
Paul Mescal & Rachael Blackmore star in BBC's All-Ireland final coverage as actor shares sweet moment with dad
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Tipperary jockey legend Rachael Blackmore was also among the famous faces in the BBC's section
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English singer-songwriter Tom Grennan, whose dad hails from Offaly, was also present
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Blackmore wore her Tipperary jersey for the day that was in it
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Her jockey boyfriend Brian Hayes was visible in this snap
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Mescal
That sentiment was even more true this year than any other as a ticket frenzy in Cork in particular made snagging one akin to a golden tickets out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Speaking at half-time before the Premier completely seized control of the match, the 29-year-old underlined his gratitude at being able to bring his namesake father along to such a special occasion.
He told BBC Sport: "All-Ireland final day is one of the most special days on the Irish calendar.
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"And to be here with dad...We're so lucky to get free tickets!"
Paul Sr. then added: "I'm absolutely thrilled (to be here). I did get to see him play here before and to be here sitting beside him today with such great company is just phenomenal.
"This is the pinnacle of Irish sport."
A goal from Shane Barrett just before half-time threatened to be a killer blow for Tipp, who trailed by 1-16 to 0-13.
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But Liam Cahill's men
As
Ronan Maher pays tribute to Dillon Quirke after Tipperary GAA win All-Ireland final
On the far side of the interval, Tipperary hit 3-14. A miserly 0-2 was all that Cork could muster in response.
And as Tipp completed the last leg of their journey on the road to redemption, they
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The 19-year-old forward was the villain when a pre-match strike on Seán O'Donoghue was punished with a red card in the Munster SHC hammering his side were subjected to by Cork in April.
He was given his marching orders again in
His goal was an emphatically-dispatched penalty that was awarded for a foul on John McGrath that led to the dismissal of Eoin Downey.
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Cork were subsequently handicapped by a numerical disadvantage for the final 20 minutes.
However, the reality is that the writing was already on the wall as the National League and Munster champions were in meltdown.
From 13 second-half shots while playing into the breeze, Cork's meagre return amounted to white flags raised by Barrett and sub Séamus Harnedy.
They may have suspected it was not to be their day when three point attempts struck the post and a shot at goal from Harnedy rattled the crossbar.
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Amid their ongoing quest for a first title since 2005, Cork are now reeling from losing back-to-back deciders. Indeed, this was their third All-Ireland final defeat in five seasons.
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RTÉ News
44 minutes ago
- RTÉ News
Irish-produced drama Mix Tape and the musical love letter
BBC drama Mix Tape, a tale of star-crossed lovers who bond over music, is coming to RTÉ soon but can it reinvigorate the lost art of the mix tape as musical love letter? It was a teenage rite of passage and also what the kids now call a major flex. Making a mixtape was a labour of love, a musical way into the heart of the one you fancied and also a proud artefact of just how very good your taste in music really was. Carefully pressing the right buttons on your twin tape deck, choosing the tracks of your hopes and dreams and lovingly inscribing the song titles and artists on the inlay card became something of a minor artform back in what some people probably correctly call simpler times. Van Morrison called it the inarticulate speech of the heart and for millions of seventies, eighties and nineties kids, the mixtape was the musical equivalent of the love letter - the spark for countless nervous conversations and maybe even debates. God knows, I still have a box of them in my spare room. And no, they weren't all retuned, un-played and unloved. These days, of course, you will see wizened old Boomers and Gen Xers posting tiresome memes on wizened old Facebook (it's where the adults hang out, OK?) of cassette tapes accompanied by a pencil. If you know, you know. This, apparently, is the modern age's equivalent of uncovering ancient runes and explaining arcane rituals to digital nativists. In our era of instant gratification, even the noughties phenomenon of the CD burn has given way to soulless Spotify playlists and causal YouTube shares on mobile phones. As ever, something has been lost but