Thursday, 20 June 2013, 1:12 pm

Robert McNamara has written 41 article(s) on the An Focal website.

Most Liverpool fans will recognise Florent Sinama Pongolle from his short lived days on Merseyside. The Frenchman endured a sporadic career with the reds after signing from Le Havre in 2001 for an undisclosed fee. Florent’s talismanic performances in the Under 17 World –Championships enforced his already growing reputation as a prolific marksman and the move to Liverpool was highly anticipated. The form he showed for France did not transpire in England, making 38 appearances for Liverpool in a 5 year spell, scoring only 4 goals, albeit very important ones. Pongolle is rarely given credi...

For the second time in two years the San Francisco Giants are the best time in baseball. They steamrolled over the Detroit Tigers in only four games at the end of October, and this brought the curtain down on the 2012 season. We should not be too surprised that the Giants came out on top so easily; they won the National League West with eight games to spare; while the Tigers, who may have finished first in the American League Central, would have barely scraped a wildcard place if they had been competing in the National League. The National League has supplied four of the last five winners of t...

So Bradley Wiggins is not the clean cut character we all thought he was. The Tour de France winner and Olympic Time Trial gold medalist may not be the man to save cycling from it’s tarnished image in the aftermath of the Lance Armstrong case after all. Not according to the latest ‘story’ to emerge about the Paul Weller obsessed modernist at least. Wiggins has apparently revealed in his new autobiography, that in his early twenties, he consumed 12 pints of beer everyday when his wife was at work. A fascination with Belgian beer – Wiggins was born there – went to such extremes that ...

27 January 2005. Arsene Wenger was putting his squad through their paces, as they prepared for a gruelling visit of Manchester United in just five days time. The focus was surely on Roy Keane and co. rocking up at Highbury, ready to inflict another confidence-sapping defeat on the faltering Gunners – a shadow of the media-christened ‘Invincibles’ side of just three months earlier. However, there was one mindset within the ranks of Arsenal FC that was not focused on the upcoming colossal game – for him, it was on the backburner. When training finished Ashley Cole, Arsenal’s prize...

  By Eoghan Wallace   It could only happen during an Olympic summer that a significant Irish sporting success elsewhere could practically go unnoticed. While we basked in the summer haze of post-Olympic optimism Rory McIlroy won his second major, the 2012 PGA Championship, with a massive score of 13 under par. Finishing eight strokes ahead of David Lynn in second place McIlroy broke the record for the largest margin of victory, previously seven strokes, set by the great Jack Nicklaus in 1980. Rory’s win is just another incredible victory in a period of unprecedented su...

by Eoin Scanlon As Joe Canning stooped over Galway’s injury time free and fired the equalizing score, every neutral - and indeed Galway supporter - who had their eyes glued to the thrilling contest must have breathed a sigh of epic relief. It not only gives us a chance to see these two great sides do battle once more before the winter starves us of televised GAA, but had Canning missed it would have unjustly overshadowed a hurling campaign of sheer brilliance from the Portumna native. Having missed what could be regarded as a much easier free to level proceedings in the 69th...

Last Saturday saw the end of an era, the end of a glittering career; Michael Phelps’ last ever swim at the Olympics. In typical fashion Phelps won yet another gold medal to bring his total medal count to 18 golds, 2 silvers and 2 bronzes. To put that into perspective, as a friend pointed out to me, Phelps’ total haul of medals is one short of the total number of medals Ireland has won at the Olympics since independence (this does not include our medals won this year). Phelps went to London just two shy of Larisa Latynina’s record 18 Olympic medals and left with 22. Phelps’ debut at th...

James Cleveland Owens was born in Oakville, Alabama in September 1913. When he was nine years old J.C. and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. When asked by his new teacher for his name ‘J.C.’ was misheard as ‘Jesse’, due to his strong southern drawl. As such the man born J.C. Owens would be universally known for the rest of his life as Jesse Owens. The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin was Adolf Hitler’s opportunity to showcase Nazi Germany to the world and to promote his ideals of racial supremacy. Perversely, the Olympic motto of ‘faster, higher, stronger’ was just a few tweaks ...

It’s the blue ribbon event at the Olympic Games and despite lasting a mere ten seconds it’s the crown jewel of the athletics; it’s the men’s 100 metres final. Although before Usain Bolt singlehandedly redeemed the race’s reputation four years ago in Beijing the event was persistently coming under intense scrutiny. Allegations of past winners doping either during the Games or at some stage in between were becoming as common as they are in cycling today. Every winner since 1984, except for Bolt (2008) and Donovan Bailey (1996), has at some point tested positive for or has bee...

Since the NHL expanded the league in the 1967-68 season with six new teams, there has been ice hockey in Los Angeles. But it has taken until 2012 for the franchise to bring the Stanley Cup to the west coast. And the team that triumphed this past season was the one that delivered probably the most unlikely victory in hockey history. Even ‘The Great One’ himself, Wayne Gretzky, could not bring the cup to LA. The closest he came was a losing final in the 1993 season. The Kings had made the playoffs in twenty five previous seasons, managing to get to the Conference finals on four occasions,...