Irish Sports Desk Rabbitte has Galway hurlers eyeing 2nd straight club title

By Sean Creedon

Galway hurler Joe Rabbitte will be attempting to equal a record set by fellow Galwayman Packie Cooney when he leads out Athenry against Graigue Ballycallan in the AIB All-Ireland club final on Easter Monday. The football and hurling finals, which normally are played on St Patrick’s Day, have been refixed for Monday.

Cooney captained Sarsfields when they had back-to-back club final wins in 1993-94. Now Rabbitte will be trying to make it two in a row as his side faces up to Sixmilebridge.

Athenry beat Dunloy in the semifinal on Feb. 25. Graigue Ballycallan may be fresher as they had a tough replay against Sixmilebridge since sports resumed after the foot-and-mouth scare.

Had the football final gone ahead on the original date, Nemo Rangers would have been without suspended captain Larry Kavanagh. But Kavanagh is now back on the Cork side, who have won the club title a record six times. They should be too strong for Mayo champions Crossmolina, who will be playing in their first-ever final.

GAA TV rights

The GAA have awarded RTE and TG4 the rights for domestic coverage of the All-Ireland Championship and National league for the next three years. TG4 have been doing good work by covering club games and they will have the club final live on Easter Monday.

Best treatment

George Best, who recently fell of the wagon and had a three-day drinking spree, is going back into hospital in London next week in an attempt to curb his drinking problem.

The 54-year-old former Manchester United and Northern Ireland star is having anti-alcohol pellets implanted in his stomach. The pellets, called Antabuse, make a person physically sick if they drink alcohol. It’s the second time that Best will have the pellets implanted. Over 20 years ago he had a similar operation in Sweden.

"They didn’t work then because they wore out quickly," Best said. "But they will work this time, they’ve just go to."

Hopefully for Best’s sake they do. We all want to see our former idol return to full health.

Gypsies, Hoops semi

Most soccer supporters were hoping that Dublin archrivals Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers would be kept apart in the draw for the FAI Cup semifinals. But it wasn’t to be and the Gypsies and the Hoops now face a Good Friday showdown in the first of the semifinals. The game will be played at Dalymount Park, home of Bohemians, but that will be of little advantage as the Rovers players are not happy with the playing surface of their temporary home in Santry Stadium.

We should also know the pairing for the second semifinal this weekend as Longford Town play Dundalk on Easter Sunday in the delayed quarterfinal. Waterford await the winners.

Racing resumption

The Jameson Irish Grand National will now be run on Sunday, May 6, which is a Bank Holiday weekend in Ireland. The race had to be deferred from its usual Easter Monday date because of foot-and-mouth threat.

The postponed Punchestown National Hunt Festival will now be held at the County Meath course. Racing at Punchestown was ruled to be unsafe by the Irish Turf Club. After losing 27 meetings during the foot-and-mouth scare, 59 race meetings will now be crammed into 45 days in April and May.

GPA growth

The Gaelic Players Association have recruited 21 members recently in New York and now has a total of 718 paid up members. The GPA, which has concentrated on inter county panelists, have 596 football members and 122 hurlers.

"We have added 300 members in recently months and we are happy with that," the association’s chairman, Dessie Farrell, said recently from Dublin. "A lot more forms have been posted out and in another few weeks we hope to reach the 1,000 mark. But we must do better in hurling areas."

Cork’s Bob Honohan, a member of Croke Park’s Games Administration Committee, expressed surprise at the growth in GPA numbers.

"I thought players were happy with the huge improvements that were made recently to their general welfare," he said. "Players are treated better now than they were before and of course they have every right to be treated well because it’s the players who are the greatest asset to any Association."

Yes, the players are treated much better now, but now that they have got over the teething problems of forming an association, they are not going to go away.

The GPA and the official Players Association had their first-ever meeting last week and an amalgamation of the two associations at a later stage cannot be ruled out.

London ruggers expand

London Irish Rugby club are expanding their playing activities to include Gaelic Football and Hurling. In a radical move, the rugby club are to form an underage Gaelic wing and affiliate to the London GAA Minor Board. London Irish feel it will help copperfasten their cultural and social ties within London’s Irish community as well as keeping their young players fit during the Summer.

London GAA Secretary Tommy Harnell welcomed the move. "The reality is that most our lads play soccer or rugby at some stage of the year and it’s not a problem," he said.

Now maybe GAA clubs in American cities could copy and form soccer or baseball clubs for the children of their families.