Broadcasters

"There are people who go to the Hague for war crimes – I tell you this, some of the coaches nowadays should be up for crimes against Gaelic football."

"I was a big meteor spotting fan, at school, what I really liked to do was meteor counts. So I would lie in the back garden in December for the Geminids or something with a tape recorder and a piece of string, and when a meteor went past I would call out the time on to the tape and hold a piece of string up and measure the length of the meteor and then we’d write all this down and send it off. It was a way of doing science with nothing except eyes, and so I was hooked at that idea that I could do something in the back garden with really simple equipment that could make a contribution to science. If you look at what I do now, where I spend my day job running websites like Galaxy Zoo that get the public involved in doing science with nothing more than a web browser it’s almost full circle, we’ve gone from being in the back garden with a deck chair and piece of string to a web browser but the principle is still the same."

"I was on the Tyrone senior panel for 13 years trying to get my hands on the Sam Maguire. Mickey Harte arrives on the scene and I leave three years later with two All-Irelands."

"Jesus you put the phone down for an hour and watch I'm a celebrity get me out of here."

"For the second week in a row, Kieran Donaghy was better dressed in the studio than Jimmy McGuinness and Peter Canavan wasn't. Last weekend, Kieran gave a detailed analysis of a sending off he hadn't seen."

"What we’re finding is that combining human and machine classification gives better results than either on their own – the machines do the bulk of the work, but you still get that human ability to be surprised and to deal with the unexpected. We need to work with our robot colleagues, not see them as competition!"

"I got a warning... It said at 11 minutes past three on the day of the drawn All-Ireland Final you said to Pat Spillane, and it was put into quotes, 'Would you stop patting my arm?' 'This was grossly unprofessional and rude and cannot be tolerated'. I kid you not. I was also told that Joanne Cantwell had lost confidence in my abilities as an analyst."

"Boys talking through their arses on TSG. It was a superb goal. The hip nudge to put Walsh off balance. The catch. The lightning fast, deft finish. The perfect timing."

"Media coverage of the tweet"

"Yes, I visibly propelled Michael Murphy into the air to catch that ball. My ability to deliver an All-Ireland to the highest bidder! I am a powerful man and people should be afraid."

"Tommy Walsh is a one-trick pony – if he gets the ball 40 yards from goal and you stay close to him he'll barge past you and head for goal, but if you stand off him and wait for him to come onto his left then he won't do any damage... Walsh doesn't have the speed of thought or foot to deal with proper, logical defending."

"And where in the country would you get anyone like Anthony Lynch, a warrior and a Gaeilgeoir? If my daughter said she was going to marry him I'd go down on my knees and thank the Lord. No dowry would be too large for the Lynch family."

"Great second half by Cavan. Always had a soft spot for the county ever since Pat Faulkner kicked me up in the air & Joe Dillon caught me over his head in the 1987 Ulster club semi final v Kingscourt."

"Barry McGowan. Now he was an example of a really great footballer who was totally unheralded. For me, he was as good as Tony Scullion. He was in that mould."

"'What do people see in Canty?' a Kerry man texted me at half-time [of the 2011 Munster final]. 'I don't know' was my response. In fairness, Kerry people are very harsh judges of a footballer. Someone like Graham, whose strengths are his physique, athleticism and never-say-die attitude, underwhelms them. They have that in Kerry, but on top of that they have the skills. Graham does not."

"Och, he knows what I think of him – I've said it before."

"The great Barry, the great unheralded maestro of Donegal football..."

"I asked one board member this week how much [Derry manager] Rory Gallagher is being paid. He said 'I don't ask, I don't want to know'. 'How is he being paid?' 'I don't know. As I said, I don't ask'. As part of the package, Rory is driving a sponsored 5 series BMW from JKC Motors. A Fermanagh man, or is it Cavan, or Antrim, I cannot put my finger on it, he was appointed by the previous board on the basis that he was a 'top rank professional manager'."

"In Derry, the board is currently in serious discussions about whether to enter a senior team into next year's championship... if Derry had not fielded a team in league or championship over the last five years, our absence would have been as memorable as Kilkenny's footballers... In a small dual county, in a vain bid to keep up with the Joneses, we have been spending over £45,000 a month on our senior teams... What has all this expenditure bought us? To Division 4. And now, Division 3 mid-table mediocrity."

