Last Saturday, as a general election campaign swirled at our door, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, I thought the same while Croke Park hunkered down under the bright lights. Earlier, as the bulbs warmed over Dublin’s biggest stage, I met a man who boasts the scars of many a campaign of his own.

For someone who earns his living swinging high amongst the branches with a saw, one imagines, clamped between his teeth, you’d expect Noel O’Leary to know where The Big Tree is. The Dublin watering hole is one station on the pilgrimage to Croker for many GAA supporters in the summertime. He must have rolled past the Dorset St pub behind a coach window on countless occasions though the seasons with Cork’s football panels.

You don’t win All-Irelands by looking out the window at the lads in the pub though, I suppose.

I knew how to get there. As a student in a college up the road in my day and a one-time resident of Drumcondra, the last time I was over the threshold of the bar I was hanging from the rafters in a retro jersey on a Wednesday night ‘County Colours’ night. Last Saturday, however, I was part of a Special Olympics panel discussion with John Fogarty of this parish and The Star’s Peter Sweeney. (As someone said at the time, I do (ITALICS PLEASE) like talking about my charity work).

A couple of hundred feet away, Dublin were beating the All-Ireland hurling champions under a carpet of cotton-wool fog. Jedward were/was clearing their throat beneath the Hogan Stand in preparation for their Croker debut and over our shoulders on TV screens, Crawley Town impressed at Old Trafford.

In this corner of the capital though, we were to talk football ahead of the Rebels’ clash with the Dubs.

The star was the Cork footballer amongst us. The Kilnamartyra man was present only because he had been sent off the previous Sunday in Tralee. Red is Noel O’Leary’s colour.
And like Superman’s kryptonite, the green-and-gold awakens something inside him. He left the Kingdom with two points and another ban after an off-the-ball tussle with Barry John Keane.

Despite never darkening the door of the Big Tree before, the tree surgeon found his way into the bar and listened intently from the audience with a couple of friends from home. It keeps a journalist honest when one of the association’s toughest customers is peering over the lip of a jar at you as you waffle about the merits of swarm defence or whatever. One suspects he can spot a spoofer.

Eventually the emcee Marcus O Buachalla of Pembroke Communications asks O’Leary to join the panel. He doesn’t want to, naturally enough but peels himself off the high stool, and plonks in next to the panelists.

First query: ‘Paul Galvin: friend or foe?’

“That’s a very unfair question,” a lady in the front row offers from her seat, “That’s a very unfair question,” she repeats.
O’Leary has his arms folded and his head dropped into the mic with a wry, bashful smile across his face. Okay we’ll move on. His supporter in the crowd smiles and winks.

Last year ahead of the All-Ireland football final with Down the Cork County Board produced pen pics of the squad members with neat biographies and interesting tidits. One of the questions – what’s your favourite piece of technology – drew predictable responses from the players. Most appreciated the iPod, the Sky-plus hard-drive or the smart phone. I’d be bereft without any of the three for more than a 15-minute period to be quite honest. One player answered differently: my chainsaw.

The arborist’s work-day would take a lot longer to digest without the teeth of a chainsaw. But no one heard its distinctive brrrr-brrrr-brrrrr in the Big Tree last weekend.

O’Leary spoke quietly and intelligently. And the cartoon hard man played the politician’s role as well as any on your ballot paper today. He sprinkled praise on former team-mates and coaches – Billy to Tompkins to Counihan. Weighed the prospects of every serious football county carefully and betrayed none of the animosity that surely fuels his relationship with his near neighbours across the border in Kerry.

As the Sam Maguire sat in the foreground on a pedestal 10 feet away, he concluded quietly: “There’s a lot done, more to do.” Or to use another Fianna Fáil catchcall from yesteryear: Showtime!

Adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first appeared in the print version of the Irish Examiner – a couple of weeks ago, forgot to post.

