After being incapable of winning a competition that has only four teams in it, for 40 years, surely it is time for the Connacht council to consider withdrawing completely from the Martin Donnelly inter-provincial series.
Connacht’s participation has become a shambles. Why bother turning up every year to be defeated? Surely if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well and Connacht’s attitude to this competition is not good enough.
To be unable to win two games in a row since 1969 beggars belief and is obviously down to attitude and apathy as much as ability.
The Munster side that beat John O’Mahony’s team last weekend in Limerick had only one Kerry player in their ranks. They were minus the likes of Colm Cooper, Tom O’Sullivan, Paul Galvin, Declan O’Sullivan, Tomás and Marc Ó Sé, and yet they were still able to beat the Connacht selection by three points.
The competition itself is in dire straits and unless Connacht decide to make an effort and go out to win the competition, the province is as well off pulling out of it and putting the whole thing out of its misery. At least that would show a bit of leadership. Whereas towing the party line and turning up every year with our tails between our legs waiting for our annual beating doesn’t offend anyone. You’re not letting down anyone by doing that. Just ourselves.
Check out TG4 this Sunday for wall to wall GAA
For those of you who are not going to any live games this Sunday and intend sitting in and watching the box for a few hours, there will be some high quality GAA viewing on TG4 for the entire day. The channel is running a full day and evening of Gaelic games themed programming as the channel celebrates the GAA’s 125th birthday with wall to wall GAA this Sunday.
A full day of televised GAA or any sport for that matter would be too much to take for most people, unless you are a complete anorak. However there are a few key items that most GAA followers will look forward to seeing and will have their recorders or Sky plus buttons at the ready for. The two must record items in my view will be the top 50 GAA football goals which will be shown at 1pm. Then at 4.10pm it is showing the top 50 hurling goals.
It would be nice to have those goals in both codes on a DVD or an old video cassette to pass a quiet half an hour on a dark and dank afternoon in the middle of next December or January. The channel has done a huge amount of good work as regards live coverage of club games over the past few years they will also have live coverage from the Munster club hurling semi-final this weekend featuring the Cork and Tipperary champions. Documentaries will also be shown on Sam Maguire, Micheál O’Hehir, Christy Ring, Cormac McAnallen and John 3:7. Another topic that will create a certain amount of debate will be the selection of the best hurler and footballer in the country over the past 25 years.
The only two Connacht men nominated in the football category were Padraic Joyce and Kevin Walsh, and in hurling the two westerners given nominations slips were Joe Cooney and Tony Keady. The public have voted for the winners so it is impossible to predict what player will be selected as the best player since 1984. If a large group of people decided to vote for a particular player he would get the award, whether he deserved it or not. Remember the RTÉ man-of-the-match awards that were selected by the public? And the bookies who wished that RTÉ had never come up with that idea as some men got awards when they absolutely did not deserve them. No names mentioned here due to pressure from the legal department of the Advertiser Group. For me the likes of Tyrone’s Peter Canavan or Kerry’s Darragh Ó Sé and Seamus Moynihan or Martin O’Connell (Meath ) should be relatively close to the top of the list as regards the best performers from 1984 until 2009. There are some nice action clips of each of the players nominated on the TG4 website – TG4.ie if you want a quick trip down memory lane and a demonstration of how to score some superb points. It’s well worth a quick viewing.
