The Year in Sports

Dublin’s All-Ireland title, their third in five years, makes a strong case for Dublin’s status as Gaelic football’s team of the decade. Not least as there could still be more titles to come.

This is not to say that they are invincible. And if anyone wants to quibble with Dublin’s achievement he or she could point out to the poor quality of opposition Dublin have met in finals – Mayo in 2013, and Kerry’s extraordinary collapse. There is also the continuing embarrassment of Leinster football, an embarrassment that looks set to continue with a bizarre venue having been chosen for Dublin’s first Championship away game since Biddy Mulligan was a slip of a girl.

But these are pointless cavils. Dublin are the best team in the country because they have the best players. And those best players don’t look like they’re going anywhere just yet.

Who can challenge them? The stark division between haves and have-nots continues, as mortal counties are crushed between the twin rocks of the back-door system and that most exclusive club that is Division 1 of the National Football League.

Kieran Shannon of the Examiner has made the point this year that addressing the League structure would be far more helpful than codding ourselves that the Championship will – or can – be changed. The Croke Park grandees have paid this not one blind bit of heed, and seem determined to bring back the unloved B Championship. Sigh.

Of the potential challengers, Tyrone may have overtaken Donegal in the pecking order, but otherwise it’s as-you-were for the Big Four. The people of Mayo will wonder if Stephen Rochford is the long-awaited Messiah but the reality is that the team is now manager-independent, really. Unpleasant though it was, the putsch of the previous management team shows that this Mayo panel is now complete in every way.

Everything you read in the papers about Mayo being short a forward or being too loose at the back or not knowing what to with Aidan O’Shea is just paper-talk. Only some truly poxy luck has kept Mayo from winning an All-Ireland since the revival of the 1990s, and luck has to change sometime.

Christy O’Connor had a typically excellent piece in the Indo a few days about the Kilkenny Hurling Imperium, and how it continues even though the playing standard is not what it was. The kings will be kings until someone rises to challenge them, but who that someone might be is anybody’s case.

Your correspondent is a great fan of the Banner County but, although far from a hurling expert, I will eat every single hat I own if Clare win the All-Ireland. Although hailed in the media as a triumph, the inclusion of Dónal Óg Cusack in the Clare back-room team is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Neither Dónal Óg nor Davy Fitz are noted for their ability to get along with regular people. How in God’s Holy Name they are meant to get on with each other is a Sixth Glorious Mystery. It’ll all end in tears before the hay is saved.

Speaking of tears, it is a generally odious thing to say I told you so, but this is the still the Season of Goodwill so I will chance my arm. This is from last year’s sports review piece in this space:

Reader, Ireland have never won a World Cup playoff game in the seven times the competition has been held, including two years, 1999 and 2007, when Ireland couldn’t even get out of their group. The Irish rugby public should think about crawling before thinking about walking.

And lo, it did come to pass. It was speculated here before the event that the Rugby World Cup would be a crashing bore, something that did not go down well with the public at the time. It wasn’t a crashing bore, but anyone who’s paying attention and is brave enough to be honest with him or herself can see that the game is changing massively, both in the way it’s played and the way it’s organised. The question, then, is whether the change is evolution or devolution.

Rugby has generally been the best of all sports in adjusting its rules to remain true to the spirit of the game as teams seek every edge, but it’s behind the times now. There are too many games decided by penalties at the breakdown which, when it comes to great sporting spectacles, make for rather Hobbesian viewing.

A sign of that evolution – or devolution – was in an offhand comment from Brian O’Driscoll while holding a mic for BT Sports during the recent Ulster v Toulouse game at Kingspan Ravenhill. O’Driscoll has a keen eye and praised Vincent Clerc for taking up a particular defensive position at one stage in the game, and that’s great. But nobody every paid in to watch Simon Geoghegan defend, or David Campese or, God save us, Doctor Sir AJF O’Reilly. If rugby isn’t about running with ball in hand it’s about nothing. Dangerous times for the ancient and glorious game.

Rugby has ruled the roost as the Nation’s Choice for the past number of years because people like winning. Martin O’Neill’s achievement in getting Ireland to the European Qualifiers may challenge rugby’s dominance. It was funny to note all the soccer journalists second-guess O’Neill all they way until the team actually qualified, by which time the u-turn was made in a cacophony of screeching brakes and stench of burning rubber.

