GAA Humour

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faithfulman
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Joined: Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:54 pm

GAA Humour

Post by faithfulman »

You know you are a Junior Hurler when ...

You spend all winter on the beer speculating on who will be brought in to manage the junior hurling team next year.
The hardest tackle you will make all year is in an indoor soccer match in January when you break your brother-in-law's leg.
There are 35 at training under lights on a bitter February night (unfit but enthusiastic) - the average for August is 7 (unfit, sick of training and making silage)
The club treasurer spends some time at the AGM lamenting the yearly cost of running a club and especially the bill for hurleys; a month later, the team is being urged to "give 'em timber lads - we have plenty of hurleys on the sideline..."
When you go for a pick-up, you tap the ball at least twice on the hurley before you fumble it
Ground hurling is for juveniles and camogie players
The full forward has his son and grandnephew in the corners
The grandnephew is two years older
For a 2.30 throw-in, you start packing your gear bag at 2.40 and still manage to be on the field before the referee even arrives
You can get a match called off because your star player is playing divisional under-16 the following week
Your tight marking corner back never gives an inch - except of course, when the ball gets inside his own 50 and he charges out after it with all the other backs, forgetting that the other team are even on the field.
Your goalie lets in a sitter every second game - this usually happens after you have scored 5 points from play to reel in a difficult half-time deficit or in the first minute if it is a final
Your full-forward can't score but "he's a good man to bust up the play"
Your centre forward can't score either but "he'll stop a good man from hurling"
Your championship is either a round robin that requires you to play six league games to eliminate one team, or a knockout starting in October
Any members of your panel that claim to have back injuries are either lazy or completely daft - unless you can see blood, bruises or bandages, they are making it up
Before every match, the forwards are told to stay wide and not bunch - but this is not what happens. The only time any forward goes wide is to take a sideline cut or if they are looking for water
Your backs play from behind waving a hurley with one hand whilst resting the other on the forward's back - this is why all your scores and all their scores come from frees
You can't field a team during the fortnight of the Leaving Cert
Your star player always has one other brother "that was even better but he couldn't stay off the drink"
Your left-corner-back plays at No.4 because he can only strike off his left side Ditto No.7
The more people instruct you to "let fly if you don't get it up the first time", the more you ignore them.

You know you are a GAA Shaper when ...

You wear white boots
You are the only guy with tanned legs on the team in April
You put gel in your hair before the game
You have bleached hair or a ponytail
You have to get a hair cut before every match
You wear your collar up to your ears
You have at least one life threatening injury per game
You hang around outside the dressing room after a match (still togged out) looking for people to tell you how good you played
You warm up looking into the crowd
You wear the latest range in thigh supports, knee bandages, etc when in reality there's shag all wrong with you.
You sulk every time you lose, you blame the pitch, the wind, the sun, the ball etc if you miss a chance (above all it was not your fault).
You complain that the backs never play good ball to you (you are always a forward becuase they score (backs get no glory), probably wing or corner (because you can pick up a handy score there and also wave to the crowd)) and if the selectors knew anything (which they don't) they would make you captain.
You insist on making yourself available for 2 championship matches on the same day
You threaten to quit the team cause the manager won't pick your brother
You wear your jersey over your togs and spend ages neatly fixing your socks before the game
You make your own speech in the dressing room after the captain and mentors have made their speeches
You leave in two soft goals...one dropped out of your hand....and you complain of a shoulder injury when trying to puck out the next couple of balls.
You wear white boots, white socks a white helmet with a white club jersey.
You walk to the dressing room at half time, while everyone else ran ,take off your helmet and start fixing up your hair before you reach the sideline.
You have something written on the bos of your hurley and showing in the team photograph before the game.
When once a game, you get shouldered straight in the face and are flattened, by a player who just ran forty yards to get ya.
Come to think of it, a tan at any time of the year
You keep running for 20-30 yards after getting a score even though you are about 5 yards from your position.
Stick out the chest (PJ O Connell style) while walking over to hit a sideline/take a free.
Your wearing the most expensive boots on the market and your the sub goalie.
When you are looking to take all the free's back as far as your own halfback line
When you wear shorts different from the rest of the team
When you have to have the longest shorts on the field
When you wear county togs instead of club togs (even if you just swopped for them or bought them)
When your save your best for those long lunging stretches in front of the crowd
When you have a different county or college match jersey every time you go training, with a number on the back.
When you insist on wearing such jerseys over a long-sleeved top during the cold months.

