Colm Parkinson reminds us all once again why he’s the most entertaining GAA personality on Twitter, while Liam Dunne won’t be exploiting any GAA loopholes this weekend.
While there are still some GAA players who won’t go near it, the GAA fraternity have fully embraced Twitter over the last year or so.
These days, you can nearly guarantee that half of an average inter-county panel will be tweeting on a fairly regular basis, even though a lot of their time is seemingly spent honourably obliging the endless requests for retweets from GAA fans.
There are a few players out there well worth a follow. Meath’s Ciaran Lenehan, for instance, is a very witty character and Wexford’s Aindreas Doyle provides occasional insights into life as an assistant to Mick Wallace.
Not all of them are particularly entertaining, however, at least not according to former Laois footballer and current Newstalk analyst Colm Parkinson, who is hands down the most entertaining GAA personality on the social networking website.
Bored by the fare on offer during the Portugal v Czech Republic clash last night, Parkinson revealed the reasons why he had unfollowed players such as Armagh duo Aaron Kernan and Jamie Clarke.
He had nothing against them personally, of course, but pointed out that for the most part, the tweets of GAA players were incredibly boring. He then proceeded to send them up with his own version of the content he encounters on a regular basis with the following post last night.
Unfortunately, some people didn’t understand the irony behind Parkinson’s tweets and some of the more inane and humourless responses were retweeted by the man himself. Some of the language contained within is too offensive to repeat here, but check out Parkinson’s timeline if you want to have a look.
Parkinson might divide opinion, often deliberately, with his forthright views, but Twitter would be a far less entertaining world without him, indeed that certainly was the case when he took a self-imposed break from the site earlier this year.
Keep up the good work Woolly.
Liam’s on-field sorties are Dunne for
It went largely unnoticed in the aftermath of Wexford’s defeat to Offaly in the Leinster Championship earlier this year, but Liam Dunne’s occasional ventures onto the field of play during that game didn’t escape the attention of the GAA authorities.
Participants in our native games will exploit a loophole whenever the opportunity presents itself, and when Dunne went on to the field to talk to his players, he wasn’t technically breaking any rules due to the ‘Maor Foirne (Runner)’, tag on his bib, as opposed to the ‘Bainisteoir’ one he should have been wearing.
There’ll be no repeat of Dunne’s actions against Westmeath this weekend, though, as the authorities have sent out a letter reminding managers of the need to wear the correct attire on the sideline.
“In no circumstance, other than where the Bainisteoir is suspended, banished from the pitch enclosure or is unable to attend the fixture, can the Bainisteoir top be worn by another member of the Official Team Party,” read the letter.
“In no circumstances, can the known Bainisteoir wear a Maor Foirne top and thus enter the field of play (see Section 6, Match Regulations). Penalties for breach of section 6 include exclusion from the pitch enclosure for one or more games.”
We applaud Dunne’s attempt at ingenuity, but when you take into account that inconsequential issues such as socks not being pulled up in a parade can carry a sanction from the authorities, he was never really going to get away with it.
