Dave’s Football Blog

The most horrid journalism cliché is the one about finding interesting stories. “Dog bites man?” Boring. “Man bites dog?” Oooh, edgy.

“Kerry County relinquishes All-Ireland Football title?” Well, now you’re just talking crazy. Can’t happen, right?

Wrong. Tyrone upset Kerry, 1-15 to 0-14, in the All-Ireland Final on Sunday. Down 0-8 to 0-7 at half, Tyrone got a big boost from Tommy McGuigan, who scored a goal — that’s worth 3 points, in case you forgot — just 22 seconds into the second half, and Tyrone held off a late charge by Kerry to walk away with the Sam McGuire Cup.

In other news, someone got pissed and opened his big mouth. In Ireland, though, that probably qualifies as “Dog bites man,” so, y’know, nothing to see there.

And that’s about all I can tell you about that. Really, keeping up with all these football codes is damn near impossible.

Australian Football and Gaelic Football can’t seem to get away from each other. AFL clubs keep sending scouts to Ireland to swipe young talent with dreams of playing professionally. The International Rules series keeps finding new life, despite being little more than an on-field brawl most years. (Collingwood boss Mick Malthouse is in as Australia’s coach this year, too.) Now AFL chief Andrew Demetriou has a brilliant plan to lure the Irish in even more — an all-Gaelic club in Sydney.

The AFL is considering a radical proposal to launch an Irish-dominated team in Sydney’s western suburbs which would perform before an international audience under the Celtic brand name.

Commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick confirmed on Friday night the Irish option was being explored as a possible basis for the competition’s 18th team, to debut as early as 2012.

Hey, Glasgow Celtic and the Boston Celtics are all league champions this year. Why not slap the Celtic name on everything in sight? Hey, lets put a team in Tasmania and call them the Lakers… no, wait, they’re after the audience in Ireland and Great Britain. We’d have to call them the Rangers.

If nothing else, at least the GAA counties would be able to focus their disdain on one club for stealing all their young Gaelic footballers away from them. That should make everyone else in the AFL look better by comparison, right?

(Thanks, Simon!)

The obvious trouble with attempting to follow every form of football around the world is that you’re bound to miss things — especially when the rest of your life gets in the way.

I had intended to get up a little early this morning to catch the second half of the Geelong Cats v. Port Adelaide Power rematch. (Geelong won, by the way.) However, last night I got wrapped up in getting my NCAA Tournament brackets filled out and setting up that bracket pool for my college buddies, getting my shiny new Slingbox set up for remote viewing — sadly, a day too late to watch that corker between Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur on my Treo while at work — and putting up FanHouse posts on the CONCACAF Champions Cup and Cristiano Ronaldo’s deadly aim.

Oh, and the girlfriend stopped by last night. Always a pleasant distraction, to be sure.

Suffice to say, I missed the AFL opener. It’s not all I miss around here. On Monday, I was going to write something about Gaelic Football for St. Patrick’s Day, which turned into St. Vincent’s Day in Dublin. That passed me by, too.

Three years ago around this time, I sat in front of my PC and thought, “What the hell am I going to write about on this blog for the next five months?” Then I shut it down, went to a sports bar and watched basketball all afternoon.

So when I wrote back in January that I wanted to shift things around a bit, this was why. Writing about the football in all its forms is fun, but I’m starting to think the origins and evolution of football is a subject better suited to a book than a blog. Maybe that’s what I should be writing. Hell, maybe half of it is already written here…

This is the day the GAA has made! Let us rejoice and be glad!

Or something.

Yes, just six months after I declared the International Rules Football series dead, the Gaelic Athletic Association has announced that it will resume talks with the AFL about reviving the series in 2008. This comes on the heels of the GAA preparing to legalize a sort of payment system for Gaelic Footballers that involves government grants — kind of like scholarships for college football players in America, but with actual cash instead of tuition and meal reimbursement.

The AFL would have to agree to a couple of things first, though. For starters, the GAA wants AFL players who get involved in fights to be suspended for AFL matches the following season. (That’s mostly Irish coach Sean Boylan talking here.) Second, the GAA wants a deal in place that would curtail the AFL’s raid on young Gaelic footballers. Given that the AFL commish Andrew Demetriou loves the cash International Rules brings in, I suspect he will agree to both these things.

Of course, fans still have issues with International Rules. Some Irish will continue to say it’s too violent, while some Aussies will say it’s just Gaelic Football with behind posts and tackling. Still, I think it’s fun to see two codes merge into something different, even if we only see it for two games a year. Besides, if you search for “International Rules Football” on Google, two things I wrote are in the top four. Why wouldn’t I be in favor of a resumption of this series?

And yes, I’m aware that picture of Jesus has nothing to with Aussie Rules or Gaelic Football. Google searches for Jesus playing either of these codes turned up squat. I considered putting a picture of Chris Judd there, but hey, he’s no messiah.