International football is back. Love it or hate it, Manchester United and Tottenham fans might be quite happy to have something else to watch for a few days.

For Ireland, attention turns to Pristina on Thursday night as Heimir Hallgrímsson’s side begin their UEFA Nations League campaign away to Kosovo, carrying an eight-game unbeaten run and looking to do something they have never managed in this competition: win their opening game.

There has been so much discussion around the two matches with Israel that you would be forgiven for forgetting Ireland have to play somebody before them. Unfortunately for Hallgrímsson, Kosovo are a little too good to be treated as a formality.

Ireland do arrive with a few problems. Captain Nathan Collins is out, while Jamie McGrath and Harvey Vale have also withdrawn through injury, with St. Mirren man Killian Phillips called in as cover. It leaves Hallgrímsson without one of his most important defenders and a little lighter in midfield before a demanding run of four games in 11 days, beginning in Pristina before meetings with Israel and Austria.

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The heart of the matter from the ground up…

The more encouraging part of the week is the form of the players who have made it.

Troy Parrott has made a fairly lively start to life at Real Betis. He scored the winner against Real Madrid, followed it with another decisive goal on his Champions League debut against Lille and then created the only goal in a win over Getafe as Betis climbed

towards the top end of La Liga. We know he can decide big games, and Ireland will need some of that across this international window.

Jack Moylan has also forced himself further into the picture after two goals and an assist for Cardiff City at the weekend, while Finn Azaz has started the season well at Southampton.

Jake O’Brien’s return at Everton could prove especially useful with Collins unavailable. After beginning the campaign outside David Moyes’ team, he has worked his way back into competitive action at centre-half and given the Scot a reminder of why he should be there.

Ireland’s eight-match unbeaten run means there is a bit of momentum behind Hallgrímsson’s side, although Kosovo should give us a better idea of where Ireland really are.

They are playing in League B for the first time and came within one game of reaching the 2026 World Cup, finishing ahead of Sweden and Slovenia in qualifying before Türkiye eventually ended their run in the play-off final.

Their biggest threat is fairly obvious. Fenerbahçe’s Vedat Muriqi gives Kosovo a physical reference point through the middle, but Ireland cannot afford to become obsessed with him.

Edon Zhegrova and former Norwich winger Milot Rashica give Kosovo quality and unpredictability in wide areas, while Hoffenheim forward Fisnik Asllani offers another mobile threat around the box.

Muriqi occupies centre-halves, and the danger comes when that creates room for the players around him.

There are problems behind that attack though. Napoli defender and captain Amir Rrahmani is absent after stepping away from the national team amid dissatisfaction with the leadership of the Kosovo Football Federation, while Florent Hadërgjonaj is also unavailable. For a side facing Parrott in his current form, losing your most experienced centre-half is hardly ideal preparation.

Kosovo haven’t taken long to get here either. They only became full UEFA members in 2016, but a decade on they are playing in League B and have already come within one win of reaching a World Cup.

Thursday will be the first senior meeting between the two countries, which makes Pristina a fairly interesting place for Ireland to start the campaign.

Ireland, meanwhile, are still chasing something fairly basic in Nations League terms: a winning start. They have never won the opening game of a campaign in this competition, which feels very on-brand for a national team that has made slow starts something of a habit.

That gives Thursday a little more weight than a standard first game of an international window.

Ireland arrive without their captain, but Parrott, Moylan, Azaz and O’Brien all give Hallgrímsson reasons to be encouraged. Kosovo have problems of their own, but enough quality going forward to punish Ireland if they switch off or spend too long thinking about what comes next.

For all the noise around the matches still to come, Thursday should tell us plenty about Ireland on its own.

As the Premier League breaks for the first time this season, our Merseyside based correspondent Kevin Bannon and editor Cathal Dervan discuss the winners and the losers of the campaign to date - and Spurs! They also chat briefly about the noise around Israel v Ireland and the lack of noise around Kosovo v Ireland.

The full episode is available on site now and you can watch all the previous Let’s Talk Football episodes now on TheSportsHacks.com

or you can listen to all of our podcasts on our Spotify channel

Check our socials (X here or insta here or tiktok here) for all the latest or just to see the World Cup giraffes again!

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There are two tricks of old school journalism that you won’t find on any third level curriculum teaching modern day communications for influencers, content creators and their like in a world where print is a thing of the past.

The first ‘old’ trick of the trade is to always talk to the taxi driver when you hit the ground in a foreign land. Trust me, nine times out of 10 they know more about their football team than most people in the vicinity.

And you can always quote a taxi driver as a local source if you’re struggling to make a deadline - more than one transfer rumour started in a black cab over the years! Some of them even came true.

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Quick step or waltz…

The taxi trick normally only works away from home mind you. Most media owners in my day expected their football writers to know more about the game on the ground than those working in the transportation industry! And I’m sure that hasn’t changed.

