denltfc

I look forward to the premier division season ahead through my fingers. Longford won the promotion playoffs from 5th place in the first Division and preseason has been brutal except for a win last week over Cabo's second string. Longford are justifiable favourites for the drop. Last weekend saw the traditional season warm up with Dundalk beating Rovers on penos to lift the Presidents Cup. Dundalk has brought in some interesting internationals including a striker from Norway and a 6'6 Centre Back from the Faroe Islands and a Latvian international at left back. They will either gel nicely or fall apart at the seams early days. Rovers have lost their two best players in Jack Byrne to APOEL of Cyprus and McEnneff to Hearts. . You have to fancy Rovers to push on again this season. They added a few experienced ex Dundalk players to the squad and Danny mandriou ( Ireland U21) who blows hot and cold on the wing. Only Bohs hipsters will think they can challenge the top 2. The rest of league is much of a muchness and relegation playoff is between Harps and Waterford ( who have Kevin Sheedy in as a manager!). Most games are on the watchloi player and a few on the RTE player including Rovers and Pats this Friday night. Overall football is back but no crowds. Hopefully by September they will be allowed back and you never have to fear overcrowding at a LOI game lol Before a ball is kicked,optimism can reign supreme I can dream big and think Longford for Europe ! Its 15 years this season since we last were in the Europa Cup.

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/dundalk-can-eye-up-4m-europa-league-bonanza-if-they-see-off-ki-1.4368661 Shows the value to small clubs of making the EL group stages and the importance of the luck of the draw ! Unusual position for LOI team to be hot favourites for a European game so guaranteed the Faroese will win LOL

Exactly and in comparison Shamrock Rovers got AC Milan last week !! Still the draw looked favourably on them for the last round. It could of been Quarbag or Legia instead.

I think he is under severe pressure to hold his seat. He won it last time on anti FF votes and all his candidates he picked for FF in local elections lost. His former colleague Soc Dem councilor Jennifer Whitmore has a great chance as does the green. FF local organisation dont like him. I found him to be quite good and someone FF should of used more. He comes across as intelligent and urbane unlike a few of our TD's. could you imagine what scottish TV viewers would make of Willie O'Dea !! He was brutal in the RTE Primetime debate on health though so I might be wrong lol

Great to see a thread on Ireland. I have been out canvassing nearly every day for the last 3 weeks in Dublin Fingal, Dun Laoghaire and back home in Roscommon- Galway East. All of the below observations should be taken with a pinch of salt as I am a biased Fianna Fáiler and former member of its National Executive and active in constituency organisation etc. Sinn Fein surge is real, middle class old ladies were saying they were voting SF for the first time and most of their kids were too, lower income areas rampant SF Greens are doing well in posher middle class areas taking a few percent off FG No great love for FF in Dublin but considered better than FG - a few of our voters are returning but its slow FG really fucked up with the RIC commemoration. There election campaign was to be based on Brexit and economy not getting any traction, its all about health, housing and keeping the pension at 65. Last few days attacks on Sinn Fein over Paul Quinn murder, Special Criminal Court were starting to get some OAP's agitated and worried about SF in government. Rural Ireland canvassing feeling FG is too Dublin centric, posh boys etc Farmers are fuming over beef prices and scared shitless about the Greens wanting to half the national beef suckler herd. No economic recovery felt in the west of Ireland. Election is tomorrow and key question is SF always under performs its poll ratings by a few percent but if its polling 25% it should get 21/22% which means about 30 TD's and most will top the poll and be elected on the first count and no need to worry about transfers. Turnout of SF core demographic voters younger and C2DE voters is always low but I feel SF machine will be going door to door tomorrow asking people out to vote. Forecast is for a very wet and windy day which might effect voters with no transport and fickle ones. I think FF will get 54/55 and might get a few more with lucky breaks. FG are heading for a shit election and could be under 40 seats. My gut says after the election it will be 8 weeks of talks and it will be a FF/Green/Labour/Social Democrats Government with a few FF independents like the Healy Rea's , Noel Grealish and Mattie McGrath bought off to pad the numbers. Both FG and FF are adamant no coalition with SF but all talk is redundant after an election in my opinion. FF have a new mechanism where a party conference has to agree coalition. If the party tried to force a deal with FG a quarter of the crowd would walk out. There is real hatred to FG amongst the members especially rural ones where the local blueshirts always looked down on the FF plebs.

