Controversy in the air as top Irish frisbee-throwers aim for Israel boycott

In Limerick, a year ahead of golf’s Ryder Cup at Adare Manor, another prestigious tournament is scheduled for next month. It is the World Ultimate Club Championship, a clash of the elite teams in the rising sport of ultimate frisbee.Ultimate frisbee is a tactically complex sport, but suffice to say it involves teams adversarially throwing a frisbee around a field. Despite its free-spirited hippie origins in the late 1960s – there is no referee, traditionally – it is not immune to geopolitics. An Israeli club is scheduled to participate in the competition, causing disquiet.Ranelagh Ultimate, whose eight Irish titles and one European gold since being founded in 2011 might make them the most successful Irish sporting outfit of all time, issued a statement during the week expressing their opposition to the inclusion of New Age, the Israeli national champions.Highlighting atrocities in Gaza, the Dublin southsiders called for the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) – the frisbee Fifa – either to suspend all Israeli teams from competitions until “ongoing large-scale violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza have ceased and accountability mechanisms are in place” or to force a neutral designation on the team, ensuring no Israeli flag. READ MORENew Age have faced difficulties in international competition before, having been excluded from a youth tournament in Belgium in 2024 over security concerns after graffiti reading “Boycott Israhell now” appeared on a wall near the playing fields.The Ranelagh club’s stance is more hardline than that of the men’s football team, who will fulfil their Nations League fixtures against the Israelis. But those will take place in neutral territory, in Hungary and Serbia, rather than at the University of Limerick, where the frisbee organisers promise an opportunity for players to “immerse themselves in the Irish culture and to experience the Limerick charm”.Overheard asked the WFDF whether it planned any action, but hasn’t heard back. Mixed signals on MetroLinkAn artist's impression of the proposed entrance to the Charlemont Metrolink stop, behind Dartmouth Square. Photograph: Metrolink.ie Once upon a time, there was a man named Sean Sweeney, a Kiwi with an Irish name like All Blacks captain Sean Fitzpatrick. With a boldness rare in Irish public-sector circles, he carried off the coup of the century. Instead of fighting the Dartmouth Square residents’ objections to the disruption of the MetroLink station behind their back gardens in Dublin 6, he just bought the houses, which will no doubt remain very desirable when they are 20 minutes from the airport for trips to Capri and Courchevel. Sweeney returned to his family in New Zealand earlier this year, and some cracks are starting to appear. One resident in the mighty metro’s path received a letter dated June 30th from the project’s “property-owner protection scheme” (Pops) instructing them to sign up no later than June 30th.Luckily for the perplexed homeowner, a further letter was sent on July 10th informing them that the June 30th deadline “was an error” and that there was no cut-off. Nonetheless, they should sign up “without delay”, with construction works in their area due to begin “before the end of 2026”.The scheme is for people who live within 30m of the line or 50m of stations, to deal with harm to homes. Those who come out top of the Pops (sorry) on damage assessment can receive up to €75,000 in compensation from the fund.So you wouldn’t want to miss it because of mixed signals. Not necessarily leprosyScreenshots of Baile Beo Northeast of the N3, somewhere between Cavan town and the Border, lies the townland of Drumalure More. This, of course, doesn’t mean anything until you get into the Irish. Logainm.ie, the repository of official placename research in Ireland, tells us that a Droim is a ridge, Mór means big and Lobhar “could refer to the sufferer of any type of virulent skin disease, not necessarily leprosy”. Druim an Lobhair Mór: Great Leper Ridge, or the Great Ridge Of Sufferers Of Any Type Of Virulent Skin Disease, Not Necessarily Leprosy, to be completely accurate.In an effort to restore this sort of understanding to the plain people of Ireland, developer Dave McGinn has produced an app, Baile Beo, which allows users to check what’s near them based on their location and load up on the knowledge contained in the names. McGinn returned to learning Irish a few years ago, and his newly sharpened skills caused him to look at road signs differently. “Irish placenames started to make more sense to me, and it became clear that they are describing very local features of the area – geography, topography, fortifications, people, sacred and religious sites – and by the same token it made it very obvious that the English placenames are crude phonetical interpretations of the Gaeilge,” he said. “It just seems so egregious and contemptuous of a long and rich history, and it started to irritate me a bit.” Overheard likes to stick close to town in order to keep a close eye on the Government, so we have only so far managed to tick off Dublin, the town of the hurdle-ford. But the Baile Beo app does contain 60,000 placenames and a growing amount of local community knowledge of the caiseals and crannogs of all corners of the island.No accounting for tasteThe bar at the Abbey Theatre on Dublin's Marlborough Street. Photograph: Matt Kavanagh “All the thought in Ireland for years past has come through the Abbey,” the playwright Seán O’Casey once told the theatre’s co-founder Lady Gregory.But for thought to have impact, it must have an audience, and for an audience to show up, it must have refreshment. A good thing, then, that the Abbey Theatre has issued a tender for someone to provide its bars with wine for the next year or more.Abbey habitués, notwithstanding the odd morality riot, are people of taste and the tender’s terms reflects this: the quality of the product accounts for 45 per cent of a provider’s score, with pricing accounting for only 20 per cent. How will the theatre assess this quality? By trying the wine, of course. Samples are to arrive at the stage door by August 28th. Required from each potential supplier for appraisal are a bottle each of sauvignon blanc, albarino, Pinot Grigio, Malbec, tempranillo, merlot, prosecco, champagne, rosé and non-alcoholic wine. You’d never see the match of it for flows of drink, as someone once said on the Abbey stage.