John CorralIIJ celebrates 10th anniversary ahead of inkjet growth curve.
Industrial Inkjet Ltd (IIJ), a leading inkjet systems integrator and product developer, will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a special dinner and party for its employees on Saturday 19 December.
Olympic champion lines up first fight after London Olympics.
Katie TaylorIt now looks certain that Olympic, World and European champion Katie Taylor’s first fight since winning gold at the London Olympics will be against American lightweight Queen Underwood.
If the fight goes ahead it will take place at the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin on February 24th.
Natasha Jonas from Liverpool who Taylor beat on her way to the title in London was offered a rematch but refused it is reported.
Underwood and Taylor are no strangers with the Bray woman having beaten her three times in the past.
However the Seattle fighter is no pushover having run Taylor close at the 2010 AIBA World Championships in Barbados.
As a footnote Taylor received her third AIBA World Female Boxer of the Year award on Friday 7th December in Yerevan, Armenia, at the AIBA World Youth Men’s Championships.
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Press release sent out by Enda Kenny, Irelands - An Taoiseach (Prime Minister of Ireland)
“Katie Taylor is not only an Olympic champion, she is a force of nature whose pioneering spirit and boxing brilliance have seen her realise her personal dream of winning Olympic gold.
In doing so she has set an exceptional standard and there is no doubt that she is a role model that many will follow. She has won the hearts and minds of the Irish people who admire her greatly and love her to bits. Amidst it all Katie’s warmth and humility shine through. Her parents have been her guiding light but the exceptional relationship between Peter and Katie, her coach and father, has had a powerful impact on her career.
Team Ireland has done the country proud at the London Olympics and, although there are results still to come, we look set for a historic outcome. We congratulate all athletes on the achievement of making it to London to represent Ireland.
I would like to congratulate Cian O’Connor on his wonderful achievement of bronze in a spectacular show jumping display yesterday, where he showed that vital quality of constant readiness to perform at the highest level.
I also wish those who have earned a place in the medals but whose journeys continue and all those who still to have to compete the very best in the days ahead. Our Irish athletes have already made the country proud and I have no doubt that they will continue to do so.”
KATIE TAYLOR FACTFILE
1986: Born July 2 in Bray, Wicklow,
1998: Starts boxing, age 12
2005: Wins European title in Norway.
2006: Retains European title in Poland; crowned Ireland's first women's world boxing champion
2007: Wins her third consecutive European title in Denmark; makes Republic of Ireland football debut against Hungary.
2008: Retains world title in China; scores and is sent off in Ireland football defeat to Italy.
2009: Retains European title in Ukraine.
2010: Retains world title in Barbados.
2011: Retains European title in Holland.
2012: Retains world title in China.
2012: August 9: Wins Olympic gold in women's lightweight division at London 2012.
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Bray girl has beaten the best in the world over the last few years.
katietaylorShe’s our best Olympic hope and the talk is that all is calm in Katie Taylor’s camp as she waits for her first boxing bout on Monday the 6th August.
The world’s No 1 boxing champion is now a household name here in Ireland and all over the boxing world. And as you can imagine, every country competing in women’s boxing at London this year has Katie in their sights.
One concern for her father Peter, who is also her coach, is that if Katie wins an easy Olympic gold it will devalue women’s boxing.
However Peter Taylor believes Katie is taking responsibility for ensuring that female boxing continues as an Olympic event.
After she declared that the world’s best women boxers should have been given a wild-card entry to the London Olympics, some commentators thought that she had made a mistake.
Katie thought differently. She is quoted as saying: “Why would you want to go to the games and box some girl who you can stop in one round. The World Boxing Championships is much harder to win than the Olympics. Some of the top names in the game unfortunately didn’t qualify like Gulsum Tatar, ranked no 2.”
Well, she has beaten the best in the world over the last few years. Can she now add an Olympic gold medal to her unbelievable tally of European and World boxing medals?
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Who Dat T-shirtWho dat? Who dat? Who dat say dey gonna claim the trademark rights to the phrase identified with the New Orleans Saints? [This term was made popular by the New Orleans Saints, a Louisiana based NFL team in the USA, but not by either team playing in this year’s Super Bowl.] The NFL it seems!
The "who dat" chant spread by fans of the New Orleans Saints is under siege this week from the NFL. The Wall Street Journal explains:
The NFL asserted rights to ["who dat"] earlier this week through the Florida Department of State, and it has issued cease-and-desist orders against New Orleans vendors who sell Saints memorabilia adorned with the wording. It informed vendors that using the phrase is likely to "confuse the purchasing public into believing that your items" are sponsored by the NFL.
