The Year in Sports

Shane Lowry was, naturally, a popular choice for RTÉ’s Sports Personality of the Year. The nation sees itself in Lowry – smashing them off the tee, showing nerves of ice on the green, and lorrying porter on the 19th. Fine girl you are.

He wasn’t the right choice though. The Sports Personality of the Year Award should have gone to Stephen Cluxton, goalkeeper of the Dublin football team that won an unprecedented five All-Ireland titles in a row.

That there wasn’t more talk of it is a reflection of Lowry’s popularity, and the fact that Lowry’s own GAA-credentials are first class. But it was still the wrong decision.

If not naming Cluxton footballer of the year earlier, or not naming him as the All-Star goalkeeper earlier, were scandalous, then how much more scandalous was the lack of acknowledgement of the great gouges in the history books with which Dublin have carved their names? And how often can it be that one team can be summed up in one player, a rock on which all subsequent edifices are built?
And how often do we see a player absolutely redefine the very concept of his position, as Cluxton has done?

There are two arguments contra Cluxton. The first is that Sports Personality of the Year is an annual award, rather than a body-of-work award. The second is that Lowry’s achievement in winning the British Open was greater than Cluxton’s in winning five All-Ireland titles in a row.

The first argument is bogus, because annual awards are about bodies of work as much as they’re about any particular year. Did Paul Newman win an Oscar for The Color of Money because Color of Money a better film than The Hustler, say, or because Newman acted better in The Color of Money than in The Hustler? Was John Wayne really better in True Grit than he was in The Searchers or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance? Come on, now.

We’re on trickier ground when we come to comparing sports, of course. Lowry is the third Irishman to win the British Open. Five straight All-Irelands have never been won before, and there were some pretty good teams that won four. Five was beyond all of them.

And then the third and, for your correspondent, clinching argument. This year is the 35th running of the RTÉ Sports Personality of the Year. Lowry is the ninth golfer to win it. No Gaelic footballer has ever won it. Bejabbers, but the nation must be fierce gone on the golf all the same.

And speaking of rugby, there was some harrumphing about no rugby player having been nominated for that Sports Personality list this year, harrumphing that was easily silenced by asking who, exactly, had covered himself in glory in the year gone by.

Rugby is in a strange place right now. If, as its critics would argue, every game outside of a World Cup match is a friendly, then international rugby becomes the Brigadoon of sports, rising from the mist only every now and again. And the worst thing for rugby is that scheduling is the least of its worries.

Nearly a quarter-century from the advent of professionalism, the new reality hasn’t bedded in at all. Players are torn by the competing demands of club and country, the need to physically survive so attritional a game, and the hope that they won’t end up in homes for the bewildered in their old age, their brains having been battered about like Moore St oranges for ten or fifteen years.

In praising the new breed of lock forward in his Sunday Times column, Stuart Barnes put his finger on another problem of the game, which is its increasing homogeny. Rugby used to be a game of many dimensions, with room for big men, small men, fat men and thin men.

Now, like motor cars, science sees us thundering towards the one streamlined super-player, fast enough to be a back, strong enough to be forward, and all looking the same from one to fifteen. If the players are all the same then the gamed will be all the same and the élan and artistry and sheer drama that international rugby served up for over one hundred years will all be lost and gone with the wind.

Not that you’d know that from the rugby press here. Your faithful correspondent was rather taken aback as different rugby scribes aimed kicks at Joe Schmidt once Schmidt was safely on a plane to the other side of the world and couldn’t hold it against them. The start of the Andy Farrell reign, where the IRFU gave the press a list of list of approved journalists and press accepted being dictated to like lambs and slaves, is not a hopeful sign. It’s the job of the media to tell the people what’s going on. It’s not the job of the media to act as an adjunct of the IRFU’s PR department.

The story of the decade of course is the one that can’t be reported. The FAI are fifty-million Euro in debt, and they say they don’t know how it happened. How can you end up in a fifty-five million Euro hole unbeknownst to you? Fifty-five million is a considerable amount of potatoes. If you were five million in the red, you’d say things were bad. Fifty-five million is Department of Health level stuff. Complete systems failure.

And the public will, as is traditional in the land of Erin, be the last to know. The top brass of the FAI has had legal eagles ready to swoop at any vague hints that there might be funny business going on for the past twenty years and it is a fact that Irish libel laws protect and favour the interests of the strong over those of the weak.

