In spite of having garnered enough bad headlines over the last few months, I have to say I’ve rarely looked forward to going to League of Ireland matches as much as I did this last weekend.
I know the pedantic police will rap my knuckles for not referring to it here as the Airtricity League, but for me it will always be the League of Ireland.
How about the Airtricity League of Ireland the next time the powers that be have a pow wow about what to call the competition?
On Friday, I went to the Carlisle Grounds to see if Eddie Gormley’s babes could put one over on a new look Dundalk. I should have known better. During the warm up before the game, Alan Cawley assured me that Dundalk would win. I should have listened to him and gone to the bookies, albeit, the Louthmen left it until injury time to nick the winner.
It was good to see a decent crowd down from Dundalk to get behind Ian Foster's side, and although Bray might struggle this season, they deserved great credit the other night for the way they battled, and if they had held on for the draw, I'd guess that Ian Foster wouldn’t have had too many complaints.
Then the following night it was up to Sligo for the battle of the Rovers. Fabulous atmosphere, cracking match, goals, controversy, great saves, great quotes from the managers. This was an example of what Irish football can be like.
I was delighted to see that Sligo had posters around the town advertising the match and they were rewarded with a smashing crowd, albeit they may have had more ticket sellers outside to prevent the delay in kick-off, which for hacks with tight deadlines doesn't help.
Incidentally I got lost in Sligo looking for the Showgrounds for the second time in a row. A sign at the junction when you arrive into the town on the Dublin road pointing up towards the Showgrounds would save fellow hapless visitors a trip around the town looking for the ground.
The opening edition of MNS has received a very good response from the viewers, who contacted us by email and on our Facebook page. 1250 fans/friends and growing.
Tony O'Donoghue's report from Derry went down very well, and I know we're going to get hundreds of requests for more coverage of First Division games, but the truth is we are still operating on a very tight budget and the costs involved in having camera at all the First Division games will prove prohibitive.
We took a bit of stick for listing Cork's next fixture for Sunday instead of Friday night. In fairness that info was taken from an official website, and as far as I know nobody from Cork contacted us to alert us of the change, but hopefully that's an early season hiccup which will be ironed out in the coming programmes. Apologies for the slip.
Paul Doolin enjoyed himself. No sooner was he in the door of the production office when Tony McDonnell was slagging him for wearing 10 pin bowling shoes into RTE. In fairness they were extremely dodgy. Thankfully he changed before we went on air, but even as a newcomer to the MNS team, he wasn't spared the slagging by his former libero. (Tony played under Paul at UCD).
If you watch the programme on the MNS website or on the RTE player, keep an eye out for the odd wince when I'm moving on the couch.
As I write this on Monday night I'm just back from casualty after my left knee buckled from under me following our pre-programme meeting. In the pantheon of great sports injuries, wrecking your knee whilst seated at a sports programme meeting has to be at least a contender, and I didn't even get kicked by Paul Doolin!
Unfortunately there were too many people in casualty ahead of me, so I chose the 'go home and hope it gets better of its own accord' route.
I'll keep you posted!
So I'm crocked, but thankfully the first week of the Airtricity League campaign has got off to a good start. Decent crowds at most venues and not a 0-0 in sight. Roll on week two!
Keep the emails coming in to mns@rte.ie; and MNS has its own facebook page and you can follow the programme tweets on Twitter - @rtemns is where you'll catch up with us.
Fogra : I promised Elaine Peers that I would congratulate her brother (I presume), Sligo defender, Gavin and his other half Debbi on the arrival of little Bradley on the programme, but because the Sligo Rovers v Shamrock Rovers match was towards the end of the programme I got rushed by the editor and ran out of time. Sorry Elaine.
