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Belief and zeal are their drugs of choice 27/6/05 Tom Humphries LockerRoom: People keep calling me up and asking me what I think of Michelle Smith de Bruin's showing in the recent Marian Finucane Show poll to find the woman, who in the opinion of many of the MF Show Listenership, is the Greatest Irish Woman Living or Dead, Clean or Unclean. On the one hand, I am perfectly indifferent. Certainly Michelle (and Erik) have done much to promote cheating (aren't those matching his 'n' hers bans so cute) and those within the cheat community must be extraordinarily proud of them both. We can understand that, so if the listeners of the MF Show want to esteem and exalt a topline drug cheat above somebody like, well say, MF herself, who has made a huge contribution to Irish society, well than surely MF just deserves a better demographic. On the other hand, I care deeply. I am outraged. I am frightened. Let me tell you about last weekend. It will explain all. I spent the weekend in Cork in the company of the Twenty-Four Greatest Living Irish Women, or the St Vincent's under-14 camogie team, as they are collectively known. We had the weekend of our lives. In fact, we had a holiday from life. If you've never been to an All-Ireland Féile competition you should cleanse your palate of the faintly sour whiskey taste of congealed Smith de Bruin and hightail it to Limerick next weekend to refresh yourself at the football Féile. Restore your faith in sport. The trip comes with guarantees and recommendations. As part of my indentured slavery I have been forced to work at World Cups and Olympics and heavyweight title fights and golf thingies and at all manner of sporting shindigs. I've never enjoyed anything remotely as much as I have enjoyed being immersed in a Féile. I never will. Anyway you'll be wanting the lowdown. What happened. And why. And how it all ties up. Well. The Twenty-Four Greatest Living Irish Women began the tournament in stately fashion. That is slowly and taking care to preserve their immense dignity. On Friday they drew a game with our generous hosts in lovely Inniscarra. It was a game which they might have won, but really should have lost. They withdrew to lick their wounds and to perform remarkable and scandalous syncopated samba routines in the Féile Parade through Cork that evening. Saturday is a long, happy blur. A soft dream of a time. The most fun any group of people have ever had in a field in Ballincollig. You'd have to know the Twenty-Four Greatest Living Irish Women for as long as we, their noble mentors/caddies, have, to feel the curious mix of confidence and trepidation with which we travelled early in the morning. See, The Fab Twenty-Four can be both erratic and brilliant. They can die for each other or they can just be not in the mood for anything except the bartering of gossip with each other. They play and function as an aggregate of their two dozen separate personalities. They are beautiful and wild and basically nuts. Somedays, they are just collectively hormonal and we are afraid to ask them to do anything in case they rage at us. An example: On Friday, The Grand Chief Agitator (Howya, April), who had a wonderful weekend, incidentally, had sought to initiate a robust debate on team selection during the half-time team talk. This was like moaning about somebody's second-hand smoke as they drew their final puff when lined up against a wall to be shot. Nevertheless, we knew the Grand Chief Agitator be most peeved about the curtailment of her highly valued right to free speech, even at such an inopportune moment. Discontent can spread quickly among the Fab 24. We had no certainty about how Saturday would unfold. The Twenty-Four Greatest Living Irish Women set into a pattern early though. They'd take a lead on a team, then let them back into the game and then finish them off. Or else, they'd take a lead on a team, then let them back into the game and then battle like lunatics to prevent the others finishing them off. Whatever, it was a pattern of sorts. Against Ballincollig, we looked condemned to another draw when Gillian Smith (if MF Show listeners had to vote for a heroic Smith, well here was one) scored a goal with just about the last poc of the game. We hugged and danced and asked them what the hell they were thinking of, leaving it so late. Not long afterwards came the final group game. Toomevara of Tipp. Fortunately, The Twenty-Four Greatest Living Irish Women are no great respecters of reputation and Toomevara of Tipp might as well have been Tooting of Timbuktu for all they knew. The game was one of those great epics which deserved a nationwide audience. The one and only Meltem Yazar thumbed her nose at the aristocracy with a hat-trick of goals, each one more wondrous than the previous one. Then a great big generous dollop of eight minutes of injury time got added, an allotment which the Fab 24 mistakenly took to be time added on especially for Toomevara's benefit. The 24 went into injury time three points ahead. They then conceded about 6,000 frees and watched about 17,000 balls whistle wide. They reached the final whistle two points ahead. And knackered. There's always at least one moment in a Féile weekend that you'll remember forever. For me there were two. The first came maybe an hour and a half after the Toomevara win. The girls were getting ready for an All-Ireland semi-final. They were drained, emptied, shattered, wrecked. You name it. So the Mill Lodge Hotel became an army field camp. Twenty-four bodies lay around one end of the restaurant fast asleep in the middle of the afternoon. Legs getting massaged, wounds being tended too, words being whispered, the smell of liniments. The sight of them there, all huddled like a scattering of dropped commas, will stay with me forever. As will an image from the end of the semi-final, a moment that has burned itself into a perfect picture in my head. The Twenty-Four Greatest Living Irish Women beat Glen Rovers. Beating the Glen meant getting into an All-Ireland final to the girls. To the rest of us, reared on the legend of how the hurlers of St Vincent's beat Glen Rovers in a famous challenge in December 1953, a game which half-filled Croke Park, it was something even more special. A gang of kids from Marino beating the Glen! I mean, jaysus, that was The Glen! We were gathering up the sticks and the water bottles and the Fab 24 had paused 40 yards away to clap the Glen girls as they passed out the gate on the other side of the field. Our heroes stood in one long, spread-out line before the distant hill and as we paused our tidying all we could see were these kids whom we've known for half their lives, and beyond them their smiling, clapping parents and fans. There were Vincent's jerseys and flags everywhere. The sun was going down on a postcard day. There in the crowd, clapping, was Mark Wilson. Mark is our club president and was corner forward on that team that beat the Glen half a century ago. He was a great mentor to me as a kid. That little moment in Ballincollig brings tears to the eyes nearly a week on. Sunday and an All-Ireland final. You have no idea. Those faces drawn and nervous sitting on the benches in the tiny dressingroom beneath Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Hearing the familiar names called out on the PA. Saying the familiar words to them. Sending them out with hope in the heart. Watching these heroes, one of them your daughter, out on the famous turf. We were hammered by a brilliant side from Douglas. No complaints. Regrets maybe that we never got to show that we can play a bit, but hey, we shed our tears and we hugged each other and we moved on. Nobody said that they'd get drugs the next time and use them to cheat those wonderful Douglas kids. On our way out we passed Pauric McDonald and the amazing Kilmacud Crokes hurling side who were just about to win the Division One title. Their journey was as stunning as ours was emotional. And all those young, keen faces in Páirc Uí Chaoimh last Sunday and around Cork last weekend were the only fitting rebuke to a certain proportion of the morally challenged MF Show listenership. So to the Twenty-Four Greatest Living Irish Women, to Ais, to Claire H, to Clairo, to Happy Gilmore, to Ciara O'L, to Niamh (Yo Foxy), to JoJo, to Jessie G, to April F, to Meltem Y, to Gillian S, to Shauna O and to Irene D, to Jenny R, to Leanna B, to Johanna C, to Fionnuala J, to Carol Mc, to Róisín D, to Eimear M, to Kate P, to Orla Mc, to Jodie C and to Molly in da house, love ye all, long may ye run and please don't ever become MF Show phone-in types, or Michelle S de B sports-cheat types. You're better than that. A million times better. May you stay forever young. © The Irish Times      Let the Gates Be Opened! Wednesday, 30-Mar-2005 It’s quiet now, almost eerie. We all know it’s coming, have known for ages. Think World War One and the trenches before men went over the top. It’s do or die, something has to give. When Congress meets in April, there will be only one issue in the eyes of the vast majority of the country - Croke Park. A subject that has been prevaricated upon, skillfully handled, financially blackmailed – whatever, but now the time has come to decide what to do with the issue. To open or not to open – that is the question. Will the biggest sporting organisation on this island decide to release the great stadium from its Gaelic duty and make it available to ‘foreign sports’ such as soccer and rugby? At this stage the issue has been argued/debated so many times that it seems as if we are going round in circles, searching for the door marked exit, trying to find a conclusive end to the dilemma. Both camps are trenchant in their views. Either you perceive the GAA as a backward, monolithic organisation that is abusing taxpayers’ money in keeping the gates of Croke Park shut, or you see it as defending stoically one of the last true bastions of Gaelic Ireland against the forces of evil (ok, not exactly evil, but you get the idea). Everyone seems to have an opinion on it – from experts who know their stuff to radio ‘personalities’ who display an alarming lack of knowledge on the subject. Make no mistake about it, whatever the GAA decides on the future use of Croke Park will have far reaching consequences for the organisation. Now is a time for calm heads, for as the day of reckoning draws nearer the tension is going to increase. Steady as she goes…. Seán Kelly is the right man to be steering the ship at this moment. During his tenure the Kerryman has displayed an ability to do what is right and proper at the given moment. Now more than ever this penchant for capability is required. Rhetoric will be spouted, at times it may resemble a civil war. Seán will be there to calm it down. Open it up. That is what De Scribe believes should happen. With some provisos – let it just refer to Croke Park, let it just be for the duration of the construction of a modern Lansdowne Road. The alternative is too distressing for the GAA. We live in a world of perception, a world where PR is NB. That’s the way it is. Imagine if you will Ireland playing their Six Nations ‘home’ match next year against Wales in Cardiff. Maybe Twickenham. Imagine our soccer team playing a ‘home’ European Championship qualifier in Manchester, Liverpool or Glasgow. Think about it. Each of these occasions would be fuel to a fire that would burn the GAA. Thousands of Irish fans making their way to Dublin Airport, some passing Croker on the way asking ‘what in God’s name is going on?’ It would be a fair question. How strangely, how negatively, how angrily would the rest of Europe look on as an 82,500 capacity stadium was lying idle, aching for some action, whilst we exported some of our biggest sporting occasions to a neighbouring land? This would be nothing short of a PR disaster for the GAA. Seán Kelly knows this. Liam Mulvihill knows this. When children ask their parents why their national team is never home, what will they be told? Who will the bad guys be? Who will bear the brunt of a nation’s ire? There is no doubt about what must happen, no room for fudge. Forget arguments that allowing other sports onto the hallowed sod will somehow taint it, removing some of its Gaelic lustre. American football, Garth Brooks, U2….need we go on? Have any of these infected the sacred sod, have they damaged the GAA? Why should Brian O’Driscoll or Damien Duff be any different? How can a country like Australia accommodate cricket, soccer, Australian Rules, rugby league and rugby union in the same arena? How can the famed MCG accommodate runs of various kinds without losing its sense of history? Are we saying that Croke Park is somehow different, that once it is subject to soccer and rugby the whole edifice of the GAA will come crashing down? The GAA is the biggest and best sporting organisation on this island. Croke Park is the biggest and best stadium on this island. There is nothing to fear from opening it up. Rather, it will only serve to highlight the magnificence of the organisation that built it. Why should such a stadium be allowed to lie idle for half a year, serving only as a seagull sanctuary and nothing else? There can only be one decision next month…. The GAA has nothing to fear, but fear itself. (c) An Fear Rua

