In today’s hospital pass, it’s Joe Brolly, but not as we know him and we learn of a different type of shootout than we’re used to seeing in Dr. Cullen Park.
Damn you Joe Brolly, we thought we had a catfight on our hands!
It seems as if the world and its mother have weighed in with opinions on whether or not Bernard Brogan was actually fouled by Aindriu MacLochlainn on Sunday.
Some people have come down on the side of the Footballer of the Year, while others agree with us that the Kildare defender did little more than breathe on his man (in fairness to Brogan, he did a lot more than that for the rest of the game) in the dying minutes of a cracking Leinster semi-final.
On one side, you had the Sunday Game pundits, Kieran McGeeney, Aindriu MacLochlainn and even Colm Parkinson saying it wasn’t a free (Parkinson did, however, have some choice words about MacLochlainn), while on the other hand, Brogan himself staunchly defended his corner, backed up by referees’ chief Mick Curley and a man who has become something of a beacon for the oppressed on Twitter of late, Mayo man Conor Mortimer.
We thought that, four days after the incident and with plenty of cracking GAA to look forward to this weekend, the issue had been put to bed, until a quick scan through our Twitter feed this afternoon revealed a couple of posts sent to Brogan from someone we thought to be ex-Derry footballer, now of the Sunday Game couch, @Joe_Brolly.
“your feet got tangled? was the defenders run for the ball not impeded also? The referee gave the free for a pull?! #bullshit,” said “Brolly”, who followed that up with another post he claims contradicted the reason Brogan claims a free was awarded in the first place: “referee signals for pull on the arm – http://t.co/ZmBvYRg“.
With our appetites whetted at the prospect of a verbal battle royale between two of the finest forwards to have played the game in recent times, imagine our disappointment to discover that the Brolly account, despite having over 660 followers, including some of the most well known footballers and GAA pundits in the country, was in fact a fake.
Then we came to the realisation that it could never have been Brolly in the first place; after all, the man talks so much that he could never, ever, condense his thoughts into 140 characters.
Carnage in Carlow
Speaking of Brolly, he did once say, and concisely too, “there are some things in life that are more important than money and the GAA is one of them.”
That message obviously didn’t filter through to the two fellas who held a female Carlow County Board official at gunpoint last week.
Thinking that she would have in her possession the takings from a game played earlier in the week, the lads approached her outside Dr. Cullen Park with sawn-off shotguns only to discover that she had lodged the money earlier in the day.
Thankfully, nobody was hurt, although it’s safe to say that it’s not the first time the words ‘GAA’ and ‘daylight robbery’ have been used in the same sentence, particularly for any punter who paid €30 for the ‘privilege’ of watching Mayo v Galway in McHale Park last Sunday.
