John O'Gorman

Sports mad from Clare.

[Conor McKenna @conormckenna98]

Mayo winning after 12 final attempts.

Westmeath winning historic Leinster title.

Roscommon winning Connacht at home

Wicklow winning Tailteann Cup.

First Louth semi final in 69 years.

First Ulster in 18 years for Armagh.

Best championship ever in history of GAA?

[Clare Gaa @GaaClare]

The @TUS_ie Clare SHC Group 4 Round 1

Full Time

Wolfe Tones na Sionna 2-21 (27)
Sixmilebridge 3-16 (25)

Drama at the finish as Wolfe Tones hold on for a huge win . Inspired by target man Aron Shanaher the Shannon side led throughout .

@wtnsgaa
@SMBGAA

#ThereIsNoHeroLikeALocalHero

[Paddy Mac @paddymac85]

The biggest bollix that ever walked into Croke Park. And I include the black and tans in that

[St. Joseph's Doora Barefield GAA Club @StJosephsDBGAA]

Some happy parishioners on Leeside this evening. Clare will play Tipperary in the Fulfil Munster GAA Under 20 Hurling Championship Final on Wednesday May 13th at 7:35pm in the TUS Gaelic Grounds Limerick. A short hop for us all!

[Clare Gaa @GaaClare]

The @fulfil @MunsterGAA U20 Hurling Championship Semi Final

Full Time

Well done lads 💪🟡🔵🟡

[Breeda Murphy @breeda_murphy]

If you watch nothing else today; watch this. The @OireachtasNews #JusticeCommittee was addressed by #MargaretLoftus, a former #Garda, who outlined the process she endured taking her #DomesticViolence case involving her husband also Garda via Irish courts.

[Ailbe O Raghallaigh @ailbeoreilly]

Should have been a red for Michael Murphy

[Randel Hodkinson @RHODLIMERICK]

Great to see the "Living City Initiatives" and the grants system having a positive effect in #Limerick. There are currently at least 8 Georgian Houses on O'Connell St. being converted back from office use to living accomodation, with at least 4 more in the pipeline. #livingcity

[Paris-Roubaix Hauts-de-France @parisroubaix]

🙏 Students from the Lycée Horticole de Raismes are hard at work in the Wallers à Hélesmes sector, also known as the famous Pont Gibus! A big thank you for their efforts in maintaining the #ParisRoubaix route!

🙏 Les élèves du Lycée Horticole de Raismes sont à pied d'œuvre sur le secteur de Wallers à Hélesmes, plus connu sous le nom de Pont Gibus ! Un grand merci pour leur travail d'entretien des secteurs de #ParisRoubaix !

[ITV Racing @itvracing]

"Nicky was overrated!" 😆

Hurling royalty present at Cheltenham Festival - Nicky English, winner of six All-Star awards 👏

#ITVRacing | @officialgaa

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

“Americans are very lucky, because wherever they go to bring freedom… they find oil.” - Michele Serra, Italian journalist

[Sardieq @SardieqWP]

I'm a fan of Antoine Dupont, but not of this behaviour.

Ben White offered to take his hand in the guard of honour, but Dupont refused and had some words.

#SCOvFRA #SixNationsRugby

[Gauthier Baudin @GauthierBaudin]

Oscar Jegou dans la tourmente après ce ralenti qui montre une suspicion de fourchette sur le talonneur écossais Ewan Ashman.

Réponse dans les prochaines heures/prochains jours sur une éventuelle convocation devant une commission de discipline.

[Richie Floyd @richiejfloyd]

I wish we lived in a world where I didn't feel constantly compelled to post this video, but until then here's Tony Benn speaking on war with clarity and moral conviction that you won't see from the evil people running the world today

[Paul Rees. ex Rucksack. @HannahIamthest1]

As I was about to retire to bed last night, I saw two people stealing from my shed.
I called the police to report it and they said that no one was available to attend and maybe they would pay a visit in the morning and take a report.
So I called back a minute later and told them:
“No need to hurry with the … I’ve just shot the pair of them, they ain't going nowhere now.”
Within minutes, half a dozen cop cars, helicopters, and an armed unit showed up and caught the burglars red-handed. 🚓🚁😂
The officer said to me, “Hey, I thought you said you shot them dead?”
I replied: “I thought you said no one was available.” 😏

[Lukáš Ronald Lukács @lucxsronald]

Insane skills MVDP 🤯 #OHN26

[Alistair Brownlee @AliBrownleetri]

If you are anything like me, you are already missing all that winter sport, so I thought I’d dive into the @TerraAPI data vaults for some insights.

