The Washed-Up Windies - Could It Happen Here?

One of the reasons given as to why the opening of Croke Park to rugby and soccer was a good and wise thing was that Gaelic Games were strong enough to survive anyway. Sure aren’t they part of what we are?, ran the argument – sure, if there was no hurling or football, how could there still be an Ireland?

Tom Humphries wrote a chilling Locker Room column four years ago about the decline of Welsh rugby and how it stands as a grim warning to what can happen to something that is “part of what we are,” which your correspondent was reminded of reading Tanya Aldred’s bittersweet elegy to the West Indian cricket team of the 1980s in the Guardian, a team that stands in contrast to the team currently touring England the way the Sears Tower of Chicago stands in contrast to a shotgun shack somewhere in the boonies.

Cricket was thought to be integral to the culture of the West Indies – the only thing keeping them together, in fact, as the West Indies is not a country as such, but a collection of countries that united in love of the common game on the islands, cricket. CLR James’ fascinating Beyond a Boundary discusses this interweaving of sport, politics and identity far better than your Spailpín Fánach could ever do, and its required reading for anyone that was ever captivated by calypso cricket and the thrilling play of heroes like Viv Richards, Richie Richardson, Patrick Patterson and the rest.

While Irish cricket lovers’ favourite team is generally the one that isn’t England, I think we’ve always had a special place in our hearts for the West Indies. They are like us in so many ways, in their fondness for porter and the crack and for our common heritage of looking at signs in shops on the bleak streets of England in the 1950s that read no blacks, no Irish, no dogs. I could still name that 1980s team, and still see them in my mind’s eye. I remember Malcolm Marshall, their peerless fast bowler, being interviewed after another devastating win in England. The BBC’s Tony Lewis asked Marshall what the win meant to him. Marshall said that he thought of all his fellow West Indians who were working in menial jobs in England and being looked down all day every day, who could hold their heads higher because the West Indies had won. Marshall knew what it was about alright.

And now that’s all over. The West Indies suffered the worst defeat in their Test history at Headlingly on Monday, skittled by an innings and 283 runs, while former heroes like Michael Holding could only look on, helpless and heartbroken, from the commentary box.

How did it happen? The same way everything happens – the cricket culture of the West Indies was not strong enough to survive the appeal of the global market. Young men in the West Indies now listen to hip-hop and watch soccer and basketball, where once their fathers listened to calypso and reggae, while living and breathing cricket.

The global market is making the same encroachments here, although I don’t think even the Jamaican authorities were so slow as to promote soccer and basketball by opening Sabina Park to the competition. And still the team is on its knees, and the culture is dying. I hope it doesn’t happen here. But I’m very worried all the same.





Technorati Tags: sport, West Indies, cricket, GAA

That Rugby Documentary Scheduled for Tonight

You've probably seen the ads for that rugby documentary tonight. An Spailpín certainly has and, if I can't see it tonight, I'll certainly set the tape. But I have no faith in it. Your faithful narrator believes in the possibility of "revealing behind-the-scenes footage" about as much as he believes in the Easter Bunny. What is much more likely is that it'll be another snow job in A Certain Party's relentless and continuing campaign for the Lions' coaching job in '09 on the tour to South Africa. I expect that bandwagon to get a right joult in France in a few months' time, may God pity the nation. More of that anon. In the meantime, does anybody really expect Eddie O'Sullivan's prematch orations to come within an ass's roar of the inspirational exhortations of that true coaching spririt of the nation, the indefatigable, the undefeatable, the legendary Timmy Ryan?






Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, rugby, Timmy Ryan

An Taoiseach's Early Morning Post-Election Address to the Nation

An Spailpín Fánach is both pleased and delighted to beat all conventional and online media in bringing you this, the first comments from An Taoiseach after yesterday's election. This morning, The Leader appeared at one of the bedroom windows in his controversial home on Griffith Avenue and addressed the people below in clear tenor voice, wavering slightly in the higher register but showing great command otherwise. When he finished, and the cheering of the crowds died down, he issued the usual apology to Lord Lloyd-Webber, but not to Sir Tim Rice. It is possible that An Taoiseach has recently read Sir Tim's autobiography, and is still sore at the waste of his precious time. Take it away, Taoiseach:

It won’t be Enda, it’s the labour exchange
For him and the rest of his crew
Getting notions of grandeur and pulling a string

They thought they had me
They thought I was past it, a footnote, a bum
Even though I’m still here all the time
I’ll be running the country again

Poor Enda is past tense, he’s got the mange
Him and his shirts of blue
I'll bet he's outpolled by Mick Ring

So I’ll choose Labour,
Lady Wicklow, Gilmore, Rabbitte and Co
We’ll see what they make
Of the benchmarking sorrow and woe

Don’t cry for me Dublin Central
The truth is I’m still the Taoiseach
The housing crisis
The marriage torment
I still survived
That attack from Vincent

And as for McDowell, and as for the PDs
I don’t think I’ll miss them at all
With their high moral tone and Avoca cookbooks

They are just bowsies
They are not quite the gentry they promised to be
So Labour, for now, will do
‘Til we win a majority again

Don’t cry for me Dublin Central
The truth is I’m still the Taoiseach
The housing crisis
The marriage torment
I still survived
That attack from Vincent

Have I said too much?
I think, Miriam, when you look at the issues that matter to you,
You find, in the totality of the situation,
That every word is poo

Don’t cry for me Dublin Central
The truth is I’m still the Taoiseach
The housing crisis
The marriage torment
I still survived
That attack from Vincent







Technorati Tags: Ireland, politics, election, satire, Bertie Ahern

Days of Wind and Timber - Mayo Blown Away in Salthill

This piece is, I believe, in the print edition of this morning's Mayo News. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have made the cut for the web edition, but this is a small matter to one with the power to cut and to paste.

Galway 2-10
Mayo 0-09

THE SEANFHOCAL TELLS US “ní hé lá na gaoithe lá na scolb”; the windy day is not the day for thatching. The deeply saddened Mayo contingent coming home from Sunday’s defeat in Galway could be forgiven for reflecting that this particular windy day wasn’t so terribly great for Mayo football either.

It was a ill wind indeed for Mayo. WB Yeats asks “what need have you to mind / The monstrous crying of the wind?” in his lovely little lyric for Maud Gonne’s daughter, To a Child Dancing in the Wind. Neither a child nor a poet had any business out in Páirc an Phiarsaigh on Sunday, dancing or otherwise. Galway came at Mayo with the ferocity of fifteen heron-choking hurricanes, and Mayo were blown away by half-time. In fact, such was the, ahem, commitment in the exchanges that a worried parent would have been forgiven for giving a gasúr a tenner’s worth of loose change and sending him or her up to the amusement arcades for a hour’s Tetris; the football was strictly over-eighteens fare.

Mayo can have no complaints. They gave as good as they got in the handbag exchanges, but it’s hard to claim seaside robbery when only three players score and you finish seven points in arrears on the only register that matters, the scoreboard. Peter Ford – on the business end of disgraceful mutterings in Galway over his management prior to the game, for reasons that are unfathomable from this, beaten, remove – planned his ambush perfectly, and when the time came, Mayo fell head over heels into the trap. Cormac Bane’s two expertly finished and clinically dispatched goals in the first half-hour put Mayo on the ropes; when nothing happened when O’Mahony played his aces from the bench, David Brady and Ciarán McDonald, and when both Conor Mortimer and Pat Harte were desperately unlucky with goal chances early in the second half, it was just a question then of shipping the final punch and the tumble into the oblivion of the qualifiers.

