After a run of disappointing results, Ireland’s footballers last night scored a memorable victory, beating Portugal 2-0 in a World Cup Qualifying match. I attribute the result to the new Head Coach, pictured below…
And here is a photo of Ireland’s two-goal hero, Troy Parrot, in action.
Now all the final results are in and validated, the Board can now proceed to the classification of Honours for the 2024/25 English Premier League.
There were 20 candidates, no absences, and no extenuating circumstances recorded.
As Chair, I will remind you of the regulations as we go through. Fortunately, as was the case last year, matters are relatively straightforward.
Looking at the last column we can see straight away that the top three all get first-class honours, the same as last year although the performance of the top candidates was not as impressive. Liverpool finished top of the class, followed by Arsenal and Manchester City. Chelsea finish with the top 2.1, the External Examiner having decided not to recommend they be rounded up. They may however still win a prize if they pass a special test next week in the form of the Europa Conference Legue final. Despite a disappointing last paper, Newcastle United finish in 5th place. They also collected a prize in the form of the Caribou Cabibbo Calabi-Yau League Cup. The top five all go on to further study in the UEFA Champions League next year.
I must draw your attention to the peculiar case of Tottenham Hotspur, who finished in 17th place, on 38. This is technically a fail, but the rules allow a pass by compensation in such a situation. Moreover, after their success in the Europa Conference League final over Manchester United, Tottenham also qualify for the Champions League next year.
Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Brighton & Hove Actually also get upper second-class honours. Villa go into the Europa Cup along with Crystal Palace who only got a 2.2 (lower-second, with 53%) but go through by virtue of winning the FA Cup. Nottingham Forest, in 7th place, have to go into the Europa Conference League playoffs.
Bournemouth, Brentford and Fulham are also in the range for a 2.2 but failed to secure places in Europe for next season.
Everton, West Ham, Manchester United and Wolverhampton Wanderers all get third-class degrees.
The bottom three (Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton) all fail outright and must take at least a year out before trying again.
(I think may have been spending too long recently marking examinations…)
I’m old enough to remember when the Carabao Cup was called the League Cup, and I’m (just) old enough to remember Newcastle United winning the Fairs Cup in 1969. I’m also old enough to remember countless cup final defeats, but I’m not old enough to remember the last time The Toon won a domestic trophy (the FA Cup in 1955), so today’s victory against Liverpool presents a unique opportunity to celebrate a Cup success. Even if it isn’t the most important piece of silverware, such an event is something I’d taken for granted I’d never be able to blog about!
As the late President Jimmy Carter put it, Howay the Lads!
I don’t think I’ve ever written a blog post about the League of Ireland (soccer) before, but since it’s a holiday weekend and I’ve just watched Dundalk versus Shamrock Rovers on the telly, I thought I’d do a quickie.
I’ve been following this year’s League of Ireland Premier Division with some interest as it has been very close. You can see how competitive the league is just by looking at the table: 35 games played with three points for a win and the top team only has 60 points! Each team plays the others 4 times, incidentally, making a total of 36 games. The last round of matches happens next Friday, 1st November; the season runs from February to November.
Anyway, Shelbourne seemed to be battling it out with Derry City for the top spot, but then St Patrick’s Athletic and Shamrock Rovers starting gaining ground, as Both Derry and Shelbourne stumbled. Today’s result was important because Shamrock Rovers had to win to keep the competition alive. Favourites to win against the bottom club, they didn’t play very well but scraped home 1-0. The gap in quality between top and bottom of this league is really very small.
Now the situation is simple: if Shelbourne win on Friday – or if Shamrock Rovers don’t – then Shelbourne are champions. If Shelbourne lose or draw and Shamrock Rovers win then Shamrock Rovers are champions. On paper, Shelbourne have the tougher game, away at Derry City, while Shamrock Rovers at home to Waterford. It’s a toss-up who will win.
UPDATE: 1st November. They left it very late but Shelbourne beat Derry 1-0 to take the title. Shamrock Rovers also won, but to no avail…
P.S. As the crow flies, Shamrock Rovers (who play at Tallaght Stadium) is the nearest Premier Division club to Maynooth
And so it came to pass that Spain beat England 2-1 in the final of the 2024 European Championship. This is a result to add to the memories of Spain I’ve acquired by living there for much of the past year. I haven’t seen every match of the tournament but there’s no doubt in my mind that Spain played consistently the best football, and are worthy Champions. England ran them close in the final, though. Despite Spain having about 66% of the possession it took a very late goal to win it.