Don’t think that anybody will see prison bars over this either. We don’t do white-collar crime well in Ireland, I’m afraid. The FAI will probably be bailed out by a government too chicken to let nature take its course. Small fry will be put on the dole as a result of that bailout, but the parties responsible will pack up and move to retirement in sunny Spain, and get season tickets for Barca, maybe. It stinks, and it’ll continue to stink for quite some time.

Happy New Year.

Filleadh Keano

Ní h-amháin nach bhfuil mórán measa ar an sacar sa mblag seo, ach uairteanta déantar iarracht droch-íde a thabairt dó. Ach a leitheoir dílis, beidh mise, tusa agus gach mac máthar san áit chéanna oíche anocht - os comhair na teilifíse ag breathnú ar ITV, agus ag súil le deatach bán ag teacht ó shimléar Martin O'Neill agus an fear spóirt is mó clú air in Éirinn, Roy Maurice Keane.

Dúirt Dion Fanning, tuairisceoir sacair an Sindo, rud éigin súimiúil ar an bpodchraoladh Second Captains an seachtain seo caite. Dár leis, is cuma cé hé ina bhainisteoir foirne na hÉireann. Más cros-síolrú idir Bill Shankley agus Brian Cody é, ní fhéidir leis Glen Whelan a dhéanamh ina Liam Brady, ná Darren O'Dea a dhéanamh ina Phaul McGrath.

Mar sin, an rud is tábhachtaí don mbainisteoir nua ná go spreagróidh sé samhlaíocht an phobail, go dtógfadh sé blás ládasach Bhóthair Lansdún istigh san Aviva agus go gcuirfeadh sé nuacht agus cúrsaí foirne Poblachta na hÉireann i lár an aonaigh arís.

Agus ar m'anam, nach é an spreagadh samhlaíochta nuair atá Roy Keane ag teacht ar áis chuig an FAI a cháin sé chomh dian is chomh minic? Agus an bua is mó, an bua a ndéanann an beart seo chomh draíochta, ná go bhfuil Keane ag filleadh ach nach mbeidh sé ina bhainisteoir. Is é Martin O'Neill, fear atá meas air ó cheann ceann na tíre, a mbeidh ina bhainisteoir. Más an Néilleach amháin a bheadh ann, beidh an pobal sacair résúnta sásta. Ach tá aithne agus tuairim, go maith agus go dona, ag gach chuile duine ar Roy Keano agus, cé go mbeidh sé i scáth an Néilligh, bí cinnte go mbeidh áire ar gach duine ar an gCorcaíoch.

Dúirt Eamon Dunphy go bhfuil seans ann go dtarlóidh tubáise traenach, go gcríochnófar gach rud le deora sillte ar gach thaobh. Agus má tá a fhíos ag éinne ar tubáise traenach, is ag Dunphy é.

Ach is cuma - is é cad a tharlóidh idir an tús agus an scrios a mbeidh súimiúil, spraoiúil agus ábhair cainte os comhair gach pionta in Éirinn.

Nuair a scríobh Julie Burchill a beathaisnéis ar David Beckham, thuig sí rud nach dtuigtear go mór maidir le sacar sa lá 'tá inniú inn. Is saigheas soap opera é, agus tá an soap opera beagnach gach rud chomh tábhachtaí ná an imirt agus na cluichí. I Roy Keane, tá JR Ewing, Cúchulainn agus an Incredible Hulk measca suas le cheile. Tá an Spailpín ag tnúth go mór leis an gcraic, agus túsa chomh maith, a leitheoir. Túsa chomh maith.

Singing When You're Losing

What is the correct reaction to certain and inevitable destruction? The answer is at the heart of the current spat over Roy Keane’s sing-song comments after the Irish soccer team’s annihilation at Spanish hands on Thursday night.

It’s not clear that this question is fundamental, as there are certain bottles of smoke over the issue. The hurt felt at the humiliation of defeat. The persons who’ve waited in the long grass to soften Trapattoni’s cough for him.

And the ghosts of Saipan, who have never been put to rest. All the old wounds bled fresh, with the interesting twist of a certain wizened commentator who has, not for the first time, changed sides when it suits him in his never-ending climb to the top of the stairs – the imp of the banisters, if you like.