The other trick beloved of the old schoolers works home or away and it doesn’t cost as much as a taxi journey. Whenever a game doesn’t go the way your target audience wants it to go, just look up the TV schedule and find a listing to match the story and the sentiment.

Now I wasn’t in Glasgow yesterday for the Old Firm derby so I had to make do with the Sky Sports broadcast of the biggest game of his second coming from Martin O’Neill.

So when Roy Keane appeared on our screens, live from the Director’s Box at Parkhead as Celtic continued to chase a 1-0 deficit, it was time to have a look at the schedule on the remote control.

And there it was on BBC One - Songs of Praise live from the Harvest Festival in Somerset and hosted on a farm with faith at its centre.

Bingo.

By the time the last hymn sheet was consigned to the history books, Rangers had seen out the 1-0 win and O’Neill was explaining a third defeat of the week, two of them against Celtic’s bitterest rivals.

In an instant, the Songs of Praise were nowhere to be heard in the East End of Glasgow. The taxi drivers, I can only assume, were talking about the removal of O’Neill as manager. Even the man himself admitted afterwards that he would consider all options over the upcoming international break.

And Roy Keane could now be the Keane the Celtic fans are looking for - having ran the Robbie one out of town the minute it was claimed that he was on his way over the summer.

Roy of the Keanes has never made a secret of the fact that he still fancies a crack at management despite all the money he is making on the Overlap and on an endless talking tour of Ireland with Roddy Doyle.

And if there is one thing that this Celtic squad clearly need at the moment, it’s a leader who can turn their season around, quite a demand considering the fact they are still two points clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership after seven games played.

The fact of the matter is that Celtic have looked rudderless this past week, against Rangers and against a Ferencvaros side largely put together by Robbie Keane.

Martin O’Neill performed a miracle worthy of a Song of Praise last season when he snatched the league title from under the nose of Derek McInnes and Hearts.

But the same McInnes, and his new Rangers team, have regrouped and recharged their batteries - they looked more like title contenders than Celtic on Sunday and that has to be a concern for a Board that didn’t have the conviction to see the Robbie Keane appointment through in the summer.

They might have seen enough on Sunday though to go for a different Keane second time around. And they might get lucky at the third time of asking - seeing as how Roy turned Dermot Desmond down twice previously when it came to the Celtic job but was there on Sunday to see for himself the task at hand, the sort of task he would surely relish.

Stranger things have happened in football - just ask your local taxi driver!

The Coaching Corner is close to home this week as Larry Mahony joins editor Cathal Dervan to discuss the ever improving League of Ireland from a coaching and playing perspective - including some penalty shoot-out tips from Larry that apply across the game. You can follow Larry at www.bigpicturecoachingireland.com.

The full episode is available on site now and you can watch all the previous Let’s Talk Football episodes now on TheSportsHacks.com

or you can listen to all of our podcasts on our Spotify channel

Check our socials (X here or insta here or tiktok here) for all the latest or just to see the World Cup giraffes again!

No noise, just the news & views that matters. The Sports Hacks is a reader supported publication - if you like what you read, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber and sharing our work.

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That Petrol Emotion were never the Undertones and the Undertones were never That Petrol Emotion. Teenage Kicks were the boyhood dreams growing up in Derry for the young Tones while the ageing Emotions were looking for someone to Detonate Their Dreams by the end of their 15 minutes of fame.

Confused? Well you have every right to be if you were born any time after USA ‘94 but there is a League of Ireland connection and there is a Premier Division title race analogy here if you have enough patience to stick with rambling.

Teenage Kicks is one of the best pop songs in the history of pop songs, delivered with all the brashness of punk and still as fresh as ever as visitors to the Brandywell tonight will discover when Derry City entertain Galway United and the song will feature on the match day playlist - as it always does.

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Getting shirty…

The O’Neill brothers - Damian and John - are well known around the City ground and they are the links between the Undertones and That Petrol Emotion, the band that almost gave them a second shot at the big time.

These days the O’Neills are back with the modern version of the Undertones, Paul McLoone doing a very good job as long term replacement for the enigmatic frontman Fergal Sharkey. And the current edition of the Undertones are a band well worth checking out on their tour of Ireland this Christmas season.

By then, the League of Ireland title race will have been decided and one of current champions Shamrock Rovers, current table toppers St Patrick’s Athletic and current double contenders Bohemians will have the trophy sitting on their mantlepiece.

Who will it be? After an incredible weekend of football last weekend, including a Fantastic Friday and a Manic Monday for Pats when they beat Rovers at home and hammered Dundalk away, we can still only guess but the central question is really a simple one - who will detonate their dreams as That Petrol Emotion sang two singles before their 1994 break-up.

