Welcome back Leinster Lion. Funny you showing up just like that.
Wanted to take a few days out to calm down and come back and explain perhaps more rationally where I'm coming from.
Duff - first up I'd like to apologise if I went to far. However, and its a big however, while I may have expressed what I felt emotionally, what I said wasn't without foundation unfortunately. During the year or so that this forum has existed I and some of my friends have repeatedly been subjected to posts/attacks that I would describe as deliberately confrontation, often arrogant and sometimes just plain abusive.
Personally I have been merrilly posting away on issues and then enter stage left a group of people - who I suspect might be the "voice of the Kiely's main bar" to which you were referring - have appeared and started playing tag team attack. Attempting to humiliate, embarass and generally take the piss out of me and other posters. Now I'm big and ugly enough to stand my ground and not be pushed around.But there are a lot of people out there who aren't. There are a lot of people out there who have been bullied off threads (and this forum) and, yes, there are a number of people who have ended up in tears as a consequence of some of the stuff that's been said - not only about their posts but about them as people.
Over the past few days I've had quite a few people PM or mail me saying "that's how I felt".
This is not a reaction to a "one liner". Its a reaction to sustained and continuous behaviour over the course of the year - just look at the way the communication has gone before hand on this thread alone. Comments about Limecat " can I such your c~*k Limey", people who post here are "nutjobs", they're "cliquey", what we post is a load of shite/site's gone to shite, stuff that people say that might be offline in your view is "outrageous rubbish". And of course, because I happen to put up something on organising tag rugby....that's "cringeworthy" and you deliberately quoted my comment because you were deliberately trying to humiliate me.
Also of course, there's the usual shite thrown back at Catherine. Everyone's favourite target. Let me tell you something about Catherine. Now I more than anyone know that Catherine has her faults and I suppose you could argue the "don't dish it out if you can't take it back argument" - however, maybe a little context. When she was running the supporters club gig she was doing it all on her own and was working really hard to get things going - many of us here met and became friends because of what she built - now you may not be supportive of it, that's fine. Your choice. But I saw some of the abuse that was directed at her - not just about the stuff she posted but about the way she looked, what she wore, the way she spoke. Other stuff too, personal stuff. Now the people who threw that stuff out probably had a great laught about it. But I saw the impact - her in tears, sobbing uncontrollably for hours, getting sick, losing weight, confidence shattered. That's what some of this stuff does - and before you ask, she is one but not the only one who has ended up in tears by some of the stuff that's happened here.
Something to think about maybe.
Meanwhile, ePaddy who has admitted to deliberately winding people up because he gets a kick out of them reacting is a "valuable contributor". A guy who wound up mild mannered Harry from munsterfans so much that the cooperation plan we had for the t-shirts was dropped - dropped onto my lap. A guy who creates different aliases for the sole purpose of abusing people - Dr. Phil being a case in point. I know he's a mate, and to be honest when I've met him and shared a pint with him, I always thought he was a good bloke. But I don't understand that perspective.
Anyway - ball's in your court now I guess. Maybe we could all learn from this - me included.
Harry - from your side, I'd like to understand why you chose this moment to stand up and make your comments when you did. I was surprised and disappointed by some of the things you say, because I genuinely don't think they're true - and to be honest, I wasn't the only one. But I'd prefer to take that offline.