Joe Brolly Quotes

Barry McGowan. Now he was an example of a really great footballer who was totally unheralded. For me, he was as good as Tony Scullion. He was in that mould.

American presidents come and go. Dublin endure. Their annual Leinster Championship run has become the easiest campaign in Irish life after the Healy-Raes', with more discipline.

He's so big, he has an arse like a bag of cement. You can't get near him when the ball comes in, yet he has the most delicate skills.

Boys talking through their arses on TSG. It was a superb goal. The hip nudge to put Walsh off balance. The catch. The lightning fast, deft finish. The perfect timing.

Och, he knows what I think of him – I've said it before.

In Derry, the board is currently in serious discussions about whether to enter a senior team into next year's championship... if Derry had not fielded a team in league or championship over the last five years, our absence would have been as memorable as Kilkenny's footballers... In a small dual county, in a vain bid to keep up with the Joneses, we have been spending over £45,000 a month on our senior teams... What has all this expenditure bought us? To Division 4. And now, Division 3 mid-table mediocrity.

Great second half by Cavan. Always had a soft spot for the county ever since Pat Faulkner kicked me up in the air & Joe Dillon caught me over his head in the 1987 Ulster club semi final v Kingscourt.

The world has increasingly become like the Rose of Tralee... We're either interested in the truth and in the facts of things or we're in Rose of Tralee world where no-one says anything and where, for example, RTÉ apologise because you and I took an entirely fair, but robust view of Barry McGuigan. I mean, apologising? And, of course, everybody knows the apology is false as well. Everybody knows, 'Well that's a false apology, obviously McGuigan has rung up to complain about this, the wee shite that he is'.

The great Barry, the great unheralded maestro of Donegal football...

And where in the country would you get anyone like Anthony Lynch, a warrior and a Gaeilgeoir? If my daughter said she was going to marry him I'd go down on my knees and thank the Lord. No dowry would be too large for the Lynch family.

Tommy Walsh is a one-trick pony – if he gets the ball 40 yards from goal and you stay close to him he'll barge past you and head for goal, but if you stand off him and wait for him to come onto his left then he won't do any damage... Walsh doesn't have the speed of thought or foot to deal with proper, logical defending.

For the second week in a row, Kieran Donaghy was better dressed in the studio than Jimmy McGuinness and Peter Canavan wasn't. Last weekend, Kieran gave a detailed analysis of a sending off he hadn't seen.

'What do people see in Canty?' a Kerry man texted me at half-time [of the 2011 Munster final]. 'I don't know' was my response. In fairness, Kerry people are very harsh judges of a footballer. Someone like Graham, whose strengths are his physique, athleticism and never-say-die attitude, underwhelms them. They have that in Kerry, but on top of that they have the skills. Graham does not.

Boris Johnson said this week that he wants to unleash 'The Great British haircut'. Boris, who looks like what Owen Mulligan will in 10 years' time, likes to put 'Great British' or 'Great Britain' before his public pronouncements... Perhaps when Owen Mulligan was running amok against Dublin in the mid-noughties, selling them what Sean Cavanagh would describe as 'The Great UK dummy', a young Boris was watching, marched straight to the barber afterwards and demanded the full Mulligan.

The one real anomaly in the League is The Black Death... They have continued to play the most horrible, defensive football the game has ever seen, oblivious to the trend towards attack based, non fouling football.