Now you can see where all this is coming from. Pats have a teenage dreamer in Ryan Sheridan, a wonderfully balanced young footballer who is filling Kian Leavy’s boots with real skill. And Rovers have clearly missed the teenage touch offered by Arsenal bound Victor Ozhianvunu before his injury at the start of the summer.

Those two, currently level on points and separated only by goal difference at the top of the table although Rovers have played one less game, are the most likely winners but Bohs, only three points adrift and with a game in hand on Pats as well, aren’t out of the running just yet.

Which makes this weekend’s games, the last series before the international break, so intriguing and so important from a psychological point of view.

Pats don’t get the chance to build on last week’s momentum until Saturday when they go to play a Sligo Rovers side already all but relegated. An away win is a racing certainty here unless Sligo pull a rabbit from a hat they don’t appear to have in their possession this season.

By the time the Saints kick-off at the Showgrounds tomorrow night, Bohs could be level on points with them if they beat their Drogheda visitors and the Dublin Rovers could be ahead of them based on the outcome of their biggest game of the season as rejuvenated Waterford travel to Tallaght Stadium tonight.

Beat the Blues and the Hoops will go three clear, draw and they move one point ahead. Win and they will convince their own fans and the detractors that they have the ability to keep the trophy in their cabinet. Lose and it will be very difficult for anyone outside their dressing room to believe this can be turned around.

That’s how big the games this weekend are. Season defining with the potential to detonate those teenage dreams. You heard it here first - mostly because you won’t read that line anywhere else!

As for Wednesday Week? That’s for another day!

After a fantastic weekend of Premier Division action in the League of Ireland, why is there no protest about the lack of local based players in the Ireland squad for the upcoming window? That’s one of the topics discussed by Darryl Geraghty and editor Cathal Dervan on this week’s LOI Let’s Talk Football Special...

The full episode is available on site now and you can watch all the previous Let’s Talk Football episodes now on TheSportsHacks.com

or you can listen to all of our podcasts on our Spotify channel

Check our socials (X here or insta here or tiktok here) for all the latest or just to see the World Cup giraffes again!

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Israel will be the main topic for discussion when Heimir Hallgrimsson sits down with the Irish football media for the first time this season today and rightly so. The moral compass will and should demand another examination of the outrageous decision to play football not once but twice in the coming weeks against a nation engaging in genocide and Heimir can expect many questions on the topic when he names his squad for said games.

What he can also expect are questions about a young man by the name of JJ Gabriel who visited these shores only a few short weeks ago when Manchester United defeated Leeds United on penalties in the Boylesports Cup final at Croke Park.

Young JJ, still only 15, was in the United squad but didn’t get a run on the hallowed GAA turf that night and right now it looks like he might never get another run in a United shirt at all.

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Need for speed…

As well documented elsewhere, JJ and his family want to end his association with Manchester United before it has really begun. The club, naturally, don’t want to lose the best 15-year-old in Europe as he has been labelled this week but Real Madrid, PSG and Barcelona are all, reportedly, waiting in the wings.

So what, you might ask, has all this got to do with Heimir Hallgrimsson? Well JJ Gabriel was born Joseph Junior Andreou O Cearruill a mere 15 years ago in the London suburb of Enfield.

His dad is Joe O Cearruill, a former Arsenal reserve who played for St Patrick’s Athletic at one stage and won two Ireland caps on the 2007 tour of America when Steve Staunton’s makeshift side played against Bolivia and Ecuador.

Joe was, and I suspect I am one of the few people who saw him play for Pats and Ireland, a bit of a journeyman footballer who never quite made the grade as a pro in England as he wandered from one non-league side to another.

The same cannot be said of his son who is already the most wanted young footballer in Europe with a talent that his dad, the one who calls the shots, clearly believes belongs on a stage bigger even than Old Trafford.

The fact that JJ’s dad played for Ireland and that his grandmother is Irish makes JJ eligible for the squad that Heimir will name today for the upcoming games against Kosovo, Israel and Austria but JJ won’t be involved.

It’s already been made clear to the FAI that JJ wants nothing to do with an Ireland call-up so those asking the question today will be wasting their time.

The reality, as the Declan Rice story proves, is that the best young players in England will be told by their advisors and agents that an England career is worth a whole lot more than throwing your lot in with the likes of the Republic or Michael O’Neill’s Northern Ireland.

That’s just the way of the world and while it makes a good story to link JJ Gabriel with Ireland, there is no fear of it ever happening. We can, and will, jump on the bandwagon but this story will be nothing more than a sideshow today when Heimir meets the media for the first time since the summer tour to Canada.

As distractions go, it will be a welcome one for the Irish boss in all probability given the nature of the Israel issue but we can’t expect to see Europe’s best 15-year-old in a green shirt. More’s the pity - but that’s life.

Don’t look back in anger - it’s time to talk Premier League football once again and our Merseyside based commentator Kevin Bannon joins editor Cathal Dervan for a brief review of the Manchester derby, VAR et al. It’s a short and sweet episode this week as Steven Spielberg would have been proud of his Gremlins who managed to curtail the conversation!

