Kerry beat Cork to win All-Ireland. Ireland flop against Georgia. Villa lose to City. But…

As you can see, sport dominated my weekend.

Time was, All-Ireland Football Final Day would have been one of the biggest days of my year. But my move to “hurling fan” has seen an erosion of the football final’s importance. Add in the fact that this year’s final was an all-Munster affair – with relatively little enthusiasm for it in other parts of the country – and the big occasion proved a sort of big anti-climax really.

The other big Irish sporting occasion of the weekend was the Rugby World Cup clash of Ireland and Georgia. This didn’t affect me very much as I personally think that rugby is a game for toffs and oafs. Oh yes – and idiots too. Why else would you have a referee constantly shouting the rules out to players? Imagine if that happened in other sports. Can you imagine it in tennis? “Hit it. Hit it back. Hit it again. Hit it back again.” Or in hurdling: “Run, run, run, run – jump. Run, run, run, run – jump.”

My beloved Villa didn’t do too good today losing out to Manchester City, one of the few teams I actually loathe. But…

The really, really, really big sporting occasion of my weekend, however, was seeing my son’s hurling team reach the finals of their P7 championship. Played in Cushendall on a bright sunny morning, with views of Ailsa Craig and Scotland in the background, the setting was pretty much perfect. Unfortunately, they lost the final but they managed to capture a couple of big scalps along the way. And my boy scored two goals. So he was happy.

We celebrated by going to the shop and buying the kids ice cream before we hit the road. Then, in the car, Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacherman popped up on the radio on the way home. For some reason, one of the kids knew all the words. So the rest all joined in with him as best they could and then they sang it over and over and over again as we drove back to Belfast.

Stuff like that you just can’t plan.

Middlesbrough 1-3 Aston Villa

Villa’s Craig Gardner is mobbed after his first-half equaliser God Save Ireland is delighted as Aston Villa stage a remarkable fightback to claim all three points at the Riverside.

Come on Villa

Aston Villa 1-1 Everton

By Chris Bevan Agbonlahor celebrates scoring Villa’s late equaliser Gabriel Agbonlahor’s late strike rescued a vital point for Aston Villa and made God Save Ireland a slighly happier chap.   Jammy Everton sneaked a lead in the first half but the god-like Villa improved after the break and John Carew forced Tim Howard into two good saves. The Everton keeper denied Carew again before the end but this time Agbonlahor followed up to slot home the equaliser.

My son’s happy. I’m… disgruntled!

Aston Villa 0-1 Arsenal Arsenal overtake Liverpool and move up into third place in the Premiership after edging a jammy win at Aston Villa. Villa Manager Martin O’Neill said: “I’m very disappointed we couldn’t deliver a win for God Save Ireland. With an Arsenal supporter in his house, I know how much this one meant to him. Sorry, God Save.”

Reasons why GAA is better than soccer

This was doing the email rounds some time ago. I saved it, kept half the list and added some of my own:   

• Micheal O Murcheartaigh. 
• Chatting to Liam McHale about getting sent off in an All-Ireland – after he’s just played basketball for Ballina. 
• Ould fellas out for a kick and catch at half-time when I was a kid.  
• Then finding a few combs that fell out of their car-coat pockets while they arsed around like eejits. 
• No segregation. 
• 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. 
• GAA players don’t sell stories to the Sun. 
• GAA players don’t have stories that the Sun would want to buy. 
• GAA nicknames: The Horse, Larry the Cricket, and so on. Soccer players just add a Y to each other’s surnames. 
• DJ Carey in full flight. 
• Jimmy Barry Murphy being the coolest skinhead ever to grace a playing field. 
• There’s nothing like seeing the bonfires blazing when a winning team reaches its home borders. 
• GAA players run faster, hit harder and last longer. Nobody acts like a grenade just went off if they get tripped. 
• The GAA is about where you’re from. English Premiership soccer is about who you like.
• Old soccer players get testimonials. Old GAA players just slip down to junior. 
• Sideline cuts. 
• Scoring from sideline cuts. 
• Not getting any extra points for scoring from sideline cuts. 
• 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 Cregan’s half time speech in a recent All Ireland. 
• Rural village = A Church, A Post-office, a Pub and a GAA pitch. 
• Under age players get to be part of the biggest days in hurling and football at half-time in the All-Ireland.  
• 21 snotty-nosed kids (ie, the whole panel) in a Ford Anglia driven by the Parish Priest. And he has the neck on him to tell you to be quiet in the back!

God Save The Queen at Croke Park

My mate wonders if listening to track 5 on the first Sex Pistols album on his iPod before the Fermanagh Mayo semi-final counts?