Norway's performance was pretty amazing: 41 total medals (18 gold) —the most golds ever at a single Winter Games and the top of the medal table. With a population of just ~5.65 million, that's roughly 0.73 medals per 100,000 people—a per-capita dominance that leaves giants like the US (~0.009 per 100,000 with 349 million people) in the dust. Johannes Høsflot Klæbo stole the show, sweeping all six cross-country events he entered for an unprecedented six golds at one Games, pushing his career total to 11.

But what drives this sustained excellence? Diving into activity data from fitness trackers across Europe reveals Norway's secret could be a deeply embedded cultural approach to movement. Norwegians average 512 minutes of activity per month (39% more than peers in the UK, Germany, France, Austria, and Italy), with massive emphasis on outdoor, nature-based pursuits: 183 minutes on walking/hiking (64% more) and 29 minutes on cross-country skiing (over 20x more than others, where it's virtually absent). They seem to favor sustainable, endurance-focused training, more time building an aerobic base, and less max-intensity.

Even more telling: activity diversity is highest in Norway at 3.39 types per user (vs. the UK's 1.53), possibly pointing to a grassroots philosophy of multi-sport participation, delayed specialisation, and a fun-first approach to training.

What can we learn from this? Does analysing the data uncover the secrets of success? Read the blog to find out…

[Dr. Eoin Lenihan @EoinLenihan]

Reflections on a week in Clare

1. Drugs

I spoke to a local farm supply merchant. He told me that drugs - particularly cocaine - is destroying families in ways never seen before. He said he knows a good family, a farmer he's dealt with his whole life whose son got into cocaine. One evening dealers showed up at his house demanding he - the father - settle the son's €60k debts. The father somehow managed it and tried to get the son help to get clean which failed. Then the son racked up another €40k which the father could not cover. One night the father's tractor was set alight and a note was left saying that the house would be next.

The merchant said that this tactic of dealers coming to the family to settle debts is the new norm. The family is terrified and the merchant has a very bleak outlook on the future of Ireland. Hard drugs have infected every facet of life out to the most rural communities. Several younger people - especially females - said they used to go out in Gort, Galway - which is the closest place to go out but stay home now because the social scene is drenched in drugs and just isn't fun because of it.

It is time to get serious about drug dealers @OCallaghanJim.

2. Killing Small Businesses

I was excited to bring my little ones into Tierney's in Ennis. It has been there with decades and made money selling sweets, newspapers, cigarettes and small groceries. It is an Ennis institution with a stunning historic shop front on Abbey Street. The owner's brother owns the beautifully-fronted Tierney's bicycle shop a couple of doors down on the same street and between them, they have kept the street looking beautiful as well as providing needed services for decades. When I went in this week, the owner told me she as nearly wiped out when forced so shut during C*VID and when they reopened, she was hit with a rise in rates. On top of that she has been hit with a €1000 year licencing fee to sell cigarettes (already among the most taxed in Europe) which means she cannot profit from selling them. I do not smoke, I do not encourage it, but the reality is, no underage person ever bought a cigarette in her shop and the state is removing one leg of her business by taxing cigarettes out of shops.

The result is that she is slowly winding down her operation. As rates rise and taxes and operational costs pile up, footfall into the town is down significantly she said. While talking she said she feels there are two Irelands, one her Ireland, small businesses being left behind and the other, modern Ireland where multinationals are prioritised.

I couldn't help but notice that there was a new sweet shop a few doors up the street operated by south Asians. It was tacky, flashing LED lighting in the windows, US 'candy' store gimmick and sold lots of vapes. The older woman in Tierney's had told me that the government's new licencing fee for vapes is less which allows this new shop to be less penalised. One might say it's all free market (outside of the government's taxes) and she failed to move with the times, sure, but also give it a few years more and Abbey Street, Ennis' historic shopping street, will resemble any London back alley - of LED lights, tat and rootless, globalist consumerism.