Thursday Talk: Please don't run kids into the ground   13/1/05 I WRITE this, dear reader(s), as one who may have sinned by not looking after a child's best sporting interest and also as a warning to the thousands of parents out there who wonder whether they should allow their kids play sports, across a variety of demands. I've always believed that if a child enjoys the various sports, they should be allowed to play them. But life doesn't unfold quite as simple as that because, if youngsters are talented, then the chances are they will be asked not just to play in their own age group, but a year or two above that level, both for their clubs and their colleges. One of my boys fitted this bill and between training and playing for three sports, he just rang out of legs. Or rather, his joint areas rebelled. A friend of mine had mentioned the fear of burn-out a year ago, but I didn't act until the boy was walking with the aches and pains of an old man. Then, with the understanding of his coaches and with a more firm attitude from yours truly and guidance from a very thorough and understanding physio, the decision was taken to give him complete rest. As I write, he hasn't kicked a ball or run a shuttle in over three months. My sincere hope is that he will resume playing and won't suffer any long-term effects from the intense demands which were being placed on him before he was 14-years-old. If there are problems, then it's largely my fault and it's a guilt I will bring with me for the rest of my life because he was a special hurler, Gaelic footballer and soccer player when he was totally fit. The point I would make to anyone who might find themselves in my position is to make the hard decision early and ensure your boy or girl isn't run into the ground before he or she gets a chance to take off. Because, believe me, it's no fun catching the look in their eyes when all they can do is watch a game, where once they played. PJ Cunningham Thursday Talk pcunningham@unison.independent.ie

