Curiosity Corner

KNOW YOUR INITIALS

Try FG

1: They play darts here....

2: ....and rugby here

3: An Olympic medal winner and one of Belfast’s finest boxers from days gone by

4: Ray Houghton scored one

5: You can score one of these in basketball and American football

6: Best known by her nickname, she lit up the 1988 Olympic Games

7: Time was when you could be suspended from the GAA for attending one of these

8: Some horses like it when they’re racing, others don’t

9: Peter Fitzpatrick once figured on this ‘team’

10: Score this and your team goes ahead

HE SAID

“I loved the performance, the aggression, the intensity in it. Some of the football we played was great.” Martin Russell, Southampton manager, after his side’s 3-0 home defeat to Manchester United on Saturday last. You’d have to wonder what the score would have been had the Saints played poorly

LOUTH CHAMPIONSHIPS ODDS & ENDS

The draw for this year’s senior quarter-finals has thrown up just one previous final pairing. In 1995 St Mary’s played first-time finalists, St Patrick’s, winning the Cluskey Park tie 1-14 to 0-7. Pat’s have since won the title seven times, while Mary’s have been champions for the past two years....

Of the eight teams still standing in senior, St Mochta’s and Dreadnots have yet to win the title. As they are meeting this weekend, one of them is guaranteed a place in the semi-finals....

Roche Emmets will be attempting to succeed where Dundalk Gaels narrowly failed in 1992. Having won the intermediate – and with it, promotion – the previous year, Gaels got to the senior final only to be beaten by Clan na Gael in a replay. Roche accounted for O’Rahilly’s twelve months ago, and now attempt to take the senior to Páirc de Róiste for the third time in their 77-year history....

Glyde Rangers ended a recent-year losing run in junior finals when they beat Naomh Finbarra twelve months ago. Two of their defeats had come in replays....

Colm Nally was the first Newtown Blues player to be presented with the Joe Ward Cup two years running (2000, ’01). Andy McDonnell has since emulated the former Louth goalkeeper (20017, ’18)....

Blues are the only team to have brought off a senior four-timer, beginning in 1961 and running to 1964. It would have been seven on-the-trot had a Muckle inspired-O’Rahilly’s not beaten them in ’65....

DID WASDELL PUNTERS STAY LOYAL?

The Wasdell pharmaceutical and packaging plant, which has closed down recently with the loss of 200 jobs, has a race horse named after it. Wasdell Dundalk is a ‘chaser, trained in England, and it probably goes without saying that if there were any punters among the former staff, they’d have been having a few quid on whenever the horse ran.

Whatever about their feeling towards their one-time employer, let’s hope those punters stayed loyal to WD. Less than a fortnight after the Mullaharlin-based company closed its doors, the Danny McMenamin-ridden chestnut won in a tight finish at the Perth course in Scotland. The odds were rewarding, 9/1.

HISTORIC GRAMMAR OUTING

If the Dundalk Grammar School team lined out as planned in yesterday’s Lennon Cup tie with Drogheda’s Ballymakenny School, it would have been a victory for those, students and teachers, who’ve been campaigning to have a team representing the school play in Louth Colleges’ football. Until now, the school authorities had resisted calls to have a team engaged in Gaelic football.

The school’s name, however, has appeared on GAA team sheets in the past. In his very successful term as manager of the combined Dundalk Colleges side, claiming a Leinster title, Leslie Toal called on several who were students at the Grammar.

ANSWERS

Know Your Initials: 1 Frimley Green, 2 Franklin Gardens, 3 Freddie Gilroy, 4 Famous Goal, 5 Field Goal, 6 Florence Griffith-Joyner (Flo-Jo), 7 Foreign Game, 8 Fast Ground, 9 Fine Gael, 10 First Goal.