So football’s not coming home after all. Evidently it’s still on sabbatical…
I feel a bit sorry for the manager Gareth Southgate. He may not have won a trophy with England (yet) but he’s taken them further in more competitions than most of his predecessors. He attracted a great deal of criticism for his cautious approach in the earlier stages of this competition which he dealt with in a remarkably dignified way. All that eased off a bit when England got to the knockout stage, but I suspect it may come back. Will he put up with it for another two years until the 2026 World Cup?
As for Spain, this is the fourth time they have been European Champions; England have never won this competition. The Spanish squad is very youthful squad too, including the brilliant teenager Lamine Yamal. Nico Williams had a superb tournament too.
P.S. This evening’s match was broadcast live on RTÉ so I watched it at home. By contrast, yesterday’s rugby between Ireland and the Springboks was not available on a free channel so I was forced against my will to watch it in a pub. I’m glad I did!
P.P.S the choice of schedule leading up to the Euros final is interesting:
Since I’ve got my own computer again now I thought I’d celebrate by doing one of those rambling, inconsequential posts I haven’t had time to do recently.
Last week, in the run up to the European Championship semi-final between England and The Netherlands, I for some reason decided to look up what “The Netherlands” is in the Irish language. I did know this once, as it came up when I was trying to learn Irish a few years ago but I had forgotten. I remembered “England”, which is Sasana (cf. Saxon). Anyway, the answer is An Ísiltír. I’ll return to that in a moment.
Here are some other names:
Anyway, a couple of things may be interest. One is that you can see that most country names in Irish are introduced by An. This is the definite article in Irish; there is no indefinite article. This contrasts with English in which only a few names start with the definite article, “The Netherlands” being one. The exceptions in Irish include England (Sasana) and Scotland (Albain). Wales is An Bhreatain Bheag (literally “Little Britain”). Of relevance to the final of the European Championship, Spain is An Spáinn.
I should also mention that some nouns suffer an initial consonant mutation (in the form of lenition, i.e. softening) after the direct article. In modern Irish this is denoted by an h next to the initial consonant, hence Fhrainc, for example; the Irish word for “French” is Fraincis.
The second interesting thing pertains to An Ísiltír itself. The second part of this, tír, means “country” or “nation” – see the plural in the heading above – and the first, Ísil, means “low”. An Ísiltír is therefore literally “The Low Country”. I shared this fascinating insight on social media and found in the replies a mention that the Welsh name for The Netherlands is Yr Iseldiroedda meaning literally “The Low Lands”. The first part of this is clearly similar to the Irish, but the second is the plural of a different word meaning ground or earth or an area of land. There is a word tir in Welsh that means ground or earth or an area of land but it does not mean country or nation like the very similar Irish word; the word for that is gwlad. In Irish the word for land or ground or earth (or turf) is talamh.
Welsh and Irish belong to distinct branches of the Celtic group of languages, the first wave of Indo-European languages to sweep across Europe. I blogged about this here. Celtic languages therefore share roots with many other Indo-European languages and very basic words in many branches of the tree often bear some similarity in form, if slight but significant differences in meaning. It seems that tír/tir illustrates this rather well. These two words also have a very similar form to the French terre which is derived from the Latin terra. And so I disappeared down an etymological rabbit hole and found that all these words are probably derived from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning “dry”, presumably through reference to “that which is dry” as opposed to the wet bits (although neither Ireland nor Wales is famous for being particular dry).
And to bring this little excursion back full circle, the Irish word tirim means “dry”…
I’ve been a bit busy catching up on things since my departure from Barcelona with the result that I almost forgot to post anything today. Fortunately there are two more Euclid Early Release Observations I can share to fill the gap. They’re about 4 minutes apiece, so there’ll be plenty time to watch them while waiting for the VAR operators to make an offside decision during the next European Championship match…
The first is entitled Measuring Luminosity Function for the Perseus Cluster of Galaxies using Euclid ERO data:
The article describing this work can be found on arXiv here; it perhaps makes up for the missing article in the title of the video.
The second one is this, about gravitational lensing and the search for high-redshift galaxies:
The paper for this one can be found on arXiv here.
Now all the final results are in and validated, the Board can now proceed to the classification of Honours for the 2023/24 Premier League.
As Chair, I will remind you of the regulations as we go through. Fortunately, as was the case last year, matters are relatively straightforward.
