James Galvin

Cork City will face Apollon Limassol of Cyprus in the first qualifying round of the Champions League. The winner will then go on to play Red Star Belgrade (aka FK Crvena Zvezda). All the qualifying round fixtures are here.

I have never heard of Apollon Limassol but Heres where Wikipedia comes in handy:

In 2006 Apollon won the Cyprus First Division championship title, while being the only undefeated team in Europe. Apollon hasn’t had a defeat for the last 30 league games (since 12 March 2005 - today).

While the league of Cyprus might not be the highest standard, that is a very impressive statistic, and this looks like a very difficult fixture. A number of them play for Cypriot national team, and they’ve also got three Iraqis who probably train with a concrete football, and a bunch of Eastern Europeans including at least one former Polish national who played in World Cup 2002.

Cork City are top of the league again after beating Drogheda United tonight, but do not look as strong as last season. It would be too much to ask for a repeat of last year’s performances against FK Ekranas and in particular the heroic win over Djurgårdens IF. I’m looking forward to this, the match will take place on the 11th or 12th of July.

Derry City face familiar opposition in the UEFA Cup - former winners IFK Göteborg. Cork City played them in the UEFA qualifiers in 1999 - Göteborg won a flattering 3-0 in Denmark, while City won 1-0 in Turners Cross. Drogheda United will face the Finnish team HJK Helsinki.

There is a common misconception in Ireland and elsewhere that Americans don’t like soccer. The average American sports fan doesn’t have access to the media coverage and the soccer tradition that exists in Europe, but they can still tell Zidane from Ronaldo.

I lived in Massachusetts for 7 years growing up, moved around a bit, and in every school I attended, each day during our lunch break, I mean “recess”, we didn’t play baseball or American football or golf or hockey - we played soccer. Along with all of my friends, I played in the regional soccer youth league, which was extremely well organised with ~12 local teams for each age group (u-8, u-10, u-12, u-14, u-16). This was not an urban area, and to have 60 underage teams playing each week was impressive. Whats more, the very good players attended try-outs for ‘competitive’, and moved on to better teams in bigger leagues.

In football-mad Ireland, my local town didn’t have a single team, and I would have had to drive some distance if I wanted to play competitively as a 14 year old. Any potentially talented footballers would be playing GAA. I know there are lots of people living outside of Cork City and Dublin who were good enough to trial for clubs, but there was no route for them to take.

On the other hand, the USA got hammered today, and I have been amazed by the naivety of the comments I’ve seen since from American fans - thankful that its “only Italy” they’ve got to beat. I said they liked soccer, and played soccer… I didn’t say they knew anything about it.

I’m still reeling from the first half, and exhausted by the tension in the second. Munster didn’t just go there to win, they set out to hammer Biarritz into the stands, and do to them what they did to Leinster a few weeks ago. I didn’t think it would be possible to match that performance, but the fury of the first half in Cardiff today was intense. Report here, and a round-up of the initial blogside reactions as well as pictures and clips on the Limerick Blogger. What a performance by Stringer, heres a picture as he flies in for his try.

Joe Gamble has been drafted into the Irish squad for the training camp in Portugal and friendly against Chile. This is the first time a Cork City player has been in the Ireland senior squad - although there have been times in the past when it was clearly deserved.

Gamble, from Togher in Cork, was one of the best players in the Eircom league last season, and remains consistent this season. He’s a great midfielder and thoroughly deserves to be there - hopefully he’ll be given the chance at Landsdowne Rd. on 24th May to prove that.

Tom’s Sporting Almanac has previewed the upcoming hurling championship, with a look at each of the contenders. A good article - until he says he thinks Kilkenny will just scrape it.

Cork’s major worry will be about injuries. They do not have Kilkenny’s numbers, but their quality overrides any deficiency in quantity. However, injuries to the likes of Diarmuid O’Sullivan, Sean Og O hAilpin, the O’Connors or Ronan Curran would be debilitating, especially if they occured amongst their inspirational defendsive division.

Slashdot’s coverage of the Oblivion saga continues. Some lawyer named Jack reckons that “the game content will spawn ‘an even worse disaster’ than occurred during Hot Coffee”.

Just to recap on Grand Theft Auto’s mod, Hot Coffee - from Wikipedia:

When installed, it unlocks a hidden part of the game which involves having sex (featuring oral sex with an “invisible” penis and dry humping) with the main character’s girlfriend to try to improve the relationship between the two.

The Oblivion mod, on the otherhand, unlocks this:

Does anyone think that is worse than GTA’s Hot Coffee mod? I think that Jack Thompson preys on the cluelessness of American parents in order to make a name for himself. This Oblivion issue has been blown way out of proportion, but Jack Thompson wants people to believe that World War III has started and he is the only guy who can save us from the enemy. Jack: this is not going to make you a guest on Oprah. Silence you furry fool. You’re finished here, you understand?

The DaVinci Code hype has gone beyond a joke.

I went to see American Dreamz yesterday, the American Idol parody. Such an easy target, but this was a weak effort. The early rounds of the real American Idol are infinitely more funny (see William Hung). However, Hugh Grant is no longer the most annoying guy on Earth, he’s actually not too bad (please don’t kill me).