"The one real anomaly in the League is The Black Death... They have continued to play the most horrible, defensive football the game has ever seen, oblivious to the trend towards attack based, non fouling football."

"The world has increasingly become like the Rose of Tralee... We're either interested in the truth and in the facts of things or we're in Rose of Tralee world where no-one says anything and where, for example, RTÉ apologise because you and I took an entirely fair, but robust view of Barry McGuigan. I mean, apologising? And, of course, everybody knows the apology is false as well. Everybody knows, 'Well that's a false apology, obviously McGuigan has rung up to complain about this, the wee shite that he is'."

"For the second week in a row, Kieran Donaghy was better dressed in the studio than Jimmy McGuinness and Peter Canavan wasn't. Last weekend, Kieran gave a detailed analysis of a sending off he hadn't seen."

"American presidents come and go. Dublin endure. Their annual Leinster Championship run has become the easiest campaign in Irish life after the Healy-Raes', with more discipline."

"It is a fact widely known that Kieran McGeeney's teams do not perform in championship. This tradition continued at Breffni Park yesterday, with Donegal playing a virtually perfect game."

"He's so big, he has an arse like a bag of cement. You can't get near him when the ball comes in, yet he has the most delicate skills."

"Boris Johnson said this week that he wants to unleash 'The Great British haircut'. Boris, who looks like what Owen Mulligan will in 10 years' time, likes to put 'Great British' or 'Great Britain' before his public pronouncements... Perhaps when Owen Mulligan was running amok against Dublin in the mid-noughties, selling them what Sean Cavanagh would describe as 'The Great UK dummy', a young Boris was watching, marched straight to the barber afterwards and demanded the full Mulligan."

"Joe Brolly is a person in pain."

"I used to think you were an awful shite."

"Brolly could cause a riot in a convent."

"I see the Taoiseach keeping a very close eye on the Donegal team, obviously looking for prospective candidates for Donegal in the next election."

"They're like the grim reaper when anybody comes [to Croke Park] they just put them away with ruthless efficiency."

"The Miraculous Medal around his neck is obviously not working all the time anyway."

"This union, which is dominated by some socialist philosophy, is not fit for purpose."

"I often got a belt from my mother with a wet dish cloth for kicking a ball through a window."

"There is no hope for anybody else. You might as well give up the ghost now."

"And we could poke fun at them about by-passing the toll gates and 10 shilling notes and driving up on Ferguson tractors and supplying them with maps of Dublin and Nelson's Pillar not being there anymore."

"If they waited a couple of hours they could have commemorated two massacres in Croke Park."

"[Charlie's] an awful man for answering his phone. I couldn't get in contact with him to get a challenge game... He [David Power] gave me the number, Charlie still didn't answer! If you know Charlie, he wouldn't be bothered. He'd just say I'm a low level guy - he only answers to a few of the big people, presidents of the US and that sort of thing."

"Did you see last week where he referred to 'the Greek poet Horace', assisting those of us who are too old by translating the Latin quotation into English? ... Horace a Roman citizen, wrote in Latin. Homer was the Greek poet. Good luck to Meath at the weekend."

"In 2020, on the Donegal Gaelic footballer."

"They always feel a bit isolated up there in the north-west."

"On playing Gaelic football for Donegal in the 1981 Ulster final."

"I played until I was 33 or 34 with one and a half legs."

"I was captain and we lost by two points to Monaghan. People said we lost it because we had a soccer midfield: myself and Denis Bonner, Packie's twin.""

"There was Patsy McGowan coming towards me, dapper dressed as always and a form in his hand."

"On the then Sligo Rovers manager."

"I managed to hold onto some performance with the knee in soccer having had two or three cruciates, whereas in Gaelic football it was a more difficult thing to do."

"I had to get out of a hole, wash my hands and sign the form."

"Odhrán Mac Niallais didn't lick his talent off the table."

"I think Colm might need to go to Specsavers, because any big game I've seen, Michael does not go hiding, that's for sure. He has been brilliant, he is a leader on and off the pitch and he goes looking for work anywhere on that pitch."