But these are all false gods. It wasn’t really humiliating. It only felt that way. The 75% of people who responded to an RTÉ poll predicting an Irish result were kidding themselves. The Irish were 14/1 to beat Spain, the highest odds of any team at the European Championships ever. Ireland’s odds on a result against Spain were the same as the odds of a piggy revolt at the Roscrea Bacon Factory. Very long indeed.

And that’s an important point. You can only be defeated if you have a chance to win in the first place. The Republic of Ireland soccer team had no chance in the world against Spain. There’s nowhere to hide in professional sport – the Irish team is drawn from West Bromich Albion, Stoke, Wolves and other dregs of the English Premier League. The Spanish team is the combined power of Barcelona and Real Madrid. Mr Nail, meet Mr Hammer.

A heartbroken Liam Brady, a patriot who wears his heart on his sleeve always, remarked after the game that most of the Irish team, because of the teams they play in, will never have encountered  players so much better than them before. They don’t play in the Champions League, and Manchesters United and City can beat them with their second XIs. Asking Ireland to keep it kicked out to Spain was like running a Ford Cortina in the Monaco Grand Prix.

The Republic of Ireland’s game against Spain was an exercise in the Kobayashi Maru – a no-win scenario. Roy Keane was right to criticise the players – it’s been Ireland’s best players who have been at fault in Euro 2012, cruel irony – but he was wrong to criticise the supporters singing. The supporters knew that they were never going to win, but for some psychotic reason their nostrils flair and chests fill out at tricolours flying on an international stage, and Ireland having a place among the nations of the earth. Let the players worry about the game. The supporters’ role is different to that.

Take it closer to home. Kilkenny get a lot of criticism from hurling counties for the single-minded devotion to hurling, and some people wonder if Kilkenny’s hurling imperium exists at the cost of their county footballers. Kilkenny doesn’t field a team in the All-Ireland football Championship, and they are the only county not to do so.

But suppose they did. Suppose they said, ok, we’ll give it a shot. And suppose there was an open draw in Leinster and Kilkenny drew Dublin in Croke Park, in a double-header with Offaly and Wexford.

Butchery would be no name for it. It wouldn’t be so much Gaelic football as something out of Nero’s Coliseum. And suppose, as Dublin hammered the hapless cats into the Croke Park dirt, you heard, rising from the stands and the Canal End, the first strains of the Rose of Mooncoin? While the Brogans ran riot through the Kilkenny defense, all you could hear was Flow on, lovely river, flow gently along…

Would you think the Kilkenny fans losers cheering a team of losers, or would you think them patriots, for whom the black and amber is their eternal banner, through good times and bad?

Ní Scaipfear Sceimhle Saipan Go dTí Go bhFoghlaimeofar a Cheachtanna

Scríobh Malachy Clerkin 3,500 focal san Irish Times Dé Sathairn ar eachtaí Saipan deich mbliana ó shin, nuair a d'fhág Roy Keane foireann na hÉireann - nó nuair a tugadh bainisteoir na hÉireann bata is bóthar dó, mar a shíltear freisin. Scríobh Malachy nach bhfuil orainn nuair a bhfeicimid siar ach gáire náireach a dhéanamh.

Níl an cheart aige. Tá ceachtanna Saipan tábhachtach fós, ó thaobh bainisteoireachta, ó thaobh dualgais, ó thaobh meon na Gael - agus b'fhéidir ó thaobh pleidhcíochta an FAI freisin.

Ar an gcéad dul síos, ó thaobh más duine Mick nó duine Roy thú, is léir anois nach raibh an cheart ag ceachtar acu. Sin ceann de na fáthanna go bhfuil Saipan spéisiúil fós. Ba fíor-thragóid í - bhí toradh eachtraí Saipan i bhfad níos measa ná peacaí na bpríomh-aisteoirí.

Theip ar Mick McCarthy mar bhainisteoir i Saipan. Deirtear nach bhfuil ball foirne amháin níos tábhachtaí ná ball foirne eile, ach ní fíor é sin, agus níorbh fíor riamh é. Caithfear bainisteoir breitheamh a dhéanamh idir deacracht duine mar duine, agus bua imirithe an duine. Agus nuair atá an bua imirthe sách láidir, déantar eiseacht.