Watching it. Ireland are playing pure shite to be honest and making basic mistakes. The RTE panel ripped the team a new one at half time. Its plodding error ridden rugby. But the bonus point has been secured.

The Kobe stadium has a retractable roof ?! so ban fans and play in a closed stadium and match is played

I watched the game last night and only for a superb save from the Slovan keeper at the end, Dundalk would of scored. It wasn't as one sided as the stats made out and Dundalk held their own for large parts and will fancy their chances of scoring two in Tallaght next week. As VT points out they may struggle to keep Slovan out though, who could feel they had one or two decent penalty shouts for handball turned down by the ref. The plastic pitch in Oriel is horrific to play good football on.

Where I grew up every parish has a GAA team but not everyone had a football team. We had a team at under 12 and under 18 for football but the other years nothing. It was more for craic really as we played with guys from school who were from other neighbouring GAA clubs who we normally would fight on the pitch with. Whereas we had GAA at every age group and a squad of about 30 but we would be lucky to have 14/15 for football out of 5 times the size of catchment area. The ban was lifted on foreign sports in 1972 within GAA and but in some areas it is still frowned upon to play both. Plus in dual counties, guys who are good at GAA and football are usually good at hurling as well. Where I am from the football team is for when the GAA season is over and guys want something to on a Sunday morning to blow off the hangover. As for the Shinty it has taken place in Inverness the last few years and are usually close games but the Irish team is made of level 2&3 players rather than most of the top tier guys but a good game of hurling will have you on the edge of your seat for 70 minutes. As for books on the LOI I would recommend a read of "Just follow the Floodlights" by Brian Kennedy. Its a few years old but a great read and depressingly familiar in parts. U19's did great to make European semi finals considering about they were missing about 20 guys who could of been in the squad but had pre season in the UK instead and not released. Troy Parrot of Spurs is the player to watch for the future, looked good playing with Kane. I think Slovan might have too much for Dundalk but will be interesting to see how it goes.

Sky sports have GAA coverage in the UK and if you have free sat then BBC NI usually have matches earlier in the summer. Both games are on Sky Sports Arena this weekend throw is at 5 on Saturday night is the Dublin v Mayo game which should be a sell out and a cracker and on Sunday throw is 3.30 for Kerry v Tyrone is a clash of football cultures dirty nordie fucks ( i may be biased as we lost to Tyrone 4 weeks ago) v the aristocrats of free flowing football ! It is totally unacceptable to wear county colours of another team and no matter how shite your county is, you support them all the way. It can be hard at times 64,000 people live in County Roscommon v 1 Million in Dublin. We last won the Championship in 1944 !!! I live close to Drogheda and they hate Dundalk, two shit holes fighting over which town is less shite. I had 3 great nights in Europe with the Town seeing them play in Bulgaria, Liechtenstein and the worst night of my life losing 5-1 in Wales to Carmarthen after beating them 2-0 at home and it should of been 5/6. Town were shocking and to the day I die I am convinced the team threw the match and made a killing in the bookies. Bohs v Rovers is the only real derby as in vicious they hate each other stuff. Other Dublin derbies can be fun but there is a visceral hatred between Bohs and Rovers. It is the LOI game i would recommend attending or any Dundalk game in Dublin would be next. Don't mind Dundalk having success at all, its a real football town and of course Stephen Kenny got his break in the LOI as manager of Longford Town and Dundalk manger now Vinny Perth is a Longford legend. The biggest loss to football was his brother Paul "Gucci" super player for the town who should of made it across Chanel but did his knee in but had made it back after being lost to heroin. Longford have had a decent season to date and lie second in the First Division (FD) 5 points behind Shels who have spent a fortune who come to Longford this weekend. Neale Fenn is the town manager and definitely has a future at a bigger club. On the piece about finances I would say that every LOI club is about 4-6 weeks away from getting into severe financial difficulty.

Apologies that should of been "no lack of passion" !!!!!!!, if you saw a GAA crowd in full flight. The air will be blue and the noise unreal.

