Farewell to An Fear Rua and Dan Carter, hurling fan?

In today’s Hospital Pass, Dan Carter shows his appreciation for Joe Canning and we show our appreciation for the soon to be departed An Fear Rua GAA website.

Dan Carter, hurling fan?

Without wanting to tar everyone with the same brush, we would suggest that the majority of people watching Sunday’s All-Ireland Final outside of those with Kilkenny leanings and others with money resting on the matter were glad to see Joe Canning knock over the last-minute equaliser.

Canning had contributed so much to the game – particularly the first half – that it would have been a shame had the losing of the game come down to the free he missed in the dying stages; Canning and the game itself deserved better than that.

The injury-time free awarded to Galway that Canning put over may have been controversial, but it was certainly no gimme and Joe showed some balls to knock it over under that amount of pressure considering the easier one he had missed only minutes before.

Canning’s character rightly came in for plenty of praise afterwards, including from an unlikely source who knows all about putting a ball over the bar under extreme pressure, New Zealand out-half Dan Carter.

Thinking that Carter would appreciate Canning’s feats given the pressure  surrounding the free and the angle he had to work with, Irishman and Carter fan Gerard Queenan tweeted Dan a picture of Canning in the process of slotting the free, which the All-Black talisman and probably the best rugby player in the world re-tweeted to nearly 50,000 followers.

Pic via Twitter/Dan Carter

High praise indeed, especially from a man capable of doing this…

If Joe can manage something similar in the replay, we’d guess that Carter won’t be the only international sportsperson of high-renown queuing up to declare their public appreciation.

Hat-tip to Gerard Queenan for sharing his five minutes of fame with us.

Farewell to An Fear Rua

On a sadder note, many GAA fans will have been sorry to hear the news that popular GAA website An Fear Rua has shut down today after 12 years on the Interweb.

Founder Liam Cahill – formerly of RTE and currently advisor to Minister of State Shane McEntee - cited falling advertising revenue, the threat posed by libel laws to an anonymous forum such as An Fear Rua and the “unreasonable sense of entitlement” of a “growing minority” of the site’s 10,000+ members as reasons to finally pack it in. You can read Cahill’s statement in full here.

Cahill obviously has good reasons to close the site down, but it is a shame it has come to this. As well as being a forum for everyone to get off their chests matters relating to the GAA world, the site was home to some excellent content – this recent article about how Mayo and Donegal have redefined Gaelic Football is well worth a peek – and it wasn’t just exclusively GAA either, anything quickening the pulse of the nation was up for discussion.

Personally, I only discovered the website in the last couple of years, but every time I paid it a visit I ended up hanging around for an hour or so, as I’m sure did numerous other GAA enthusiasts who, probably like myself, spend far too much time online for their own good.

It will be sadly missed.