Kevin Lenane stood in the usual spot in the The Merchant — an Irish pub in the centre of Seville. Just around the corner the busy bus station is shuttling tired professionals home for the night after a run-of-the-mill Tuesday in the city. Inside the city’s most popular Irish bar however, it’s St Patrick’s Day, 2009. And grand plans are hatched.

Lenane puts his drink on the bar, leans in to make himself heard above The Pogues and broaches a subject that’s been on his mind, with half of a dozen of his fellow ex-pats.

“I had this thing in my mind for a few years — setting up a GAA club — but there was never the numbers there,” Lenane says, when I call him at his desk this week. “There was always the older guys but we didn’t think we’d have enough to field a team.”

Then St Patrick oiled the wheels. “We were having a pint — probably having too many pints, if I’m honest — and we got talking about it again. There was seven or eight of us and we said we’d give it a go and surely we’d pick up a few more along the way.”

Some 125 years after Cusack and the lads sank a few at the founding of the Association in Liberty Square, Thurles, the Éire Óg Seville club was formed on Calle de Canalegas, Sevilla.

The Waterford man — an accomplished footballer in his own right — has been in Spain for over a decade. It was nice to unpack a piece of home which he had long since left in a dressing room corner back home.

“I came out here 11 years ago — I chased a girl. That old story,” he says with an audible smile. “I met her in Cork — I was working as a telecommunications engineer and she was studying.

“So I decided to chance my arm out here and see if I could take to Spanish life. I started working in a bar because I had no Spanish. But I worked my way up and I’m now in an office job which is a completely different ball game. We got married a couple of years ago and we have a daughter now too so I’m well settled.”

There was a handful like him around in Andalusia; those who crammed under the big screen on Sundays for big matches beamed from home. They pulled on the O’Neill’s nicks and dusty studs once again.

“It was November by time we got out to train [after the Paddy’s Day summit] but there was only a few of us turning up — four or five — and we thought the club might fold before we even played a game. But after Christmas — miraculously — there was a few students turned up and guys who we didn’t even know existed in the area.”

‘Los verdirojos’ or the green-and-reds were born. A motley crew of Irish ex-pats, English friends, Scandinavians, scholars and locals tugged on the adopted colours. The club made their debut in the Spanish championship — yes, there is such a wonderful thing — last year. This Saturday they host the Iberian GAA championship.

Teams from Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Marbella, A Coruña and Pamplona will take part in the event which will be held in the shadow of Seville’s famous old Olympic Stadium. Referees will be jetted in from the old sod. Games are 11-a-side, and games last 20 minutes. It’s a serious business.

“We made our debut in the Spanish championship in Marbella in 2010 which was a massive achievement. How did we get on? Not too good, to be honest. If there was six teams in it, we probably came sixth,” says Lenane. But the only way is up. Last year they went to Madrid and only lost out to Valencia in the semi-final by a kick of a ball.

This year, on their own citrus-scented turf, they mean business.

“We have an even better team now, having been together a few years and have gotten to know each other and improved. But more than that, we have a handful of Spanish lads too which is great. They got involved because they either saw the posters we put around the place or watched the games in the bars with us or experienced the game when they were travelling.”

And as in La Liga’s duopoly, the big boys with the targets on their backs this weekend wear famous crests on their chests.

“The heavyweights would be Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia are coming along now too. Pamplona is made up of entirely Basques. It’s an amazing achievement. The standard? I played senior for Ardmore and minor for the county. And I’d say the standard would be Junior A, maybe, in general. But saying that, a Barcelona or Madrid would match up to a good senior club side, I’d say, no problem.”

Win, lose or draw, however, The Merchant Bar will heave afterwards. And more plans will be made. “The best thing about it is the social aspect,” concludes Lenane, “I’m out here over a decade now and it’s good to get out and reconnect with your roots. And it’s an excuse to get out for a jars. Which is a big plus at my stage.”