New Orleans locals are outraged and suspicious. The NFL, they contend, never cared about the quirky chant when the football team was dubbed the 'Aints a few decades ago, or after it was ousted from its home stadium in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina and finished 3-13.
As I see it there are 2 sides to this (in reality there are probably 102): Why should the NFL ,who make billions of dollars per annum, worry about a guy in New Orleans selling a T-shirt at $10? Is this really going to put the NFL in the red or damage its bottom line?
On the other hand if a tee shirt is created with a” Mick E Mouse” or a “Just Do It logos [owned by Disney and Nike respectively], a cease and desist letter would most assuredly be issued. Is it similar with NFL and do they own Who Dat? Today it's New Orleans but tomorrow it's sellers in 50 States. Besides, the reason people in New Orleans didn't know that they weren't allowed to sell "Who Dat" T-shirts is because no one identified with the logo until the Saints contended in the Super Bowl in 2010.
In the meantime, The NFL and a Louisiana recording company have resolved their legal dispute over merchandising rights to the “Who Dat?” chant of New Orleans Saints fans. Last Tuesday, a federal judge agreed to dismiss claims that “Who Dat?” Inc. and the NFL filed against each other after the Saints' Super Bowl victory in 2010. The company, which recorded a song in 1983 that used the popular chant, had accused the NFL of violating its trademark of the phrase. Brian McCarthy, NFL spokesman, says the settlement calls for the league, the Saints and the company to make co-branded merchandise available to fans.
The agreement doesn't resolve other claims that “Who Dat?” Inc. filed against several tee shirt shops over alleged trademark violations.
This contest over ownership of the “Who Dat” Logo will continue long after this week’s Super Bowl game is over.
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After their recent overtime win against the Pittsburgh Steelers, it seemed the Denver Broncos could go into next year’s National Football League confident in Timothy Tebow as their quarterback. Boy, how wrong can you be!
The dream was shattered last weekend by a complete dismantling of Tebow by New England’s defence. He has now lost three of his last four starts, and the stats for this game were disturbing, finishing with 136 yards on 9-for-26 passing and only 13 yards rushing. It was clear that whatever difficulties the Broncos might have caused other opponents, The Patriots were having none of it.
This raises an interesting question about this intriguing young man. How will he fare when teams get used to him? Two teams played against the Broncos twice this year with Tebow as the starter for the entire game. The first was Kansas City, which lost to Denver 17-10 in Week 7. Then when they played the Broncos again in Week 17, the Chiefs limited Tebow to 6-for-22 passing for 60 yards, and 16 yards rushing. The Broncos scored only three points.
The Patriots had lost their last three playoff games, but that losing streak ended with a 45-10 demolition win over the Broncos in their AFC Divisional round game last week.
And guess who that second team was. You guessed, The Patriots. On both occasions Tebow didn’t fare too well on a second occasion.
Patriots head coach Bill Belichick commented: “I watched the Kansas City game and it looked like the second time Kansas City played them, their players and their team had a little better feel for how to play some of that than they did the first time. It’s probably true for us, too.”
So are Tebow’s days numbered on the field? Time will tell.
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A few weeks ago when the Green Bay Packers lost to the Kansas City Chiefs ending an undefeated season, the 2011 NFL season had a new name: ‘The Season of Tebow’.
The name originates from a young man who even in some parts of the States is still unknown. His name is Timothy Richard Tebow and he is the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos. He took over the reigns for the Broncos during week six of this NFL season on the back of leading the University of Florida to two national championships before being drafted by the Broncos in the first round of the 2010 NFL draft.
This young man suddenly had the opportunity to progress to being at least a successful quarterback in the NFL, right? Guess what? Life’s not like that! Tebow displayed what diehard NFL pundits arguably call one of the worst throwing abilities of any professional quarterback in the league, displayed unusual emotion by crying during press conferences and also was not afraid to let everybody see his very profound religious beliefs. In any other footballing profession he certainly would not have survived. Nevertheless, Tebow led the Broncos to a 7-4 record as a starter and his success this season has been quite staggering given those qualities.
Now look at the stats.
Tebow’s 72.9 passer rating and 46.5 per cent completion rate rank 28th – the worst in the entire NFL league. Add in that he has also thrown for an abysmal 1,729 yards and achieved only 12 touchdown passes in 11 starts and anybody can see that sort of performance just does not produce victories.
