By Cathal Dervan

GAA: Eamonn Barry’s long-running feud with the Meath County Board could yet cost him his job as Sean Boylan’s successor. Barry was a constant critic of the board officials as he tried to oust Boylan for two years before succeeding this autumn, but now his determination to appoint his brother Martin and Dessie Rogers to his backroom team looks set to unveil new controversy after they were both banned by the same board after a row over the Meath junior team they ran in 2003. For years now Barry has been telling anyone who’ll listen that he wants to manage Meath, but now his very own petulance may cost him the shot at the title he has craved. It’s bizarre to say the least.

GAA: John Bannon, the Longford man who refereed this year’s All-Ireland final, wants all managers and officials banished to the stands in championship games, and he has a point. Bannon is clearly fed up with the abuse that comes his way from the sidelines. “It must happen sooner or later. There is far too much intimidation of referees and umpires by officials, especially those who are unable to accept referees’ decisions and let everyone know about it,” he says. “If we hadn’t got these people on the sidelines I can guarantee a lot of the problems in Gaelic Games would be cut out.” It’s an interesting theory, but somehow I don’t see John getting his way.

GAA: The GAA will be urged to scrap the Compromise Rules series against the Aussies on a couple of fronts in the coming months. The Offaly County Board are to submit a motion to Central Council proposing that the series be done away with, while Sunday’s Galway convention is to consider a similar proposal in wake of the violence that marred the second and final test in Melbourne last month. Clearly the rank and file of the GAA are unhappy at events on the field in the Mickey Mouse game, so maybe the GAA should listen to their members and save their players another beating next summer – this time on home turf.

SOCCER: Sometimes you just can’t win. Alex McLeish is living on borrowed time as Rangers manager after another defeat on Sunday, this time to Hibs, as Celtic and Hearts gain ground at the top of the Scottish League. His chairman David Murray has even given McLeish until the end of the month to save his job. So what happened when Portsmouth approached Rangers on Monday looking for permission to speak to McLeish about the managerial vacancy at Fratton Park? Murray refused. Seems like Rangers don’t want McLeish, but don’t want to lose him either.

SOCCER: Few people in Ireland can be happy that Shamrock Rovers were relegated from the Premier Division of the Eircom League on Friday night but all their problems, bad as they may seem at the moment, go back to 1987 and the brutal sale of Milltown. Until such time as the club finds a permanent home back on the South Side of Dublin the sorry mess is going to continue. Hopefully it will happen soon.

GOLF: A recent golfing trip to Portugal resulted in the discovery of some new catch phrases for those awkward putts on the greens. From now on in our group on a nasty five footer is known as Denis Wise, an impossible read is known as a Salman Rushdie and then there’s the Rock Hudson – the one you thought was straight but it wasn’t!

HERO OF THE WEEK: John O’Shea hasn’t had much to shout about recently, what with the exit from the World Cup finals and the attack on his character by Roy Keane, but the Waterford man proved he can still play football with the headed winner as Manchester United won at West Ham on Sunday. Better again, it was entirely fitting that an Irishman should score the decisive goal for United on the weekend they remembered the great Belfast boy George Best, surely the best player ever to emerge from the island of Ireland.

IDIOTS OF THE WEEK: Those who booed the minute’s silence for George Best before the Manchester City-Liverpool and Millwall-Leeds games on Saturday deserve to be banned from football for the rest of their lives. The blame has been apportioned at the feet of a minority of City, Liverpool and Leeds fans but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the clubs involved identify the vandals and ban them for life. They deserve nothing better for marring the tributes to a great footballer.