Contact: Adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, February 18, 2011

Believe it it or not, I was once the feckless type of young man who’d only wear a suit when I reached the cup final in Championship Manager 97-98 on the Amiga 1200.

I drank out of wet glasses in strange bars. Cruised around in leathers on my motorbike (chugged into town in Dunnes Stores wet gear on a one-mirrored moped).

I lost phones, jobs, teeth and friends — in the breadth of a typical weekend.

Yes sir, life was good.

Then, last week, I asked a human girl to marry me. She said yes — and as is tradition in these things, we’re to be wed.

If I have my way George O’Callaghan will officiate the ceremony in front of the Shed at Turner’s Cross — but, whether or which, it’s happening, ladies. Deal with it.

But what of the rest of you wretched lot — destined, I know it seems, to spend your lives alone. Fear not, I haven’t forgotten about you.

Neither has Dermot Lawless. The Donegal native was amongst our number four years ago. Single, he knocked about the social scene the normal way — and eventually cracked open the laptop, fired up the modem and logged into a dating website.

And what do you know. When I call him this week, the woman sat beside him — his fiancee — is a lady he met then, online, four years ago. Hey, this internet thing just might catch on.

Last month, Lawless — who spends his days building websites for other people as part of his day job — launched his own dating site; but this one is a little bit different.

LoveGAA.ie is the first place where those who make the annual pilgrimage to Semple Stadium or Croker and spend Saturdays and Sundays throughout the year pointing the car to the local club for training or meetings or pints or whatever, can meet online — and see, hopefully, a romance blossom.

“It’s only coming up on its one-month birthday now,” says Lawless when I ring him one evening this week, after his day’s work is done.

“I came up with the idea while watching an advertisement for a dating website during the Donegal versus Clare match of the All-Ireland Football Championship in July.

“The ad said they could find a partner based on 29 levels of compatibility, but I thought there really is only one level of compatibility — whether your partner likes GAA games or not.

“Ultimately, you know that you’ve met your soul-mate when they stand beside you in the rain at a match, or shout at the one on telly just as loudly as you do.

“And as I looked around afterwards in the paper and online and there was dating services — very good ones — for every type of sub-section of society.

“There’s a lady in Dublin who has one for golfers I believe, and in the UK there’s special ones for Jewish people to Muslims and everything in between. So it was clear there was a gap there.”

And like Cilla used to say every Saturday tea-time, should I buy a hat? Well, one month in, perhaps it’s better the wedding bells are silent yet.

“There hasn’t been any success stories yet, I’m afraid — but it’s really early on, isn’t it. I’ve had a few e-mails from guys to let me know that arrangements have been made to meet up and whatever so it’s all going on.

“The reaction in general has been brilliant — absolutely fantastic. You wouldn’t believe it either with the people overseas — I’ve been getting interest all over the world — people in Britain, the US, Australia — all with an interest in gaelic games and meeting someone else.

“We’re geared up now and have about 1,000 members — and they’re all very, very active. They’re all interacting themselves online whether its sending little icebreaker messages through the site or Microsoft Messenger — it’s really great,” he adds.

And in a world where the gaelic games offer us a parcel of old-fashioned community and allows people to meet in the natural, easy way, Lawless thinks that social networks will do no harm alongside it in the future.

“Many of us are no longer socialising as much as we used to — the opportunity to meet someone is not what it once was. Online dating gives a refreshingly clear opportunity to meet a partner.’’

The site, which is open to anyone over the age of 18, is growing exponentially with members from counties all over Ireland looking for that special someone who loves their team as much as they do.

And though the technology on these sites can sometimes draw on psychology, sociology and economics — sometimes it’s easier just to keep it simple.

“Just to make sure that we have all the bases covered, we have personality matching too… you never know, that Cork/Kerry rivalry might just be too much,’’ he adds.

Contact: adrianjrussell@gmail.com. Twitter: @adrianrussell

this column first appeared in this morning’s Irish Examiner newspaper.

