GAA

Brian Murphy

Brian is a 26-year-old from Cork who manages the GAA coverage on the new setantasports.com website.

The son of a marathon runner, he played GAA until the age of 18 but now prefers to write about it and convey the passion for gaelic football and hurling in Ireland.

After graduating in journalism, from DCU college, he will offer his honest opinions on a regular basis and speak his mind more openly than is portrayed in our traditional editorial areas.

Davy, you're a divil when you get behind a mike

No Irish childhood is complete without a year under the tutelage of a greenhorn múinteoir with romantic notions of inculcating his/her students with a love of many more things than are contained in the fourth class syllabus.

You know the type: if the sun was shining you could convince them it would be better to play football in the yard, while lessons could be delayed indefinitely by the mere mention of the 1916 Rising or, more importantly, whether Ryan Giggs, Lee Sharpe or Andrei Kanchelskis was United’s greatest attacking threat.

I studied (looked out the window) under just such a character in my primary school days. He was a giant, energetic man from Séan O Riada country down near the Kerry border who still had his training college lustre and a desire to shape our pliable young minds.

Amongst his hair brain plans included getting us to make a Styrofoam model of our prefabricated schoolhouse. In theory, the plan was sound. We sketched the buildings and drafted detailed drawings. To carve the Styrofoam, he had come up with an ingenious plan of heating giant needles stuck in wine corks like cocktail sticks. The corks served as handles and the red-hot needles carved through the Styrofoam like Ryan Giggs through the Oldham Athletic defence.

There was a catch. A red hot needle carved through anything. I know because we tried. Plastic chairs, copy books, lunch boxes and even the slightly rotund lad’s pencil case at the front of the class. The idea was abandoned when, attracted by the commotion, the Priomhoide walked into the class and caught one of the less focused lads carving his initials in his neighbour’s Liverpool lunch box. Suffice to say, the pioneering teacher was warned to run every future idea past his superiors.

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New rules key to preventing more Celtic Park shame

28 May 2009

As de facto starts to a championship season go, Sunday’s fare in Celtic Park was a little like a cyclist getting a puncture on the way to the starting line on day one of the Tour De France – deflating.

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Why the constant need to reaffirm the GAA faith?

11 May 2009

I see we’ve been given another 125 reasons why the GAA is the greatest little sporting body in the world.

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My mid-season Gaelic football rankings

27 April 2009

It's time for a bit of a mid-season appraisal of the football scene following the conclusion of the National League. Here are my top ten teams heading into the 2009 Championship:

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Time for Counihan's Rebels to shine

14 April 2009

To many GAA folk, Cork’s humiliation against Kilkenny in Nowlan Park last Sunday week was met with all the sympathy a banker might expect upon discovering that his Lexus has been rear-ended.

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Time for change in Cork

11 March 2009

I have done my best to keep out of the whole Cork saga. But keeping schtum on something that has dominated the discourse of every sports person, never mind a Cork one, over the last few weeks is a bit like trying to keep out of the pub on St Patrick’s Day.

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