As it was with the players, not least the much reviled Glen Whelan. It is worth closing, then, by noting that not everyone was derelict in his or her duty by Whelan when nobody was singing because nobody was winning. The great Keith Duggan wrote a marvellous piece in the Irish Times about Whelan, his role for Ireland and the nature of the professional soccer player back last June. Treat yourself friends, and check it out.

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.

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?

So. Farewell then, Socrates of Brazil

Today is a sad day for people of a certain age. News that the great Brazilian soccer player Socrates has died from an intestinal infection at the age of 57 reminds everyone who watched the 1982 and 1986 World Cups that we are mortal and we shall die.

It was a different era. There is saturation soccer coverage now – so much so that it’s easy to forget that one of the reasons the World Cup was a big deal previously is because there was nothing else.

In Ireland, what you knew about soccer you read in the papers or saw in highlights or what you saw in those strange midweek European Cup games, where Liverpool or Nottingham Forest would play in Belgrade or Budapest in a stadium ringed by an running track and a phalanx of heavily-armed military with the crowd deep in the shadows.

And then, every four summers, weeks and weeks of the stuff. Because you didn’t know who the players were, you were always ready to believe the hype, that these were colossi who bestrode the very earth, while mortals worshipped at their feet. Or at least, that's how they looked to a child.

Ricky Villas and Ossie Ardilles were the only players from outside the British Isles playing in England, and they both had to go back home to Argentina when the Falklands War broke out. Pre-internet and pre-satellite TV, all you knew were names and reputations – Rummenegge of West Germany, Platini of France, Maradona of Argentina. And everyone who played for Brazil. Every one of them.

Brazil arrived at the 1982 World Cup with too many central midfielders and not enough wide men. In a language that had yet to be invented, Brazil saw that as a feature, not a bug.

Brazil lit up Spain playing in a 4-2-2-2 formation, with Zico and Socrates as the penultimate two. Nobody had ever seen anything like it, nor would again. Brazil were at once fire and ice, rapier and broadsword, and became the most beloved international team since their own 1970 incarnation.

And then they lost. Brazil met Italy, the supreme pragmatists, in Barcelona’s Estadio Sarriá in the final game of their second round group. Brazil needed only a draw to go through. They lost, 3-2. Paolo Rossi scored a hat-trick and Zico would later describe the game as “the day football died.”

That was Zico enjoying the benefit of hindsight. Because four years later Brazil returned to the World Cup, and they lustre still shone just as brightly from the famous yellow jerseys.

Mexico 1986 was the last great World Cup. It was the last World Cup to showcase a man who was undeniably the Greatest Player in the World (don’t forget, Messi has yet to perform on the greatest stage, as Maradona, Cruyff (when he was bothered) and Pele have all done). Not only that, it had a number of teams who could have won it and deserved it just as much as Argentina did. Chiefly Brazil. Of course.

What a magnificent, frightening team Brazil were. Zico was a fitful due to injury, but Socrates was still there, pulling the strings. Unusually tall and gangly for a soccer player, with a distinctive thick black beard, he looked both completely at home and strangely out of place.

Brazil met the European Champions France in the quarter-finals. France weren’t that good, but Brazil ran out of luck that day in Guadalajara, losing to France on penalties.

The game turned on a penalty during the ninety minutes. Socrates had been taking them all during the tournament. He had a bizarre action – one step before striking the ball – but it worked. Keepers had no idea what to make of it.

But Zico had come on as a sub just before the penalty. Zico wore Brazil’s iconic No 10 shirt. Zico had never missed a penalty in his career. Zico had to take the penalty, because he was Zico.

France’s Joel Bats guessed correctly in goal. Zico missed, and the game went to penalties.

Socrates stepped up for the first. Bats was inspired by the earlier save of Zico. Bats saved Socrates’ shot, France won the shootout 4-3, and Brazil were gone. France went onto face Germany in the semi-final, and lost 0-2, to goals by Andy Brehme at the start and Rudi Völler at the finish. Bats was at fault for both of them.

