The Year in Sports

The businessmen who run Croke Park are not noted for their wit. A pity; should it be a thing that Dublin win a fourth All-Ireland title in a row, wouldn’t it be funny if the traditional post-match playing of Molly Malone were swapped for Linda Ronstadt’s rather super cover of the Everly Brothers’ classic When Will I Be Loved? It would seem to strike the correct note.

The apparent disdain in which the team is held isn’t easy to understand. Pilar Caffrey’s Dublin, with their notorious Blue Book, were difficult to love. But the Gilroy / Gavin generation are the real deal. They are legit in every way a GAA team can be legit, and yet still Ireland withholds its heart.

Part of this may be jealousy. It would be nice to think there’s more too it than that, but there probably isn’t. Would Kerry of the Golden Years be held in the same regard as they are had they not be rendered mortal by Offaly in 1982?

When Meath were in their dark pomp in the 1980s they were hated. Has time humanised them, or was it the loss to Down (not to take anything away from that fine Down team) in 1991 that had the same humanising effect on them as Offaly’s win had on Kerry?

Those greybeards who remember when snooker was a big deal may remember Steve Davis was never loved until he was past his prime; then he became the Grand Old Man of the Green Baize. Is Ireland waiting on Dublin to lose, to return to the mortal realm, before forgiving them for being so much better than the rest? And when is that to happen, exactly?

Reader, I’m damned if I know. Mayo are in pole position among the challengers for the crown, but the trauma of thinking about my own beloved county actually winning an All-Ireland and all that would imply would reduce your correspondent to writing with crayons on greaseproof paper behind high walls and under medical supervision, so let’s not go there just yet, while the season of brotherhood and goodwill is still with us.

The reality is that it is hard to make a case for anyone living with Dublin, to say nothing of beating them. Leinster is a wasteland and, no more than Mayo, Monaghan and Tyrone can only knock on the door for so long.

Kerry remain Kerry, of course, and the impact of the disgraceful Super 8s remains to be seen, but it’s very hard to imagine any team better suited to a Super 8 structure than the current Dublin setup. Tradition, legend, values – may I introduce you to the Almighty Dollar? God help us all.

Hurling

When historians get around to recording and passing judgement on these changing times, will the publication of Jackie Tyrell’s book be seen as the most significant event of 2017 in hurling? We’ve waited for over a decade for an insight into Kilkenny in the Cody era. Now we have it, does it take from the achievements of that great team? At what stage is a title not worth winning? At what stage can you say a team has gone too far, and it becomes necessary to remind people that sport isn’t life and death; sport is what we concern ourselves with when we need a break from life and death. It’s something to think about.

Rugby
As Gaelic Games slide further from shamatuerism to fully-blown professionalism, it’s interesting – and horrifying – to look at rugby, which has been professional for 22 years. What has survived, what has thrived, and what has gone by the wayside.

Who would have thought, for instance, that domestic French rugby would set the standard for the world game, and that this club standard would come at the expense of the French national team, once the personification of a way of looking at the world that is quintessentially French?

The current situation cannot last, but what will come in its place nobody knows. The fruits of the banal weekly brutality of the professional game is also a harvest that has yet to be gathered, and will not be nice when it is. Dónal Lenihan made this point very well in his very thoughtful and under-estimated autobiography, released last year.

The Lions Tour, once described by the late Frank Keating as a cross between a school tour and a medieval crusade, was one of those institutions marked for doom when the game went professional, but went from strength to strength instead. On the balance sheet, anyway; neither the heads nor the hearts of fans seem quite sure what to make of the Lions, just as they don’t quite know where club competitions, Six Nations Tournaments and World Cups fit in relative to each other. In the light of Seán O’Brien’s strident opinion of the second-most successful Lions tour of New Zealand in over 110 years, maybe even the players are struggling to keep up. Or it could be all those bumps to the head, of course.

Rugby fans in Ireland are at a particular disadvantage as Irish rugby journalists take the notion of fans-with-typewriters to new depths. What Martin O’Neill wouldn’t do for the coverage Joe Schmidt gets, even though Martin O’Neill has nothing like the talent available to Schmidt.

Certainly, Schmidt’s artisanal style of rugby has never got the abuse that O’Neill’s hearts-on-their-sleeves, lead-in-their-boots soccer team habitually get, even though Schmidt has a better selection. And that’s not even counting the chaps who make Michael Flatley of the Clan Flatley seem as Irish as the very Blarney Stone itself.

