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Recent Articles

• Chocs away as usual suspects get back to business

  January 16, 2012 in Columns, Football, Merk, Sport

  MANY of us this week may have at last broken a self-imposed winter training ban of our own after an extended Christmas period. I personally spent more of December in a tin of Roses than my running shoes. I broke sweat once around the 27th when I fell asleep in front of the fire during [...]

• Frank’s tale throws legend into new focus

  January 11, 2012 in Columns, Football, Sport

  FOR me Frank O’Farrell was a sad, grey face sketched in 25-year-old newspaper print. As a young lad brainwashed by an uncle with a season ticket for the Stretford End before Ryanair brought it closer to home, my brother and I were swaddled in United red – despite the unease of a Leeds United supporting [...]

• Still flicking to kick….

  January 11, 2012 in Columns, Football, Sport

    First appeared in the Irish Examiner on December 23, 2011 ON Sunday morning, many of us will be woken by electronic bleeps and whirrs as new computer-powered gadgets and toys are plugged in, charged up and used for the first time. But in a world unmarked by Xboxes, the analogue sounds of Christmases past, [...]

• The straight-shooter

  November 23, 2011 in Columns

  “Be careful, there’s no panic,” Sean Baldwin says as he places the rifle in my arms and I look through the sights at a target the size of a saucer, 10metres down the hall at Morton Stadium last Tuesday morning. “Keep the finger on the trigger, it’s just the slightest movement, there’s no need to [...]

• Brought to book. The hard way

  October 19, 2011 in Books, Columns, Hurling

    THEY say everyone has a book in them. Paddy Coyne dragged it out kicking and screaming. Unemployment arrives at the door with plenty of baggage. Lots of us know it all too well these days. For the 35-year-old, Coyne, opportunity knocked too, however. The north Tipperary man no longer filled his days on the [...]

• Lamenting the days when boxing was the sport of kings

  October 19, 2011 in Boxing, Columns

  THE nights are drawing in on us, you’ll notice, ahead of another winter, like the cinema lights dimming before a movie. Having shuffled in from under another cloud-scarred sky of an evening, I enjoy kicking closed the door, sending the kettle towards its whistle-stop and snapping open a book like an umbrella. Bob Dylan explained [...]

• Ad break for Rory

  July 20, 2011 in Uncategorized

  FOR Don Draper, advertising is based on one thing: happiness. If I know anything about advertising after three scotch-soaked seasons of Mad Men, I know that Madison Ave’s finest ad man sold a lifestyle to America – not products. When he needs to flog cereal, he sells the image of the ideal family. Nylon tights [...]

• July 13, 2011 in Athletics, Columns, Golf, Sport

    “LEGS, arms, eyebrows, chest hair, nipples, inner thigh, everything. And I mean everything. I raised €2,500 that night but they took every bit of hair off me with the waxing,” says Ross Long as he thinks back on that night in the Gaelic Bar. The Carrigaline local organised a quiz night in the pub [...]

• Going down in family history

  July 5, 2011 in Columns, Cycling, Football, Sport

  LET’S talk a little cycling and football. But first some family history. William O’Doherty pulled on his apron as normal one morning in Cork city and walked to work behind the bar of the well-known Woodford Bourne public house on St Patrick’s Street. The year was 1912. He was in his early 20s and, it [...]

• Open for business

  June 29, 2011 in Columns

  THE IMF and EU own the deeds to the shop, our balance sheet isn’t looking too hot and the staff have long since clocked out but Ireland is open for business, our Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, is fond of saying. When you get a phone call from Flan Marsh in Clare, you realise it actually is. [...]