with a new generation turning to vinyl and even the cassette format making its own comeback, can the actual physical mixtape become a tribune of love once again? Perhaps recent BBC drama Mix Tape (ta-dah!), which is due to air on RTÉ soon, will inspire a fresh flood of spooling polyester plastic film coated with magnetic material as musical missives. Perhaps not. In any case, the fabled mixtape is the jumping off point for the four-part series. It is the overwrought story of two music mad Sheffield kids, with the very Irish names of Daniel O'Toole and Alison Connor, who meet as teens at a house party in 1989. The young Daniel (who looks like a cross between Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. and a young Neil Morrissey) is a music obsessive and he wins bookish Alison's heart with his impressive knowledge of Cabaret Voltaire. Then again, we later learn that his favourite Bowie song is Modern Love. Their first dance is to Joy Division's immortal Love Will Tear Us Apart, their first kiss is to The Jesus & Mary Chain, and when their bedroom fumbling goes much further, they DO IT to the strains of In-Between Days by The Cure. Oh, the drama! Oh, the great basslines! There isn't enough of The Fall featured in Mix Tape for my liking but music is the spine of young Dan and Ali's romance and it plays out the beats and missed heart beats of puppy love (thankfully, no songs by Donny Osmond were used in the making of this programme). Daniel slips his mixtapes into Alison's school bag and she hands him lovingly curated TDKs on the bus to school. We hear The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Velvet Underground and The Stone Roses. All very good, indeed. But just as their teen crush turns to full-blown romance, Alison vanishes from Sheffield, leaving Daniel feeling like a Morrissey song. It's an intriguing premise and the drama plays out in a dual timelines and dual time zones, making it a lot like Sliding Doors meets Sleepless in Seattle - a Proustian rush of 'what ifs' and 'if onlys' played out longingly in verboten mobile phone texts and mutual cyber stalking and the songs of their lost youth. Normal People it is not. However, it is fraught stuff. We follow Daniel and Alison, who is now a successful novelist living in Syndey and married to a total eejit, and move between their teenage romance in 1989 Sheffield and the modern-day reality of their adult relationships living on opposite sides of the world. Daniel and his wife aren't exactly singing from the same hymn sheet back in Sheffield. He now works as a music journalist but never seems to do any actual work (so, that makes sense) and he is toying with writing a book about some great lost music figurehead, like Daniel Johnson or Nick Drake. Mix Tape is a very Irish affair. The four-part drama was originated and developed by Dublin-based production company Subotica, who have previously produced North Sea Connection and The Boy That Never Was, with help from Ireland's generous Section 481 Film and Television tax incentive and the support of Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland and Screen Australia among others. It was also filmed entirely on location in Dublin and Sydney. And so, the former steel town of Sheffield is played by Dublin's Liberties (I was tickled to see that some of it was shot on the very street where I live), while location filming was also completed in Australia. However, things get seriously meta when the young Alison actually moves to actual Dublin and young Daniel nearly has a whitey on the actual Ha'penny Bridge when he sees her with another bloke. Strangely, no U2 was used in the making of this programme. Based on the novel by Jane Sanderson and adapted for television by Irish writer Jo Spain, the show stars Teresa Palmer as the adult Alison and Jim Sturgess as the adult Daniel and Rory Walton-Smith as young Daniel and Florence Hunt as young Alison. And here's the thing, the actors who play the younger versions of our protagonists are so much better than the anguished grown-up versions, who spend most of the time moping about like extras in a Cure video. Of course, the whole thing reminded me of that minor noughties indie hit about an estranged couple haggling over their shared record collection in the same way rich people haggle over their condo in Bel Air or their D4 pied-à-terre. If you're looking for a good music-based romance, Stephen Frears' film of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity is still your best. Mix Tape is a mite too tortured and joyless but it does have two major flexes - those Dublin locations and the actual music. It also asks an eternal question posed by music obsessives in every time line and time zone - can the songs that sound-tracked our young lives and loves ever really sound the same again?


Irish Examiner
3 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Joe McNamee: Is it time to subsidise Irish hospitality?