101 reasons why the GAA is better than Soccer
(came across this,its fairly old but a good laugh all the same)
1. Paul Gascoigne.
2. Fitzgerald Stadium Killarney on a sunny day is one of the loveliest sights in sport.
3. Bribery scandals.
4. Because the championship has always been the Championship. The League of Ireland has had more new improved formulas than most washing powders. Indeed it's not even the LOI anymore.
5. Because by and large GAA heroes don't turn into villains overnight. One week this column would have happily borne Eric Cantona's children. The next week Eric was playing with Manchester United and this column wouldn't give him the time of day. Same old Eric both weeks though.
6. Most GAA players lead fuller lives than your average pro soccer player, thus they have more to talk about and fewer clichés to use.
7. The PA announcer at Landsdowne Road soccer internationals need to be shot. We hate the Mexican wave.
8. Bohs never in anything anymore.
9. The offside rule can be really tedious.
10. Andy Gray.
11. Jimmy Hill.
12. Micheal O'Murchearaigh.
13. No GAA team would ever wear a strip as vile as Chelsea's away strip last season.
14. Nobody sings "you'll never beat the Irish" at GAA games.
15. When Jurgen Klingsmann did his witty diving celebration at the start of the English season every lame brain in the game did the same thing for three months. Why?
16. Since Dalymount decayed, professional Irish soccer has no place to call home despite two World Cups and a Euro Championship.
17. RTE would never foist Brendan O'Carroll on the GAA viewership.
18. There is no piece of sporting equipment available anywhere that is as lovely as a well crafted hurley.
19. Vinnie Jones would bawl like a baby if he ever came up against Brian Mullens (Brian McGilligain, Brian Corcoran..) And that's just three Brians that spring to mind.
20. If something goes wrong the GAA always comes up with some excuse. "The crowd arrived too early" "The cat was sick" In soccer nobody is ever to blame. Rioting in Landsdowne Road can be put down to what insurers call an act of God.
21. The GAA may not appreciate its women as much as it should but at least we all know who Angela Downey is. The most famous woman in English soccer is Victoria Beckham.
22. It's hard to feel passionate about any sport that John Major feels passionate about. Plus David Mellor never made love to anyone while wearing a GAA jersey.
23. "Clash of the Ash" was a lovely film about hurling. "Escape to Victory" was a soccer film with Pele and Sly Stallone in it.
24. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.
25. Spivs. Who asked DISC to ask Wimbledon to move to Dublin anyway.
26. People working for Irish soccer clubs who double as scouts for English clubs. Some mistake surely.
27. No soccer manager was ever as warm and as entertaining as Eamon Coleman.
28. No segregation at GAA matches.
29. No naff furry hats on men who should know better at soccer matches.
30. No naff jewellery on men who should know better at GAA matches.
31. There were 15,154 fans at Irelands last home World Cup game pre Jack Charlton. Now you couldn't squeeze all the "real" fans into the Maracana with a shoehorn.
32. The GAA player who performs in front of 70,000 at the weekend will be teaching your kids on Monday or he'll be selling you meat or fixing your drains or representing you in court. The soccer player who performs in front of 70,000 fans at the weekend will be moaning about too many games and trying to sell you his personalised brand of leisure wear.
33. GAA players don't sell stories to the Sun.
34. GAA players don't have stories that the Sun would like to buy.
35. Bungs.
36. Backpasses.
37. Barry Venison's dress sense.
38. Jack Walker can buy a league title. You can't buy an All-Ireland.
39. Penalty shootouts. What was wrong with the old interminable FA cup replay sagas eg Leeds and Ipswitch 1975. Heartbreaking but memorable.
40. Jack Boothman doesn't care if America doesn't like GAA. Joao Havelange loses sleep over it.
41. Nobody ever proposed making GAA goals bigger. Not even Charlie Redmond.
42. GAA nicknames are better: Sambo Hunter, Fat Larry, Babs, Bingo and so on. Soccer players just add a Y to each others surnames.
43. The Munster Hurling Final.
44. The Munster Football Final.
45. Dublin vs Meath is a real local derby. What does Liverpool vs Everton mean to Jan Molby or Daniel Amokachi.
46. You always remember what county your Irish teacher came from.
47. We care so much about the weaker GAA counties that we sensitively refer to them as the "so called weaker counties". English soccer just makes the premier league smaller.
