Cookies required two hours of baking time at the International Space Station
If you’re yearning for chocolate chip
While stuck on an orbital ship
They’ve at last won the race
To make cookies in space
But they’re yet to pass anyone’s lip
“Niall is a former professional football player who has represented the Republic of Ireland national team 92 times, as well as playing in the English top flight for Arsenal FC, Manchester City FC and Sunderland AFC.
As well as being a former board member of Sport Ireland, Niall is the former Chairman of Sunderland AFC and a successful businessman across diverse industries in Ireland and abroad.
In addressing the current challenges facing the FAI, the executive team want to ensure that the organisation’s core objective of the promotion and development of the game of football in Ireland is prioritised.
Niall’s role with the team will focus on leading a future League of Ireland strategy, the overall development of the game in Ireland, including supporting grassroots and community initiatives together with our player pathway programmes.
Niall will also focus on helping restoring and building key relationships and trust with key peer groups and the media.
Gary Owens, FAI interim CEO, said: “We are really pleased that someone of Niall’s calibre is joining the team. Football is such an important game in this country at every level.
“Niall not only brings great insight and experience to developing the game but is passionate about football in Ireland – his energy and commitment is a great fit for the FAI as we begin reform of the organisation and look to create a better future for football in Ireland.”
Behold: globular star cluster NGC 6752, 13,000 light-years away toward the southern constellation Pavo (the Peacock), roaming the halo of the Milky Way. To wit:
Over 10 billion years old, NGC 6752 follows clusters Omega Centauri and 47 Tucanae as the third brightest globular in planet Earth’s night sky. It holds over 100 thousand stars in a sphere about 100 light-years in diameter. Telescopic explorations of the NGC 6752 have found that a remarkable fraction of the stars near the cluster’s core, are multiple star systems. They also reveal the presence of blue straggle stars, stars which appear to be too young and massive to exist in a cluster whose stars are all expected to be at least twice as old as the Sun. The blue stragglers are thought to be formed by star mergers and collisions in the dense stellar environment at the cluster’s core. This sharp color composite also features the cluster’s ancient red giant stars in yellowish hues. (Note: The bright, spiky blue star at 11 o’clock from the cluster center is a foreground star along the line-of-sight to NGC 6752).
Last week, with a Golden Discs voucher worth a ravishing €25 on offer I asked YOU to name your favourite closing song on an album.
You answered in your tens.
But there could be only one winner.
Third Place:
Hunting The Wren by Lankum.
Fearganainm writes:
The final track on their album ‘The Livelong Day’’, a song based on the true story of ‘The Wrens of the Curragh’, a small colony of some of Ireland’s homeless in the middle of the 19th century.
The Wrens were an assortment of pregnant young women, alcoholic women, mentally frail women and ‘fallen women’ who lived in holes scooped out of the ground on the Curragh of Kildare with gorse as their covering.
At that time around one third of the British army was made up of Irishmen and some of the pregnant young women had probably made their way to the burgeoning military camp on the Curragh in search of the young men who were in part responsible for their condition but who had legged it from the small towns and villages that they came from.
Over a period of around five decades many of the women became ‘professionals’, camp followers. Denounced and castigated by local clergy the Wrens were often attacked by ‘pious’ Irishmen who burned their nests and assaulted the women.
Of course, in those days militant clerics yearned for a theocratic state and were content to whip up mobs that saw it as righteous punishment to attack the unfortunate Wrens.
So, not a happy song but a piece relating to a morsel of our history.’
Runner up:
Eclipse by Pink Floyd
Walter Ego writes:
‘The album [Dark Side of the Moon] starts with a heartbeat, brings you on an epic journey of the human soul and ends with a heartbeat. Perfection.’
Winner:
The End Medley by The Beatles
Seanydelight writes:
if the end of Abbey Road can be counted as one song, that medley is one of the most amazing pieces of music in history. Including the jaunty “Her Majesty”.
We pay tribute to the incredible patients, families and staff at CHI [Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital] at Crumlin in Dublin…
Sophie Barnes Aabo from November’s Late Late Toy Show, who brought the nation to tears speaking about her brother Cian, who is receiving treatment the children’s hospital, will be joining Ryan…
Munster rugby player Billy Holland and his wife Lanlih will also be on the show to speak about the tireless work of Crumlin’s medical teams when it came to treating to their baby daughter Emmeline…
Niall Horan is back home in Ireland, and will be performing his hit single Nice To Meet Ya.
Actress Siobhán McSweeney, who plays consistently cynical nun, Sister Michael, in Derry Girls, will be joining Ryan in studio…
Sarah Corbett Lynch and her aunt Tracey Corbett Lynch will talk about the tragic loss of Sarah’s father and Tracey’s brother, Jason, and how, at just 13 years old, Sarah has penned her first book aimed at helping young people coping with grief.
Plus, singer Aoife Scott will give a special musical performance of Dublin Suanter.