In recent years, you may have noticed how early the Christmas music starts playing on the radio and how early supermarkets begin to boost holiday sales. No, you are not dreaming or crazy if you have noticed. It is just the simple fact that Christmas has become too commercialized. In recent years, people seem to not be as excited to spend Christmas with their families. Every year, there are more department stores eager to post their holiday catalogues in September making it all about the money gimmick and not so much about the consumer. From gift wrapping to Christmas trees, supermarket Santa’s and beyond, what started as a religious holiday has taken on commercial significance. Entrepreneurs, marketers and business’ large and small have certainly all played a massive part. But how did Christmas become so commercialised?
Since when did it become the norm for football clubs to spend £100 million plus on one football player? Money has taken over football to the extent that if your club is not spending big money on players each transfer window then you’re not moving forward. Gone are the days of players spending their entire careers at the one club, such as Scholes, Totti and Puyol to name a few. Players say that they want to move clubs because they ‘want to challenge themselves’. And while that may be true in some cases it’s perhaps easier to acknowledge that money is a motivator in such considerations. Have we ever seen a player at their prime move to another club for less? The practice of moving from one employer to another for more money is not exclusive to football – lots of ‘ordinary’ careers are driven by the financial opportunities on offer elsewhere. So why would a footballer stay at the one club if they can go elsewhere and earn significantly more? Francesco Totti was asked once why he would never leave Roma and he answered, “Because I grew up playing for Roma and I want to die playing for Roma, because I have always been a Roma fan.”
How many top players nowadays have that attitude where if they were playing for their boyhood club would turn down the opportunity to play elsewhere for more money? Off the top of my head, of the players still playing today, I could only think of Messi who has rejected more money in order to stay at the club that he has played for since the age of 13. So, is loyalty in football just a romantic idea? Certainly, when it comes to money it seems to be. We’ve all heard and seen the controversy caused by James Mclean stemming from his undying belief to not wear a poppy on the English Remembrance Day which is in homage to their fallen soldiers. This is due to the troubles in the north of Ireland where he grew up. Whether you support him or feel that James McClean is an ‘eeijit’ for this and the subsequent media backlash he has faced, I’m certain that it is an issue which people will feel very differently about. Here are a number of debatable topics coming from both sides of the argument that will hopefully allow you to attain a better understanding of what the English majority think of the matter and also give cases of other players/ organisations that have fallen into similar disrepute because of opinions held.
Soccer club training Monday, school training Tuesday, county Wednesday, school match Thursday, camogie Friday night and league match Saturday. When does it all stop?
Many young athletes between the ages of 14 and 21 are being bombarded by coaches to come and train with one of the many teams that they play for. Young people these days are getting involved in numerous sports ranging from GAA, soccer, rugby and so on. They are playing these sports with schools, clubs, college teams and at county level. They are being brought through different programmes that are being run by the governing bodies, for example GAA development squads, emerging talent programmes with the FAI and provincial development squads with IRFU. Is this too much to handle for athletes at such a young age. This blog looks at what burnout in sport actually is and the different types of burnout that you as an athlete could face throughout your sporting career and if worst comes to worst what it can lead to. DROPOUT!! Well firstly let’s explain exactly what I mean by the ‘gender issue’ for those of you wondering what issues exist. Gender issues which have been well documented across news platforms include gender equality, gender fluidity, and transsexuals. The purpose of this blog is to analyse the recent controversial news topics which include the marketing campaign involving Kleenex mansize tissues which recently came under scrutiny from feminists and the ongoing debate of whether transsexuals should be allowed to compete in sport.
Choose life! What do I mean when I say choose life? Choose life can be interpreted in a million different ways. Take for example, choose moving home. Choose moving county. Choose new housemates, freezing cold houses and electricity bills. Choose Kazbar and wondering who you are on a Thursday morning. Choose sitting on the couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing video games, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose four years of not knowing if you’re going forwards or backwards. And at the end of it all, still not knowing where you’re going. Choose your future. Choose life. Yes you guessed it, I chose to go back to college as a “mature” student and this is my journey so far.
For most college students we all have our own special memories that will stay with us for the rest of our lives (good or bad), however if you were a student in Waterford Institute of Technology, there are some things you will never forget that unites us a college. Whether it be the excuses, living off a fiver for a week or living out of home for the first time, here are some things that are sure to jog your memory of your time in WIT.
You have read “oodles” of articles, saved more for future reference than hot dinners and are still struggling to make your health & wellness your daily priority. All you have to do is.........
Today seems like another good day to have a look for the latest tips and maybe, if time permits have a “root” through that fat file in your phone where the other “million” are stored. Maybe you have been super organised and have all the articles you have ever found interesting and potentially useful printed and beautifully filed ready for use! Today you are deciding that your health and wellness are now your priority. Your thoughts expound, your mind races and you cannot wait to have the perfectly balanced, healthy well life that all the articles allude to. You look around, laundry is piled up, the sink is full of dishes, the fridge is bare, the house is dirty and Pilates, the one class you treat yourself to is in 30 minutes. Are you thinking of completing all your domestic chores before you’re ready to include your health & wellness? Learning the ropes, a beginner’s guide into the sport of rock climbingClimbing is like many other sports in that it can have of high and low points. It can have moments of great frustration if you fail a climb you’ve been trying for a while, but at the other end of that scale it can lead to an adrenaline fuelled sense of achievement and success when you get to that last hold on a climb and complete it. I fell in love with climbing a few years ago and am by no means an expert. I am still learning as I progress in the sport the purpose of this blog is give an insight to the sport and provide information for people thinking about taking it up and being afraid of not knowing what to do or say, there will always be newcomers and there will always be those with more experience to help them along.
This is the time of year when we usually see matches getting called off week after week because of the bad weather. This season however is a different story. Parents are driving all over the place for their kids to play in grassroots football games, but in some cases, games are being abandoned by match officials for reasons such as parents and coaches fighting on the side-lines. For example, in the past six weeks there have been seven grassroots games abandoned in the Dublin District Schoolboys League, better known as the DDSL, because of brawls on the side-lines spilling onto the pitches with the latest incident seeing a parent kick a child for shushing the parent during the child’s goal celebration. National newspapers in their reports suggest that someone will be killed if this carries on. The DDSL are trying to introduce hefty fines for clubs and individuals found guilty of further incidents and threatening clubs with expulsion from leagues. In this blog we are going to look possible causes for these brawls and see what obvious ways there are to avoid them in the first place.
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