‘An easy fix' – tattoo artist offers to change digit in Cork fan's premature ink
A hurling fan who got an 'All-Ireland Champions 2025' tattoo days before Cork were humbled by Tipperary at Croke Park has been offered the chance to change a digit as a vote of future confidence in his beloved Rebels.
Michael John Murphy (37) from Mayfield got the tattoo when Passage West studio Skint Tattoo offered a promotion with specific Cork-based inkings being offered for free earlier this month.
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Irish Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Legend of Dawn Run lives on at Sligo on a special night for teenage jockey
It might be 40 years since Dawn Run created horse racing history at Cheltenham but the mighty mare's legend lived on at Sligo on Wednesday night. The Paddy Mullins-trained racing icon was the only horse to ever win the Champion Hurdle (1984) and Gold Cup (1986) and is considered the greatest mare ever to race over jumps. She was tragically killed in a fatal fall at French racecourse Auteuil just a few months after her historic Gold Cup win when attempting to win the French Champion Hurdle. Dawn Run was famously owned by Mrs Charmian Hill, who rode out the mare at Mullins' yard and was known as the 'Galloping Granny'. The Waterford woman also incredibly won a race at Tralee on her mare when she was 62. Mrs Hill died in 1990 but decades on the iconic red and black silks of Dawn Run were back in the winners' enclosure at Sligo, and amazingly worn by HIll's great-granddaughter. 19-year-old Gabriella Hill and the Henry De Bromhead-trained Trubshaw grabbed the glory in the Guinness Handicap - hanging on by a head to win from God The Highness in a desperately close finish. Glor Tire and Gabriella Hill after winning at Leopardstown last year (Image: PA Archive/PA Images) HIll rode her first winner last summer for Jim Bolger and is now eyeing a new career in the UK with trainer Stuart Williams, ensuring the Dawn Run dynasty continues. Wexford-based Hill told : 'It's great to get a win in the family colours and Trubshaw has come on a lot in his last few runs. He was lovely and relaxed today. 'I'm getting the boat over to Newmarket on Monday to join Stuart Williams. He has a good few horses and I'm looking forward to it. She added: 'We always had a couple of horses at home I've always been riding. I started with a local point-to-point trainer down the road at weekends. I got a taste for it then and got my licence. I'm really enjoying it.'
Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
'We just got lucky': Tales from the Cork lads who ran merchandise stalls for Oasis in the 1990s
Morty McCarthy remembers the first time he met one of the Gallagher brothers. It was February 1992, and the Cork man and his band, the Sultans of Ping, were sharing a bill with fellow Leesiders the Frank and Walters at the Boardwalk venue in Manchester. A local lad by the name of Noel popped up during the soundcheck to say hello. He'd been rehearsing in one of the other rooms with an unsigned group he said were called 'Oasis', and wanted to reacquaint with the Franks, a band he'd previously worked with as a roadie. Little did anyone there know that the 'sound' 21-year-old and the four lads banging out tunes in the basement were on their way to becoming the biggest band in Britain. Or that McCarthy would have a front seat on the Oasis rollercoaster. As the Sultans' career plateaued, the Greenmount drummer ended up working with the Manchester band's merchandise material in the era when they exploded onto the scene. His switch of career to the merchandise world originated in his Sultans days when, as the non-drinker in the band, McCarthy was the designated van driver. During a period of downtime in early 1994, he heard that their merchandise company Underworld needed somebody to ferry gear to various gigs. McCarthy signed up, and drafted in his childhood pal Damien Mullally when an opening came up for somebody to look after the company's London warehouse. 'Underworld were probably the biggest merchandise outfit in the UK at the time,' recalls McCarthy. 'We just got lucky, because we all started working literally a couple of months before the whole Britpop thing broke. And Underworld not only had Oasis, they also had Pulp.' Liam and Noel Gallagher messing about at Knebworth in 1996. Mullally and McCarthy enjoyed working in the merchandise, travelling to gigs and making the most of life in London. In true Cork style, they'd even managed to secure jobs in Underworld for a few more of their mates from home. Not that it was all plain sailing. There was still an element of anti-Irish feeling in the UK in the mid-1990s – especially in the wake of the IRA bombing of the Bishopsgate financial district in 1993 – and going around in a van full of boxes meant the Cork duo were regularly stopped and questioned at police checkpoints. 