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Frank McNally Profile
Frank McNally

@FrankmcnallyIT

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Chief Writer of An Irish Diary, The Irish Times. Runner. Monaghan supporter. Flannorak. Father. Himself/Yer man. Also (& increasingly) @frankie49.bluesky.social

Dublin
Joined October 2011
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
@FrankmcnallyIT
Frank McNally
5 years
White smoke rises over St James’s Gate: traditional signal to the faithful that the pubs will be open again soon.
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Frank McNally
4 years
Typical Cavan. They wait until the pubs are all closed to win an Ulster title. #tight.
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Frank McNally
6 years
Daniel Hannan hoisted by his own petard, again. From Private Eye.
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Frank McNally
5 years
Stand up for the Japanese. Irish fans giving credit where it’s due. #JAPvIRE
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Frank McNally
6 years
Apparently Wolves fans have been celebrating non-existent Brighton goals to get the Liverpool fans going & mess with their heads. Black ops from the Black Country, or Man City agents working under cover? Impressively fiendish either way.
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Frank McNally
2 years
Desperate scenes in Dublin as hipsters queue for Bread.
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Frank McNally
7 months
Drury Street, July evening.
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Frank McNally
2 years
And they’re away. The annual Art O’Neill Challenge - recreating the 1592 escape - leaves Dublin Castle, facing a 60km trek over the Wicklow Mountains into the safety of Glenmalure Valley. The leaders should arrive at about 6am, if the English and the weather don’t kill them.
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Frank McNally
5 years
Ireland committing bodies to the ruck on the train to Yokohama. Referee has a look but waves play on. #IREvSCO
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Frank McNally
1 year
The guy beside me is on his own but he just ordered two pints. It’s that kind of game. #IREvRSA
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Frank McNally
4 years
Fantastic by Sam Bennett. What a way to bring the green jersey home.
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Frank McNally
7 years
The Liffey Swim today & in Jack B Yeats's painting from 1923.
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Frank McNally
5 months
My youngest kid had his debs this week & wore an old suit of mine - the first I ever bought - from 1983. Not sure which I’m prouder of: him or it.
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Frank McNally
5 years
Luas on way to hospital (St James’s).
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Frank McNally
5 years
Just back from lap of the Phoenix Park & Farmleigh. Place full of people walking, running, & cycling, singly or in couples or small family groups, but as far as I could see there was almost universal respect for the social distance rules. In other good news, it’s a glorious day.
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Frank McNally
5 years
People you see in Dublin. The man passing on bike here is Willie Dunne, who ran the 1960 Olympic Marathon in Rome. Multiple national champ, career best 2:14.35. Now 86 & proceeding at stately pace to @DonoreHarriers in Chapelizod, where he’ll probably run a few laps on the track.
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Frank McNally
5 years
Short and to the pint. (From today’s @ITletters)
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Frank McNally
4 years
Looks like Dublin Castle has fallen into Mayo hands. #allirelandfinal
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Frank McNally
3 years
Very sorry to hear of the death of Nanci Griffith. She was a bright light in the dark 1980s. Saw her in the Olympia once, c.1988, then met her sitting alone in McDonald’s Grafton St next day & said a shy hello. She seemed lovely.
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Frank McNally
7 months
Harry Gleeson’s own fiddle playing a hornpipe at the graveside in his native village of Holycross, Co Tipperary, today where he was buried 83 years after being wrongfully executed in Mountjoy Jail. The musician is Anthony Condron.
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Frank McNally
6 months
A surreal turn of events in the last race at Galway as Daniel Wiffin (top right on big screen) gradually overtakes the horses to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming.
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Frank McNally
3 years
Even in extremely small print, the ticket prices for Springsteen in Dublin are grotesque.
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Frank McNally
4 years
Car-parking erasers outside a school in Dublin’s Liberties.
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Frank McNally
7 years
No it’s not a painting by Magritte of a tree falling to pieces. It’s a pic of starlings taking flight. Lovely work by Mark Marlow, on page 3 of today’s @IrishTimes
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Frank McNally
5 years
Modest as the letter writer is, this “minor” correction is probably the most authoritative I’ve ever been on the receiving end of.