On the bright side for the county Mayo, there are seven weeks until the qualifier match, which is an aeon in football terms. It’s like a whole new Championship, really, and any hangover that may exist from Sunday’s disappointment will be long gone. On the less bright side, one of the reasons John O’Mahony was able to resurrect Galway in 2001 and take them from a comprehensive whacking from Roscommon in Tuam to their ninth All-Ireland in a single unprecedented and still unrepeated summer was the good fortune of drawing Wicklow in the first round of the qualifiers. With the Division 4 teams losing in the Championship before Provincial Final level now condemned to the Tommy Murphy Cup, Johnno may not be as lucky next time out. Donegal or Armagh, anyone?

But no matter. We shall take the poet Kipling’s advice, looking at triumph and disaster and treating both impostors the same. We are Mayo, after all; it’s not like we’ve not been here before. If we in Mayo have learnt anything as a football people in the past eighteen years, since the first coming of Johnno brought us to our first All-Ireland final since 1951, it’s how to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down, and start all over again.

There is, however, one small request that I would like to make, on behalf on the fans, like myself, who wouldn’t know that much about football really, but who are inclined to measure their lives in Championship summers. This is the second time in ten years that Galway have ended Mayo’s Championship before the schools have got their holidays, and both times have been under the stewardships of Mayo managers – Peter Ford this year, and Johnno himself in 1998. So the next time some Saoi or Wise One of Mayo football burns with the missionary spirit to bring the gospel outside the heather county, could he or she please be so good as to travel a bit further than Galway next time? Manchuria Mitchells could do with a good coach I’m sure, or Shangri-La Sarsfields, or Abu Dhabi Davitts. Anywhere, in fact, but Galway. They have forty-four Connacht titles and nine Sams, and they’re not finished yet. They don’t really need any more dig outs from us.





Technorati Tags: Sport, GAA, Mayo, Galway

A Game of Chess or Lannigan's Ball? Johnno Names the Team for Sunday

John O’Mahony’s team selected to play Galway on Sunday has been met with arched eyebrows, pursed lips, and requests to pull the other one, Johnno, it’s got bells on. A good friend of your humble correspondent assured An Spailpín Fánach via text message last night that if Mayo lined out as selected, specifically with Billy Joe Padden at fullback and James Nallen at centre-half back, he, the texter, would leap off the pier at Blackrock in Upper Salthill, and into the cold, cold briny below.

Let this column assure friends and detractors, assenters and dissenters that there will be no need for this sort of thing. Billy Joe Padden has played at fullback before, and played very well there – he went in fullback against Monaghan in the League last year after David Heaney got sent off, and performed very well there. Heaney was suspended for the following game and your faithful narrator expected Billy Joe to slot in there for the foreseeable, but Liam O’Malley played there the next day and Heaney returned to the last line of defence once he came out of purdah.

People have been suggesting all sorts of switching and shifting in formation to go on before the throw-in, but An Spailpín isn’t quite so sure. Having named this team it would make as much sense to start it, as opposed to working on bluffs and double-bluffs until we get to the stage where the coaches exit and the discrete mathematicians and quantum physics theorists take over. A man stepping in and a man stepping out again is all very well at Lannigan's Ball, but it might get confusing in a game of Gaelic Football. Besides, if P Joyce decides to go strolling and Ja comes in to the square to rest his venerable bones, then Mayo’s full and centre-half backs are changed anyway. It’s best to stay calm in this regard.

For An Spailpín, the most interesting confrontations are at midfield, where Mayo’s Harte and Heaney face Galway’s Bergin and Coleman, and in the corners, with very interesting tussles coming up between Michael Meehan and Keith Higgins, Cormac Bane and Liam O’Malley, and, perhaps most crucially of all, Galway’s Damien Burke against Conor Mortimer. How these battle pan out will tell a lot on the day. Mayo’s bench is in theory the stronger, and you can expect a cheer in Salthill the likes of which haven’t been heard in that area since Planxty played the Hanger in 1972 if or when David Brady or Ciarán McDonald are stripped and ready to enter the fray. The downside is that if the old warriors are sent for Mayo may be in trouble – in the All-Ireland Finals in which David Brady was introduced as a sub, the moving finger had long ago done its terrible work. All Mayo would face the horrendous battle to the notoriously inaccessible Pearse Stadium with a little more ease were Brady full fit and starting, but it’s hard to have it every way.

