Top Issue 1-2024

16 October 1997 Edition

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Sportsview: The fastest growing sport in Ireland

What's the fastest growing sport in Ireland? You're right, Women's Gaelic Football (or Ladies' Gaelic Football, as the old-fashioned gentlemen of Croke Park call it). And after watching last Sunday's All-Ireland Finals, it's not hard to see why. 15,000 spectators saw the type of flowing match which the men's senior championship only rarely reproduces.

Monaghan won the senior final for the second year in a row in a match which they thought they had sewn up. They led Waterford by nine points at half-time but with only two minutes of actual time left Waterford were two ahead. The (male) referee played over ten minutes injury time and by the final whistle Monaghan had won by two points.

These are the two class teams in Ireland and they look set to dominate for a while to come. But others are catching up and it won't be long before Croke Park tickets are as hard to find for a women's match as for a men's.

One thing, though, the level of fitness on Sunday has to be questioned. Too many players were dropping from cramp. Some winter training on a Donegal beach wouldn't go amiss.

 


Here we go again. Not Italia 90 or USA 94 but France 98. And in order to get there we have to witness the fight of the small nations. Plucky little Belgium stand in our way and we have to put all sentimentality out of our minds. There is a job to be done and it doesn't matter that the Belgians are the geriatrics of European football. They must be rolled over if the fair fields of France are to beckon for our lads.

It could have been Italy or Croatia (or almost anybody among the group of seven potential play-off opponents) and we would not even be worrying about the price of a pint of wine. But Belgium gives us hope.

 


Where I live I am surrounded by Celtic supporters. As I write this one particularly sad Celt has just returned from watching them play Dunfermline in the semi-final of the Scottish League Cup. He travelled by bus from Dublin, leaving at 8.00am on the morning of the match and returning immediately after the final whistle in order to catch the ferry. He got back at 7.00am.

It is a 23 hour trip through a sleepless drunken haze to watch Celtic take on the mighty Dunfermline. Why?

I asked my desperately hungover friend who really did look like he hadn't slept for a week. He thought I was mad for asking.

It's a funny old game.

By Tony McCabe

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland