Cork fought back against a confident Kerry team to force a replay next Sunday in Croke Park.  Leading into the last six minutes Kerry's hopes of avenging the Munster Finals defeat were undone by  a remarkable comeback by the Rebels. It's only the third draw this decade between these two rivals. The replay is set for 2pm Sunday followed by the other semi between Tyrone and Wexford.

Yes, no comment about Tyrone thrashing Dublin, there's always next year. GO WEXFORD !! 

A quick round up.

Cork ended Kildare's dreams of advancing to the All Ireland Semi Finals with a score of 2-11 to 1-11, Cork now face Kerry(who beat Connacht Champs, Galway 1-21 to 1-16) on August 24th.

The Ulster champs Armagh lost to Wexford 0-12 to 1-14. Wexford will now wait for this weekend's Dublin Tyrone game to know their opponent in the semi-finals.

Congratulations

 to

 Padraig Harrington

PGA CHAMPION 2008

For those of you still keeping track (Alan) last weekend's games went as follows Kerry beat Monaghan by 1-13 to 0-13 and now meet Galway this Saturday in the SFC Quarter Finals. Kildare took care of Fermanagh 0-11 to 0-5 and face the Munster Champions Cork on Sunday in Croke Park which will also feature Cork hurlers in action against Kilkenny in the Hurling Semis.

Wexford beat Down in their qualifier 2-13 to 0-12 and earn the face off against the Ulster Champs Armagh this Saturday following the Galway Kerry game at Croker. Finally Mayo lost to Tyrone 1-09 to 0-13. Tyrone meet Dublin a week later August 16th at Croker whilst on the 17th Tipperary battle Waterford for the right to play in the All Ireland Hurling Championship.

The Olympic Games open this week, GOOD LUCK to all the athletes competing for Ireland. 

In 1956 Ron Delaney won a Gold medal for Ireland in the 1600yds (back then) now the 1500 metres. Claim to fame, Ron ran for Crusaders Athletic Club in Dublin, a club I have fond memories of. I was a member there from 1972 to 1976 and ran Paudie Lavelle, Sean Kearns, Brian Tansey to name a few. I wasn't necessarily in their league but i enjoyed the workouts. I visited their website recently and recognized a good few names from way back then. I ran cross country and middle distance till my mid thirties.           

Yeah I know it's still the summer holidays but I was just thinking the other day about my schooling when my mum told me my niece wouldn't get her leaving results till September or later. That's a bit stupid, how are they suppose to know what marks they got in order to get into Colleges. We used get our leaving results by the end of July and many's a pub would turn a blind eye or two to some underage drinking in celebration of getting out of school or sorrow now we had to get a job!!!

School, school was something we had to do, Irish was something we had to learn especialy if we wanted a civil service job. The monotony  of it was broken up by school trips to exciting places like GALWAY, NEWRY, God forbid a museum. This year my niece in Ireland went to Africa, they were doing charity work so fair play to them. But the notion of going abroad in the 1970's was absurd, never mind not even an inkling of going there. 6am in the school yard into the 52 seater coach and onto Galway, we'd have a fish and chip dinner and even buy a stick of rock(candy) with Salthill written in the stick Cool !!! 

My daughter is starting middle school and one of the schools she visited had field trips on a three year cycle to get this China, Paris or New York. Kids these days never had it so good. Guess I better be ready for loads of fundraisers.    

Armagh beat Fermanagh 1-11 to 0-08 to win the Ulster Championships. In the qualifiers round 2 Tyrone saw off Westmeath 0-14 to 1-07. They next face Mayo which will be a hard one. Monaghan beat Donegal for the second year running at this stage, 0-16 to 0-15 earning a chance to play Kerry. The Lillywhites saw off Limerick 1-11 to 0-11 and they take on Fermanagh next. Finally Laois lost to Down 1-15 to 2-14 who now face Wexford in the 3rd round. 

Hurling saw Cork  beat Clare by 2 points 2-19 to 2-17 and now play Killkenny while Waterrford squeeked past Wexford 2-19 to 3-15 and now meet Tipperary.