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Frank McNally
2 years
“It is October all over my life and the light is staring.” An unusually sunny Patrick Kavanagh shines down from a gable wall in Carrickmacross.
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Frank McNally
4 years
Central Dublin was like Latin Quarter Paris earlier with all the outside dining. Streets hopping with people. Only a heavy shower away from utter desolation, I know, but still great to see.
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Frank McNally
7 years
This is amazing. The heatwave is effectively x-raying ancient underground monuments now.
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Frank McNally
7 months
Summer in Dublin, as the ducks of Stephen’s Green celebrate an exciting new extension of the pond. Great pic by Dara MacDónaill on the front page of today’s ⁦@IrishTimes
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Frank McNally
6 years
On a bus to (my home town) Carrickmacross, eavesdropping on a conversation between the driver & a very friendly woman passenger from Kerry. Kerry people are exotic things in these parts anyway. But the bus has just been electrified by news that the woman is Dáithí Ó Sé’s mammy.
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Frank McNally
1 year
I didn’t notice ⁦@BryanJOBrien⁩ taking this picture of me, under a stairs and deadline pressure, in the only quiet corner of Nenagh last night. But with a better-looking model, it could nearly be a painting by Vermeer.
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Frank McNally
6 years
My son refused to pose for pictures with the cup he won playing trumpet at the Wesley Interschools Music Festival earlier today, so I had to get a pot of jam to stand in for him.
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Frank McNally
4 years
Never mind fishing rights. According to ⁦@BBCNewsnight⁩, the UK is staking a claim to Donegal. #brexitcrisis
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Frank McNally
6 years
Am I the only non-watcher of Game of Thrones who hasn’t yet asked publicly if I’m the only one who doesn’t watch it?.
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Frank McNally
1 year
I remember that summer in Dublin
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Frank McNally
5 years
It’s like a Samuel Beckett play, with cats.
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Frank McNally
5 years
More suspected Russian interference in elections. According to @BBCNewsnight, the next Taoiseach could be a man called “Mikhail” Martin.
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Frank McNally
4 years
From today’s ⁦@ITletters⁩. As a daily columnist on the same page, I feel his pain.
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Frank McNally
6 years
The food alone would be a big improvement on our last imperial experience.
@spectator
The Spectator
6 years
How odd to see the Irish — usually so quick to take offence at any whiff of imperialism — acting as a cheerleader for French aggrandisement, says Robert Hardman.
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Frank McNally
6 years
Have walked over this a thousand times but finally passed through it today. It’s the Guinness tunnel under James’s Street, built in the 1890s by an engineer who also helped design the London Underground. His name alone would have earned him a job in a brewery: James H Greathead.
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Frank McNally
2 years
Argentinian fans starting the celebrations early on Dublin’s Grafton St.
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Frank McNally
3 years
The 13th century Sainte-Chapelle, Paris’s most beautiful (former) church, with its ceiling seemingly supported by walls of stained glass.
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Frank McNally
2 years
Live from the green carpet. #IreVEng
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Frank McNally
2 months
It was the last one left, in fairness, and reduced to €30.
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Frank McNally
7 months
Can’t believe it’s 26 years since I first met her, in Holles Street Hospital.
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Frank McNally
5 years
Japan is so well ordered that, naturally, they have contraflow lanes on footpaths leading to the rugby stadium, for people not going to the games. I’ve only been in Tokyo 24 hours and already I’m too embarrassed to jaywalk.
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Frank McNally
11 months
Snow was general, all over Usher’s Island. #jamesjoyce #snow #sneachta
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Frank McNally
6 years
Kirsty Wark of @BBCNewsnight asking why Theresa May would be so “thrawn” about something. Had to look it up: it’s a Scots word for “obdurate, stubborn”. Thanks to May, Corbyn, & the DUP, British politics is currently a Game of Thrawns.
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Frank McNally
1 year
Not only is Bryan O’Brien a brilliant photographer, he’s also a nice guy. I found this in my Irish Times inbox today - a souvenir from a certain funeral in Nenagh we both covered recently. I’m quite moved.
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Frank McNally
3 years
A bunch of my school pals at the Pope’s mass in Galway 1979. Not his best pic but Gary Sheehan is second from left, standing. He was killed four years later. I wrote about him here
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Frank McNally
3 years
The baby sister. Am feeling simultaneously proud and old. via @IrishTimes.