Sports injuries in the game of hurling. A one-year prospective study AW Watson Sports Injuries Research Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland. A prospective study of hurling injuries was conducted over the 8 months of one season on 74 players. These athletes averaged 4.30 +/- 2.58 hours per week of training and 1.15 +/- 0.21 hours per week of matches. Mean time of injury was 1.20 +/- 2.53 days in the hospital, 20.34 +/- 19.25 days off sport, and 13.34 +/- 17.25 days of restricted activity. Together this injury time amounts to 14.3% of the season. There were 92 match- and 43 training-related injuries, giving 342.47 injuries per 10,000 hours of matches and 43.83 injuries per 10,000 hours of training. Overall, there were 369.9 days of injury per 1000 hours of participation. The most common type of injury was muscle strain (24.4% of the 135 total injuries). The hamstrings was the most common site of strain, accounting for 41% of these injuries. Contusions comprised 16.3% of the injuries and sprains comprised 15.6%. The most frequently injured sites were the finger (13%), hamstrings (12%), back (11%), head (9%), and knee and ankle (9%). Forty-one percent of the injuries were attributed to foul play. The results of the study suggest that the incidence of injuries in hurling is high and may be attributed to poor conditioning, poor protection, and lack of enforcement of the rules. American Journal of Sports Medicine, Vol 24, Issue 3 323-328, Copyright © 1996 by American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine

