Top 20 GAA moments

[oscar]

Yes, I admit my Offaly bias is coming to the fore here but I thought Seamus Darby's goal against Kerry in the '82 All Ireland final should have won. I wonder did the presence of other Offaly moments in the top 20 split the vote?

[Bord na Mona man]

I can't believe Donnellan won it.
Fair enough, it was a memorable run upfield
But.
- It was by no means a winning or important score.
- The ball was passed around a bit after his run ended.
- There was no particular piece of brilliant skill. Athleticism yes.
- Had Glen "Bull" Ryan not picked up a knee injury before half time, Galway would never have been able to run through Kildare so easily.

Compare that to the what was at stake with Kevin Foley's or Seamus Darby's goal. Last gasp desperation/inspiration.

It looks like one those "Ronnie O'Brien" type campaigns won it for Galway.
Those text votes are crap. T'was text voting that allowed that cheeky chimp Mickey Harte to beat Simon Casey!

[azoffaly]

Couldn't believe that the Michael Donnellan run won it. There was an equally good run on Saturday by the Galway corner back that led to a goal directly when he handpassed it off. As you say, Donellan's wasn't even the final pass before the score. Great run but the most memorable moment??? Hardly, considering I'd forgotten all about it until the 'moments' were announced.

For me it would have to be Seamus Darby's goal, considering the circumstances and the ramifications.

Also I'd have put `94, Maurice Fitz's point, John Fenton's goal, McGuigans 11 points and Mikey Sheehy's lob above that run. I'd also have had Diarmuid O'Sullivans huge point against Limerick (I think) a few years back when he bulled out and scored from about 110 yards.

These text vote yokes are a joke anyway. Money spinners for the RTE is all.

[The Biff]

I blame the Eurovision myself!

The winner was (in my opinion) the most useless and innappropriate entry in the whole list. A half-forward is back out-of-position to pick up an easy pass in his own full-back line, then goes on an admittedly fast solo-run up the field. One good lay-off and return is the only good feature of it, and then he readily admits he "ran out of gas" and barely got a pass away to a well-marked colleague, who in turn had to bungle it away to a free man who kicked an easy point.

Big effin' deal. There were so many other great scores (Darby's included) in the list that deserved to be singled out for accolade on the night marking 40 years of GAA coverage on RTE. But the winner turned out to be a madcap solo-run. Embarrassing!

Ever since Eurovision made phone polls popular, competitions like this are rarely won by the best entrant. They're skewed by inequalities in the voter catchment areas. Who really bothers to vote in things like this? I rarely do but when I saw that Donnellan's Dart was leading, I admit I did actually text a couple for Darby's jem.

But feck those young Galway teenage groupies who probably have posters of Donnellan on their bedroom walls, lashing in loads of votes just so that they could see their idol get more exposure on TV. Bring back expert juries, that's the only option to get a good deserving and realistic winner.

[TheManFromFerbane]

Try this on for size, a friend of mine told me that a group of the galway lads head down to the bookies, throw some money on their fellow county man, spend about 30 euro each on phone in votes and collect a tidy some from the bookies to cover their expenses and the night out. Sounds like a good idea to me!! (seemingly they also do it for Man Of The Match on the Sunday Game)

[Lone Shark]

I'd say Mulhollands have cottoned on by now. They were the ones that got caught that week in 2001 when the Joyce/Shefflin double came up. The difference then was (and I can be pretty sure of this because I was responsible for checking with RTE on behalf of my former employer - We had just pulled it the previous week when I realised that it was phone in.) RTE confirmed that they were getting less than a thousand calls for each match. This on the other hand took in 73,000 texts - so Donnellan got about 14,000. That's a lot to spend when bookies would run sharply at any half decent wagers on something like this.

I don't know do any bookies even take bets on man of the match any more other than for the All Ireland final.

[turk]

you always have bolloxes coming up to you in pubs saying they had yer man that won the snooker, the national winner and greece in a 200,000,000,000,000 to 1 treble

[azoffaly]

Yeah, and then they won't buy a pint. the langers

[mykneehurts]

Donnellan ran. That's it. He didn't even have the ball for most of it and any wing forward in the game (excapt maybe TheManFrom Ferbane ) could have done that.

[mykneehurts]

Woah, what happened there?!

[TheManFromFerbane]

At least I can run faster than you now MKH, he who laughs last....

[TheManFromFerbane]

Double Post

[The Biff]

A conspiracy theorist on GaaBoard.com mentioned how suspicious he got at the start of the programme as soon as he saw that Michael Donnellan was actually in the studio. Of the other recent "Moments", only Davy Fitz was also there in person. Since they went to the trouble of getting "His Excellency El Presidente" to come to make a presentation, they (RTE) would not have been happy NOT to have (say) Maurice Fitz there to accept the award in person.

So (2 + 2 = .....) the young Galway pin-up WAS there IF he needed to be called upon .......

[The Biff]

Bit of a problem with these double posts. I got a Debug Error screen that made no sense to me (and I'm supposed to be a techie).

[Lone Shark]

It's a trick to generate more posts and make the board seem more active ...

Nah, tis just a few gremlins left over from the transfer - it is being worked on by the technical expert of uibhfhaili.com (Not me!)

The thing to remember is that when you get that debug error message, your post has in fact gone up - that could be why we're getting a double post extravaganza at the moment.