Our shared and serious passion for music and film led my daughter and I to The Bear, a truly magnificent TV series (TV being the new 'film') set in a Chicago restaurant with Michelin star aspirations. As a recovering chef, I can confirm its authenticity, at times almost as stressful as actually being back in a slammed kitchen, slaving under a sociopathic bully — it is why some chefs I know can't watch it. Flush with marvellously written characters, we struggle to pick our favourite. We adore transcendently serene pastry chef Marcus and the sweetly naive Fak brothers; we flat out venerate jittery, driven head chef Sydney. Jamie Lee Curtis's monstrous matriarch is nitro-glycerine plonked next to an open furnace; her children, Michael, Natalie and Carmen Berzatto, three differing studies of the impact of her dysfunctional parenting. Every single character, even minor, is fully realised. And then there is 'Cousin' Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who runs front of house. A loud, boorish and deeply obnoxious character, we spent the first few episodes wishing him serious harm until, gradually, tiny slivers of his humanity and vulnerability began to slip through. But he utterly transformed in our eyes when sent on a training internship to the fictional Ever, 'the world's best restaurant', site of his Damascene culinary conversion. Breaking through his innate cynicism, he comes to understand why high-end restaurants operate as they do and, most of all, learns to appreciate the complexities of service and its fundamental importance in a good restaurant. After that, he could do little wrong in our eyes, even when he does — regularly — do wrong. Over a decade ago, after a major food awards in Dublin, two of Ireland's finest restaurant managers and I wound up in deep conversation about service, the lack of awards for service, wondering whether it related to the marked decline in service standards, from what was always a wildly varying benchmark. Irish restaurant service has only worsened since; good service — the exception rather than rule — is an unexpected pleasure rather than automatic entitlement when dining out. When Patrick Guilbaud first opened his now Michelin two-starred Dublin restaurant, it took him a while to realise most of his non-French waiters, many of them students, viewed their role as a mere staging post en route to a 'real' career. Indeed, working as a waiter/server has rarely been viewed as a profession in this country even though innate Irish sociability makes for a natural-born host. Service is about so much more than ferrying plates to and from the table and it takes time and effort to train even the good ones. Imagine the frustration when they then leave for a 'real job'! For all the advance 'engagement' — online, reviews and so on — a diner's first human interaction with a restaurant is through service. A good first impression is vital; sustaining it throughout the course of an entire meal, equally so. (Take note, all servers who seem to ghost a table once desserts are served.) More worryingly, I see the decline in standards of Irish restaurant service as a canary in the coalmine for the Irish hospitality sector overall. Many businesses operate on a fiscal model that wouldn't last kissing time in other industries, while a dining public, ignorant of the harsh realities of hospitality, only ever registers the rising prices of eating out. When the minimum wage was raised to €13.50 an hour last January, the best restaurateurs acknowledged the additional financial stress on their business models, yet never begrudged their employees the extra 80c an hour. In Dublin, for example, many of the lowest-paid hospitality workers have to commute from far outside the city to afford accommodation — if they can find it. There is one question that gauges the real viability of Irish hospitality like no other: as a waiter/server, will I qualify for a mortgage? (It applies equally to lower-paid kitchen jobs.) The answer is almost inevitably, no. Which begs another question — is it time we start a conversation about subsidising the Irish restaurant sector, as we do with the farming sector? TABLE TALK A recent soiree at The Metropole Hotel to launch its newly designed reception/lobby area and a casual all-day menu sees a venerable old aristocrat of Cork hospitality substantially sharpening its offering in tune with the overall energy sense of energy that has imbued its home, MacCurtain St, in recent times, reminding that it is about so much more than just an annual venue for 'The Jazz'. In further reference to today's main theme, belated congrats to the Market Lane group for their ongoing achievements at the Fáilte Ireland Employer Excellence Awards, voted on anonymously by employees, and, yes, the ML group does number more than a few well-supported professional waiters/servers in their ranks. Vada café in Dublin's