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Weekly Notes - 16th August 2006Where have I put these sanguinary notes (sanguis being Latin for that red liquid flowing in the veins)? Valuable writing hours have been lost in a futile search. A usually reliable filing system has let me down on this occasion!! What notes is one talking about anyway? They were the jottings taken from Junior B guru, Philip Smullen, about his charges' league game v Avondale in Rathdrum. Memory, a poor substitute for the written word, tells me that they won comfortably enough but cannot provide any detail of the game itself. Why not contact Philip again? Easier said than done! Philip is, at this moment, sojourning en famille in foreign parts and, unfortunately, will not be available for sideline duty for the Junior B championship game v Laragh on to-morrow, Thursday, night in Roundwood. His urgings will be sorely missed so we are hoping for a large contingent of supporters to offset this vocal deficit. Our game against Laragh in the League was a close encounter and we are not expecting that to-morrows game will be otherwise.Tu viens Dimanche (are you coming Sunday)? is a question frequently heard during the week in the "My Goodness" Irish pub (French owner) in Amiens, France. What are they talking about, you may ask. Believe it or not ( it is truly sad that it is a matter of incredulity to many of the people in this country that foreigners can see merit in our games which can more than hold their own against all the other field games for skill content, spectacle, athleticism and excitement generation) they are talking about training for le foot Gaelic. Éire Óg's own Míde Ní Shúilleabháin has introduced the game to the pub's multicultural customers and up to 25 of them can be seen playing the game on Sunday mornings in the local park. They enjoy it hugely - much faster than soccer they say, and far better as an exercise medium. They have their efforts filmed and then analyse them on the pub's video afterwards! There has been a bit of a lull in activities, particularly at juvenile level, over the first two weeks in August. So the column has entered a "silly season" equivalent; space has to be filled and current copy is at a premium. An opportunity to give recognition to the happenings in one of the areas which have had minimal exposure during the season viz. the u-12 footballers, specifically their recent match against Emmets. This was a game that aroused passions - a closely contested local derby with no quarter given within or without the white line. Given that we were well ahead at the break, the result - we lost by 4 points - was a disappointment. For the second half Emmets moved their big centre-field into goal and therein lay the main source of their victory. His bulk and his agility presented an impenetrable barrier to our hard-working forwards. We did have a steady point turnover but the concession of a few soft goals led to our undoing. The team cannot be faulted for its efforts but it could not overcome the handicap of the absence of a number of key players - it had to raid the u-10 larder to make up the fifteen. Maedhbh Deeney, James Smullen, Raymond Crotty, Darah Callan and David Crosbie were particularly prominent in a wholehearted team performance. |
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