A Feast of Sport
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I'd like to start my column this week by congratulating Danny North on the safe arrival of his little baby girl Mia-Grace. What a week it's been for one of my best mates in football. After two fantastic performances in front of the TV cameras in our previous games against Shamrock Rovers and Cork City respectively , including great finishes in each game, he now ventures into fatherhood.
I mentioned last week in my column that Danny has been excellent for us all season and his goals have kept us in contention for league and FAI cup honours. Yet again he stepped up to the plate against Cork City last Friday and fired us through to the semi finals of the cup with a wonderful finish after great build up play by Derek Pender and Stephen Bradley. After a solid defensive display after taking the lead through Danny's goal we were delighted to progress to the next round.
A special mention must go to the travelling Saints fans who were fantastic from the first whistle to the last. With support like that there is nothing to stop us from winning silverware this season. I'm also sure they enjoyed the half time performance of Sean Stewart in nets after confiscating Chris Bennions goalkeeper gloves. Sean is no more than 1 foot tall so I think its self explanatory from where their amusement would have came from!
On a serious note, Daryl Kavanagh deservedly picked up the Man of The Match award again after a truly mesmeric performance. The way Danny and Dil have been playing all season I'm not surprised there has been cross channel interest in them both. Obviously though, it's the squad as a whole who have got us in the great position we are at the moment ,and with competition for places intense to say the least, it bodes well for the rest of the season.
After Friday's game we were told we had the weekend off, which went down very well with the lads considering the ridiculous amount of games we have had over the last few months. What made this particular free weekend even better was the absolute feast of sporting action ahead, beginning with Ireland facing Australia in Pool C in the 2011 Rugby World Cup on Saturday.
After a truly heroic performance by the boys in green ,resulting in a 15-6 victory, it set up Sunday's day of events very nicely. The football fixtures went as follows : Celtic Vs Rangers, Liverpool Vs Spurs and Man United Vs Chelsea. Sandwiched in between them games was the All Ireland GAA Final of Dublin V Kerry. Celtic losing to Rangers was the only dampener on my weekend, as being a Man United fan I was delighted to see United beat Chelsea 3-1 at Old Trafford and also it was great to see Spurs stuff Liverpool 4-0 at White Hart Lane.
None of those games came close in terms of drama and action compared to the All Ireland Senior GAA final. I'm no GAA fan by any stretch of the imagination, mainly because I lost three school GAA finals in a row in Croke Park when I was younger, but with Dublin playing in the final I decided to jump on the GAA bandwagon and tune in. The last time Dublin had won the All Ireland title, Paul Curran and Dessie Farrell came into my Mary Queen of Angels primary school class to show it off and I was hoping that after so many years of hurt that we would finally bring Sam home.
With Dublin trailing against the all conquering Kerry it looked like Sam was heading to its usual destination. Through an incredible amount of effort and hard graft, Dublin clawed themselves back into the game and put themselves within a free kick of clinching the All Ireland title for the first time in 16 years. Up stepped Stephen Cluxton to confidently score the winning point and Croke Park went into raptures.
The whole city has been buzzing ever since and I'm sure one venue in particular must have been the place to be on Sunday night after Dublin Captain Bryan Cullen's declaration of " See you all in Coppers" in his victorious speech.
Unfortunately for every epic success in the world there is also epic failure and there is one man who will be wanting to forget this weekend for the remainder of his life. That man's name is ... Fernando Torres. I'm sure almost everybody has seen El Ninos's horror open goal miss at the weekend Vs Man United. Facebook pages like "FIFA 12 Achievement- Score an open goal with Fernando Torres" and " All these jokes about Fernando Torres are Hit & Miss" certainly won't help his confidence.
I for one am a massive Torres fan and although I "Liked" the pages and had a good chuckle watching the replays , I'm sure he will turn it around as he is a World Class player. Not to fear Fernando, it happens to the best of us. Just ask our very own Sean Stewart. Earlier in the season we played Athlone Town in the Leinster Senior Cup in Richmond Park and after scoring an absolute wonder goal from 30 yards, Sean misfired in front of an open goal from all of five yards in the last seconds of the game.
Although he has bounced back and proved he's a quality young player , with almost 100,000 Youtube Views , Sean will be no doubt be joining Fernando in future "Football's Funniest Videos". So for the people who haven't seen either miss here are both Youtube links :