The full episode is available on site now and you can watch all the previous Let’s Talk Football episodes now on TheSportsHacks.com

or you can listen to all of our podcasts on our Spotify channel

Check our socials (X here or insta here or tiktok here) for all the latest or just to see the World Cup giraffes again!

No noise, just the news & views that matters. The Sports Hacks is a reader supported publication - if you like what you read, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber and sharing our work.

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There’s a young man out there who won’t like the story being told but here goes - only because today is Friday and not a Super Sunday as so often used by Sky Sports and their likes.

Once upon a time Sunday was League of Ireland day. All games kicked-off in the afternoon and everyone was home - or in the pub - by teatime. It was all very regular and all very structured and of its time.

Nowadays, Friday is League of Ireland day. From February until November, give or take, we measure our seasons and our ambitions on a Friday evening - unless you’re from Sligo which is when Saturday comes into play in the North-West.

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Let’s get the party started…

This weekend however, all the Premier Division action is on tonight, Friday night. So we need, as you will hear on our LOI podcast with Darryl Geraghty, a new moniker and an Irish version of Super Sunday.

Fabulous Friday is a bit too Joanna Lumley so maybe we should consider Freaky Friday - even if a young man I know was so freaked out by the title of the 2003 movie that he left the cinema before the opening credits had even rolled at the time of its release.

Could tonight be a Freaky Friday in the top flight of Irish football? Or is Fantastic Friday a better option? Yes actually, simply because it has all the ingredients to be a defining Friday with just seven games to go before the end of the season - or a flop of a Friday for some.

There’s a couple of games that don’t really have the clout to deserve a freak title. Bohs go to Galway for a potential FAI Cup final dress rehearsal with Alan Reynolds side in real need of the three points in case something goes their way elsewhere in the title race.

Shels against Derry and Waterford against Dundalk won’t really affect the top or the bottom of the table as it will look after tonight’s games - but the other two games certainly will. And they definitely have the potential to be freaky or fabulous in terms of impact, depending on which side of the fence you sit on at Richmond Park or Sullivan & Lambe Park.

Let’s start with the visit of Shamrock Rovers to Inchicore and their quest to avenge their recent extra-time defeat to Pats in the FAI Cup. That probably won’t be as big an incentive for the Hoops tonight as the three points which could, effectively, all but end the title race given that they are currently six points ahead of both the second placed Saints and third placed Bohs.

You would have to think that a nine point advantage for Rovers over Stephen Kenny’s side, with only 18 left to play for after this game, would effectively end the home team’s title hopes and leave their owners and their fans scratching their heads again.

Likewise a win for Pats - cutting the lead down to three points in the process - would reignite their own championship hopes and the title race, even more so if Bohs take a win home from Terryland.

To borrow and alter an old phrase - it really is poop or get off the pot time for those who will wear the Pats and Rovers jerseys on Virgin Media tonight.

If Rovers are to win the league, they need to deliver more than their recent form and turn possession into goals tonight. They can create chances, we have seen that more often than not recently, but this time they must take them.

The same goes for Pats. Yes, they were unlucky to lose on penalties to Bohs last weekend but again they had the chances to win that game and didn’t take them. Any repeat this evening and they can kiss the league title goodbye.

Drogheda have a different problem at home to Sligo at the other end of the table. Kevin Doherty’s side can play good football and can score great goals - witness Brandon Kavanagh’s strike against Dundalk in the recent game. But they are also prone to conceding too often, as again evident in that painful Wee County derby defeat.

Currently five points clear of a doomed Sligo ahead of tonight’s relegation battle, they are also four behind Waterford and cemented, it would seem, to that play-off spot.

Time, as Kevin will know, is not Drogheda’s friend right now. They have to start winning again tonight - or it will be a flop of a Friday. And that’s a marketing jingle nobody wants.

It has all the makings of a Super Sunday but it might end up being a Freaky Friday with so much at stake in the League of Ireland tonight at both ends of the table. Our regular LOI analyst Darryl Geraghty joins editor Cathal Dervan to look forward to all the action.

The full episode is available on site now and you can watch all the previous Let’s Talk Football episodes now on TheSportsHacks.com

or you can listen to all of our podcasts on our Spotify channel

Check our socials (X here or insta here or tiktok here) for all the latest or just to see the World Cup giraffes again!

No noise, just the news & views that matters. The Sports Hacks is a reader supported publication - if you like what you read, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber and sharing our work.

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Firsts and lasts. It’s all about the firsts and the lasts this morning as Irish football continues to cling on to the past and hope for a better future - Troy Parrott and Dalymount Park being the latest focus of obvious attention.

Troy has had a number of firsts in the last few days - his first appearance for Real Betis, his first start for the club, his first goal, his first ever Champions League appearance, his first Champions League goal. All good news stories.