€7m Dublin development plan launched 30/11/2004 GAELIC GAMES: Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last night launched the Dublin County Board's strategic initiative at Croke Park. Costing more than €7 million over three years it is the most ambitious development plan ever devised for the county, reports Seán Moran, GAA Correspondent The product of two years' negotiation between Dublin, the Leinster Council and the GAA, the initiative aims to divide the county into regions, loosely based on existing local authority areas, and focus its efforts on raising the profile of Gaelic games in schools, improving recruitment for clubs and establishing a structure for developing elite talent. 'Today is about establishing the foundations for the future,' said an Taoiseach. 'It is about securing the foothold of Gaelic games in this city and county. 'It is about providing our young people with every opportunity to master and participate in games that are integral to our identity as a people. 'Dublin is now home to one quarter of our country's population. Young people under the age of 18 make up almost 300,000. Such a population has naturally put an added premium on land and facilities across the county. 'I am particularly heartened to see the focus on disadvantaged areas.' He also paid tribute to the county board, the Leinster Council and Croke Park for their support of the initiative. He was responding to the presentation by Dublin Chief Executive John Costello, in the course of which the problems facing Dublin were set out. The decline in volunteerism, increased competition from other sports and the price of land had all presented obstacles. As a result, the GAA was not getting into primary schools at anything like an ideal rate. He showed statistics of nine to 16 year-olds in the county, which indicated 16.63 per cent of boys and 5.32 per cent of girls were playing football while 10.84 per cent of boys and 4.06 per cent of girls played hurling or camogie. The strategy for dealing with the challenge will be based on devolving work to regional areas, where the focus will be sharper on servicing the schools in those regions and identifying the elite talent. Regions have yet to be finalised, but will largely correspond to local authority areas. Kevin O'Shaughnessy has been appointed Strategic Programme Manager and he heads the initiative. Reporting to him - in hierarchical order - will be the regional development officers, the hurling development officer and the games promotion officers. GAA president Seán Kelly, who chaired the joint-committee that agreed these initiatives, said that the plans would 'make Dublin what it should be - the greatest GAA county in Ireland'. He praised the Leinster Council for their generosity in backing the initiative, as they also had to take into account 11 other counties in the province. 'It was well put by my predecessor Peter Quinn,' he said, 'when addressing the SRC (Strategic Review Committee) congress. 'Dublin is not a national problem,' he declared, 'it's a national opportunity'.' Addressing the question of breaking Dublin into two counties - the controversial proposal advanced by the SRC nearly three years ago - Kelly dismissed it, but in ambiguous fashion. 'No one's suggesting that Dublin should be divided in two. That's hogwash. No one's saying that for the moment.' © The Irish Times

Monday Focus: A great day for Gaelic Games as bad old coaching manual is torn up

Monday November 29th 2004

WHAT would you say are the 'big items' on the GAA agenda for your ordinary follower of the games just now?

© Irish Independent
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/