One of the most impressive aspects of it is that they have the real life player names - according to their website they have ” the 32 Irish Inter-County, New York and London Senior Hurling panels, which comprise of over 1,000 real-life Hurling stars, including D.J Carey, Ken McGrath, Brian Lohan and Eugene Cloonan”. This is one aspect that seriously let down the other GAA offering out there, Gaelic Football on the Playstation, it didn’t have any real players.
The company is apparently based in Nenagh in Tipperary, it’s great to see a local Irish software company producing a quality GAA product. Their website seems to be still under development but they have background on themselves and the product on
their “About” page.
After 4 week bans on the 4 Clare and 3 Cork players were confirmed we get a reactionary statement from the Clare county board chairman suggesting they could pull out of the championship. Why on earth would they do that? It’s all to do with the parochial, sense of injustice, no one respects us attitude that seems to have a hold on most smaller GAA county boards and officials. They’re players were involved in a very bad looking fight before the game had even started, they fully deserve to be banned and they’re lucky at 4 weeks and 1 game that it’s a relatively light ban. It’s only going to affect them for the first round of the qualifiers.
However their manager Tony Considine has said that they wouldn’t be pulling out. Realistically it’s highly unlikely they would and the comment was just a heat of the moment one.
Cork have the more pressing problems as they prepare for Sunday’s game against Waterford without the services of three very key players, Donal Og Cusack, Diarmuid O’Sullivan and Sean Og O’Hailpin. John Gardiner was freed to play after he was cleared of any wrong doing. Waterford may have been favourites anyway but this will certainly make them odds on. In the betting shops you can get around 4-6 Waterford and 11-8 Cork.
What did the weekend action tell us? Not a lot really, Kilkenny should easily retain their Leinster title and neither Limerick nor Tipperary have much chance in the Munster final against Cork or Waterford.
Offaly are in rebuilding mode and they had some good young players on show yesterday but for all the promise we might see Kilkenny are still churning out loads of top class players and still remain by a distance the best team in Leinster. Dublin may be on the rise and might pull off an upset in the qualifiers. It’s hard to know what to make of Wexford, they certainly are capable of putting it up to Kilkenny as they do every couple of years but it’s hard to see anything other than an easy Kilkenny win. And once Wexford get outside of Leinster they seem to flounder against the Munster teams.
Tipperary should have beaten Limerick yesterday but it seems some of their younger players were a bit short of the killer instinct and the fire in the belly type approach of Limerick. Paul Kelly is certainly a big loss but every team has to be able to deal with the loss of key players during a season. It’s unlikely that either team could win the final but they could certainly get a good run in the qualifiers and be in good shape for the quarter finals.
Wexford and Kilkenny are through to the Leinster final after two very contrasting semi finals and Limerick and Tipperary must meet again.
Wexford needed a last minute point to pip Dublin by 1 (2-14 to 3-10). Tough on the Dubs who had put up a great battle after losing a few players to injury early in the game. It would have been great to see Dublin in the Leinster final but it’s the usual pairing now, instead they have to gear themselves for the qualifiers.
Kilkenny turned in a powerful second half performance to run out easy winners in the other semi, 1-27 to 1-13. The first half was fairly even with Offaly fighting hard for everything and a late goal from a penalty meant there was only 1 point in it at half time. The cats though quickly stamped their authority in the second half, firing over points at will as Offaly ran out of steam. One interesting note from the match was that Henry Shefflin moved past Christy Ring into second place on the all time championship scorers list. Although he still has a good way to go to catch his fellow county man Eddie Keher.
Limerick and Tipperary played out a great battle in the Gaelic Grounds. A very late goal from Limerick forced the draw at 1-19 each. They had to do it the hard way having had captain Damien Reale sent off after around 20 minutes of the first half, he got a second yellow after a dangerous chop across Eoin Kelly’s hands. Tipp led for most of the game but were never able to pull away and their extra man advantage didn’t come to much use as it should have given the extra work the Limerick players had to do in the very hot conditions. Pat Tobin hit the brilliant equalizing goal from a difficult angle. The replay is next Saturday evening at 7pm in Semple Stadium.
There’s not too much difference in the odds being offered by the major betting shops for the 3 hurling games at the weekend. Kilkenny are unbackable favourites against Offaly, Wexford are very short priced against Dublin and Tipperary are favoured over Limerick.
You can get an incredibly short 1-33 for Kilkenny to beat Wexford from Ladbrokes. There may be some value in a bet on Limerick who are available at just short of 2-1 in most shops while if you fancy the Dubs to upset Wexford you can get them around 4-1.
Dublin and Wexford have named their starting 15 for Saturday evenings Leinster semi-final in Nowlan Park. Dublin hand out 4 debuts to Declan Qualter and Joey Boland in midfield and Ross O’Carroll and Padraig O’Driscoll in attack. Veterans Adrian Fenlon and Colm Kehoe are named among the Wexford subs having recently rejoined the panel.
This could be a fascinating match-up after Dublins impressive league campaign. Perhaps we may get the badly needed shock result in hurling here.
Dublin: G Maguire; P Brennan, S Hiney, T Brady; M Carton, R Fallon, D O’Reilly; D Qualter, J Boland; L Ryan, R O’Carroll, D Curtin; J Kelly, P O’Driscoll, K Flynn.
Wexford: D Fitzhenry; M Travers, D Ruth, P Roche; R Kehoe, K Rossiter, C Kenny; D Lyng, E Quigley; M Jacob, D O’Connor, P Carley; N Higgins, D Stamp, R Jacob.
Tipperary and Limerick have named their starting 15 for Sunday’s Munster semi-final clash. Tipperary give debuts to three players, Eamon Buckley, James Woodlock and Ryan O’Dwyer. Paul Kelly is ruled out through injury which is a big blow after his impressive league displays at corner forward. Limerick have no newcomers although Mark O’Riordan is named despite being an injury doubt recently.
TIPPERARY: B Cummins; E Buckley, P Curran, D Fitzgerald; E Corcoran, B Dunne, C O’Mahony; S McGrath, J Woodlock; J Carroll, R O’Dwyer, D Egan; E Kelly, L Corbett, W Ryan.
LIMERICK: B Murray; D Reale, S Lucey, S Hickey; M O’Riordan, B Geary, M Foley; P Lawlor, D O’Grady; N Moran, O Moran, M O’Brien; A O’Shaughnessy, S O’Connor, B Foley.
Antrim cruised to victory in the Ulster Championship final at Casement Park on a scoreline of Antrim 2-24 Down 0-4. In a very disappointing final Down were totally outclassed. All 6 Antrim forwards and their 2 midfielders got on the scoresheet in the rout. The win nicely sets up Antrim for their Liam MacCarthy qualifier campaign while Down will have to dig deep to pick themselves up for their Christy Ring games.
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