Dalyer has had a number of lasts in recent weeks as well. The last European game at the famous old ground, the date set for the last ever FAI Cup match at the ground, all landmarks ahead of the rebuild of the old lady of Irish football.

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Net nestlers…

I’ve no problem with all the celebrations around Troy’s series of first. After November last year, when he briefly rescued Ireland’s World Cup hopes and earned Heimir Hallgrimsson a contract extension he didn’t deserve, Troy was the Budapest hero who answered his country’s call when needed. Those Budapest goals alone have earned him all the credit he wants in my book.

That he put his struggles in English football behind him and took his chances on the continent a couple of years ago - rather than taking the traditional route of dropping down to the Championship from Spurs - also earned him an enormous amount of credit.

That the plan is working, albeit we would all be well advised not to get carried away with the instant success of his Seville move, is indeed something to celebrate.

Irish football needs new heroes who can stay the course and Troy is as good a contender in that regard as any of the current crop, better probably than most of those we hype up far too easily in this corner of the Atlantic.

No doubt he will be named in the Ireland squad next week and no doubt he will add seats to the Austria fixture that will be the Aviva’s only fixture in a four game window that is going to be dominated by Israeli discourse, whether we like it or not.

Let’s hope Troy stays fit with Betis and is ready to torment the Kosovans, the Israelis and the Austrians on the pitch the next time he wears the green shirt of Ireland.

He has never, as far as I can recall and certainly not as an adult, worn the green shirt of Ireland at Dalymount Park and that’s a pity. Whatever about the claims that the Aviva Stadium is the home of Irish football, it’s not. The long term lease will expire somewhere around 2070 so the FAI are effectively tenants in a rugby stadium that will revert to rugby ownership long after some of us have moved on to another arena.

Dalymount was our home, even when it wasn’t fit for purpose for international football. It’s where Don Givens routed Russia, where Paul McGrath made his debut against Italy, where Hurley and Giles and Farrell strutted their stuff, where FAI Cup finals were won and lost. And then it was abandoned by international football, when it became too small and too old and too lacking in corporate opportunities.

Now they are going to rebuild it - after the last Cup game and after the last League of Ireland game. After the last of the lasts they will knock it down and replace it with an 8,000 all-seater at an estimated cost of €63million according to the most recent reports. That’s around €7,500 per seat as things stand and a lot more than the cost of the old seats recrafted as garden furniture which you can buy via Bohs.

It’s great to see Dalymount reimagined but it is too small in my opinion. As someone who walked from one end of the ground to the other at half-time in games in the late 70s, I have always wanted to see Irish football stay at home, stay at Dalyer.

But that’s never going to happen now. That boat sailed years ago when buying the houses around Dalymount would have been cheaper and easier and possible.

So Troy will never get to play a World Cup or Euros game in Dalymount Park. More’s the pity.

The Champions League is back and so is Kevin Bannon, our Merseyside based guru on all things English football, as he chats European action, a Seamus Coleman return and the chances of Spurs finally winning a Premier League game this weekend with editor Cathal Dervan.

The full episode is available on site now and you can watch all the previous Let’s Talk Football episodes now on TheSportsHacks.com

or you can listen to all of our podcasts on our Spotify channel

Check our socials (X here or insta here or tiktok here) for all the latest or just to see the World Cup giraffes again!

No noise, just the news & views that matters. The Sports Hacks is a reader supported publication - if you like what you read, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber and sharing our work.

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Imagine telling Cork’s very own Henry Ford how to build a car? Imagine telling Henry Ford how to drive a car? Imagine telling Henry Ford how to sell a car?

Yeah, you’d be wasting your time if the great Henry was around today. He knew a thing or two about combustible engines, chassis construction and gearbox ratios so I wouldn’t be taking him on in the motoring section of the pub quiz - even if he might struggle with the concept of electric cars or self drive vehicles.

So if the pub quiz was on in that quaint little establishment near Bandon and Clonakilty and a resurrected Henry was there, I’d tip my hat to him and said job well done sir.

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Refs need the love too…

If his great-great grandson walked into the same bar tomorrow, I’d get up and leave based on the insult he just delivered at the feet of an Irish icon and one of the most honest sports people you will ever meet.

Calvin Ford - no, I never heard of him either - is the latest American investor in ‘soccer’ to prove that Gianni Infantino thought he saw an easy hit when he targeted Wall Street for the great World Cup sell-off.

Now I am not a genealogist or a mathematician so excuse me if my guess that this man is three generations removed from his great-great grandfather Henry Ford is incorrect. But I’d say I’m close enough for this exercise.

There’s little on Google search about Calvin other than to suggest that he does a lot of charity work and is a shrewd philanthropist according to those who know such things.