And meanwhile Brazil are gone forever. The world waits for another Brazil to turn on the magic like they did in the 1960s and 1980s but that’s thirty years ago, and counting. The game has moved on. Whether it’s evolved or devolved is a debate for those who still love it. I don’t. Not any more.

All I do know is there once was a man, Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, whom the world knew simply as Socrates, and he had magic in him. May God grant the eternal reward due him for the joy he brought to millions and millions of people, all over the world.

The Sporting Year in Review and Preview

Rugby swept the boards at RTÉ’s sports shindig last night, and it was very hard to claim injustice over it. The Kilkenny hurlers may feel a little hard done by after their four in a row, while Giovanni Trapattoni must have been in with a shout for Alchemist of the Year, nearly making gold from some extremely base metals indeed.

But when you look back on the year you realise that rugby in Ireland has never had as good a year as it’s had this year. Or anything even vaguely like it.

Things looked dim this time last year. Declan Kidney had finally been given the keys to the car, but the team looked very much like the Over the Hill Gang in the autumn internationals. And then Jamie Heaslip went on his remarkable gallop against the French and really, rugby hasn’t stopped galloping since.

An Spailpín Fánach is firmly of the opinion that if Gavin Henson, rather than Stephen Jones, had taken that final penalty in Cardiff the campaign could have ended on yet another downer, but screw it. Ireland had enough bad beats over the years. The team were due this break.

Not least Brian O’Driscoll, their captain and inspiration. Rolling Stone magazine’s Peter Travers famously wrote of Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven that, in all his years in the saddle, never had Eastwood ridden so tall. So it was with O’Driscoll this season.

It was reasonable to assume – and the assumption was certainly made on this blog, and more than once – that O’Driscoll was shot, that he would hang up his boots unfulfilled. The events of the 2005 Lions tour seemed to have left their mark and O’Driscoll looked like a man playing out the string in recent seasons.

Instead, he compensated for the effects of age on his speed with some tremendous tactical application, he remains Ireland’s best forward as well as back, and ever single time that Ireland needed something this year it was either O’Driscoll who started the fire or put it out.

And he won a Heineken Cup with Leinster and was the Lions’ best player in South Africa too. Would we were all over the same hill.

The Kilkenny hurlers were the only other contenders for team of the year, securing their fourth All-Ireland in a row in what must surely have been the best hurling final of the decade. Some people, including your correspondent, left Croke Park thinking that the best team had not won, such was the awesomeness of Tipperary display, but Jamesie O’Connor put it in perspective on Newstalk’s Off the Ball the week after the game. Jamesie made the point that while he didn’t think any Tipp back played badly, Kilkenny still ran up 2-22. Somebody must have felt the blade somewhere.

The tragic thing is, of course, that while Kilkenny march imperiously on and Tipperary rise as worthy adversaries to their neighbours, the actual game of hurling is dying on its feet. While the GAA busied itself with the dog and pony shows of the Christy Ring and Nicky Rackard Cups, the noble game is in crisis in counties that are just behind the big three of Kilkenny, Tipp and Cork.

Wexford, Offaly and Clare have all won All-Irelands in the past fifteen years but they’re failing apart now. Nobody can follow who’s beaten whom in the Byzantine current Championship structure while the county that is in most danger from the rise of rugby, Limerick, seems seem intent on committing hari-kari. It’s tragic, and heartbreaking.

Tragedy and heartbreak were two words that were being bandied about after Thierry Va-Va-Voom became the Thief of Saint Denis. An Spailpín isn’t buying it. Ireland had their chances to win it, and didn’t take them. You can’t hang Henry and then say you’d have done exactly the same thing yourself, as so many Irish players have said.

Giovanni Trapattoni deserves a world of credit for getting the team as far as he did, and the RTÉ soccer panel, once the finest in the business, were craven and disgraceful in their condemnation of il vecchio italiano during the campaign. One the panel spoke with neither fear nor favour; this time, it clear that Eamon Dunphy had an agenda because the soccer team had been grousing about what Liam Brady said about them while a panellist himself. But Eamon knew that Trapattoni was a free shot, and he took it. Shame on him.