Three candidates (Manchester City, Arsenal, and Liverpool) have a final score greater than or equal to 70 and will therefore be awarded First Class Honours. All three can look forward to further study abroad in Europe next year. Manchester City win this year’s prize for getting the top marks as well as a special award for getting away with so many financial irregularities.
The next five candidates all have scores in the range 60-69 so they are all in the Upper Second Class, i.e. II.1, category though in the case of Newcastle United and Manchester United, only just. Aston Villa will be disappointed to have missed out on a First, but their mark of 68 is nevertheless enough to ensure they will be heading abroad next year along with the top three.
Tottenham and Chelsea (and perhaps Newcastle United) will also get to study abroad next year. Manchester Utd are taking an extra exam on Saturday and if they pass that will get to study abroad, in place of Newcastle.
Only one candidate is in the Lower Second Class (II.2) this year (West Ham), while the next six candidates all get clear Thirds, having marks in the range 40-49. The Board discussed whether to offer Crystal Palace a viva but in the end decided it couldn’t be bothered. Everton only just passed, with a mark of 40, after having points deducted for disciplinary reasons.
Brentford technically failed with a mark of 39 but can pass by compensation. Nottingham Forest only just scraped through by compensation last year, and did even worse this year including having marks deducted for cheating but, having considered the extenuating circumstances, the Board has decided to allow them yet another go, although they do not qualify for Honours and must be content with being classified as “Ordinary”.
That leaves the three candidates at the bottom of the table – Luton Town, Burnley, and Sheffield United – who are all “hard fails” . They will have to terminate the course and consider their options. The Chair has agreed to meet with the Admissions Team to understand how Sheffield United was admitted to the course when they were so clearly under-qualified. Perhaps some form of administrative error occurred?
I couldn’t resist a short post wrapping up the 2023 Women’s Soccer World Cup after today’s victory by Spain over England. I don’t think there can be any arguments about the final: England are a good side and played pretty well, but Spain had the edge tactically and in terms of skill levels. They had a penalty saved and a shot by the excellent Paralluelo hit the post near the end of the first half. In short, the better team won.
Although Spain lost heavily to Japan in the Group stage, I think they were worthy winners of the competition overall playing some superb football on the way. The other team that I thought played particularly great football to watch was France. I felt sad when they lost on penalties to Australia in the quarter-finals, as France-England semi-final would have been a great match. I particularly admire Wendie Renard, who at 33 may have played in her last World Cup.
Although I didn’t see that many games because of the timing, I thought it was a very good competition. A particular thing struck me, that in the past there really haven’t been that many teams who had a realistic chance of winning, so many of the games were very one-sided. This time it was quite different, and there were many upsets. I never thought Germany, Canada, Italy and Brazil would fail to progress beyond the Group stage. Nor did I think USA would be out before the quarter-finals, losing on penalties to Sweden in the round of 16. I think this is an indication of a generally increase in quality and a positive sign for the women’s game.
I think a word is due for Ireland, who qualified for the finals this year for the very first time. They didn’t get beyond the group stage but in no way did they disgrace themselves. It was always going to be difficult for them to progress from a tough group with Australia, Canada and Nigeria. In the end they lost narrowly to the first two and drew with the latter. They’ll be back.
But the day belongs to Spain’s women, as does the trophy. Felicidades a Ellas!
Now all the final results are in and validated the Board can now proceed to the classification of Honours for the 2022/23 Premier League.
As Chair, I will remind you of the regulations as we go through. Fortunately, this time matters are relatively straightforward.
Four candidates (Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United and Newcastle United) have a final score greater than or equal to 70 will therefore be awarded First Class Honours. All four can look forward to further study next year; Manchester City win this year’s Prize for getting the top mark.
The next four candidates all have scores in the range 60-69 so they are all in the Upper Second Class, i.e. II.1, category – though in the case of Tottenham Hotspur, only just. Liverpool will be disappointed to have missed out on a First, but Aston Villa and Brighton & Hove Actually will probably be satisfied.
Only two candidates are in the Lower Second Class (II.2) this year (Brentford and Fulham) while Crystal Palace, Chelsea, Wolverhanpton Wanderers and West Ham United all get clear Thirds, having marks in the range 40-49.
AFC Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest and Everton have all technically failed, but with marks in the range 35-39 they are “soft fails” and are allowed to pass by compensation. There being no extenuating circumstances, however, they do not qualify for Honours and must be content with being classified as “Ordinary”.
That leaves the three candidates at the bottom of the table – Leicester City, Leeds United and Southampton – who are all “hard fails” so will have to terminate the course and consider their options while taking some time out.
I hope this clarifies the situation.
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