The Sporting Year - Review and Preview

After Mayo lost the All-Ireland Final to Donegal in 2012, a football man, a fatalist, and a personal friend of the blog remarked that this could be the beginning of an unprecedented era in Mayo football, where the heather county would manage an unprecedented feat of losing three finals in a row.

We’re two up on that now so those of you unlucky enough to be from somewhere other than the sweet county Mayo may excuse us if we’re a little twitchy in the year ahead, and whistle past every graveyard we see. James Horan has committed to another year, and the crusade will begin again in New York City in May. Fingers crossed.

The main story in Gaelic football was of course Dublin, who won their second title in three years and are showing all the makings of a dynasty. They have the best squad of players they’ve had since the 1970s, and the best coaching and management. They’re the team to beat in 2014, no question.

A rebuilt Kerry will be interesting, God only knows what Cork will be like, Tyrone are a team it’s hard to be fully convinced about and if you’re looking for a dark horse you could do worse than Galway, curse them.

It’s hard to see Donegal reaching the heights again, there’s no reason to expect Meath or Kildare to raise the bar in Leinster, which means that we could be looking at our first repeat matchup in the All-Ireland Final since 2009. Mayo are looking good for those three losses in a row alright.

In hurling, Clare were deserving champions as Davy Fitzgerald answered his critics for once and for all. To read the papers during the Championship was to be told that John Allen, Jimmy Barry-Murphy and Anthony Daly were the Balthazar, Melcior and Casper of hurling, while Davy Fitz was some sort of monkey that only recently swung down out a tree.

But Davy outgeneralled them all, tying Limerick in knots in the semi-final, playing an unexpectedly traditional lineup against Cork in the drawn final and then pulling a substitution masterstroke in the replay. Cork fought to the end and their iconic manager proved his class once more by looking on those two imposters, success and failure, and treating them just the same.

In rugby, the long-anticipated end of the Lions Tour was brought closer by Sky Sports’ genuinely awful coverage of the 2013 campaign. By the end it was hard to escape the conclusion that Will Greenwood would see a trip to the shops for a pound of tea as a timeless Odyssey across a desolate, barren plain, while Scott Quinnell would declare Samson bringing down the Philistine towers as one and the same with his opening the curtains of a morning. The level of hype was ridiculous, embarrassing and one of the reasons why so many non-rugby people find the Lions a joke.

Of course, the Lions touring Australia of all countries was half the problem. The Lions tour only works in countries were rugby is king, which means New Zealand or South Africa. Australia was only added to the schedule when South Africa was in its apartheid exile, and should have been swiftly removed once the Springboks returned. There is a better case to be made for the Lions touring Argentina than Australia. The Australian public could not give a stuff about rugby and indifference is a much greater enemy to the tradition of the Lions than countless hammerings at the hands of the All-Blacks.


As for the tour itself, there was shock, horror, hurt and genuine sorrow at home when Brian O’Driscoll was dropped for the third test but, in the bigger picture, the team justified Warren Gatland’s decision by not just winning, but by destroying Australia. A bad ending for O’Driscoll, but the correct call by management.

O’Driscoll is on his goodbye tour now – all rugby people’s one wish now is that this great man just doesn’t get hurt. It would perhaps have been better if he had retired, but Brian Moore was right when he said that if O’Driscoll were to retire, someone would have to retire him. A brave man fights to the end. We have been lucky to have seen him.

In soccer, the return of Roy Keane was best summed up by Ken Early of the Second Captains, who tweeted “my own feeling about the o'neill/keane combo is an unfamiliar and almost unsettling sense of excitement, anticipation and wonder” on the second of November, when the news broke. And even though Martin O’Neill is the manager, it’s Roy Keane who’s the story, as ever. The team isn’t any good and people who think it will get good when the players whom Trapattoni didn’t wouldn’t pick return may be fooling themselves. But throughout all this there will be Keane, O’Driscoll’s brother from another mother, and for that a nation will count its blessings.

The Sporting Year: Review and Preview

It is a bittersweet thing indeed that the sporting year of 2012 ends on the death of Páidí Ó Sé. “Legend” is the most overused word in sports, but Páidí Ó Sé transcended the narrow bounds of that cliché long ago.

Where other men are legends, Páidí was an icon; others on that great Kerry of the 1970s were more admired and it’s possible Eoin “The Bomber” Liston was more loved, but nobody represented parish and people, the DNA of the GAA itself, better or more proudly than Páidí Ó Sé.

