup (ladies
golf competition between Europe and the U.S.) with its highlight being the
performance of Cavan’s Leona Maguire. It was magnetic.
The
Ryder Cup had a whole range of drama and even if Padraig Harrington’s side was
well beaten, the event overall was riveting.
The
European Soccer Championships with Italy emerging as winners on penalties after
extra time v England. Italy had the character of the competition too in their
captain Giorgio Chiellini who possessed the characteristics of a pirate.
The
Irish ladies’ soccer team with a win v Finland and a great performance, though
losing v Sweden.
The
win by Mayo over Dublin. The recovery of the Roscommon minors v Galway and the
U 21-win v Down. The power displays of Limerick. Boyle minors v Michael
Glaveys/Eire Og. I nearly forgot ‘The Edo Olympics’ and the Para Olympics’.
While
I also watch cricket from time to time and also some baseball games if they
involve The Boston Red Sox, New York Mets, New York Yankees, especially the
finals which they call ‘The World Series’.
I
imagine I’m leaving some sports out Ladies GAA games which are regularly top
class. That is enough to be going on with!
Documentaries
I have
watched a number of really excellent documentaries during Covid. I started off
with the great sports exposé titled ‘The
Last Dance’. This was a series on the man who is regarded as the greatest
basketball player ever, Michael Jordan.
It follows his team ‘The Chicago Bulls’ in their relentless pursuit of national
title number six. I have seen it written that the three greatest U.S.
sportsmen are listed as Muhammad Ali; Babe Ruth who was a baseball player with
the New York Yankees in the 1920s’; and Michael Jordan. Tiger Woods was on his
way to being there but a tree got in the way.
‘The Salute’
At
the Mexico Olympics of 1968 in the 200 hundred meters final two Black U.S.
Carlos and smith took gold and bronze medals. They were divided by an
Australian names Peter Norman. On
the podium Carlos and Smith raised one arm each in a Black Power salute. Norman
was wearing a human rights ‘button’. The reason that they wore just one glove
each was because one of them forgot his gloves and Norman suggested the
improvisation of wearing one glove each. The head of the Olympics an almost
fascist American named Avery Brundage was outraged and the Americans were sent
home. They were ostracised for decades and their careers were over. Norman too
suffered a similar fate for, as it were, contributing to the protest kind of. Until
this film was made by his nephew and released in 2008 very, very few remembered
Peter Norman the great Australian and world class sprinter. He was ignored when
Australia hosted the 2000 Olympics and died in 2006. Carlos and Smith, his
life-long friends were pall bearers at his funeral.
(*I
tripped across the film ‘Salute’ on BT Sport, I think.)
Political/Historical Documentaries.
1.
Blair & Brown. The New
Labour Revolution.
Blair
could have been a force for good but allowed himself and Britain to be sucked
into the Iraq (Get Saddam Hussein) War by U.S. Hawks like Bush, Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld and an enthusiastic military power base with the ‘Big Lie’ of
WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction.
2. America after 9/11. I just saw the second part of this
on Tuesday night on RTE 1. Not for the sensitive.
3. ‘Once Upon a time in Iraq’ RTE 1 @ 11. 50 p.m. on Thursdays tells
the story of the invasion of Iraq, the lack of any plan for after the invasion
and the chaos that followed and will continue for decades. Some 3000 people
were killed in the Twin Towers atrocity. In retribution tens of thousands,
including American soldiers, have died in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Those
countries have been destroyed and they now face ongoing chaos, the threat of
famine and, for many, persecution. All this in a purgatorial existence not to
mention the trillions of dollars that were wasted through all of this madness.
Two
and three above are not for the squeamish.
After
the French revolution an old aristocrat was asked the following question; “What
did you do for the duration of the Revolution?” answered
“I
survived”
I’ll
adjourn at that.
Take
care, follow the guidelines.
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