But for some reason, this guy with a pretty poor record sheet is all over the major US television networks and is covered in almost every single publication. Suddenly not a day goes by where ESPN, Yahoo, numerous local sports TV networks and many more can’t say enough about the former Heisman Trophy winner (this memorial trophy is awarded annually to the player deemed the most outstanding in collegiate football). Why? Because things are different now, with a flurry of comeback victories propelling him into the national spotlight last autumn and putting the entire football world under the influence of the Tim Tebow Effect!
When you talk to people within the Broncos organisation all you will hear is praise for this player. From general manager John Elway to defensive captain Brian Dawkins, the talk is all about how Tebow is a natural-born leader who inspires the rest of the team with his intensity and passion for the game – both definitely products of his deep religious views.
Fans joke about how he has brought passionate prayer onto the field. And now there is that famous pose known as ‘tebowing’, where he kneels on one knee, resting his head on one fist. It has become an internet sensation and has even led to a website, tebowing.com. But Tim Tebow has done more than just inspire his teammates.
Recently ESPN featured just how much Tebow has affected society off the field as well as on it. Joey Norris is a 13-year-old boy who has had leukemia for four years and lives almost across the country from Denver in Kensington, Maryland.
His illness forced Joey, a former youth football player, to stop playing his beloved game. But his time spent watching Tebow fight and somehow claw back into games has given the cancer patient that bit of extra motivation to fight and prove to everyone that he can come back as well. Joey started tebowing before his chemotherapy sessions which he calls ‘tebowing while chemoing’, and now prays alongside his nurses, who also tebow, before his treatments.
Tim Tebow may not be the most talented, skilled, or flashy quarterback, but he gets the job done.
Everyone now recognises what Tebow has truly meant to the Broncos and the NFL this season. Simply put, he has provided hope for underdogs, inspired those who need inspiration, and proven that sheer determination will definitely result in success.
His latest rescue was last Sunday, when the young quarterback threw an 80-yard touchdown pass to Demaryius Thomas on the first play of overtime to give Denver a remarkable 29-23 victory over Pittsburgh in an AFC wild-card game.
So what can Tebow do for an encore? Well as I write this, Tebow and crew are gearing themselves up for this weekend’s AFC Divisional Playoff clash with the New England Patriots.
At this stage some Bronco fans are talking about, yes, winning the Super Bowl.
Guided by a man with crazed yelling, fist-pumps and that trademarked tebowing stance will forever be remembered this 2011 NFL season. Tebow subconsciously touched the hearts and lives of many fans and spectators around him and pushed himself into the national media spotlight.
So win or lose this weekend coming one young man’s passion, his never-say-die attitude and deep religious views will ensure that his positive message will last forever.
Super Bowl details:
Super Bowl XLVI will be the 46th annual edition of the Super Bowl in American football, and the 42nd annual championship game of the modern-era National Football League (NFL). It is played on Sunday, February 5th 2012 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana.
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Most people in Ireland and across Europe have little or no knowledge of American football except possibly when they tune into the Superbowl each year. I have a story to tell which is sweeping the States right now but for our non American readers I decided to give you some background to the game first so you might understand it better.
*The National Football League (NFL) is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by 11 teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing its name to the National Football League in 1922. The league currently consists of 32 teams from the United States. The league is divided evenly into two conferences – the American Football Conference (AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC), and each conference has four divisions that have four teams each, for a total of 16 teams in each conference. The NFL is an unincorporated 501 association, a federal nonprofit designation, comprising its 32 teams.
The regular season is a 17-week schedule during which each team play 16 games and has one bye week. The season currently starts on the Thursday night in the first full week of September and runs weekly to late December or early January. At the end of each regular season, six teams from each conference (at least one from each division) play in the NFL playoffs, a 12-team single-elimination tournament that culminates with the championship game, known as the Super Bowl. This game is held at a pre-selected site which is usually a city that hosts an NFL team.
The NFL is the most attended domestic sports league in the world by average attendance per game, with 66,960 fans per game in 2010-11.
The story I want to tell is called ‘The Tebow Effect’ so look out for it in next week’s publication.
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*courtesy Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ireland was seconds away from
pulling off the greatest shock
in their rugby history.
brian odriscoll supported by paul oconnell tackled by luke romanoThis was the 28th time Ireland faced up against the All Blacks and they are still waiting for a first win against them after that heartbreaking finale.
In the process New Zealand became the first side in the professional era to win all their games in a calendar year - this was their 14th straight success since losing at Twickenham last December.