The most romantic field sport in Ireland is not hurling or football, but a specific variant of both codes. Junior GAA is a weird and wonderful world and you do not need me to delve into its many charms.
It has provided many wonderful moments down the years, the latest being the wonderful spectacle of a certain Irish back row forward terrifying the opposition in Carlow the other day.
Here is the brief but delightful run through of some of the sport's many other fine moments.
1. Technology
This football boot was not advertised by a booted and suited Eric Cantona and a host of continental looking galacticos housed in a strange cage. But junior footballers are not the sort to be impressed by stuff like that. Especially not the members of Tracton GAA in Minane in Co. Cork.
2. The refs at junior level have a Clive Thomas like stubborness
This ref wasn't letting this goal stand. He told them the free was going to be the last puck. Rather like the amazingly bull-headed Clive Thomas back in 1978, he wasn't for turning.
3. Goalkeepers
A lesser man, more seduced by cosmopolitan snake-oil would have opted to punch this ball, or go all David Simms on us and tip the ball over the bar. No, no this goalkeeper was going to catch this ball in the traditional manner and deal with the consequences.
4. The journalism
From the much neglected but also much mythologised world of Kilkenny football, this match report from Tullogher Rosbercon GAA is a masterpiece worthy of Wright Thompson or Hugh McIlvanney, brilliantly side-stepping and skewering the cliches of GAA reportage.
5. The managers
Sensible man-management. These men eschew commando style training. Pat Spillane would approve. Jim McGuinness, take note. Budd Cotter
H/T Darren Cleary
6. Appropriate celebrations
Arsenal should have celebrated the FA Cup in this manner. Carberry lorries chugging through North London. Imagine...
7. The morality like
*Insert rant about the Premier League prima donnas and their patent moral inferiority to GAA players here. Then direct people to this story. They might be a senior team but a junior team would do likewise.