Attendance wise GAA is the most popular with Irish sports fans that attend games, its a day out and depending on who is playing huge crowds will descend on Croke Park or other grounds. The All Ireland semi final between Dublin and Mayo on this coming Saturday night is heading towards an 80,000 sell out. I have been to see my local U16 club team play a GAA county final and 3500 showed to watch the game. My home county's ground of Dr Hyde Park has a capacity of 30,000 but we only have about 64,000 living in the county. I would suggest that would be a good weekend, if Bohs v Rovers was on a Friday night and Dublin playing on a Saturday or Sunday in Croke Park. I would suggest that any Scots man who shows up in Quinns post match wont be going home alone ..... unless the wife frowns upon that sort of thing . Hurling might be a more interesting game for a tourist to watch, anyone who has seen shinty will be able to follow the basics easily enough. Longford, Cobh Ramblers and Sligo play on Saturday nights but you would get a match in Belfast on a Saturday afternoon if you wanted more football. They won't be playing football on a Sunday up north ! There is no real tradition of going to football matches in Ireland and getting on a flight and going to England or Scotland doesn't count ! Rugby gets decent attendances but even still the capacity of the RDS is about 18,500. Participation rates are highest for football but the survey includes things like 5-a-side etc so I would be skeptical of the data. Every GAA club in Dublin has decent all weather pitches, club house etc and thousands of members.

As a long suffering Longford Town currently in the graveyard of the First Division (Bottom tier). Happy to answer questions. Friday night football is the norm in the League of Ireland (LOI) and has been for a long number of years as it doesn't clash with GAA which are usually Saturday and Sunday and previously UK football when we had a winter season. Summer football suits me especially when Longford are in the Premier Division as half the clubs are in Dublin and I work here so i can usually get to a game every few weeks. There is going away from the fact that following the LOI is considered pretty niche and you don't tend to bump into many fans of other clubs in work. There are two Boh's fans here as well and that's it out of 500 people in a large government department. My own small section has 5 Leinster rugby season ticket holders within it. Also I am a pretty hardcore GAA fan who spends the summer following my own county of Roscommon around and being honest if there was a clash between the two teams I would pick the GAA. My own wife has only come to one football match in 5 years and can not understand the difference in crowd atmosphere etc. She hated it but loves going to Croke Park and its amazing to see the number of females and families at GAA games and no fan segregation . Its a family day out. There can be 80,000 in Croke Park and there will be lack of passion or noise amongst the fans. The standard can be decent at times and the great pub debate is always where would Dundalk, Rovers be in the SPFL. Most people think they would hold their own against all bar Celtic and Rangers. if you look at this https://www.pressreader.com/ireland/the-argus/20190521/282411285780127 , the prize money gap between the two leagues is huge. If Irish clubs had that level of money to spend it would improve. Teams do raise their game for Europe but its still impressive that Rovers and Dundalk made it to Europa group stages over the past few years. The crowds are terrible and some of the facilities are awful. If you ever suffered the away section in Oriel Park, Dundalk then primitive does not do it justice. Longford got nearly 10,000 to the FAI cup final in the two years we won back in 03/04 but the week before at league match maybe 850 at it and in the First Division maybe 250/300. One of the issues is for Longford is that most of the team are from Dublin and have real no connection to the town other than showing up every second week for a game and even training is on the outskirts of Dublin which obviously contrasts badly to GAA where transfers are not really a thing and you play for where you come from. Still if only a small majority of barstoolers went to the game they would see no matter what nothing beats being at the game.

Week 1 - Stenhousemuir

The Ireland V Scotland game is live on RTE2 on Saturday evening before the compromise rules game against Austrailia. I am heading to Croke Park should hopefully be a good double header and two good games.

A quick google search says he played for Antrim but won an All Ireland medal with Derry which means he was pretty handy at GAA. http://gaeliclife.com/2014/12/1992-fermanagh-1-9-antrim-1-8/ anyway another GAA season over for Roscommon after a sickening defeat to Fermanagh and blowing the game against Sligo in the Connacht Championship, just can not handle being favourites at all in games. Just as well we are Division 1 next year and will be underdogs in every game lol As for the other games. Dublin strolled against Westmeath in the second half in the Leinster final and I have to say the weekend's hurling I saw was poor both the Dublin v Limerick and the Munster final yesterday Tipp deserved it but it was a dire game.

The view from this side of the Irish sea that concentrates on football http://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/irish/2014/1114/659304-euro-2016-preview-ireland-can-snatch-points/

I doubt anyone is naive enough to deny that were was certain sectarian and racists views held towards Irish Catholic immigrants in Scotland in the past and indeed this lovely document got an airing during the week http://www.scribd.com/doc/152217519/Menace-of-the-Irish-Race-to-our-Scottish-Nationality which a large number of Irish people had never heard of that document and I would say in Ireland the overwhelming view of Irish people is positive towards Scotland and its people. I would imagine some of the past injustices were passed down amongst the Irish emigrant community and there are grievances but time and life moves on. Anyway soon hopefully a football match will break out, it will tense with both teams misplacing passes and hitting the ball long and at times not retaining possession. I think there wil be lots of silly yellow cards which could come back to haunt both teams when it comes to games later in the group and key players will be missing. It has 1-1 or 1-0 written all over it and could be a proper shitfest ....