Finally, there was on constant in a changing year, as Kerry took Cork’s candy from them again. Nobody seems to realise (bar the Kerrymen themselves, and they’re far too cute to let on) that in Kerry the Munster Championship is simply an extension of the League, and they act accordingly. No other county targets August and beyond as the Kingdom do, just as no other county who have a star playing in Australia could bring him home to get him his medal and then ship him back again to the kangaroos and koala bears. Pearse Hanley please copy, God help us.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, sporting review, rugby, hurling, soccer, football

Soccer is a Cheaters' Game, and Has Been for Generations

All this guff about replays from the FAI and An Taoiseach over Thierry Henry’s handball last night is just so much old blather. Soccer is a cheaters’ game, and has been for generations. The Theft of St Denis was not a once-off event – it happens week-in, week-out in professional soccer, and is now an accepted part of the game.

As evidenced by the Irish players’ refusal to a man to condemn Henry himself. They will talk about Sepp Blatter and Platini and FIFA and the ref ‘til the cows come home, but as far as they are concerned, calling Thierry Henry a cheat or a thief is out of order. As far as they are concerned, he is a good pro doing what he must do to win. That’s why Barcelona pay him the big bucks. The Corinthian spirit has no key on the cash register.

It wasn’t always like this. The BBC did a documentary on Sir Stanley Matthews once, possibly around the time of his death in 2000, where he said that when he played in the forties and fifties, if a team won a corner, this was considered a mark against the winger for not doing his job and getting a cross in. These were the days of five man full forward lines in a pyramid, 2-3-5, formation, remember. A totally different existence.

Watching the footage of George Best that saturated all media when Best died it was remarkable how he always stayed on his feet, even after he had a lump kicked out of him. He never went down. Soccer had not evolved to that level. The idea hadn’t been introduced.

But it’s certainly been introduced, processed and assimilated now. Soccer has reached that part of its evolution, where winning takes piority over how the game is played, and the powers that be seem quite happy with that.

Diving is an integral part of the game now. Think of the great players in the Premiership in recent years: Drogba, Ronaldo, Steven Gerrard – diving is an integral part of their game. Pretending to be hurt. Bending the rules. Cheating.

Sneaky, cowardly fouls, like Thierry Henry’s handball last night. There’s a certain honesty in a punch. Not least the not inconsiderable risk that the fellow you punch may punch you back. But diving – it’s just pathetic.

And it’s not like they do it now and again. It’s not like Didier Drogba, say, took a tumble in the box once when Chelsea were 1-0 down with ten minutes to go. Didier Drogba hits the turf more often than the tongs by the fire.

Look at him. He’s six foot two inches tall, over thirteen stones of bone and muscle. He’s an outstanding physical specimen of a man, and a footballer with all the gifts. There is nothing in football Didier Drogba cannot do, and with his physical bulk, he is not a man who is knocked over easily. And yet he is knocked over easily. In what seems like every damned game. During the last World Cup, a man texted Des Cahill on the radio and said that when he bumped into the telly on the way back from the kitchen during one of the Ivory Coast’s games, Drogba went over from the impact.

Cheating is part of the game. It is a part of a professional soccer player’s armoury. You read about players who “can win free kicks.” These are the divers, and they are a recognised, if unspoken, part of the fabric of modern, professional soccer.

Is Thierry Henry a lesser man among his own because of last night in Paris? He is not. And it’s ridiculous to pretend that he is. This is the twenty-first century. Women and children first went down with the Titanic – this is the age of every-man-for-himself.

As a society we don’t aspire to anything other than personal gain – why should soccer players buck the trend of society as a whole? Name one player who has suffered for diving. Cristiano Ronaldo dived all the time for Manchester United – Real Madrid stumped up eighty millions pounds for him. You do the math, baby.

FIFA identifies seventeen rules in the game of association football. If An Spailpín were running soccer, he’d introduce an eighteenth, to do with bringing the game into disrepute. This would have two facets. 1. Anybody diving or acting like a coward or a cheat concedes an automatic penalty irrespective of where the foul occurred. 2. Incidents that brought the game into disrepute can be cited as in rugby, with the player in question suffering lengthy punishments.