While you sit there on the train or in the canteen or outside the school gate, ponder this one: what’s the connection between hurling in north Kerry and Hollywood superstar Brad Pitt? As Castelisland man Con Houlihan often wrote: read on.

The star of films like Oceans 11 — whose allegiance in the Kingdom’s senior hurling championship is sadly yet unknown, though in Fight Club he had the thighs of someone who trains regularly on the dunes of Banna Strand — is currently filming the movie Moneyball, a big-budget production based on the best-selling and extremely-influential book by Michael Lewis.

In the film, Mr Jolie will play Billy Beane, the charismatic manager of the Oakland A’s baseball franchise who ushered in — by achieving unlikely success at the modest franchise — a new, modern era in the uber-traditional sport. Beane essentially applied statistics — or the science of sabermetrics as it is known — to building his teams.

Where the conventional wisdom in the game insisted one needed athletic, strong-jawed pitchers, Beane studied the numbers, trusted them and bought soft-waisted, jowly men. But they threw as fast.

As one of his former teammates remarked in the book, Beane ‘could talk a dog off a meat wagon’ and so he is cast comfortably as an irresistible underdog hero. ‘At its centre,’ we’re told ‘is a man whose life was turned upside down by professional baseball, and who, miraculously, found a way to return the favour.’ But while the sport was spun upside down by Beane, it revolved on another’s axis.

Over the quarter of a century one man named Bill James worked away in his home – for the love of it really — on player evaluation, player development, and baseball strategy, giving birth to sabermetrics.

For years a prophet in the wilderness, James was essentially ignored by the Greek chorus of the game’s elite. Until that is Beane applied his work and won championships because of it.

The famous Boston Red Sox eventually invited James up out of his basement office and hired him as a senior adviser. Depending on what twists the Merseyside drama takes in the next day or so, Liverpool fans may well see him sitting next to new owners soon – as well as Boston wunderkind general manager Theo Epstein, a disciple of James who brought the Red Sox their first World Series win in decades in 2004.

Beane on the other hand has spoken of his deep respect for Arsene Wenger – Moneyball’s natural heir in European football, perhaps.
But where is its application in Gaelic games, if any? Liam Sheedy stepped down recently after two seasons of exhaustive work – including, we’re told, use of statistics. But even if he isn’t to fill the Beane role of introducing the game to another way of thinking from the sideline, we already have a man filling the Bill James part at home.

Kevin Deely is a software engineer based in Galway who runs the wonderful hurlingstats website. A treasure trove of rare information, the blog is a treat for hurling nerds and those out to settle a pub argument.

Started in 2003, Deely offers detailed analysis mined from hurling’s championship action from the number of pointed sideline cuts in a given year to the best rookies of the 2010 season. It’s obviously a labour of love.

“There’s a reasonable amount of work goes into it. I’ve tried to make it easier by taking some of the drudgery out of it,” he said this week, ” When I started it off – I was doing it manually, going through newspapers and imputing the information into a database I set up and the website reads that from the database.

“Then to make it a little bit easier I wrote a programme that does the same thing but programmatically. So for one match it takes about five-10 minutes, I’d say.”
What prompted such devotion to the figures? “You know yourself; you’d often have arguments about who scored what or whatever. I really think that this information should be on the web. And apart from Wikipedia – where guys have filled in a lot of gaps themselves — that info isn’t there. And the GAA website should have everything as they’re the keepers of the archive,” says the 37-year-old, who grew up swinging a hurley in the picturesque Ballyheigue.

“So I decided to it for myself. I thought that this will be a fun project to do and that’s how I started. I got it going in 2003 and I had great intentions of going through archive to pull out the stats but I just haven’t had the time unfortunately. The fact that it only goes back so far is always nagging at me; like this year Henry Shefflin became the top scorer of all time – and ideally you should be able to have all that data at your finger tips; when he scored, against whom, how does it compare to Ring.”