A line through McCarthy

Doyle is out injured not Long O'Neill will go for something like this in my opinion Forde Coleman Keogh O'Shea Ward Walters McCarthy Gibson Quinn McClean McGeady Keane But I would prefer McClean and McGeady attacking the fullbacks and Long upfront beside Keane and Hendricks for Quinn Edited: McCarthy is out so Gibson in

Suppose we are doing ok since with 17 players born in Ireland since football is not even the national sport !!! The spread of football in Ireland since 1988 is also noticeable since only 6 of the 17 are from Dublin with Donegal, Cork, Derry, Tipperary, Waterford, Galway and Wicklow also represented. As an Irish fan I don't care where someone is from, once they give 100% for the jersey.

Will be in Croke Park on Sunday for what should be a cracking days football. Great to see it a sell out. Hopefully our Roscommon minors beat Tyrone in the first game. I backed them at 16/1 for the All-Ireland and at 4/1 to beat Kildare in the quarter final. They should of beaten Mayo Minors in the Connacht final but let in soft goals and nearly won it with the last kick of the game crashing off the crossbar. Mayo took Monaghan to the cleaners last Sunday. As for the Senior game, Donaghy on the bench and sure to make an impact when he is sprung. I don't think its as cut and dry for Dublin. Kerry have not done much all summer and will love playing a hyped up Dublin. Hoping for a classic and anyone I know from Mayo is praying for Dublin to win as they seem fixated by the fact they will self destruct if its Kerry in the final. Its not the greatest Kerry team by any stretch but playing Dublin and the mythology of past encounters. I could see it being a draw. There will not be a kick of a ball in it either way by end.

I would agree that in rural areas FF and FG both wanted 3 seaters as most of the time it would be 2FF 1FG or vice versa and having a 4th seat left the option for Labour or a 2-2 split. I think that Donegal NE and SW remained virtually the same from 1961 till the present day with only slight thinkering around the edges. Of course following the reduction in Dáil seats for the next election. Donegal will be one big 5 seater which may return 2 FF, 2 SF and I FG. God help an independent candidate trying to canvas from Bundoran to Malin ......

On the issue of gerrymandering, Until after the 1977 General election and the infamous "Tullymander" which backfired badly on FG/Lab and gave FF a 20 seat majority. The government of the day would of selected the electoral boundary commissions. I imagine part of the problem with Donegal was population wise ....using electionsireland.org as a source. You will see that Donegal East has 4 Seats and Donegal West has 3 seats in 1957. The population of Donegal in 1951 was 132,000 people and in 1961 it was 114,000. The constitution states under article 16'2 states a constituency is entitled to one TD for a maximum of 30,000 people to a minimum of 20,000 people. So Donegal were due only 6 seats. I dont doubt that within Donegal TD's influenced which parts of the county were in North East and South West Constituency. William Sheldon took the last seat in Donegal East in 1957 and did not stand using electionsireland as a source in 1961 under the new boundaries.

In a strange way the EU has shown the way forward, educational qualifications can fit into the European Qualifications Framework for one. Most regulations come from the EU now anyway so there is a certain amount of harmonisation. Road Signs would not be a problem over time .....as when they come up for renewal they would just be changed to the green dual name type we use of course NI signposts are miles not KM and of course the fun of speed limits and that. Civil servants wise, our pay is much better than in the NIO. I get paid the same as someone who is 2 grades higher in the North. We could bribe the kids by letting them know you get your holidays in the last week of may in secondary school in non exam years or the second week of june for exam years. Its an emotive subject unification and there will be a lack of logic. I do think we were closer to a united Ireland 50 years ago than we are today. On the issue of SF voters most of them have never read the Republican Socialist manifesto of SF and the voters of Fermanagh and Tyrone are just as rural and conservative as the voters of my own Roscommon/South Leitrim home constituency. Politics would change in that regard. What would be interesting is that 20% of the vote in the Dáil would most likely guarantee Unionists a role in nearly every coalition government. It is in most cases idle speculation. The overwhelming majority have never considered a united Ireland unless singing a nation once again after 20 pints counts ...........