His bar in Ventry is a GAA grotto. The greatest cynic of that particularly Kerry cuteness that Tom Humphries identified as “the Republic of Yerra” could not help but be swept away by the aura of the place, the rich sense of the history tucked up against the Atlantic, where so much of the world’s history and culture was once stored, many hundreds of years ago.

Páidí Ó Sé’s life was short but few lives have been so full. Suaimhneas síoraí ar a anam Gaelach uasal.

In this year’s iteration of the football championship that Páidí Ó Sé graced for so long, Mayo lost; they always lose.

In hurling, the crown tottered on Kilkenny’s head as the All-Ireland final turned into its third and final act, but Henry Shefflin did nothing less than impose the majesty of his talent on the game. Shefflin moved to centre-half forward to dominate the game and rescue Kilkenny in their hour of greatest need of this decade they have dominated. Galway had no answer in the replay and Kilkenny continue at the very top of the tree.

Donegal were the best team in the football Championship of course. If you wish to see a team as being a symbiosis of coaching, talent and tactics, seldom can the three strands have combined as well as they did for Donegal this year. Donegal swept through the Championship as a burning flame, and nobody ever really made them sweat. It was a year of sheer dominance by Donegal from start to finish, like a racehorse winning the Derby from wire to wire.

Keith Duggan wrote a stirring call to arms for Donegal in the Irish Times in the week after the final, suggesting that they had it in them to dominate football for years to come. And it’s possible, but my goodness it’s a big ask. Only two teams have retained the title in the past twenty-two years, and the intensity of Donegal this year will surely be hard to replicate in 2013 – not least after a winter of celebration.

The current All-Ireland odds have Donegal as joint favourites with Kerry. This is a little surprising as Kerry are meant to be rebuilding, but then anytime the Championship seems wide open it’s the Usual Suspect that generally collects it.

Jim Gavin’s new model Dublin could be worth a bet at a best price 5/1 while it’s hard to know quite what to make of Cork in Championship terms. The Rebels are undoubted League specialists with their three League titles in a row and that can never be taken away from them. The League is the second most important inter-county competition after all.

Mayo are the last of the top five contenders at best price 12/1, shorter than they generally start seasons. After a semi-final in James Horan’s first year and a final in his second, there are only two places for Horan to go in his third year, and all Mayo prays it’ll be the good place rather than the alternative.

Mayo’s series of All-Ireland failures mean that the Championship for them is now a seventy-minute one, that doesn’t start until half-three on the third Sunday in September. Everything else is just a super-long League. It’s neither fair nor just, but that’s how it is.

Rugby has the excitement of a Lions tour next summer, which always adds a frisson for the home nations in the Championship. It’s hard to know how Ireland will do; the golden generation is now dead and gone and there is evidence for a reasonable campaign in the Six Nations and for an abject disaster. As ever, the first game sets the tone and Ireland’s campaign begins in Cardiff, where the Welsh are reeling from the effects of a disappointing summer and a particularly wretched autumn. We’ll wait and see.

2012 was an Olympic year of course, with Katie Taylor’s victory (and Seán Bán Breathnach’s marvellous commentary) the highlight for Ireland. Good for Katie but it’s fair to say, now that the dust has died down, that people got carried away hailing her as the greatest Irish sportswoman ever. This blog coughs discreetly, and suggests that honour remains with Sonia O’Sullivan.

In soccer, 2012 will be remembered as the year when the plucky Irish lost their major Championship innocence. After the drama of Saipan, the glory of America, the incredible, nation-building summers of 1990 and 1988, Ireland’s dream lasted just three minutes, until Mario Mandžukić headed home the goal that exposed Ireland as a busted flush.

The dream lasted as long as it takes to boil an egg. Ireland were humiliated and Giovanni Trapattoni’s reputation left in tatters in a series of nightmare matches. The best reaction was Liam Brady’s during the Spanish game, when the great man remarked that the majority of the Irish team had never played against the likes of the Spanish. They were as baffled by them as a Sunday league pub side would be.

And in the meantime, the supporters sang on. There was some vicious reaction back home to the singing, but in truth, what else could they do? There were people in Mayo jersies out drinking pints after the All-Ireland. Life goes on, and there’s always next year to dream anew.

Dath an Dobhróin Tuillte ag Foireann Rugbaí na hÉireann

Baineann blás speisialta le gach séasúr rugbaí a chríochnaíonn le camchuairt na Leon. Cé go bhfuil roinnt athraithe i gcúrsaí rugbaí ó thús an ré gairmiúla, maireann roinnt chomh maith, más fhéidir linn macalla a bhaint ó Tennyson.

