Goodman gears up for Cork glory
Louis Goodman believes preparation and confidence are key as the County Louth golfer gets set to make the trip to Cork Golf Club as one of the contenders hoping to get his hands on the coveted Flogas Irish Boys' Amateur Open Championship trophy.
Ninety of the best up and coming golfers, including eight international players from countries such as France, Norway, Germany, and the USA, are set to tee it up at the Little Island course this week.
It has been a busy start to the season for Goodman, having already competed at the Scottish Boys' and the French International Boys' U18 Championship in recent weeks. Now as the 18-year-old returns to more familiar surroundings, the experience gained from taking on some of the best talent from across the globe could prove vital.
'Since last year, I've just been doing bigger and bigger tournaments, gradually building it up, and it's definitely been a nice experience and a new experience, because it's all the higher level, you get to see much stronger fields, better players,' said Goodman.
'Because all the tournaments are in such quick succession at the moment, I know where my strengths and my weaknesses are in my game, just from reviewing the previous tournaments so I know what areas to focus on more, so my game is more complete.'
Having been a part of the 2024 Irish Boys' Home Internationals team last August, Goodman will have plenty of his teammates to contend with this week including John Doyle (Fota Island), Finlay Eager (Royal Belfast) and Rory Gallagher (Galway Bay).
Now in his Leaving Certificate year at Clongowes Wood College, Goodman, like many other elite amateurs his age, strives to strike a balance between his studies and his golfing ambitions with his parents Jane and Laurence continuing to be two of his biggest supporters on his journey.
'They've been unbelievable, truly', said Goodman.
'Particularly my mum, she's driving me everywhere and at the same time letting me do all this golf at the moment. She still pushes me to get my work done and all that sort of stuff, but I suppose we both make the plan, make sure we're organized, just so we can get both done as efficiently as possible.'
As his focus turns to the Flogas Irish Boys' Amateur Open Championship, Goodman knows that the confidence gained, and preparation completed from his recent events will be important components when looking towards success this week.
'Knowing I'm able to go out there, do what I need to do, do what I know I have to do, just adds to the confidence going into each event that I could be in', said Goodman.
'If you don't put in the prep, you don't expect the results.'
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Irish Daily Mirror
04-06-2025
- Irish Daily Mirror
O'Connell names 11 uncapped players for Ireland tour to Georgia and Portugal
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Not that Osborne was seen simply as a 'fill-in' as the option was there to use Barrett as the outside centre but not exercised, possibly because management likes to keep the All Black on Sam Prendergast's shoulder, near his ear. 'Jamie came on for Garry in the game against Zebre, so he played there. He has had repetitions in there, it is something he has been exposed to since the Zebre game so he naturally continued on there.' 'He did really well," said Jacques Nienaber. "So last year he played mostly no12 for us and he did really well last weekend. "I had seen him in training there before and maybe if there was a little bit of injuries there during other games he would move there towards the end. "But this is the first time I saw him playing there and I just monitored him defensively, Tyler (Bleyendaal, Attack Coach) will have opinions on his attack, but defensively I thought he did really well.' 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Irish Examiner
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The ‘big misunderstanding' which saw Scottie Scheffler arrested and locked up
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Irish Times
12-05-2025
- Irish Times
The Last Ditch by Eamonn Sweeney: Brave admissions about mental health struggles hit hard in follow-up
The Last Ditch: How One GAA Championship Gave a Sportswriter Back His Life Author : Eamonn Sweeney ISBN-13 : 978-1399734639 Publisher : Hachette Books Ireland Guideline Price : £16.99 In a world of limited space, very few books survive the intermittent culling of the shelves in our spare room for very long. A few dozen new sports books get piled up there every year and a few dozen (and more, when the going's good) are lorried out to the charity shops the following spring. Any that remain have earned their spot. And yet, as I crane my neck back to check, I see a hunch confirmed. Yes, I do still have an original copy of The Road To Croker by Eamonn Sweeney, published in 2004. Time and again over the past two decades, it has skipped merrily over the scythe and settled back in dusty situ, one of the all-time great GAA books. Can't give it any higher recommendation than that. His follow-up, The Last Ditch, isn't really a follow-up at all. Despite having the same structure – Sweeney following the 2024 GAA championship around the country, just as he did the 2003 one – The Last Ditch is its own thing, with its own story. I don't know if it will still be on my shelf in 20 years but it's certain to be one of the most compelling sports books of 2025. The reason for this is that Sweeney drives the first part of the book by telling the story of his mental health struggles. What began with a panic attack out of the blue on the way to a game in Killarney in 2000 gradually morphed into an all-consuming fear of travel that lasted the thick end of the past two decades. He couldn't fly, he found himself jumping off a train as the door closed, even being a passenger in a car became too much at times. READ MORE Throughout it all, Sweeney was – and is – a well-known sports columnist with the Irish Independent. For someone who has been a public figure for so long, his bravery in laying himself bare like this shines through every page. The vice grip with which mental illness can squeeze a person's life is remorseless. Sweeney's early account of how he bought himself a train ticket from Galway to Athenry on three occasions over Christmas 2023 but turned back from the platform each time is particularly excruciating. He wants so badly to simply go and sit on a moving train but he can't bring himself to do it. Eventually, he somehow convinces himself that if he gets a bus to somewhere that the Galway train stops – the small village of Ardrahan in this case – maybe he can will himself to get the train back. When it works, you want to punch the air for him. As a result, the book becomes something more than just an account of following the big old GAA jamboree around the country. It is still that, yes – but it's also the gradual, quiet process of Sweeney reclaiming his life for himself. He's doing the book because the publisher asked. But he's doing it for himself too. And so he goes around the country – or at least the bottom half of it. Unlike the first book, there are no skites up to Tempo in Fermanagh or Mayobridge in Down or Ballygawley in Tyrone. But he goes to Killarney and Portlaoise and Thurles and Limerick and Salthill for games and then, as it all comes to a head in Croke Park, to Dublin. Some of the matches are incredible (hurling), some of them are deathly dull (football). He captures the GAA summer of 2024 perfectly. Along the way, there are some hilarious vignettes beyond the games. As a non-driver, all his travel is on public transport so he's there for the lone Tipperary man who stands his ground in the face of a ribald and riotous group of Cork supporters as they call him Hozier . And he's there for the overheard conversations, the singing and the slagging, the quiet moments of life that have nothing to do with the GAA but feel a crucial part of it too. Ultimately, and probably understandably, The Last Ditch doesn't have the same vim to it as its classic forebear. Sweeney is 57 now and has been through a couple of decades of mental turmoil, so it would be a surprise if it did. In the Dublin passages, he spends some time going to religious services – Romanian Orthodox in Ranelagh, Russian Orthodox in Harold's Cross, Syriac Orthodox in Rathmines, the Dublin Mosque on the South Circular Road. Some of it is beautiful but some of it feels like padding. The biggest difference between the two books is the author. In the first one, he was in his mid-30s, curious and probing, trying to find Ireland in the GAA championship. He rang up people to interview them, he went to pubs and clubs and towns and villages just to see who he'd find and what sort of GAA chat they could put on him. In this one, he's more of a passive observer of it all. Older, wiser, less gung-ho. It makes for a book that while written with Sweeney's usual elan, doesn't feel as urgent or as vital as The Road To Croker. And that's okay too. Some victories are more important than others.