Neither of these things will happen, of course. Ireland will take their beating, and we’ll feel sorry for ourselves, something we’re good at, and boo Thierry Henry any time Barcelona are on in the Champions League in the pub or during the World Cup. And in the meantime, professional soccer will rake in the money because people watch the Champions League in their millions, and Premiership in their millions, and the World Cup in their millions.

And when players trail a leg and tumble over and pretend that they’re hurt, all the kids watching the game will see all that adult talk about the right way to play as so much old blather like the tooth fairy and the bogey man. They’ll know that to get on in this world, to get the lifestyle of Ronaldo with the cars and the girls and the money, you cheat and con and trick and pretend. Because that’s what we value now.





Technorati Tags: sport, soccer, World Cup, Ireland, France, Thierry Henry, handball, diving, cheating, Didier Drogba,

Maybe Soccer Will Catch on in the States Yet

Ron Chopper Harris. Andoni Goikoetxea, the Butcher of Bilbao. Norman Bite Yer Legs Hunter. Duncan Ferguson, the Toast of Barlinnie. Even Roy Keane himself, the Lord bless us and save us. The whole lot of them are only trotting after Ms Elizabeth Lambert of the New Mexico Lobos women's college soccer team, as the following remarkable footage shows. The hair pull reminded me of Brian O'Driscoll on Australia's George Smith in the 2003 World Cup. BOD got whistled for it, and that was top flight international rugby. There are some tough ladies in those United States.








Technorati Tags: sport, soccer, Elizabeth Lambert

The Sporting Year in Review and Preview

One of the many stings of the current recession is the memory of what was. The squandering and the waste of the riches that once were, and are no longer. As far as the rugby public of Ireland are concerned; you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The cold hard fact of the matter is that Ireland and Italy are the only countries in the Six Nations that have not won the Championship in the past twenty-three years. And not only have England, France, Wales and Scotland won multiple championships in that time, each of them has at least one Grand Slam as well in that period. What have Ireland to show for this? A few devalued Triple Crowns and a lot of old blather about rugby in Croke Park and Paul O’Connell pyjamas.

That was the good news. The bad news is that it’s about to get worse. The lack of foresight that characterises Irish government is also becoming clearer as the golden generation ages in Irish rugby. The rise of the provinces – well, one of the provinces – as an entity in the international game comes at a cost. Time was when the clubs were the next level down from the international team; a provincial cap was not a necessary precursor to an international cap. Now the gap is too wide, meaning that there are now only three teams from which Ireland can choose her international side. There is a ragbag of exiles, parental rules and Hell-or-Connacht, but the reality is that the Irish pick of players has never been so small.

Look at the current out-half situation. If Ronan O’Gara slips coming out of the betting shop some frosty January morning Ireland do not have anyone who can replace him. Nor is one likely to appear; in the professional game, the choice between accepting losses as the cost of developing young players in specialised positions and flying in some nearly-was from Australia is a starkly simple one. Munster is now in danger of eclipsing Ireland as an entity in the national sporting psyche – did you notice how both Ronan O’Gara and Anthony Foley were pictured on the front of their autobiographies in the red of Munster rather than the green of Ireland? – but in ten years’ time, how many Irish eligible players will be playing for the Irish provinces? Grim times.

Thank goodness, then, that the Championship still rolls on, giving the summer meaning and definition year after year. The football championship was another classic this year, as Tyrone confirmed their place as the team of the decade. Kerry’s team of all talents lost focus over the Galvin affair, and the behaviour of former Kerry greats in defending the disgraceful antics of their former captain did the proud county no favours. Perhaps if Kerry had cut Galvin loose the Monday after the Clare game they would be All-Ireland champions today? Hubris is Greek for getting too big for your boots.

And how wonderful it is that Kerry have responded to Tyrone’s victory by recalling Jack O’Connor to the colours. O’Connor has a chip on his shoulder the size of the rock of Gibraltar, and he is brought back solely to put down the Ulster rising. How delicious would it be should Kerry meet Mayo in another All-Ireland final? O’Connor’s frustrations would be Olympian. Mayo would get hammered out the gate, of course, but the weeping would be louder in the Kerry dressing room. A backwards sort of victory for the heather county, but at this stage we’d take it.

