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THANK GAA IT’S FRIDAY

Thank GAA It's Friday John Muldoon Image Name: Thank GAA It's Friday John Muldoon

Episode 5

It’s All-Ireland Hurling Quarter-Final weekend with Wexford taking on Waterford and Galway facing Clare in a double header at Semple Stadium on Sunday.

Wexford star Conor McDonald tells us how the Model County is preparing for a Waterford
backlash from their Munster final defeat. Wexford bounced back earlier this year after a Leinster championship defeat to Dublin, so McDonald knows the danger of a wounded animal. Nonetheless, the young sharpshooter will look to continue his rich vein of form
on Sunday. This is Wexford’s sixth All-Ireland quarterfinal appearance, and they’ll be looking to win their first one since 2007 this weekend.

Ahead of the other quarter-final, we catch up with a member of Galway’s All-Ireland winning minor team of 2000, who may be better known for his exploits with Connacht Rugby. John Muldoon captained his province to a historic Pro12 crown in May but we catch up with him to hear about his exploits with Galway hurling and about growing up on the same road as
Tribesmen like Joe Canning and Damien Hayes.

We also sent our cameras down to Tubber, on the border of Clare and Galway, to talk to Banner legend Eamonn Taaffe about the fluid lines between the counties. Now in charge of Tubber’s first team, the goalscoring hero of Clare’s 1995 All-Ireland triumph, brings us inside the local community and its relationship with Gort, right across the border.

As it’s also a big weekend in the football qualifiers, with quarter-final places up for grabs, we head Down Under to catch up with Colin O’Riordan. We hear how the Tipperary native is settling in to life in Australia with AFL club Sydney Swans and how he has kept track of his former team-mates’ All-Ireland campaign.

We’re also tackling the big issue of the last couple of weeks. Diving has been a buzz word in GAA circles in the past fortnight and we catch up with Fermanagh forward Tomás Corrigan former referee John Bannon, and former Dublin defender Paddy Christie to see whether it really has become a problem area in Gaelic football.

The programme is repeated on Sunday July 24th on RTÉ 2 at 12:55pm.