So can a binary code be useful to the poets on the hurling sideline next summer? “Stats only tell a certain part of the story but it’s another way at looking at things. I know the US sports are very focused on stats and they have a very standard way of comparing and contrasting players’ performances going back over the years. And as soon as someone breaks a record you have it all there. I wish the GAA was alike that. But it’s probably in its infancy.”

Visit: hurlingstats.com/blog for more

Twitter: @adrianrussell adrian.russell@Examiner.ie

This column first appeared in this morning’s Irish Examiner newspaper

We have just agreed a deal to buy the Jim Stynes documentary and hope to show it within the next couple of months.

What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care.

That, possibly, summed up my ill-informed and indifferent attitude to the AFL Grand Final between St Kilda and Collingwood last weekend as I lay, blank-faced and in my Coco-Pop-stained SuperTed pyjamas on the couch watching the biggest game in the Aussie Rules calendar. Though I may have started watching out of stubbornness (I’ll get the value out of this Sky subscription yet!) and continued to follow the game due to a heady mixture of laziness and ill-health (man flu and a hangover), I completely lucked out.

What unfolded vividly and loudly on my screen was a gripping finale to the long season Down Under which eventually saw the two Melbourne clubs – playing in the famous MCG, of course – finish with 68 points each at the final siren.

Sleeveless antipodean men lay prostrate and spent throughout the oval. The two deflated captains, shaking their heads vacantly, wandered slowly towards the field’s centre where they were cruelly interrogated like shocked road traffic accident survivors at the scene as cars fireballed over their shoulders.

A crowd of 100,016 emotional Victorians looked completely freaked out by the first draw since 1977, as if the sport could not compute and the Australian admirable, hard-wired need for a result – one way or the other – was short-circuiting. Please, reader, watch the replay tomorrow if you can. The first game, at least, was poetry.

In the same city and at the same time, Jim Stynes continued his own battle towards another personal victory – and it’s a stalemate there too at the moment.

Stynes of course is a legend in Melbourne. I once picked his autobiography Whatever It Takes off a bookshelf in Sydney, cracked it open and was amazed at the unfamiliar Aussie story written in an Irish accent.

Shipped off to Oz as part of the grandly-named ‘Irish Experiment’ – when Ricky Nixon was but in short talent-scout trousers – the rangy Ballyboden St Enda’s man became both the scheme’s pioneer and its greatest success. Garry Lyon – a Demons star at the time – this week wrote in The Age newspaper about the pasty Dublin specimen that shouldered open the locker room door in a pair of O’Neill’s shorts all those years ago.

“To have a tall, skinny, pale Irishman walk into the change rooms at Melbourne Football Club and be encouraged to embrace the concept of him becoming an AFL footballer was asking a hell of a lot,” he wrote.

“He couldn’t kick, he had no understanding of the most fundamental elements of the game, and for the best part of a year, I was pretty sure he didn’t speak English.”

Yes, Garry, to paraphrase, George Bernard Shaw: we are two nations divided by a common language – but a common game too, I suppose. And from this low base, Stynes went on to become the best player in the game. Seriously; he was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame and is the only soul from outside of Australia to win the prestigious Brownlow Medal.

Last Sunday night, 24 hours after the white heat of the Grand Final had cooled, Australia tuned into yet more emotional drama on TV: ‘Every Heart Beats True: The Jim Stynes Story’. Footie takes a back-seat in this chapter however.

In July, 2009, Stynes held an emotional press conference, which saw his unique Dub-Aussie lilt crack under the strain as he informed the public that he had developed cancer. Tests revealed that it had spread to other parts of his body, including his brain. By then, as president of his beloved Melbourne, Stynes was reinvigorating the struggling club. He intended to continue the process.

In April this year, it was revealed that his condition worsened and three days later he had surgery to remove tumours from his brain. The documentary is heartbreaking stuff. It’s hard to watch comfortably as a giant is, for now at least, laid low and vulnerable. Smiling through bandages as he’s fed into medical machinery, sporting metaphors are redundant. But he takes plenty of inspiration from the lessons he’s learnt from a life in the oval.