Stoneybatter, may cleave to a very familiar formula for what is currently cool in casual dining but more than gets away with it on the back of some tasty food and a genuine commitment to sustainability and zero waste so, additional opening hours to serve dinner on Friday and Saturday evenings could be well worth checking out. TODAY'S SPECIAL Make Hummus, Not War print from Bia Blasta This week's choice is more about food for the mind and soul than the belly, a handsome print from Blasta Books inspired by their latest authors, Izzeddeen Alkarajeh and Eman Aburabi, and the original version of the Free Palestine mural painted next to their Izz Café in Cork City. Available in A4 (€25) and A3 (€38) sizes and shipped anywhere in the world, all profits will be donated to World Central Kitchen. Read More Ireland's best food trucks and street food stalls to try this summer


Irish Examiner
3 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
How Munster's LGBT+ sports clubs are helping athletes find acceptance and belonging
One of my earliest memories of sport is hiding in our chicken coop on a Saturday morning to avoid hurling training. I was an active child but not a sporty one. In the early 2000s there weren't many options for sport outside of hurling and football for children to get into. It was a highly masculine space, dads shouting at us from the sideline, men close to the same age as I am now – it was pretty intimidating to a boy that already felt like he didn't belong in this space. I entered my teen years and early adulthood convinced sport wasn't for me. Now I'm a member of the Irish Triathlon team. So, what changed? Becoming more comfortable and finally embracing my sexuality was pivotal for me. A huge step on this journey was joining an LGBT+ swimming club, Out to Swim, where I live and work in London. Creating an environment within sport clubs is imperative to encouraging not only members of the LGBT+ community into the world of sport but everyone, whether you're a woman who is intimidated by the traditional 'macho' vibes of a rugby or GAA club, or a gay man who may struggle to find a sense of belonging or understanding within a predominantly heterosexual sporting club. Micheál Costello, training in Battersea Park, London. It is in everyone's best interests, including sporting clubs and their athletes, to open their doors to people from every background and make us all feel welcome. That being said, LGBT+ specific clubs play a hugely important role in sport the world over, including in Ireland. The fact that I'm often asked to speak about being a gay long-distance triathlete, and other more illustrious athletes like Katie McCabe and Olympian Jack Woolley are often asked to speak about their experience, is a sign that we're still an anomaly and being out in sport is 'brave'. The ability to access LGBT+ spaces in sport is something I didn't hold in high regard until I joined Out to Swim. Before joining the club just over seven months ago, I had my triathlon, my coach and I thought I was set. However, as soon as the nerves surrounding my first session with Out to Swim subsided, the sense of belonging and comfort I felt was truly special. Micheál Costello marching in London Pride. It is a fact that the majority of LGBT+ people either feel like they have to, or are forced to announce their sexuality and/or gender identity the second they step into a sporting context. Heading into the pool with a beautiful group of people running the gamut of the LGBT+ spectrum was such a weight lifted off my shoulders, a weight I didn't even know was there. Like any group of people, we're all different, we come from a variety of backgrounds, countries and cultures, but there is one commonality between us all and that is that we know what it is to feel different and excluded, and we all hold a huge appreciation of the happiness inclusion in sport brings. Up and down Ireland, there are clubs from runners, to rugby players, to GAA changing the sporting fabric of Ireland through their dedication to including LGBT+ people in sport. Sitting down to chat with some of these athletes struck a chord with me. Within every quote they echo that feeling of belonging and the continued importance of feeling included in a society that, sadly, can feel like it is becoming increasingly divided. Cork Frontrunners and Brisk Walkers Jack Mulcahy, Rónan Murray and Emma Harrington of Frontrunners and Briskwalkers, Cork out for a run on the Marina, Cork. Picture: David Creedon Cork-based LGBT+ running and walking club. They've been in existence since October 2018 and are growing. Rónan Murray — club secretary I was never interested in sport when I was younger, partially because I felt out of place among all straight teams. I joined FRBW Cork a year and a half ago, and I have been flourishing ever since. There is an amazing and supportive community, and I finally feel