48. How many soccer players does it take to change a light bulb? Eleven. One to stick it in. ten to hug and kiss him afterwards.
49. Why can nobody agree on the size of the crowd at domestic soccer games.
50. Under age players get to be part of the biggest days in hurling and football. The Irish U21 team are sadly neglected. The "real' fan seldom turn up to see them.
51. Soccer players go to Rumours. GAA players go to the pub.
52. If a GAA player ever jumped at a spectator like Eric Cantona did the rest of his team would join in. So would the rest of the crowd.
53. You can't play a defensive game of football or hurling.
54. Razzmatazz. OK the Artane Boys band may be boring but why does it take Sky 3 hours to show a 90 minute soccer game.
55. Soccer players always describe the game they have just played in the same guarded way. There is nothing like a GAA player cutting loose "He ate the shite out of us" said an Offaly player of Eamon Cregans half time speech in last years All Ireland.
56. The championship means summer. The FA (or FAI) Cup means winter.
57. DJ Carey in full flight.
58. Barry Fry, Ken Bates, Ron Noades, Robert Chase. Take your pick.
59. Television runs soccer. Schoolteachers run the GAA.
60. Vinnie Jones grabbed Gascoignes testicles. Paudie O'Se decked Joe McNally during the National Anthem. McNally learnt his lesson. Gascoigne just got worse.
61. Joe Brolly in full flight, on the field or off it.
62. Jimmy Barry Murphy was the coolest skinhead ever to grace a playing field.
63. There's nothing like seeing the bonfires blazing when a winning team reaches it's home borders.
64. The GAA season always leaves you wanting more. The soccer season leaves soccer people demanding less. Fewer games please.
65. Three points for a win is a distortion of the games natural balance.
66. "Soccer isn't a matter of life and death, it's much more important than that" isn't such a witty thing to have said.
67. The GAA is just a part of life and death.
68. Gaelic Games is harder to play. Niall Quinn and Kevin Moran got out and went to soccer. You never see anyone coming the other direction.
69. GAA players run faster, hit harder and last longer. Nobody acts like a grenade just went off if they get tripped.
70. Soccer is so subtle that Wimbledon can win the FA cup.
71. There's no one quite so bitter as a soccer bigot.
72. They think Ryan Giggs is the new George Best. Sure sign of decline.
73. GAA teams are numbered one to fifteen, soccer teams read like the national lottery results.
74. All soccer players wear shinguards. Some hurling players even wear helmets.
75. Ever penny we put into soccer stays at the top. Most of what we spend on GAA trickles down.
76. The GAA is about where you're from. Soccer is mainly about who you like.
77. A scoreless draw in GAA would be quite a novelty.
78. The GAA offer a journalist the chance to travel to Kerry regularly.
79. The GAA won't sell us all out by starting a European SuperLeague.
80. Under 13,000 fans attended the FAI Cup final. "Real" fans would rather watch Wimbledon play AN other at a new characterless stadium built by suits for suits.
81. Old soccer players get testimonials, Old GAA players just slip down to junior. Dog rough it is too.
82. Bubble perms never made it to Croke Park.
83. Throw ins set the adrenalin pumping faster than tip offs.
84. GAA fans never have time for the Mexican wave.
85. Rupert Murdoch doesn't own the GAA.
86. Ghosted soccer biographies.
87. All of soccer works to filter the best players to the top teams. GAA sides always get to keep their heroes.
88. Dual players still carry a certain romantic cachet.
89. The Dergvate, Gay Priors pub, Tommy Tubridy's, The Bradog, The Drovers, MacGleogans, The Pound Bar, Mc Sweeney's.
90. No soccer team has a name quite as lovely as that belonging to Fighting Cocks of Carlow.
91. Danny Lynch. The thinking person's PR man.
92. The InterToto Cup. The ZDS Date Cup, The Simod Trophy.
93. Guinness ISN'T inscribed in large letters on the Liam McCarthy Cup. Carling IS inscribed in large letters on the Premier league trophy.
94. Doubling on an overhead sliotar is a more beautiful thing than volleying a soccer ball.
95. Roy of the Rovers was a prat.
96. GAA goalposts cast nicer shadows on summer evenings.
97. There are always two men in white coats behind each goal at GAA games. Very wise.
98. The new Cusack stand. We call it space age.
99. Sideline cuts, high catches, summer schools to define the tackle.
100. The Dubs.
101. The Championship is here again.
He is so bad in goal he needs the net in front of him.

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