The FAI Cup on MNS

It was a Late Late MNS this week as the show was booted from its usual 8:00 p.m. slot by a group game from the most pointless international tournament of them all. Con told us that it was the ‘first Late Late since Pat’s departure’ and that Rico, Pat Morley and Steve’s big brother had all stocked up on the coffee to get them through it. I found beer worked better myself. Con the conman then went on to explain in his online blog that the show was actually pre-recorded so it seems that he was lying to us. TV fakery from Montrose? Surely not.

It’s a shame that this week, of all weeks, was shunted into the wee hours as it was FAI Ford Cup Third Round time, a weekend crammed with more one-sided victories than your average Harlem Globetrotters World Tour. There were some juicy ties though, and to be fair to the MNS crew, they were covered well.

Tony O went Leeside to report on the Cork – Sligo game. Yours truly thought it a bit odd to see the managers interviewed before the game, giving their thoughts before an event that had already happened days previously. Paul Cook told us unequivocally that he didn’t want a draw at Turners Cross, yet we all knew that a 2-2 was on the way. It was like watching a particularly deadly knockout punch for the 12th time on YouTube – you know what’s coming, the victim doesn’t.

Speaking of boxing, it’s clear that Paul Cook’s voice went through a tough 12 rounds during the 90 minutes. Cook’s match day bout of laryngitis is as regular as sunset but the two interviews, either side of the match, shows the battering the genial Liverpudlian puts himself through for the Rovers’ cause. It was as if Stevie G himself had munched on a kitten. Hope there were plenty of Hacks on the team bus home.

It was nice to see a feature on the Tralee Dynamos. Their 2-1 win over Salthill Devon was described as ‘the biggest game in Kerry soccer history’ and no doubt the locals, interviewed before the game, will be happy that the Dynamos are one step closer to picking up the “Heineken Cup, Super 14 trophy or ‘McCarthy’” as they identified one of Irish soccer’s most important trophies.

The match itself seemed to give good entertainment to the 14 or so souls who forgot that there was a game going on in Pairc Uí Chaoimh. Reporter Eamonn Donohue took full advantage of the unusual inclusion of the Dynamos on MNS by using as many tortured puns as possible... a tactic that this reporter thought he had an exclusive hold upon.

To ensure that RTE got their full value from the trip to Kerry as this week’s Karaoke King came from Tralee’s David O’ Leary. If there’s been a more annoying feature on a sports show anywhere in the world, ever, then it would surprise me. This week’s King should be dethroned as soon as possible. Warbling isn’t the word that one should use to describe his version of Sex on Fire from the Kings of Leon. Heck, even Paul Cook sounded better.

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This week's edition of MNS can be seen by clicking here. This article was originally written for the nice folks over at http://www.extratime.ie/

This Week In The League Of Ireland

The big story in the League of Ireland this week has been the sacking of Dundalk defender Dave Rogers in the wake of ‘Arse Gate.’ Rogers was left not too jolly with the decision by the Louth club to terminate his contract for ‘gross misconduct’ after he mooned the travelling Pats support at Oriel Park on Friday night. Unsurprisingly, many in the media were quick to have a bit of craic (or is that crack?) with this one. In fact, the only thing faster than the ‘bum’s rush’ given to Rogers was the rush of hacks and journo’s across the land as they tried to ‘out-pun’ each other.






There were plenty of ‘witty’ headlines in our tabloids about the Rogers’ sacking (‘Moon Walk’ was one of my personal favourites) but the pun-tastic headlines weren’t limited to the red-tops. ‘rogers calls foul play over bum rap’ and ‘hoping shirty conduct will end is asking for the moon’ are both the work of Aiden O’Hara in the Indo. The lack of capitals in these very cheesy headlines may be a mistake, or it may be an attempt at understating the descent into cheddar-ville.


The incident provoked an intense debate on RTE’s Monday Night Soccerball. Eoin “I’m not a prude” Hand says that if he had brought his daughter to the game, and he’d seen Rogers’ actions, that he “would have reacted.” Goodness only knows how... Meanwhile Rico had the counter-argument on the matter, standing up for Scouser. An MNS caption informed us that he once ‘played the bodhrán on an album by Tundra, a folk music group from Kent’ so it’s probably appropriate that it was he who was banging the drum in Rogers’ defence. He mused about possible conspiracy theories (“It makes me think that there’s something else in the background”) before analyzing the incident in detail, telling us that it wasn’t too bad because Rogers “had his briefs on underneath.” Thanks for saving us the bother to take such a close look Rico. “Have we all lost our sense of humour?” he wondered. Well, the journo’s certainly haven’t...


I’ll leave the last word to Neil O’ Riordan. The Irish Sun writer keeps a blog called The Big O in which he recalled an incident involving current Dundalk boss Sean Connor while he was boss at Bohs. According to O’ Riordan, in their preparation for the 2007 League Cup Final, Connor mooned his players as they practiced potentially crucial penalty kicks ‘in a bid to recreate the atmosphere they would face in a shoot-out at The Brandywell.’ ‘It’s worth remembering’ says Statto, ‘that Dalymount is overlooked by a primary school.’ Now that this scandal is in the public domain, should we expect the Dundalk board to sack Connor as swiftly as they booted Rogers out the door? Or will he stay, adding more fuel to the theories of the multi-talented Rico? Only time will tell.

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This article was originally written for and can be seen at the fine website, http://www.extratime.ie