O Se retires from inter-county football

(UKPA) – 9 hours ago

All-Ireland champions Kerry could begin the defence of their All-Ireland football title without one-third of the starting 15 from last September's victory, following the retirement of legendary midfielder Darragh O Se.

O Se has announced his retirement from inter-county football after 81 Championship appearances.

With Tadhg Kennelly and Tommy Walsh having moved to Australia and the AFL, and Diarmuid Murphy retired, speculation niow surrounds the future of Mike McCarthy, who came out of retirement last year to play a key role in the Kingdom's Sam Maguire Cup triumph.

O Se won the last of his six All-Ireland medals against old rivals Cork last September, the first having come in 1997.

Crewe manager Dario Gradi has praised the contribution of Neil Baker to the club's success in unearthing talent from non-league in the past decade.

"Neil's a proper football man, he just loves football," Gradi told BBC Radio Stoke. "People say I'm a football man, but I'm not a football man like he is.

"I don't want to be going out in the evenings watching non-league football with 50 spectators, but he does.

"He's made a great contribution to our success over the years."

Baker has worked as an assistant manager, coach and scout during his time with the League Two club, having previously managed non-league Leek Town.

The likes of Luke Varney, Tom Pope, Joel Grant, John Brayford and Carl Martin have all been taken from non-league clubs and gone on to make first-team appearances for Crewe.

His latest discovery from outside the Football League is young Flixton striker Danny Gardner, who signed a contract with the Alex until the end of the season on Monday.

"I wouldn't have signed him if I didn't think he had a chance of being taken on next season," said Gradi, 68.

"It's not an overnight thing with a player like him because he's come from nowhere and he hasn't got a record for us to look at."

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London: With smartphone sales in UK predicted to skyrocket this year because of the FIFA World Cup, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has said it will launch new sports and news applications to satisfy mobile phone user and football fan demand.

Live Sport is one of a string of free video-on-demand applications, which the BBC plans to launch this year, starting with its news applications in April.

The decision means that football fans will be able to watch every England game live on their smartphone, as well as clips of every goal scored in this summer's tournament in South Africa.

"It's been 12 years since the launch of BBC Online, but as media converges and technology accelerates, licence fee payers are increasingly using sophisticated handheld devices to access information," The Telegraph quoted Erik Huggers, BBC's director of future technology, as saying.

"They tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them," he added.

He added the BBC is "catching up" with its audience and the new technology will offer "greater public value" to licence fee payers.

Initially, the apps will launch on Apple's iPhone and iPod devices, however, similar versions are planned for Blackberry and Android operating systems later in the year.