3. Demographics

Walking around Ennis one can still feel that it is Ennis - from the age of 30 up. Particularly older people can feel that while things are changing, the bulk of the major changes to come will not happen in their lifetimes. In other words, it is easy to turn a blind eye to the fact that the majority of those under the age of 20 walking the streets are not ethnically Irish. And because of the mass migration of the last two decades that saw large groups of the same ethnicity placed in similar areas, many of these youths speak their mother tongue while together. In other words, self-sustaining ethnic groups/enclaves have been allowed form. As the rest of western Europe has shown us over decades, allowing emigration on a scale that allows ethnic enclaves to form will lead to a low trust, fragmented communities that come into conflict with one another. More to the point - clearly, under the age of 20 are growing up in an Ireland that is no longer their birthright.

4. Travellers

I flicked on the radio at one point out rambling around The Burren during the week and some very earnest, academic-sounding woman was talking about the need for greater Traveller recognition in public life - something that has become a very fashionable rallying call in official Ireland. Travellers have become the key protected class of the Irish liberal left. They have also become a terrific way for NGOs and academic to secure tremendous amounts of taxpayer funding to keep themselves in jobs. To listen to these advocates one would think that Travellers are living some kind of American Jim Crow experience that black people lived in the US after desegregation but the reality, of course is very different.

Out in my parish, travellers from the nearest halting site on the outskirts of Ennis, have become so emboldened by their protected status and by the Gardai's unwillingness to hold them to account, that they now go door to door in housing estates in the middle of the day checking doors to see if they are open to go in and rob them. A local WhatsApp group has clear cut photos of men - identified as travellers from the halting site - circulating and nothing is being done. What this means is that now everyone in my once small, quiet village has to remind one another via social media and in person to lock their doors and their car doors at night. It has caused a great deal of anxiety locally and a sense of being unsafe.

When I asked several people why the Gardai do nothing, they say because nothing will happen and they fear being branded 'racist' for reporting it (many have bought into the nonsense that the travellers are a different race). One said he had it on good authority from a guard that travellers have threatened to go to the houses of individual guards at night and do damage if they intervene. Whatever the reasons, travellers feel that they are above the law and it has emboldened them.

So, @OCallaghanJim - while getting tough on drug dealers, get tough on rural traveller crime and intimidation also if you want safer, peaceful communities.

5. Tourism and Heritage

Of course February is off season in Co. Clare so it is not fair to comment on the tourist trade but what I did notice bringing the little ones around the county - is that there has been an obvious lack of funding for historic tourism development. The most shocking example was the inauguration site at Magh Adhair, near Quin.

If you haven't heard of Magh Adhair that's OK, that's Clare Co. Co. and the OPW's fault. It is the inauguration place of the Kings of Thomond with development on the site likely going back to at least the Bronze Age. It is understood that Brian Boru himself was inaugurated there. The site was documented by several travellers and antiquarians throughout history and retained an important position as a meeting point, a fair location, etc up to the Famine. It should be the jewel in the crown of Clare archaeology and tourism. Yet it has never been excavated - not a problem in itself, it's good to leave some mystery and to leave some things for future generations to excavate - however, the main mound has been destroyed by cattle who are kept on the site. They have similarly broken down a wedge tomb on site and use the bullaun stone which would have played an important ceremonial role in the ordination of Munster kings as a scratching post.

It is a shameful display and an upcoming local politician with an eye on stirring local pride will win credit by promising to restore the site to its former glory by making it a centre of academic research and tourism revenue.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

A 60-year-old grandmother killer whale named Sophia battling in what scientists believe is the first time a single orca was captured on camera killing a great white shark.

[📹 NatGeoWILD]

[Keira Connolly @keira_con]

According to a news report, a certain private school in Ireland was recently was faced with a unique problem.
A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.
Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done.
She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the maintenance man who had to clean the mirrors every night.
To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.
He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.
Moral of the story, There are teachers, and then there are educators.