Rock bottom, a point so low and distressing that it compels a person to confront their dependence and submit to getting well, is a familiar concept in addiction treatment.
Judging from the reaction I get whenever I write about the state of Gaelic football, there are a lot of people exercised by the topic.
HURLING MAN can relax again – the great game has been saved.
“Money, money, money
The screen remains stubbornly blank and the clock ticks on relentlessly toward the witching hour.
The late, brilliant, but often tormented author and chef Anthony Bourdain once posed a question that spoke portentously of an emptiness at his core, a void that fame and acclaim were powerless to sate.
JUST the latest Old Trafford prisoner of fate, Erik ten Hag looks on feebly as the doomsday clock ticks inexorably toward midnight.
The Kerry county championship final was played last Sunday, for those who didn’t know.
Already, just weeks into his residency at the House of the White Knights, Jude Bellingham’s aura dwarfs even the mighty and imperious coliseum that is his factory floor.
Of course, Jurgen Klopp’s perch on the highest balcony of Anfield history is secure and will remain so for as long as the sun continues to rise over the Mersey Basin.
When sporting historians delve into the reasons for the demise of Gaelic football as Ireland’s most popular field game in a few years time, they may identify last Sunday’s Mayo County final as the moment when the Rubicon was crossed.
Now that the dust has settled on Ireland’s exit from the Rugby World Cup, I want reflect not just on the team’s failure, yet again, to advance past the last eight, but also on how their exit was treated by the Irish media.
The Magees from Raphoe in Co Donegal are the first family of Irish badminton.
At times, I’ve been close to losing faith in the provincial football championships.
Winter officially begins this weekend; the leaves are piling up on suburban streets, the rain seems ceaseless and Christmas Day is less than eight weeks away. There is an unmistakeable feeling abroad that another year is winding down.
When my father died, there were no uncles living near us, so I didn’t have a father figure or a male role model growing up. It might be an exaggeration to say Mick O’Dwyer was a father figure to me, but only a small one.
The choreographer-in-chief has shaped his last dance, a conductor for the ages has laid down his baton, it is time for Ireland’s ancient condor to fold his great wings and rest.
SO what to write about this week? Let’s check the GAA headlines.
IT was payback time for Liverpool in yesterday’s Merseyside derby, but that is not how this game should work.
You’ve heard it all before. I’m past my sell-by-date. A dinosaur. The game has changed – but not for the better, I might add.
A speeding behemoth, one shaking the World Cup foundations with his competitive intensity, the rising voltage of Bundee Aki’s aura is electrifying Ireland’s Gallic advance.
If Bundee Aki has seized the title deeds to the early weeks of the World Cup, the bruising centre has been just one of many among the Irish battalion who have delivered the best of themselves.
Liverpool were up against a very good Tottenham team and a dreadful referee last night – they came within seconds of pulling off an incredible result.
THE giant-sized headache facing the GAA in the next decade over how to finance the cost of upgrading their stadia threatens to be every bit as severe as Storm Agnes.
Golf’s Ben Hur rumbles into a Roman colosseum this week, every onlooker in the overflowing amphitheatre impatient to see if he can offload a cargo of Ryder Cup regrets.
As regular readers of this column know, I’m a self-confessed TV sports addict.
As I try to pick the teams that will finish in the Premier League’s top four this season, Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool have to be on my list – along with a team that are increasingly impossible to ignore.
Something is stirring at Anfield, a burst of remembering, the first petals of peak-Klopp Liverpool again curling open.
ON a Parisian night for the ages, one where Ireland wore their defiance like impenetrable body armour, South Africa’s famed and destructive ‘bomb squad’ were impotent to blast Johnny Sexton’s pursuit of World Cup immortality into fragments.
On Monday evening I was having dinner with a friend when my mobile phone beeped with a message from a work WhatsApp group.
Not even the most hallucinogenic Jamie Heaslip tweet – claiming, say, that without the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly novels, the cosmic ingredients required to facilitate the Big Bang simply would not have existed – can distract them now.
When we come to reflect on what is an increasingly promising season for Liverpool, the 2-1 win at Newcastle last month may have been a pivotal moment.
I was momentarily tempted to jump on the rugby bandwagon and reflect on that thrilling win Ireland had over Romania in their first match in the World Cup.
His body language amounted to a certificate of authenticity, confirmation of a broken dreamer’s bone-deep devastation.
EVEN by normal standards of self-delusion last weekend’s GAA Central Council meeting broke all records.
Official Ireland holds its breath as the Irish rugby team embark on another World Cup campaign.
Once news emerged that Jimmy McGuinness was coming back to manage Donegal, I started to experience unpleasant flashbacks.
A GRIM and depressing truth assails Erik ten Hag as he seeks to identify the offenders short-circuiting his ambition to restore Manchester United to their glory days.
DARWIN Nunez should be the first name on Jurgen Klopp’s teamsheet for today’s game against Aston Villa at Anfield – but he knows the time has come to deliver.
THE first four stories running on the official Australian Football Women’s League (AFWL) website on Thursday evening were all reposted from Irish media outlets.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines snake oil as a product or policy of little worth or value that is promoted as a solution to a problem.
BACK in the era of GAA innocence, I occasionally travelled on the Sligo GAA team bus to away matches in the National Football League.
After lengthy deliberations, this one-man jury has returned his verdict on the 2023 All-Ireland Championship.
AS the years roll past ticking items off the bucket list becomes a priority.
Bear with me. It is going to take me another week to fully process the 2023 All-Ireland Football Championship.
IT has been a transfer window like no other this summer, as Premier League clubs have been caught in the eye of a desert storm.
JUDGING by the scarcity of tickets available on the Ticketmaster website it looks like Sunday’s TG4 LGFA All-Ireland final between Dublin and Kerry is set to make history.
Forty eight hours after his 39th birthday in 2020 Stephen Cluxton captained Dublin to their sixth All-Ireland win on the spin. It was his eighth Celtic Cross, his seventh as skipper.
History is always written by the winners be it war or sport.
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