Tá na Barbaraigh cailte go deo, faoi ghlás na stáire agus an dea-chuimhneamh, ach tá na Leoin linn fós, an céim is áirde i rugbaí idirnáisiúnta 'sna hOileáin Bhriotanacha. 'Sé dea-thaispeántas in aghaidh na Leon a thugann loinnir ar saothar imreoirí na Nua-Shéalainne agus na hAfraice Theasa, agus an rud ceannann céanna do na Leoin in aghaidh na tíortha móra rugbaí ar thaobh eile an domhain.

'Sé an geansaí dearg sin atá i smaoineamh Brian O'Driscoll anois, agus an deireadh ag teacht chuige go tapaidh anois. D'éirigh leis an Craobh Sé Náisiún a bhuaigh i 2009 nuair a bhí daoine cinnte go raibh a sheans cailte aige. Anois, tá sé ag súil go n-éireoidh leis ar a cheathrú chamchuairt Leon agus dea-chríoch a chur ar a shaothar rugbaí - más fhéidir leis áit a fháil ar an eitleán sa gcéad áit, ar ndóigh.

Tá ré órga na nGael thart anois. Níor bhuadar chomh minic nó chomh mór mar ba chóir dóibh, ach is faoiseamh gur bhuadar an Craobh sin i 2009 ag an deireadh. Bheadh aiféala orthu go lá deireadh an tsaoil murab éirigh leo riamh aon chraobh a bhuaigh agus na dea-imreoirí a bhí acu le deich bliain.

Tá Declan Kidney faoi bhrú anois mar cóitseálaí na foirne ach, mura bhfuil na h-imreoirí aige, cad eile ab fhéidir le cóitseálaí eile a dheánamh, cé gurb Mick O'Dwyer nó Jose Mourinho féin é? Baineann ceist mhór an seachtain seo, ceist Michael Bent, go mór le seo. Tá ceithre fhoireann ag an IRFU ag imirt ins an gCorn Heineken agus an Sráith Rabo-Direct, agus na h-imreoirí go léir fostaithe ag an IRFU. Cé mhead frapa Gaelacha atá ag imirt leis na ceithre fhoireann sin?

B'fhearr nach mbuafadh foireann na hÉireann cluiche arís riamh in ionad an geansaí a dhíol ar an margadh idirnáisiúnta, ach is dócha gurb soineanta an tuairim sin ins an ré gairmiúla seo. Ach ní fhéadair an lucht a chur ar an gcóitseálaí amháin nuair atá an rogha chomh bheag leis go bhfuil air Michael Bent a fháil ón Nua-Shéalainn.

Freisin, tá daoine ar an tuairim gur chóir rugbaí níos corraithí a imirt, mar a n-imríonn na cúigí le déanaí. Agus tá sé sin ceart go leor, ach deántar dearmad i gcónaí an tionchar atá ag imreoirí ghallda leis na cúigí. An mbuafadh na cúigí na Coirn a bhuadar seachas Brad Thorne, nó Trevor Halstead? Bhí imreoirí na ré órga Éireannaigh ann ar ndóigh, ach cad é an difríocht idir na buanna atá agus na "moral victories" a bhíodh?

Beidh na cúigí féin faoi bhrú má n-éiríonn leis an ERC an droch-íde a thugann an IRFU do Chonnachta a thabairt d'fhoirne na tíortha Ceilteacha. Nárbh bhlásta an íoróin é, más mar sin a thitfidh an scéal amach?

Agus oíche fada dorcha ag teacht chuig rugbaí na hÉireann, is rí gan ríocht é Brian O'Driscoll anois, agus a shéasúr deireanach roimhe. Ba bhrea le gach croí dá n-éireodh leis dul leis na Leoin, agus go mbeadh deireadh deas ag a saothar rugbaí, saothar níos fearr ná aon cheann a bhfeicfear in Éirinn leis na blianta fada.

Ní fhéidir le Declan Kidney smaoineamh ar a chaptaen, nó cad a tharlóidh thar lár sa tSamhradh. Taispeánann a mhéid feara ghortaithe an seachtain seo chomh beag atá an rogha leis agus, comh dona atá an scéal anois, tá an t-ádh le Kidney nach bhfuil an scéal níos measa arís.

Pé scéal é; beidh ré Kidney féin thart freisin tar éis an shéasúir seo, nó níos luaithe. Caithfear rud éigin a dhéanamh nó a bheith le feiceáil a dhéanamh, agus is é ceann Kidney atá is feiliúnaí don mbloc.