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Frank McNally
3 years
The great Tomi Reichental saying Kaddish earlier at the grave of Professor Ludwig Hopf, friend and assistant of Einstein, who died in Dublin OTD in 1939.
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Frank McNally
1 year
There won’t be a coconut milked in Fiji tonight.
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Frank McNally
4 years
Distribution of Irish speakers in 1871. South Monaghan, the Louth/Armagh corridor, & Cooley the last holdouts in the east. @Siuners
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@OnlyOneMUFC
Dermot
4 years
@FrankmcnallyIT how did I not know about this (ie the Farney Gaeltacht, not the seminar)?.
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Frank McNally
6 months
My B & B for tonight
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Frank McNally
2 years
The traditional newspaper knock-down for Malachy Logan, who retired today after 48 years in ⁦The Irish Times, 34 of them as Sports Editor.
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Frank McNally
5 years
And he never banned Irish Times journalists.
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Frank McNally
7 years
The Nick Cave concert seems to be unusually popular with cyclists. Beijing-style levels of bike density in Kilmainham tonight.
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Frank McNally
2 years
@Lillylatelee @Myles_O_Reilly If they put a cap on him he’d be elected.
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Frank McNally
4 years
@edoloughlin A criminal mastermind is born.
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Frank McNally
6 years
Boarded a train to Mayo hungry & fondly hoping there’d be a food trolley on board. There is, but due to crowding, they had to put two trains together, with no connecting door. The trolley woman is on the other train. It’s a tragedy of Romeo & Juliet proportions.
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Frank McNally
6 years
Man United’s managerial appointment is a clear win for the soft Brexiters. Instead of relying on the internal market (Southgate) or unrealistic global trade deals (Pochettino), they went for the EEA route in the end, better known as the Norway option.
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Frank McNally
5 years
This just happened in Kilmainham. It’s like a bomb hit it. Heard the bang from a café round the corner. Lucky nobody was passing it at the time.
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Frank McNally
4 years
Ground floor window seat in Bewley’s Grafton St. A lifetime first, if only because to be here in past years, I think, you’d have had to be part of the actual window display.
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Frank McNally
3 years
A tree for all seasons, on Dublin’s Pembroke Road.
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Frank McNally
4 years
They’re after making a balls of that.
@tiernanhenry
Tiernan Henry
4 years
@FrankmcnallyIT⁩ insert in parentheses, I presume by sub editor at ⁦@ObserverUK⁩, which changes the entire meaning of that first sentence.
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Frank McNally
6 years
Riverdance 1994 - one of those rare “Where were you?” moments that didn’t involve anyone getting killed.
@Riverdance
Riverdance
6 years
🎈It’s our birthday. 25 years ago today, #Riverdance burst onto the stage for the very first time as the interval act @Eurovision in Dublin's Point Depot 🥳, Where did you first see Riverdance?
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Frank McNally
14 days
Morning rush hour in Dublin. I’m all on my #Éowyn, nearly.
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Frank McNally
2 years
The final score was harsh, but that was a typically brave, disciplined performance by ⁦@monaghangaa⁩, who gave us a great year even though nobody had expected much from it. Disappointed but proud.
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Frank McNally
3 years
38 years after my old school pal Gary Sheehan was killed in the Don Tidey shootout, he was today posthumously awarded a medal for bravery. The man he gave his life to save, now in his 80s, was among the audience.
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The Irish Times
3 years
‘The goal was to free Don Tidey. And we freed Don Tidey’ – 15 gardaí decorated for bravery
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Frank McNally
7 years
Extraordinary. As a baby he visited his about-to-be-executed father in Kilmainham Gaol. 102 years later, the last child of the 1916 leaders has died. And on Easter Sunday.
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Frank McNally
3 years
Passing ⁦@swenyspharmacy⁩, I peered in to wish PJ Happy Christmas. Next thing I knew I was inside drinking whiskey. Anyone who like me leaves present shopping to the last minute may be happy to note that Sweny’s is open not just today but tomorrow. Joyceans never rest.
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Frank McNally
6 years
Come out ye Black and Tans.
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Frank McNally
2 years
A fond farewell from the great Michael Viney as he writes his last Another Life column, 45 years after the first and 61 years after he started writing for The Irish Times.