Dublin juniors won their 1st All Ireland Championship since 1960 beating Roscommon  0-13 to 0-07. Well done lads.

Well the weekend's sport surely had people happy. Congratulations to Padraig Harrington on his excellent win at St Andrews.  

Onto the football field we go, Dublin made it 4 in a row as Leinster Champions beating Wexford 3-23 to 0-9 at Croke Park. Wexford who hadn't been in a Leinster final since 1956, (an Olympic year as well-Ron Delaney won gold for Ireland in the 1600 yards) played a fine first half before Dublin open up all cyclinders, scoring a hat trick of second half goals from Diarmuid Connolly, Alan Brogan and Mark Vaughan. Armagh could only manage a draw against Fermanagh in the Ulster Finals and meet again next Saturday.

In the qualifiers Westmeath beat Tipperary handsomely 0-15 to 0-6. Monaghan had a squeeker against Derry winning 1-13 to 1-12 and Donegal sheared the Rossies 3-11 to 1-09. The Limerick Meath game saw plenty of scoring with Limerick coming out on top 4-12 to 4-03. Longford fell to Laois by a score of 0-11 to 1-10. Kildare squeezed by Cavan 1-16 to 1-15, Down thrashed Offaly 5-19 to 2-10 and finally Tyrone saw off Louth 1-18 to 1-10. 

Over to the clash of the ashes, Waterford beat offaly 2-18 to 0-18 and Galway lost to Cork 2-15 to 0-23. 

This coming weekend in a Senior Hurling Quarter Finals doubleheader Wexford meet Waterford at Thurles followed by Clare against Cork.

The football action centers on Saturday afternoon with round two of the qualifiers taking place.Tyrone host Westmeath and Donegal face monaghan. Later that evening Limerick meet Kildare and Laois play Down in Portlaoise.

Plenty of action these summer weekends. Follow the road to Croke Park and hope your team makes it there in September. 

Ireland is green, is, was and always will be. Long before Greenpeace, Ireland was green. Long before Waste Management was picking up your old newspapers and making a hefty fortune (Miami Dolphins/Florida Panthers) we were doing our bit to save the planet.

In 1972 I was in the boy scouts 71st Kilmacud Troop, we were into waste management/paper recycling then. The idea was for us to save the neighbourhood's papers and raise funds for our annual camp which was to be in Gilwell Park, England. As we all were more or less from the same neighborhood we divided up the roads to collect from between us. Even going as far as, "you doing one side of the road and I do the other". We would approach the resident and offer to take their daily papers away for them and make money for our camp trip. I believe we had to bundle them in hundredweights and then haul them down to the scout hall. We got so much credit per ton of papers collected. Quinnsworth the local supermarket lost a few trolleys for a while as we utilized them to haul our paper collection around the streets.  Every Wednesday night throughout the winter down at the den, the paper mountain would rise and rise till we had enough for the recyclers to take it away. That was the scout master's job I don't remember much about that. I know I had fun collecting the papers tying them up and hauling them down the road to the den, competing with my fellow scouts as to who collected the most. Unlike today's American papers with inches of flyers, the Irish papers were pretty straightforward broadsheets. People would have either the morning or evening paper or sometimes both. And then the Sunday papers as well. It was fun, the landfills were losing tons of paper to the boy scouts and we made money for our camp.

We did our bit to save the planet way back then. Who would have thought that nowadays they charge for a bag in the grocery stores just to be green.

Well a lot has happened this past few weekends. Kerry were beaten by Cork in the Munster Championships, good job there's a back door. Mayo lost to Galway in the Connacht Championship in Castlebar. 1-14 to 2-12. They'll need it too.

This weekend sees round one of the Football qualifiers Tipp. take on Westmeath, Monaghan v Derry, Donegal v Roscommon, Limerick v Meath, Longford v Laois, Kildare v Cavan, Offaly v Down and Louth take on Tyrone.

The Ulster Finals in Clones sees Armagh play  Fernmanagh and Dublin contest the Leinster Finals against Wexford at Croke Park.

Hurling action sees Waterford vervus offaly and Galway meet Cork.

Plenty to keep all fans happy.