text: The Irish Nation and the Olympic Dream | Politics.ie
  www.disgruntlednation.com
  Not only that, I heard she tampers with her whiskey as well!
  I know that I'm taking the discussion slightly off-track here, but I think comparing Ireland's athletic prowess to that of New Zealand is misguided, regardless of the medal counts. New Zealand happen to be near the top table in both rugby codes, cricket and other minor sports, what have we got? Gaelic games?
  And I'm sure that if you compared our medal count to other small nations such as Croatia, they'd kick our backsides up and down the road. Does anyone have the medal tables?
  The only near complete table I can find is the one on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Summe ... edal_count). The handy thing about it is you can click on the nation and it tells you what events the medals were won in.
  Rugby and cricket aren't competed in at the Olympics so they wouldn't count towards New Zealands standings. NZs medals came in rowing, cycling, triathlon and canoeing. With the exception of triathlon those events are all ones which we have been competing in in Ireland for some years.
  Croatia won 1 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze.
  HAve a look at thishttp://www.geocities.com/unclebryan/Polympic.html
  I mean no offence to any of our Mongolian visitors but the nation is a backward backwater,... Yet a nation similar to 1920s Ireland, without the communism, is still capable to sending a better team to the Olympics then this fair nation.
  Well moghroth, if my rant has not been interesting enough I shall issue and official apology and send you a voucher for a meal somewhere.
  Why not the City Nomad in Ulan Bator! Then I can check out your assumption that Mongolia is a backward backwater, whilst enjoying my horse stew.
  Could it not also have something to do with the fact that we have become a somewhat lazy nation without any real facilities for young people.
  I seem to recall an incident on the Late Late Show in the early 90's when Stephen Roche had decided that he was moving his family (back) to France because of the paucity of (sports) facilities for young people in Ireland. This caused a stir at the time, with a lot of self-righteous indignation, but of course nothing was really done. Government sponsored programmes and centres of sports excellence are sound bites with little or no effect.
  Why don't we have GAA sports in the Olympics, soccer is there, why not hurling. It might take a while to develop but then we might be in with a chance. We have a precedent in this regard as hurling was an integral sport in the original Tailteann Games which ran from 1829BC to 1180AD.
  Come off it Bullyee, she was found to have tampered with her pi55. Not just once, not twice, but thrice.[/quote]
  In my opinion it was a whole conspiracy. We have to stand up for our great athletes. There are enough anglosaxons out their willing to take a pop at us. She is Irish and if memory serves me right could speak Gaeilge. That's enough for me to believe that she deserved those gold medals.
  I took magic mushrooms years ago. The day before a club hurling championship semi final. I played like a man possessed and marked the opposing star player out of the game. We subsequently one the county final weeks later. in retrospect should we be dethroned of our title just because I was seeing pink elephants and Darby O Gill the night before... Come to think of it those September nights ( magic mushroom season ) were splendid!!!!
  The Olympics have been so badly tainted with drug taking that they are just not worth watching.
  We don't do enough to acknowledge the achievement of Michelle Smith. If we did we might inspire more athletes.
  How much does it cost to send the team?
  Why send people who don't make the grade?
  That's rich coming from a Toffee whose team allowed Paul Gascoigne (a notorious alcho, drug abuser and hun ) to play for them. However, I still have a soft spot for your wee team after they stuffed those b******ds Rapid Vienna in 1985.
  If you want to talk about cheating in sport and aren't old enough to remember they cheated Celtic out of a European Cup Winners Cup semifinal spot... You can castigate performance enhancers but this team had a player who faked injury when a plastic bottle was thrown at him and landed 10 yards away. The Celtic win was reversed and the game was replayed in england with the hoops subsequently loosing.
  Sharp, Bracewell, Reid, Trevor Steven, Gary Stevens, Heath, Gray, Sheedy, ratcliffe, Mountfield.... A very good team but not in the same class as the Lisbon Lions.....
  When you were describing Gaza you forgot to add that he is a tad mad.
  The Lisbon lions were a great side, and a real Celtic team. Every one of them came from within a 20 mile radius of the centre of Glasgow. This will never happen again, with any team.