What was your sporting moment of 2012?

Mine? It was one of two. Donegal winning the Ulster championship, or winning the All Ireland.

Oh yes, there was the look on Sir Alex Ferguson’s face when Man City took the Premiership off Man U at the very last minute.

It was made all the better because I was the only Blue in the pub at the time, and there were several (very loud) Reds who had already started celebrating.

It helped too that the QPR fans (the largest single group in the pub) all came over to congratulate me warmly, even though they’d just been beaten.

But Donegal GAA was the first love of my sporting life. My first big match was the Ulster Final of 1966, when the great Down team of the 60s gave poor old Donegal a lesson in the rudiments of the game.

I remember the long miserable ride home, for me and the Da at least. My mum and sister were unremittingly for Down.

This year, it was Donegal’s turn to show their class, not once, but twice. It’s the rising out of all those years of promising, but dismissable anonymity that made this year so much sweeter.

The Da would have been proud of his native county. And I expect the Ma, a Down woman to her fingertips, would have been too.

So give us your sporting highlights? And what it means to you?

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