Smaoinigh ar Jack Charlton, agus an clú aige mar fear smachta. Chuir Jack David O'Leary ón bhfoireann ar dtús chun a cheannaireacht a dhéanamh soléir os comhair na foirne, ach nuair a bhí deacrachtaí óil ag Paul McGrath bhris Charlton gach riail chun McGrath a thógáil slán. Thuig Charlton tábhacht McGrath ina fhoireann, agus mar sin rinne Charlton gach iarracht ar son McGrath.

Ba é teipeadh McCarthy nár thuig sé tábhacht Keane ina fhoireann féin. Seachas Keane, beidh gach duine acu ag breathnú ar an gCorn Domhanda sa mbaile ar an teilifís. Bhuaigh Roy Keane cluichí ina aonar sa bhfeachtas chun an gCorn Domhanda 2002.

D'aimsigh Jason McAteer an cúl buaite in aghaidh na hÍsiltíre, ach ba é Keane a bhuaigh an cluiche nuair a rinne sé scrios ar Marc Overmars, scrios a thaispeán do na hÍsiltírigh nach mbuafaidís tada bog i mBleá Cliath. Nuair a d'aimsigh McAteer a chúl, cá ndéacaigh sé? Chun Roy Keane, croí agus anam na foirne.

Ba cheart do Mick McCarthy tuiscint gurbh é sásamh Roy Keane a chéad cloch ar a phaidrín. Ba chuma an costas, caithfear Roy a choimead sásta. Theip ar sin, agus bhris gach rud eile as sin amach.

Theip ar Keane freisin. Níor thuig Keane - nó níor bhac leis - go bhfuil dualgas ar bhall foirne glacadh le cad atá ar súil leis an bhfoireann go léir. Níl air aonú leis, agus tá go deimhin air glacadh leis. Tá an duallgas sin níos láidre arís nuair atá an ball foirne ina chaptaen. Níor thuig - nó arís, níor bhac - Roy Keane go raibh an fhoireann níos tábhachtaí ná a shásamh féin, agus is smál go deo ar a shaothar peile é.

Tá eachtraí Saipan spéisiúil ó thaobh meoin na nGael mar ba é Roy Keane ar duine de na gcéad laochra Gael nár shíl go raibh an dara áit ceart go leor, go raibh an craic níos tábhachtaí ná an bua, gurbh chóir bheith i gcónaí ag gabháil leithscéal go bhfuil bacach Gaelach anseo leis na h-uaisle.

Bhí an Tíogar Ceilteach faoi lánsheol nuair a tharla Saipan, agus thug Roy Keane ceannaireacht duinn ins na blianta roimh Saipan conas a dul fúinn i measc na h-uaisle. Thaispeán Roy Keane go raibh Gael gach cuid chomh maith le aon duine eile, agus ní chóir do Ghael fanacht taobh thiar an dorais as seo amach.

Feictear oidhreacht Keane i bhfoirne rugbaí na hÉireann anois, idir na cúigí agus an fhoireann náisiúnta féin. Dúirt Ronan O'Gara agus Brian O'Driscoll beirt go minic ar an meas atá acu ar Roy Keane. Bhuail Roy Keane slí cróga nua amach agus lean na sluaite ina dhiaidh.

Scríobh Malachy Clerkin "if there’s a lasting legacy from Saipan that exists away from the barstool and the broken dreams, it’s that the FAI is inarguably a more serious outfit now than it was then" - má tá oidhreacht mharthanach ó Shaipan, amach ó thithe tábhairne agus brionglóidí briste, is ea go bhfuil an FAI gan amhras níos dáiríre ná mar a bhíodar ansin. Gan amhras? Tógfaidh an Spailpín an ceann sin le gráinnín salainn.

Seacht mbliana tar éis Saipan, bhí seans ag an FAI bualadh marfach a bhuail ar an ndallamullóg, nuair a chuir Thierry Henry a lámh ar an liathróid. Cad a rinne siad? Ar chuir siad dlí nua os comhair FIFA a chuirfeadh stop ar an ndallamullóg, a chuireadh éiric nua ina aghaidh, a thógadh gaiscíocht ar ais sa sacar?

Níor chuir. D'iarradar ar Sepp Blatter Poblacht na hÉireann a dhéanamh mar an 33ú fhoireann ag an gCorn Domhanda, agus chuireadh náire ar an náisiúin nuair a bhris Blatter ag gáire ag caint faoi. 33ú fhoireann. Ní dhéanfadh Blatter gáire in aghaidh Roy Keane - sin í an dífríocht.