From ClanBase - news of a major security flaw in the six year old Quake 3 engine:

Today, on milw0rm.com, a hacker nicknamed Landser has released a hack that exploits a serious leak in games based on the Quake 3 Engine. It grants hackers full access to take over your computer.

Technically, the leak creates a unsuspicious “boundary error” when sending malformed messages from the gameserver to a client during the remapShader process. Once a buffer overflow occurs, the computer is fully exposed to any type of activities.

This also affects Enemy Territory, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and any other games running the Quake 3 engine. The patch is out, but PunkBuster anti-cheat program is slowing things down, so you if you plan on playing league games this week, don’t upgrade just yet.

In other news, the Swedish Quake legend Blue is back dueling in the Eurocup after five years absence. Will be interesting to see how he does in Quake 4

Soccer - Ireland’s squad was announced for the training camp in Portugal and upcoming friendly vs Chile. Great to see Steve Staunton building a team for the future, with many young faces in the side including the 17 year old Terry Dixon from Spurs. A big surprise to me was the inclusion of Shelbourne’s Jason Byrne. In the past, I have always campaigned for the managers to look to the Eircom League, and in particular to the likes of Jason Byrne, when we had no options (other than David Connolly) up front.

However, at the moment our strikers are better than I can ever remember, with Robbie Keane in flying form at Spurs, Stephen Elliot looking very lively for Ireland last season, and Kevin Doyle named Fan’s Player of the Year at Reading, making the team of the championship, and spawning a 58-page thread of appreciation on the Royal’s forum in the process. Thats not to mention Clinton, who has often done well for us.

Since Jayo’s inclusion is obviously just a token, why not give Georgie a few minutes to dazzle the palta-eaters over in Chile? Still, at least theres good news for one Cork City player, as Denis Behan has been called up into the U-21 side to play Azerbaijan.

I’m not going to say anything derogatory about the Leinster fans, because they’ve been getting slated enough this weekend and I think its time we give both of them a break now.

Theres a report here. Lets hope all the lads get back to Limerick before Polish is declared the official language. Biarritz must be in fits.

Last night I attended the Cork Masters / Liam O’Connor Memorial snooker match between Stephen Hendry and the defending champion: Dominic Dale. I have never been a huge snooker fan, although I would happily watch it when theres a tournament on, in the same way I might watch bobsledding in the winter olympics. But on this occasion, my brother had VIP tickets courtesy of 96fm. With the match hosted only 18 minutes away (in The Commons in Blackpool) there was no excuse not to go.

Dominic Dale drew first blood, dealing so comfortably with the initial long shots that it reminded me of that time I once potted three balls in a row in the Vic. An impressive break of 92 or so gave him that frame, and when he followed this up with a century break, I was thoroughly satisfied. You could go to a thousand snooker halls and never see a player like this. A nice guy too, very sound (despite the embarrassing ‘flamboyant’ dress and hair style) and I was happy for him when he made it 3-0.

The Scottish superstar scowling in the far corner looked even more pissed off than usual. Perhaps it was because the tiny crowd, inclusive of restless kids in Man Utd jersies and disinterested women who went for drinks during play. It might have been the slightly miserable venue in the heart of beautiful Blackpool that was not worthy of the talents of the most successful snooker player of all time, and current #2 in the world, but he was not enjoying himself at all. Or maybe he just wasn’t warmed up properly, because after a 10min break he came back and destroyed the Welshman, taking five frames straight to win 5-3 (ending with a very impressive break of 124). It was great entertainment, well worth the 15euro that I didn’t have to pay. Hendry seemed friendly enough too when I met him afterwards, although I can’t say for sure because I couldn’t understand a word he was saying.

I was looking forward to attending the final - Hendry vs Doherty (who knocked out Steve Davis earlier), but laziness got the better of me. I will make an effort to go if its on again next year… front row seats make all the difference. I had no idea that Stephen Hendry was such a legend:

1. Hendry has won the World Snooker Championships seven times, a record for the modern era, and is thus regarded as the greatest player of all time.
2. He was Scottish Amateur Champion at the age of 15, and turned professional aged just 16.
3. Hendry first won the World Professional Snooker Championship in at the age of 21, becoming the youngest player ever to win the event.
4. He has earned more prize money than any other player (about £8 million).
5. He has scored the most 147s (eight times).
6. He is the only player to have scored a 147 in a deciding frame.
7. He has compiled the most century breaks (currently over 700).
8. He holds the most ranking event titles (36).
9. Winner of 6 masters titles - 5 of which were in a row. 7 World titles (5 in a row). 18 major titles (World, UK, Masters).
10. In 1990/1991, he won five ranking events - a record for a single season.
11. He had the longest unbeaten run spanning 10 month and over 5 events.
12. He was ranked number 1 from 1990 to 1998 in a record breaking 8 season streak.
13. He has won 72 professional titles in total - just one less than Steve Davis’ record of 73.
14. He was awarded an MBE in 1994.
15. He was voted BBC Scotland’s Sports Personality of the Year in 1987 and 1996.
16. He has been voted World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association Player of the Year of the Year on seven occasions.
17. He played in the 2005 World Series of Poker.

There are at least 17 reasons why you’d think he might cheer up a bit