According to the internet, his investments in football include a small stake in the German club SSV Ulm - no, never heard of them either - and Livingston where he bought 100 per cent of the shares from a man called John McIlvogue last year.

Calvin came to my attention yesterday when he sacked former Ireland captain Glenn Whelan as manager after just nine games and 98 days in charge of a side that played only five times in the league under Glenn’s tutelage, winning two and losing three, and currently sit in fifth place in the Scottish Championship table.

That’s not good enough seemingly for Calvin or his Director of Football David Martindale - incidentally he was manager for most of last season when they were relegated from the Scottish Premier. Now Martindale is in interim charge and back in the dug-out and Glenn is back in Manchester and out of work.

Yep. Less than a hundred days into his first managerial role, Glenn has been sacked. A guarantee for any manager, regardless of their age or their experience and one that Glenn knew would come his way one day.

Getting the sack is not the issue here. How it was handled is and not just the vulgarity of sacking your boss after less than a hundred days. It’s the words Calvin used in his excuse making statement that add weight to the theory that most American investors know sweet FA about football.

“Looking ahead, we have already begun the process of securing the appropriate search firm to help us find our next head coach,” wrote Calvin in his letter to the fans that was more JCB than Ford Mustang.

“Our net will be cast far wider than it was in our previous search, and the focus of the search will be via data analytics that fit in with the clubs game model, and other important criteria’s that will aid Livingston FC in finding the ideal candidate to lead our Club forward.

“Mediocrity is not an acceptable solution, and we will continue to work to find the leader that delivers on the ambitions and aspirations of sustained, high-level success that we expect at Livingston. Nothing else is acceptable.”

Ford - and whoever advises him - should ask any Ireland fan about Glenn Whelan’s standards. He is far from mediocre. He is a player who dedicated his professional life to improvement via hard work, determination and honesty.

You don’t earn 91 caps for your country without knowing your way around football. You don’t play for Giovanni Trapattoni by being mediocre.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of his reign at Livingston, Glenn Whelan deserved better from a Yank landlord than to have the word mediocrity attached to his name.

Calvin’s letter to the fans stinks. I hope they see through this American bull***t. The Glenn Whelan I know deserves better.

How Katie Taylor turned down senior football with UCD, Stephen Kelly bingo, the vulgarity of modern coaching terminology including left tilts and the funnel press - it's all on this week's Coaching Corner with the great Larry Mahony from www.bigpicturecoachingireland.com.

The full episode is available on site now and you can watch all the previous Let’s Talk Football episodes now on TheSportsHacks.com

or you can listen to all of our podcasts on our Spotify channel

Check our socials (X here or insta here or tiktok here) for all the latest or just to see the World Cup giraffes again!

No noise, just the news & views that matters. The Sports Hacks is a reader supported publication - if you like what you read, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber and sharing our work.

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Two decades and a bit ago you could stroll around Islandbridge and watch Katie Taylor at the top of her sport for free, stand there on the grassy bank and realise the hype was true as she matched pace with skill, brain with brawn.

Tomorrow night she fights for the final time in a Croke Park stadium befitting her greatness and a friend of a friend of mine has been offered two decent tickets for a staggering €1500. Each.

That’s how sport works, it’s how sport evolves, it’s how the stars in the male and female arenas become superstars. It’s how the sporting circle of life rotates.

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Walking away with it…

A decade ago you could have walked into an underage game and watched Bradley Barcola for free. Next Wednesday night a premium package will cost you a small fortune to see him against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League at Anfield.

Liverpool have to get a return on their €125million investment in Barcola any way they can. Eddie Hearn has to earn the rent money for Croke Park - though I can state for a fact that the seller of those €1500 has no connection to the Hearn family and is merely a speculator. Maybe even a tout.

I was one of the few people watching Katie play football in Islandbridge for free all those years ago. My good friend and Star colleague Gerry Callan had told me this story about the finest boxer of her generation combining her love for the beautiful game with an absolute passion for the fight game.

An Irish international already at the time, Katie did indeed have a great story to tell and she was, as Gerry had promised, a standout player and an excellent interview subject.

We’ve met a few times since and she has always been courteous, civil and engaging. But the spark has never left her eye. That single-mindedness that drives all great sports people is always present around the Katie Taylor aura.

It’s what got her to the very top, it’s what helped her rewrite boxing history and good luck to her, tomorrow night and in the future when the gloves are packed away and her life carries on without professional boxing as a constant.

Katie will enter the Jones Road arena tomorrow night a few hours after the FAI Cup’s game of the weekend when St Patrick’s Athletic entertain Bohemians in the quarter-final clash at Richmond Park.

Quite why this game is on in our capital city on the same day that almost a hundred thousand people will be otherwise engaged with the biggest boxing occasion in Irish sporting history is beyond me.

And there are still some tickets available for a lot less than the €1500 my friend was quoted for Croker or the hundreds of Euros it will cost to get to Merseyside to watch Barcola in action next Wednesday night.

