This football-less Covid era is getting to all of us. A further yawning period of more than two months now stretches before us ahead of the most optimistic date at which the ball might be thrown in to start the 2021 inter-county season. We’ll all be driven bats before then. Up until last year, all of our lives had a […]
As we approach the first anniversary of the imposition of Covid-related restrictions – it’ll be a year next weekend since that madcap League match against Kerry, the last inter-county game that crowds were allowed to attend – the start date for inter-county action this year has become a little clearer. The provision of clarity wasn’t an accusation that could, in […]
The latest GAA-related Covid news – broken this evening by RTÉ’s Damian Lawlor (report here) – comes as a huge blow to everyone who may have been expecting a resumption of inter-county action within any kind of reasonable timeframe this year. In short, the GAA were informed by the Government earlier this week that their inter-county action, as well as […]
I usually do the annual update on web traffic stats for the blog earlier in January. Last week’s glut of retirements blind-sided me a bit in that respect, however, so here, a little later than usual, is this year’s update. Covid-19 has caused plenty of graphs that were pointing upwards to tip vertiginously in the opposite direction. It certainly did […]
A bit of digital gardening that I have to do on an annual basis here on the blog is to file away into the results archive the complete set of results for all matches played during the year. I’ve just now done this for 2020 so the permanent home for the year’s results is here. A notable year it was […]
There are some advantages to watching the final on television. The main one for me on Saturday evening was the proximity of the TV remote. At the push of a button, the screen switched satisfactorily to black, chiming perfectly with my mood. It wasn’t a lack of respect for James Horan’s team that caused me to cut off the broadcast […]
As we approach the shortest day of the year, the results are in on our final Man of the Match poll of 2020. Playing in your first All-Ireland final must, I’m sure, be a daunting experience for any player, especially for someone who was still eligible to line out at U20 this year. If Oisín Mullin had any such worries […]
Less than a week before Christmas in an eerily empty Croke Park, Mayo battled hard in this Covid-era All-Ireland final but ultimately they came up five points short against perennial champions Dublin. In this episode of the Mayo News football podcast we bring you the story of this year’s decider and how it was won … and lost. Rob Murphy […]
Up until this evening, no team had laid a glove on Dublin in this year’s Championship. We gave the all-conquering Metropolitans a decent rattle in this final but ultimately it wasn’t enough as we lost out by five points. Unlike those heart-wrenching one-point losses we’d suffered to them the last three times we played them in the decider, Dublin had […]
This is it – for the fifth time in this incredible decade for us, we’re back in the All-Ireland final, which, in this unprecedented year, takes place this evening, less than a week out from Christmas Day. I’ve been thinking over the last few days about the dream-like quality of this hugely weird Championship campaign. One minute, the lads are […]