Not that Mayo should worry about September too much in 2009. Worrying about September, in fact, is partly what has got my beloved native heath into this mess in the first place. It was common in Mayo to remark, in the post-five o’clock agonies of another Final defeat, that we would have been better not getting out of Connacht. Now that wish has come true, how odd that the gloom has darkened rather than lifted.

One of the reasons behind the remarkable momentum of John O’Mahony’s return was the idea that Johnno was the man to take the team “the final step.” Instead, Johnno has dismantled that fine team of 2004 and 2006, and what is to come in their place is far from clear. Falling to a risen Ross in June would find a far less forging Mayo public.

In hurling, the black and amber imperium extends the boundaries of its empire. Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh – who else – said it best when the third goal went in against hapless Waterford in this year’s All-Ireland final. “Kilkenny are going after this three-in-a-row,” he said, “like they had never won anything before.”

An Spailpín Fánach notes with sadness the way Kilkenny are being portrayed in some quarters as being “bad for hurling.” What’s bad about taking the game to new heights of excellence? How can that be bad? It’s up to the other counties to match them, rather than have Kilkenny fall back to the chasing pack. If anybody wants to win anything, they have to stop feeling sorry for themselves first.

Speaking of which. The Cork dispute has extended now to the footballers. The Cork County Board’s choice is clear. They must enter teams in all competitions as usual, staring in January, or else absent themselves from competitions. If some players don’t want to play, that’s their privilege. There is no slavery here. The Cork Board should simply find someone else and play them, or else not enter competitions, just as Kilkenny, say, don’t enter the football or Mayo don’t enter the hurling championship. It’s quite simple, really. I’m sure I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Finally – An Spailpín seldom bothers with the soccer, due to the high preponderance of cheats, cowards, spivs, divers and other wastrels in that game. But I am an unabashed admirer of Giovanni Trapattoni, and the more he digs in over the so-called Andy Reid controversy, the more I like him.

The fact of the matter is that Ireland just do not have any world class players right now. Andy Reid is not a world class player. He isn’t. So Trapattoni has to take what he’s stuck with and he’s making the best of that. Seven points out of a possible nine is good going, and the home support getting anxious because of an overly-defensive style just don’t realise that they’re dealing with a man with a completely different way of looking at the world. Catenaccio isn’t a type of pasta you know.

Perhaps they’re like this fellow over on the right, pictured after Trapattoni’s Italy lost in World Cup in 2002, who demands that Trapattoni be hanged with his fecking catenaccio. I translate out of the fear that as most of those boys who would criticise the vecchio Italiano struggle through their Star of a lunch break, the language of Dante and Da Ponte is more than likely beyond them. Bulgaria are next up at home in March; if Trapattoni can get a result, Ireland have one foot on the plane to South Africa. No-one in the state will be able to afford the trip to go out and watch them of course, but still. It’s the principle of the thing.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, rugby, football, hurling, soccer, sporting review

A Management Issue - Killing Two Birds with One Stone

The Republic of Ireland soccer team are without a manager. The Cork senior footballers have one manager too many. In fact, such is the agony caused by the thought of playing Teddy Holland that not only will the footballers not play under him, but the hurlers won’t play under him either, even though they don’t play under him at all. The hurlers play under their own manager, one Gerald McCarthy, who must be bemused, at the very least, by these shenanigans.

Allow An Spailpín Fánach to step forward and clear up the mess. Simply move Teddy Holland from Cork to Dublin, and have him manage the soccer players. The most of that job seems to consist of babysitting one Stephen Ireland, who famous claimed that Brian Kerr would not pick him during Kerr’s managership because Mr Ireland is from Cork. This sensitive young man is unlikely to suffer such discrimination from Teddy H.

As for the Cork footballers, who have repeatedly said that they will not play for Teddy Holland, no how, no way, that obstacle is now cleared. So just send Joe Mac of the Dixies to manage them, a man who represents his county and native heath as few others do, a man who surely lives solely on drisheen and Murphy’s stout, and a man that is the very personification of the People’s Republic. G’wan Joe boy – you’re just what the doctor ordered.

FOCAL SCÓIR: Many thanks to Irish-Showbands.com for the groovy Joe Mac pic. Keep hucklebucking fellas!





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA, soccer, Teddy Holland, Joe Mac, Cork