more at home. I have become an avid runner, have since completed five half marathons and a full marathon, and I am currently training for more! Sport has become such a huge part of my life, something which I never imagined would have happened without the safe space provided by the club. Jack Mulcahy — PRO Being a part of the club has given me a chance to improve my fitness and friendships with other queer people in a way that always makes me excited to show up to the next run. The support, laughter, and shared pride make even the toughest runs all the more rewarding. With FRBW I've made friends for life and I'm incredibly grateful to have access to a group of friends where being gay is the norm. Emma Harrington — athlete Joining the Frontrunners a year ago has been a gateway to making new friends in the queer community since moving back home after living abroad for six years. It has given me a space where I can truly be myself, both as a runner and as a member of the queer community. The club has made the transition back feel far less isolating and much more welcoming. More than just a run club, it's a support network that extends well beyond fitness, offering connection, encouragement, and a genuine sense of belonging. Sarsfields Rugby Club Sarsfields Rugby chairperson Dave Cuddihy proudly sporting his team kit This Limerick-based rugby club is the Midwest's first LGBT+ inclusive rugby project. They launched at Limerick Pride in July 2022 and have since grown into one of the largest LGBT+ social/sports groups in Limerick. Dave Cuddihy — chairperson If you told me four years ago that I'd be part of a rugby team I would have told you that you were mad! Team sports was always something that I considered out of my comfort zone and that was engrained in my brain from the culture and stereotypical 'macho' nature of teams growing up, it was not me, I didn't fit into that culture. Since joining Sarsfields I have realised that I can be a part of a team, and I have found my place there. Sarsfields came at a time where I was a bit lost on my path, friends were all moving away for work and I found myself questioning whether I actually belonged in Limerick anymore. Sarsfields changed all of that. Now I am part of a 70+ member sports group and have found a completely new lease of life. Sarsfields became more than just a rugby club, it became a community to me. The beauty of the club is that we have people of all abilities, all genders, all sexualities, but no one actually cares as long as you're sound. We have straight members who joined the team because they felt the 'typical' club environment didn't suit them. They love being involved because no one questions their situations — everyone is too busy getting on with our new love of rugby. There is so much to be learned from the likes of Sarsfields and our counterparts across the country in the likes of Cork Hellhounds, Emerald Warriors, Belfast Azlans and all the other inclusive clubs across their disciplines. Na Laochra Aeracha Na Laochra Aeracha - taking pride in their place in sport. Cork's first openly LGBT+ inclusive GAA club Dean Kinsella — co-founder and vice chairperson Many team sports clubs and organisations have a reputation for enforcing heteronormative behaviour and often are seen as being outright discriminative towards LGBT+ people. The reality however is very different. A recent survey of players from several amateur and professional sports clubs revealed that although the majority of players were unaware of LGBT+ people on their team, the overwhelming majority of them would welcome and support an LGBT+ player. Dean Kinsella, co-founder and vice-chairperson of Na Laochra Aeracha GAA Club Times are changing, and attitudes are not what they once were. Although there is an increasing amount of LGBT+ inclusive sports clubs around, much more can be done to create these safe spaces and promote visibility of LGBT+ people in sports. Increased visibility creates increased awareness, which leads to better understanding and a more supportive and inclusive community, not just across the LGBT+ community but also across our sporting community. Deirbhile Lynch — GAA player Joining Na Laochra Aeracha may have been a step outside of my comfort zone, but it was the best decision I have made in my adult life, enabling me to pursue my passion for GAA and expand my social circle. Queer spaces such as this are vital for ensuring that members of the LGBT+ community feel represented and respected in the sports world, in which we have long been hidden. Deirbhile Lynch, a passionate GAA player with Na Laochra Aeracha. The club continuously fills me with pride as we grow in numbers, improve our abilities and support one another during training. Whatever your background or experience in GAA, our team will welcome you! Read More Vanishing act: The realities and impacts of ghosting on those left behind