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Frank McNally
3 years
Think O’Gara may have had the last word here. #LEIvLAR
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Frank McNally
3 years
My (newly employed & dizzy with financial Independence) son has taken to remote-ordering packages of books, not from Amazon, but from an actual shop in town. He’s very impressed - as am I - that someone there has noticed.
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Frank McNally
6 years
Dublin, city of lovers.
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Frank McNally
5 years
The old bridge at Mostar, looking like the war never happened.
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Frank McNally
3 years
A special guest appearance during the President’s Bloomsday party speech.
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Frank McNally
6 years
Attended 9 Monaghan league & champ’ship games this yr (including Dubs in Croker & Kerry twice). Today was 1st time I saw them lose. We were a bit flat, unlucky with ref, & still only a kick away from All-Ireland Final. Disappointed tonight but also very proud. #ThankYouMonaghan.
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Frank McNally
4 years
Not sure if Banty’s doing Joey or vice versa. @monaghangaa
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Frank McNally
2 years
⁦Monaghan minors through to an All-Ireland Final for the first time in 84 years. Grown men in tears here. One of them anyway. ⁦@monaghangaa
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Frank McNally
6 years
Jesus - if this escalates we may have to send in the Wolfe Tones.
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Frank McNally
4 years
Dan-o-rama. A 360-degree view from the beach in front of Derrynane House, home of Daniel O’Connell. The rainbow was a bonus.
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Frank McNally
6 years
You’d think a former international goalkeeper would appreciate the importance of a backstop.
@Peter_Shilton
Peter Shilton
6 years
Have been so impressed with @Jacob_Rees_Mogg @Conservatives @itvnews with interviews in the last few days. He really knows what he is talking about and puts it across in a calm and calculated manner!.
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Frank McNally
1 year
Sunday morning in a coffee shop with newspapers, bookshelves, and background jazz. It’s nearly as good as Mass.
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Frank McNally
3 years
For the day that’s in it, the Liffey Swim then and (nearly) now. #Liffeyswim.
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Frank McNally
7 years
The Liffey Swim today & in Jack B Yeats's painting from 1923.
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Frank McNally
5 years
Magnificently dignified interview by the South African captain. I suspect there were a few shebeens here cheering them on too. #RWCFinal #ENGvSA
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Frank McNally
6 years
Me on the White House press briefing room podium. It had to be done.
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Frank McNally
6 years
Dublin poised delicately somewhere between summer & winter. #gloomsday2019
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Frank McNally
5 years
I had to give John Hume a lift once. It was simultaneously a great honour and mortifying. As in all things, he was very diplomatic about the state of the car.
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Frank McNally
5 years
Happy Bastille Day.
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Frank McNally
5 years
Don’t forget that Brexit Winter Time (BWT) starts tonight. The countdown clock goes back 92 days. @BBCNewsnight
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Frank McNally
4 years
The fire is lit and, in an unexpected bonus, the almond bun is warm too. Civilisation has not fallen yet.
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Frank McNally
6 years
Man City v Burton Albion (8-0 currently) in danger of outscoring Tyrone v Fermanagh (0-4 to 0-3). The magic of the McKenna Cup.
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Frank McNally
7 years
@attackerman Trump’s hairdressers have found the number 666 under his comb-over?.
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Frank McNally
5 years
275 years ago OTD: France defeats a British-led alliance at the epochal Battle of Fontenoy, after a decisive late intervention by the Irish Brigade. The event is still immortalised in the names of at least 3 GAA clubs, as well as a street in Dublin where James Joyce used to live.
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Frank McNally
4 years
An interview more eloquent than words. Sam Bennett starts by saying it hasn’t hit him yet. Then it hits him.
@itvcycling
ITV Cycling
4 years
🇮🇪 Pure emotion from the excellent Sam Bennett 👏. "I don't think it's hit me. You dream of it and you never think it'll happen.". #TDF2020
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Frank McNally
11 months
The Lion in Winter. Dublin Castle, 1st March 2024. #sneachta
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Frank McNally
6 years
Michael Corcoran on radio claiming the #MUNvEXE game in Thomond is “literally on a knife-edge”. When will this negative stereotyping of Limerick end?.
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