By Patrick Sharkey,
Episode 56: Westmeath aim to raid Orchard and send Saffrons packing – The GAA Zone podcast
Plans for a live referee mic at next Sunday’s Wexford County senior hurling final as part of the TV coverage, have had to be shelved due to a directive from the GAA at the national level. The novel initiative was trialed last Sunday for the Kerry senior hurling final on TG4 and was praised by viewers as an innovative development. A TG4 spokesperson confirmed to The42 today that they were set to employ the live referee mic again in next Sunday’s decider in Wexford, but the GAA has stepped in.
Dan Quirke gave a moving tribute to his son as over 1,000 mourners gathered in the Tipperary village of Clonoulty for the 24-year-old hurler’s Requiem Mass. Dylan Quirke played in the league.
Hundreds of people have attended a vigil for Dillon Quirke as his local GAA club Clonoulty-Rossmore led the tributes. Antrim had a solid league campaign until the final day when they lost out to Quirke’s Tipperary with former Antrim senior hurler Terrance ‘Sambo’ McNaughton talking about the league campaign saying: “You know, the past league was fantastic, we got what we set out to do, the biggest thing was to stay in that league. To get exposed to that level of hurling for another year for them young lads, I think the league was a massive success for us and it wouldn’t have taken a whole lot more to be a whole lot better.” People attended the GAA grounds of the Tipperary club.
Cork suffered All-Ireland senior camogie final heartache for the second year in a row as a late Sophie O’Dwyer goal and a Denise Gaule point pushed the title beyond their grasp and into grateful Kilkenny hands with a 1-13 to 1-12 win at Croke Park on Sunday. Since then, Davy Fitz has left Cork.
On the Friday after Kerry’s All-Ireland triumph, Jack O’Connor hit the road home from Dingle to St Finian’s Bay in south Kerry and the official homecoming in Dromid. Someday Antrim could have similar celebrations and Mr.Naughton sees division one as important to achieving that saying: “It’s the most important thing. It’s premier, it’s ahead of everything. To me really, that is the way that we’re going to be able to close the gap and get exposed to that level and a consistent regular basis”.
Flo Roche, from Poppin tree in Ballymun, has vowed to make the most of every day she has left with her youngest son Calvin (22), who was born with a mental and physical disability. Dublin GAA helped his birthday celebrations and just like Antrim, they benefited from a full league campaign with McNaughton saying: “Yeah, I think this year was an important year. It’s every year, there is pressure like management is a results-based game like and he got some very good results and probably come towards the end of the year we were a wee bit start, stop. Eh, I have been on record it says that I thought that we had a real chance to take a skeleton in Cork. But it came a week after the Joe McDonagh which wasn’t ideal for us. And that there like the first half against Cork we were the better team. We missed a lot of simple chances. We could have been in six, seven points up.”
With the majority of top-tier hurling counties set to have a new manager in place for 2023, it has been an intercounty off-season of change. It won’t be a season for Antrim however who are coming back.
Erin’s Own GAA will hold their Golf Classic on Friday, August 19th in Castle comer GC. Antrim won the Joe McDonagh cup last year from the funding of clubs and Sambo talked about it saying: “I think we were favorites to win. Eh and we did win it obviously but the final like we started off If we were going to carry apart and McKenna then stopped. That is what it is meaning about the start”.
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