“I was probably addicted to anything exciting,” he shrugs, his head cleanly shaven, “then I took on the role as president of

Melbourne footie club. So I was getting a bit concerned that it was probably a bit… a bit too much of the ego.

“When faced with death, the ego just drops its barriers,” he adds later. But as well as the ready smile that won so many friends as he built a life half a world away, so too we’re treated to the Irish steel in his eyes – the grit that won that won him the Brownlow in 1991 – when he’s told of new cancerous spots.

Jim Stynes is no stranger to overcoming challenges. He usually picks pretty tough ones. Until last year, when one chose him.

And in rough week for Ireland – and yes, as more of her sons and daughters flood towards Australia and elsewhere – let’s remember the path Stynes beat.

Garry Lyon – once his most sceptical teammate in the Demons dressing room – was won over, and long before last Sunday’s film aired.

“This is an insight into a man who is indeed different. A man who makes me want to be a better person every time I talk to him. You will feel that way after seeing this documentary,” he wrote. “There has been much talk about heroes in recent times. Jim Stynes is the yardstick for heroes. There is none better.”

adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

The great world spins towards another All-Ireland Sunday. Around the world – for an hour or two at least – Irish feet will not make footprints on the fine sands of south–east Asia’s beaches. Friends will meet on familiar corners of oblivious American cities before pushing the door open on a little wet embassy with a satellite pointed homewards. Phones of those abroad will buzz with succinct updates – but never often enough in the last few crucial moments.

John Canty is a 26-year-old from Innishannon in Cork. After two happy years working as a pensions administrator in Zurich’s Dublin office, like a lot of guys his age, he set the Facebook status thus: going to Oz with the lads for 12 months.

And he was off.

Two years later, when I ring him this week, he picks up the mobile in Zanzibar.
“With the financial crisis and everything else I’ve been gone now for longer than I expected. I just arrived in Zanzibar this morning and the place is incredible. The people are really genuine, unlike in some touristy places and there’s a real happiness in the air, I must say.

“I went travelling with my friends but I left them all in Australia and I’m on my own now. But I’m not on my own really – there are plenty of German and English backpackers – and I usually just slot in with those groups.

“I’ve been trying to suss out where to watch the match. There’s an Irish bar in Dar es Salaam called – listen to this – ‘O’Willy’s Irish Whisky Tavern’. And I’ve been talking but there are Premiership games on and they’ll be showing them. I’ll probably just stay here ‘til Monday and listen to it on the radio in an internet cafe.”

A brother of Cork senior hurler, Kevin, John will surely soon be back swinging a hurley with Valley Rovers – but, like Cork and Down, there’s a few peaks to be scaled yet.

“I might try Kilimanjaro – I’ll see how the money is – and the idea then is to circumnavigate Lake Victoria so it’ll be Rwanda, Kenya, maybe fly out of Ethiopia. I told the parents I’ll be home by Christmas. So we’ll see how we go.”

He’ll nearly run into our troops somewhere so. Comdt Ronan Corcoran picks up a crackling phone line in Uganda. Part of a European mission to the country, the officer shows immediately that you can take the boy out of the Kingdom, but…

“I’m from Killarney and to be honest it’s going to be very strange to not be watching my county in the third week of September. I’m not being cocky or arrogant – but growing up in Kerry, it’s what you associate with.”

Sorry you’re breaking up there, Cmdnt…

“But I’ll be cheering for the Rebels this Sunday. Am I sure? I am; we have two Cork lads in our small unit out here. And I’ll certainly be cheering them on,” he adds.

“I’m in Kampala and there’s one Irish pub, Bubbles O’Leary’s – very unusual name. Two Irish lads have it here and they brought the bar itself all the way from Dundalk. There’ll be a gang of ex-pats in there and there should be good craic. The locals come in obviously and they don’t know what to make of us, the Mzungus, as they call white people – but its good fun.”

