Internationally, 2012 was a massive year for sport and will be a tough one to recreate. From an Irish point of view, well, it wasn’t all that great. There were one or two valiant exceptions, Katie Taylor and Fionnuala Britton for example, that kept the flag flying - and Kilkenny and Donegal on the home front gave plenty of GAA fans something to cheer about, but elsewhere we pretty much underperformed. A middling performance by our rugby team in the 6 Nations, a dismal performance by our soccer team in Euro 2012 and an Olympics, boxers notwithstanding, that left us ...
Our regular Sports Stories Updates with Sunday Independent journalist, Damian Lawlor in studio with John. Plus we talk to an All Ireland winner & Cork hurler, Kevin Hennessy, who is keeping up with Operation Transformation, in assoc with Safefood www.rte.ie/ot plus his friend & team-mate Tomás Mulcahy joins us on the line also.
This morning we launch our search for sporting underdogs, to follow the fortunes of a club or team as it seeks to make a stir in its league or championshiop in 2013. Joining John on the line now is former chairman of Tinryland GAA, Michael Murphy.
To those of us with only a patchy interest in sports, the reaction of Man United fans earlier this week to the retirement of Alex Ferguson was pretty extraordinary & that emotional outpouring got us thinking about what it really means to be a fan of a sports club. In studio with Miriam is Dr. Tara Magdalinski is lecturer at UCD’s Centre for Sports Studies.