Which brings me to the point of this column. Finally. In a week when the English transfer marker officially went mad and led Miguel Delaney to make the very plausible suggestion that it is all built on sand, domestic Irish football started to make a lot more sense.

You may not see the next Barcola if you swap Anfield for Richmond Park tomorrow afternoon but you will see honest footballers minus the vulgarity of an industry that values Enzo Fernandes at close to €150million.

Yes, these players play for the pay cheque. But they also play with passion, commitment and integrity. Like Katie Taylor in Islandbridge all those years ago, they will give everything for the shirt tomorrow and mostly because this is the season defining game for both teams.

The atmosphere won’t beat that at Croke Park and the collective skills on show won’t quite be at the same level as Liverpool v Atletico but that shouldn’t make it any less appealing to the real sports fans out there.

Chris Forrester and Dawson Devoy are easily worth €20 of your time today. Trust me.

As Rory Gaffney hangs up his boots, our League of Ireland man on the beat Darryl Geraghty and editor Cathal Dervan pay tribute to the Galway born legend. Plus Rovers v Shels and all the side stories, the FAI Cup previews and Athlone's dominance continues in the WNL...

The full episode is available on site now and you can watch all the previous Let’s Talk Football episodes now on TheSportsHacks.com

or you can listen to all of our podcasts on our Spotify channel

Check our socials (X here or insta here or tiktok here) for all the latest or just to see the World Cup giraffes again!

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There’s a Tommy Tiernan reference and a scene from a chipper in Belfast starring three great Dutch footballers to come but first a statement formed by opinion, not fact - Lionel Messi is not the greatest player who ever played the beautiful game. Now read on as they used to say in the days when typewriters carried the words to the page.

Let’s start with Tommy and the scene in one of his very early stage shows when one of his genius real life characters pronounces, behind the bike sheds in our old Navan haunt St Patrick’s Classical School, that Status Quo are the best band in the world - because his brother said so.

The definition by Tiernan’s character was very definitive and there was no suggestion that Thin Lizzy, the Rolling Stones, Stiff Little Fingers or even local heroes The Bogey Boys could give Quo a run for their money.

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No chance…

That scene came to mind as the world debated the greatness of Messi earlier this week when the Great One - not the greatest one - announced his international retirement after 207 games and 125 goals in the most famous light blue and white stripes of them all.

Many comments were passed on a career that has seen the little one earn over a billion dollars and every honour available to him with club or country, all of them complimentary and the majority of them gushing.

Those only coming to terms with their love of football as Messi and Ronaldo exploded onto the European scene and then the world stage in the early 2000s were treated to the emergence of two of the best players the game has ever seen, fighting it out to be regarded as the football world’s number one star.

That Messi was awarded that crown, and indeed the title of greatest player ever, by so many of those commentators as the ink dried on his retirement statement this week is no surprise. But is it realistic?

I’m not sure. That declaration of greatness brought me back to a trip to Belfast in August 1988, just a couple of months after Joxer went to Stuttgart and Ireland beat England, drew with Russia and lost to an offside Dutch goal in our first ever appearance at a major tournament.

The reason to visit Belfast, then still a troubled city, was a burning desire to see one of the world’s greatest players live in action as George Best’s career was celebrated at Windsor Park in front of a sell-out crowd of 27,000 fans and in a game featuring great players from all over Europe including our own Liam Brady, Pat Jennings and a very young Michael O’Neill.

My desire to travel North was a simple one. I wanted to see George play football, something I was too young to experience when he was at the height of his talents, not even when he played briefly for Cork Celtic in the League of Ireland in 1975.

Instead, I had to make do with the 42-year-old version of George as he dragged his ageing legs and a few defenders around Windsor one last time, even scoring a brilliant chipped goal over Allen McKnight of Northern Ireland and West Ham.

And speaking of chips - guess who ended up in a late night chipper around the corner from the Europa Hotel that night with my Star colleague and photographer Noel Gavin and a handful of footballing legends including Dutch masters Ruud Krol, Johnny Rep and Johan Neeskens? Yes, yours truly. It was no time to discuss their own greatness.

My desire to see George play was a simple one. For years I had been told by everyone old enough to remember that he was the greatest player who ever played the game. So I really wanted to see him play for myself.

I’m still glad I did. Did he look like the greatest player ever? No, of course he didn’t. Was he once the best player ever? I don’t know simply because I never saw him in his prime, short and all as that was.

He’s not alone in that regard. I have to rely on other people to tell me if he was better than Duncan Edwards, Pele or Alfredi Di Stefano. Unlike today, there’s no real YouTube footage available to prove them right or me wrong.

Which is exactly why I can’t agree that Lionel Messi is the greatest player ever - simply because that is subjective. Is he one of the best players I have been lucky enough to see live on more than occasion, most recently when Argentina were given the shock of their World Cup lives by Pico and Cape Verde? Yes, he is.