'Sé todhchaí na Gaeil os ár gcomhair amach anois ná go mbeidh siad níos giorra don spúnóg adhmaid ná don gCraobh. Tá saibhreas dóchreite ag Sasana agus ag an bhFrainc, agus tá an Bhreatain Bheag fillte ina cumhacht arís, chomh láidir is mar a bhí na draoithe bheaga riamh.

Agus ag bun na sraithe, na Gaeil, na hAlbanaigh agus na hIodalaigh, ag iarraidh an spúnóg a sheachaint agus lá mór a fheiceáil in aghaidh na Breataine Bige, Shasana nó na Fraince gach deich bliain nó mar sin. Ba ghlórmhar iad na laethanta órga ach beidh an sean-nós linn arís, agus le fada.

Ní de thimpiste go mbeidh foireann na hÉireann gleasta i ndubh in aghaidh Die Bokke Dé Sathairn. Is dath an dobhróin é, an caoineadh ar an ré atá thart agus an ré atá seo chugainn.

O'Connell's Steam Engine: Emulating McBride in South Africa

Lions coach Ian McGeechan sprung more than one surprise when he named his thirty-seven man panel for the upcoming tour to South Africa at Heathrow this morning.

There are fourteen Irishmen on the squad, more than Ireland have ever had before, and Paul O’Connell has been named captain. It’s thirty-five years since O’Connell’s legendary predecessor for the Lions and Ireland, Ballymena’s Willie John McBride, captained the most successful Lions tour of all time, also in South Africa, in 1974. History repeating would be very welcome indeed.

The biggest shocks in McGeechan’s panel are the naming of two men who had no part at all in Ireland’s Grand Slam win, Limerick’s Keith Earls and Tipperary’s Alan Quinlan, but it would be the bitter, bitter heart that would begrudge either man his moment.

Both men are at opposite ends of the their careers, Earls just starting out but the son of a father whom many consider would have played many times for Ireland had he not made the crucial mistake of being born on the wrong side of the tracks, and the stalwart Quinlan, who has been so often left out of Ireland selections for so long. Many glasses will be raised to those men tonight, and I hope the porter is sweet.

McGeechan’s selection of O’Connell as his captain, and such flinty forwards as Quinlan and England’s Simon Shaw, would indicate that McGeehan has no intention of letting the side get bullied in the trenches by Die Bokke. It is unlikely that the infamous 99 call will be heard on the high veldt this time around, but its spirit remains.

One of the many heartening things about the upcoming tour is the return to traditional Lions virtues after the all-too-predictable horrors of New Zealand in 2005. Sir Clive brought 45 players four years ago but clearly had decided his starting XV long before they set foot in New Zealand. The rest were only ever window dressing.

McGeehan seems much more likely to let the team evolve in the six games before the first test in Durban on June 20th. Someone once described Lions tours as a cross between a school tour and a medieval crusade; if McGeehan and co can capture that buccaneering spirit than the chances are good for a record third win in South Africa against the two time and reigning World Champion Springboks.

Ironically, considering the rich history of the Lions at half-back, it is at the pivot that the Lions will be most vulnerable. Mike Phillips is the most likely contender to wear 9, and a man who cannot but remind the Springboks of their own Joost van der Westhuizen in stature and attitude, but it is hard not to be nervous looking at the back up options. Twelve years ago Matt Dawson came from nowhere to become one of the stars of the tour in the best Lions tradition; could Tomás O’Leary or Harry Ellis step up to the same degree if anything happens to Phillips?

The Lions biggest concern is at out-half. Steven Jones and Ronan O’Gara are seasoned professionals playing a professional game but, compared to the great Lions 10s of the past, Campbell, Bennett, the immortal, imperious Barry John, Kyle and Morgan of the fifties – well, it’s hard to see them quite matching up. Once the forwards have gone toe to toe with Bakkies Botha and won the ball off him, there is still then the question of what to do with the thing. The Lions have always been about running rugby; everybody plays a variation of total rugby football now, but it would be a shame if the Lions were to lose that cavalier spirit that made the jersey so famous, even though they only ever won three tours in 27 attempts.

James Hook of Wales and Danny Cipriani of England were the up and coming men with the potential to come alive on a Lions tour, the single greatest stage in World rugby with all due respect to the French, but neither of them have made the cut. It’s a source of concern, but not one that undoes the daring selection of McGeehan or the flutter of anticipation at the prospect of the Lions taking on the Springboks under African skies. Roll on tour, roll on.





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