'We also got a bit of it around Abbey Wood where we lived, but things were much better when we moved to Hackney, which was more multicultural,' says Mullally. Meanwhile, between April 1994 and the release of Definitely Maybe at the end of August, a real buzz was building around Oasis. The three singles Supersonic, Shakermaker, and Live Forever, had been hitting incrementally higher chart positions, and the album went straight to number one in the UK charts. The Gallagher brothers had arrived. For the Cork duo, the gigs they worked were getting ever busier, and the few dozen t-shirts and other bits they'd previously sold were now getting to hundreds and even thousands of units. Underworld realised they were going to need a bigger boat. Or at least a decent lorry. This created a bit of a conundrum as nobody in the company had the special licence required in the UK. Step forward the lad with the Irish licence which, at the time, was universal and didn't need the special HGV training. 'I'd never even sat in the truck before,' recalls McCarthy, now 55, of the day they went to hire their new vehicle from a yard near King's Cross. 'I just thought, how hard can it be? We got in and the first thing I did was hit a barrier. I was just thinking 'I'm not going to be able to reverse this. So whatever we do, we'll just have to drive it forward'. I suppose we had this 'It'll be grand' attitude. I wouldn't do it at this age!' Morty McCarthy on a merchandise stall back in the 1990s. Life on the road was a mixture of good fun and hard work. Depending on the tour, Mullally and McCarthy would sometimes be living on the crew's bus, or other times driving to venues themselves. Of course there were some late nights and partying along the way, but the Oasis entourage also had a serious work ethic. 'If everybody knew that did a couple of days off, then there might be a big party and a bit of a blowout. But a lot of the time, people were up early to get set up at the next venue, and working long hours through the day. You wouldn't have been able to do your job if you were partying all the time,' says Mullally, now working at the Everyman theatre in Cork. 'People got on very well on tour. You knew you just couldn't be invading people's private space or doing the langer in any way.' The band themselves travelled in a different bus, but both Mullally and McCarthy recall the Gallagher brothers as being down-to-earth lads who were always pleasant to deal with. 'I think because we were Irish, that helped too,' says Mullally. 'Yes,' agrees McCarthy. 'I even remember Noel joking with us about Taytos and Tanora!' He does recall a friendly disagreement before a gig in Bournemouth when Liam Gallagher fancied his footwear. 'We had this Dutch driver who used to come every week delivering merchandise, and he used to sell Adidas off the back of the truck. I'd bought this pair of orange Adidas. Liam collected Adidas trainers. He was like 'I'm having your trainers.' And I was going no, and he was like '100 quid!'.' While it was predominantly merchandise that kept Mullally and McCarthy involved with Oasis, they also dropped a load of equipment for the band to Rockfield Studios in 1995. Those sessions at the Welsh studio would of course spawn (What's the Story) Morning Glory?,the second album that would propel the band to stratospheric levels of popularity. On the road, part of the Cork duo's job was dealing with the increasing amount of bootleggers who were selling unofficial merchandise near the venues. 'We'd go out to chat to them, and then of course it'd turn out that a lot of them were friends of the Gallaghers from Manchester,' says Mullally. 'They were mostly nice guys so you'd just ask them to push back a bit – 'Just go down to the end of the road to sell your stuff'.' The mid-1990s was an era when everything was paid for in cash. This meant the two Cork lads would sometimes end up with tens of thousands worth of banknotes in cardboard boxes or plastic bags in the back of the truck or in a hotel after a gig. Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis arriving at Cork Airport in 1996. Picture: Dan Linehan An event like Knebworth in 1996 – when Oasis played to 250,000 people across two days – created even more issues. 'A few times a day we used to do a cash-run to get the money off the stall. Somebody would come along with a backpack and we'd stuff it with maybe 10 grand in notes," says Mullally. "You'd try to be as inconspicuous as you could walking through the crowd with that on your back, hoping that nobody comes at you.' Knebworth had 'proper' security vans taking the cash from the event HQ, but Mullally recalls the earlier days when himself and his co-worker would have to bank the money. 'You can imagine with all the stuff that was going on at the time, and two Irish guys coming into the bank with 20 grand in cash, sometimes even in deutsche marks if we were after a European tour. They'd be looking at you strangely, and you know that they're just about to push a button. But they might make a few phonecalls or whatever and we'd eventually get it done.' Knebworth is widely regarded as the high point for the band, but McCarthy also has particularly warm memories of the gig they played in his hometown just a few days later. 