Declan Bogue

1 week ago | the42.ie | Declan Bogue

FOR PEOPLE OF a certain age, journalist Eamonn Sweeney’s book The Road To Croker was a sporting and cultural touchstone. If that sounds like a wild example of hyperbole, hear us out. The Road To Croker was a diary of the 2003 GAA championship season as followed by Sweeney, and let’s just say there was a lot going on at that time. While rugby’s transition from amateur to professional was explicit, the GAA was gradually doing the same thing but under the covers.

1 week ago | the42.ie | Declan Bogue

AS A JOURNALIST with the Mayo News, Ed McGreal had borne witness to Aidan O’Shea’s manic insistence on playing through all sorts of scenarios of concussion, injury and circumstance. In 2015, as a member of the Breaffy management backroom team, he got up close and personal to it all. They were playing a starred league game against Garrymore, eight days out from the Connacht final against Sligo. O’Shea, naturally was there in the dressing room and wearing a tracksuit.

1 week ago | the42.ie | Declan Bogue

LOUTH MANAGER GER Brennan has called the decision by the Leinster Council to stage a double-header last Sunday at O’Connor Park in Tullamore, as ‘a disgrace.’The curtain-raiser to Louth’s Leinster semi-final win over Kildare was a provincial club football league final between Rosemount and Milltown. Brennan only found out the fixture was taking place after a friend of his, Fr Joe Campbell, who married himself and his wife Aisling, sent him an image advertising the league final.

2 weeks ago | the42.ie | Declan Bogue

THERE WILL BE no shift of the All-Ireland finals to an August date for 2026, GAA President Jarlath Burns has insisted. Despite having previously floated the idea of the finals for football and hurling returning to their traditional September slots, Burns has passed that call onto his successor, citing the potential of concerts being hosted in Croke Park as a significant commercial driver for the GAA. “This year it’s out,” Burns said on the GAA’s new broadcast channel, GAA+.

2 weeks ago | the42.ie | Declan Bogue

WHEN YOU PIECE it all together, the story of Hugh O’Doherty pulls in all the threads that bound together the aspects of rebellion, the War of Independence, the formation of the Irish Free State and a National Army, and the fledging GAA as a cultural and sporting body. Just over a century ago, O’Doherty was three days short of his 23rd birthday and despite his relative youth had lived through much already.