Now imagine twirling the globe or Google Earth westwards on the same morning. Treasa Smyth from Cobh is winding through the broad streets of New York City from her home in Queens to a small studio on a college campus in the Bronx where she will present the station’s Sunday Game coverage.

“I usually open with two pieces of music – this year it will be the Banks and the Mountains of Mourne. That gets us off on a nice note and tells people what we’re about as well as paying tribute to the teams,” says Treasa, wife of ESPN soccer pundit Tommy – who started the annual broadcasts for the Irish in the Big Apple.

“We take the feed live from RTE – but the station in the Bronx is non-commercial so it’d be fined about $150,000 if there were adverts aired. So when they go to the breaks in Dublin, I come in and give bits of information about the teams, managers or the jerseys this year or whatever.

“I love doing it; it keeps me… well for that day I’m home again. People can find the pictures live these days if they like but we still have a lot of people in hospitals, cops, nurses who listen. And you’d be so surprised at the amount of second-, third-, even fourth- or fifth-generation Americans who sit down and listen every year.

“I really don’t know how many people we get every year – but if it didn’t go out there’d be a riot,” she adds.

As Colm McCann wrote in his New York-based novel about an Irish priest, a French tight-rope walker and so much more: ‘The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.’

Adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This piece of indigenous hip-hop is more intercounty than Intergalactic.

And as fan-produced All-Ireland final songs go recently… it’s pretty good. But I’m biased.

Somewhere south of the Mason-Dixie, however, Caleb Followill is spinning in his skinny jeans.

She reads the editorial in the morning newspaper (possibly the Irish Examiner), while on her train commute to work.

Later, on the way home from the office she picks up the evening paper.

* I realise referencing the Swedish four-piece may be percieved as uncool – but this particular song came to my attention when included on the Pitchfork 500. I was also living (temporarily) in a loft in New York’s Chinatown at the time. So I’m still MOST CERTAINLY COOL OK? **

**I’m borrowing this asteriks and italics thing from Joe Posnanski’s excellent blog

Anyway, the point is that now they might also sing about the latest iPhone app as Agnetha fiddles with her smartphone on the Metro journey to the office every morning.

The top-flight English soccer season got underway on Saturday and as I was out and about I had to rely on my soccer Saturday app for info on how badly my Fantasy Football team were doing.

And, to paraphrase Carrie Bradshaw’s clunky sex-column writing: that got me thinking… what other sports apps are worth a download. Here’s the few I have installed and if you’ve any suggestions, do let me know.

For any Dublin fans *spit* looking for news on their doomed build-up to the All-Ireland semi-final this weekend or canny Cork fans *high-five* who want to view the Blue hype for themselves than the excellent new Hill16 app is a must.

I like a bit of baseball and the MLB at bat app, left, is pretty class – especially when the Yankees and Red Sox games are stretching to almost four hours these days.

When the GAA aren’t busy constructing an eight-foot tall fence in their underground lab, they’re creating a nifty little app. How can one organisation take so many backward steps and live in the past so often, and at the same time be the most progressive and forward-working organisations – preofessional or not – in the country? Anyway, it’s a good app.

I also use Livescore, RTÉ GAA news, ESPN and Sports Illustrated. Any other recommendations?

NOTE: I’d hoped to include screen grabs of all these but Flickr is absolutely wrecking my head. All of a sudden it won’t let me link an image through the URL onto WordPress. Embedding is still fine but then everything is centred. The one I did include is uploaded straight from the PC here. But Gavin Sheridan told me, when helping me set this blog up, to firstly not feed the Gremlins after midnight and secondly, use FLickr to upload pics or else a server in southern California will suddenly explode and kill many, many Apple fanboys. Is this correct?

I realise I’ve now pulled back the curtain, reader, and spoiled any mystique which surrounded the magical process of operating this little corner of the internet.