'I couldn't believe they were actually playing in Cork at that stage,' he says. He drove the truck from the UK via the Holyhead ferry, but as he arrived at Páirc Uí Chaoimh ahead of schedule, they wouldn't let him into the arena. Wary of leaving a truck full of merchandise parked around the city, McCarthy drove it to the seaside village of Crosshaven. 'When I got there I decided I'd leave it at the carpark at Graball Bay. I didn't even know if it'd fit up the hill but I just about managed it,' he recalls. When he went back later that evening to check everything was ok, there was a big crowd of children gathered around the emblazoned truck. 'There was a big mystery in Cork about where the Gallaghers were staying, and the word had gone around that this was their truck. One of the kids asked me 'Are Liam and Noel coming out to play?' I had to shoo them away.' Oasis merchandise has become an even bigger business since the 1990s. Picture: Lucy North/PA Those two Cork gigs were among the final dealings McCarthy had with Oasis. He has since moved to Sweden, where he teaches English, but regularly returns to the merchandising world for tours with various other bands. He's happy the Gallagher brothers are back together, and realises he was part of something special in the 1990s. 'It's hard to explain people the energy in the UK that the Britpop thing had. Musically, I didn't think it was the greatest, but the energy was phenomenal,' says McCarthy. ' I think at the time, the Indie scene was very middle class. But then along came Oasis. We probably didn't realise we were living in a golden era, but we had the time of our lives.'
Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
'It's such a Cork story, the homecoming feels special': 'Christy' makes its home debut
'This feels like the big one,' says Cork director Brendan Canty at his film Christy's premiere. It's not the Berlin International Film Festival — it premiered there in February. No, this is Mahon Point shopping centre on a Wednesday evening, and the atmosphere is electric. As the Kabin Crew entertain the gathering crowds nearby, Canty is recalling a conversation with his wife the night before where he shared his nerves. 'She was like, 'what, Mahon Point?' But, like, it's such a Cork story and for all the cast especially, this is the one, like. Cork is their world. It's such a Cork story, the homecoming feels special.' Despite his nerves at home, Christy is a resounding success internationally. In Berlin, Canty won a top award for his street-cast, Cork-shot debut feature film and he describes it as a whirlwind experience. 'It was chaos, but it was amazing. You go from making this film for eight years, almost privately, to it being shown in front of 1,000 people in the opening. It was just crazy and it went down so well.' Christy follows two estranged brothers as they grapple with their past and resolve to unite over one summer in Cork City's northside. At the centre of the film is actor Danny Power, who said it was 'scary' bringing the film home to Cork but that he enjoyed working in his native northside. Brendan Canty, actor Danny Power, and Danny's five-year-old son Keano on the red carpet at Mahon Point Shopping Centre. Picture: Chani Anderson 'I live up the northside anyway and I used to hang around Knocknaheeny, and I was in the Cabin when I was younger. It's really a tight-knit community, like everyone knows everything about everyone. It's really community-orientated, you wouldn't find it in many places, that tight.' Canty, who grew up in Ballincollig, notes Power was the first person he cast through the Kabin Crew and he describes the rap collective as their gateway to the community. 'It allowed me, who's not from the area, access to the area, just going up there and having a purpose and hanging out and stuff like that. I got to meet the wider community and hear the stories,' he says. Christy tackles dark topics and Power says he put a lot of his own experiences into the character. 'It was weird because I felt a lot of the emotions that Christy was feeling in the film that I felt before myself in life,' Power says. 'Not everything, obviously, but I was able to portray him a lot easier than I thought I would.' The pair say it was a tight-knit crew on set and they formed strong friendships, and soon co-star Chris Walley is walking over to poke fun at Power. Jamie and Tiny from the Kabin Studio performing on the red carpet at the premiere of 'Christy' at Mahon Point. Picture: Chani Anderson Walley, best known as Jock in The Young Offenders, says he is proud of the work being done in Cork. 'It fills me with enormous pride to see the film and the TV projects that are coming from here and to be a part of that means an awful lot to me,' he says. 'This is where I grew up, where my love for acting began. So to be able to come back to actually work here on screen is an enormous privilege.' The balance of light and dark subjects in Christy is impressive, says Walley. 'I think the way Brendan's managed to balance both the drama and the reality of situations like this with the humour is again, very true and reflective of Cork. I'm very proud to be part of the film.' Christy is in Irish cinemas from August 29.