Better than Ronaldo? Yes. Better than Maradona, who I was also fortunate enough to see play football when he was still worth the admission money? Maybe.

The best ever? Nobody can ever say that for definite in my opinion but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

What I can say for definite is that Thin Lizzy were a better band than Status Quo - no matter what Tommy Tiernan’s brother thinks!

It’s Wednesday Week (to keep up with the northern music references), so it’s Kevin Bannon joining Cathal Dervan to discuss all things EPL. The window slammed shut last night, here they cast their eye over some of those movements while keeping an eye on what’s ahead this weekend.

The full episode is available on site now and you can watch all the previous Let’s Talk Football episodes now on TheSportsHacks.com

or you can listen to all of our podcasts on our Spotify channel

Check our socials (X here or insta here or tiktok here) for all the latest or just to see the World Cup giraffes again!

No noise, just the news & views that matters. The Sports Hacks is a reader supported publication - if you like what you read, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber and sharing our work.

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Jerry Maguire turns 40 later this year. Hard to believe that one of the most iconic sporting movies was released four decades ago as it opened the public’s eyes to the world of sports agents and their fragile relationships with their clients through the good times and the bad.

It was of its time of course and it was pretty brilliant to be fair, matching as it did the harsh realities of professional sport in one of the cruellest arenas of all, the NFL, with the romance between Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger, aka Jerry and Dorothy Boyd.

Made on a budget of $50million, long repaid by box office takings of over $273million, It was also factual and well written, on both sides of the story.

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New beginnings

There’s not a sports agent alive since then who hasn’t had the ‘show me the money’ line thrown at them at least once in their relationship with any client, signed or secured.

Nor is there an agent out there who hasn’t been led up the garden path like Jerry was with the family of Frank Cushman or found loyalty for life as Jerry did, eventually, with Rod Tidwell. And Rod’s eventual fairytale success does indeed show them all the money.

The Jerry Maguire story is as relevant today as it was back in 1996. And it should be on the ‘must watch’ list at every academy in Ireland now that we are a nation overdosing on producing players via a ‘one size fits all’ system for clubs - and for our best young talent by default.

Young players and their families can learn from Jerry Maguire. So can anyone thinking of a career in the sports industry. And so can we, as members of the Irish media.

In the past week, I have seen glowing praise heaped on the shoulders of Jack Moylan, Troy Parrott, Jacob Devaney and Rory Finneran to name just four - none of whom, of course, were born when Jerry Maguire was filling cinemas.

Jack and Troy are home produced, Jack more so than Troy given that he found his feet in the League of Ireland. Jacob and Rory, like so many of our recent recruits, are products of the English academy system.

All are young players at the crossroads of their football careers so how we refer to them, how we regard them, is important.

Troy is the most successful of the four as of now with his transfer value already at half the Jerry Maguire budget. But Troy is still learning the game and still has to prove himself in La Liga which is exactly why we should pay no heed to some of the negative Spanish reviews of his 57 minute full debut in the 5-2 defeat for Real Betis at Levante on Saturday.

Jack Moylan fared better the same day, scoring with a well finished strike after two minutes in the 2-2 home draw with Sheffield United. That goal saw him compared to Wayne Rooney in some quarters but again, the comparisons need to be taken with a pinch of salt. After his unusual route to professional football in the UK, Jack will know that better than anyone.

Troy is there or thereabouts in football terms and his career is definitely there in terms of setting him up for life. He is to be congratulated on that after being brave enough to reinvent himself in Holland.

Jack is getting there and is to be congratulated for the sheer determination that has seen him progress from Tolka Park to Ireland caps and the Championship.

Rory Finneran, on loan at Notts County from Newcastle, and Jacob Devaney, on loan at Hibs from Manchester United, are still in the development stages of their careers. They haven’t made it yet - they are showing positive signs - so we need to be careful with branding them as the great young hopes of Irish football before they have delivered at the highest levels or earned the right to deliver at the top of the game.

As a viewing of Jerry Maguire will prove, anything can happen in professional sport so let’s take it easy with the superlatives. The fairytale end isn’t always guaranteed.

This week’s Coaching Corner with Larry Mahony and editor Cathal Dervan is all about managers. Why do Graham Coughlan and Stephen Bradley give all the credit to their players and what is Roberto Di Zerbi doing wrong at Spurs? You can catch up with Larry at bigpicturecoachingireland.com.

The full episode is available on site now and you can watch all the previous Let’s Talk Football episodes now on TheSportsHacks.com

or you can listen to all of our podcasts on our Spotify channel

Check our socials (X here or insta here or tiktok here) for all the latest or just to see the World Cup giraffes again!

No noise, just the news & views that matters. The Sports Hacks is a reader supported publication - if you like what you read, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber and sharing our work.

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