Galway are a more free-scoring team than Mayo – if Mayo dominate midfield, this will negate that, but if Galway win the centre then it’s double jeopardy, as Mayo’s difficulties in front of goal increase exponentially. If any one of the Galway inside line catches fire and gives his man a trimming, Mayo are in trouble. If two of them light up, Johnno is as well to start looking at the map, as his next game won’t be in Castlebar no more. And if all three of those desperados catch fire, well, Michelle Mulherin might see Dáil Éireann yet. On the bright side, that’s a lot of if’s. Mayo by 2 is the vote.

FOCAL SCOIR: If you're finding all this Gaelic Football a bit much as the Championship moves up through the gears, try how the other half lives - a fasncinating story on ESPN about the Russian Professional Women's Basketball League. Incredible stuff.





Technorati Tags: Sport, GAA, football, Galway, Mayo

Deireadh Siopaleabhair Greene's

Scríobh Dorothy Parker uair amháin gurb fhuath lena cara agus a co-scríobhnóir ar an irisleabhar New Yorker sa 30í, Robert Benchley, dul isteach i siopaleabhar. Gach aon uair a chuaigh Benchley isteach, d'fheicfeadh sé na leabhair agus bhuailfeadh tonn mhór trua air nuair a smaoineodh sé ar na scríobhnóirí a scríobh na leabhair, iadsan láncinnte nuair a chríochníodar go raibh sárshaothar scríofa acu, agus eisean, Benchley, faoi lán-eolas nach mbacfaí faoi chuid is mó dá leabhair, agus go bhfanfaidís thuas ar na seilfeanna go deo na ndeor.

Tá a ghlanmhalairt toraidh ag siopaleabhar ar an Spailpín Fánach. Is é an leabhar agus an scríbhneoireacht an cumadh is tábhachtach sa stáir, níos tábhachtaí ná an roth nó an tine, mar thugann leabhar seans dúinn siúl i ndomhain nárbh fhéidir linn siuladh gan leabhar, domhain samhlaíochta agus domhain dáiríre, domhain fadó atá caillte le fada, domhain nár tháinig ar an tsaol fós agus, b'fhéidir, nach dtiocfaidh go deo. Tagann gliondar im' chroí agam agus mise isteach i siopa leabhar mar, nuair a bhreathnaím ar na seilfeanna lán le leabhair ar gach aon saghas nó sórt nó teanga, tugtar misneach dom gurb fhiú leis an duine tar éis an tsaoil; go mbímis ann, go raibh rudaí tábhachtach linn, chomh tábhachtach gur scríobhamar síos iad, ar eagla go gcaillfí an t-eolas, agus go bhfuil dream ann fós faoi láthair ag iarraidh an eolas céanna a choinneal beo ar son na glúine atá chugainn.

Faightear sin i ngach uile siopa leabhar, ach faightear blás eile i siopa a díolann leabhar athláimhe amháin. Mar ins na siopaí leabhair athláimhe faightear blás an ghrá, an ghrá a bhí ag léitheoirí ar a leabhair, agus an méid measa a bhí ag léitheoirí ar a leabhair. Agus mura bhfaightear blás an ghrá, tharlaíonn rud níos fearr arís: faightear leabhar dílleachta, nár fhuair grá nó ómós riamh, agus tá seans agatsa anois fíorbhaile a thabhairt do faoi deireadh.

Ag breathnú ar na seanchlúdaigh, feictear an difríocht ina ndíoladh leabhar ins na caogaidí, mar shampla, agus mar a ndíoltar sa lá atá inniu ann. Is breá liom na seanleabhar Pelican, craobh comhlachta Penguin a scríobhadh ar ábhair acadaimh. Cheannaigh mé ceann acu uair amháin, ar cheol classiceach, agus scríofa ar an gcúlchuldach narbh pléisiúr na colainne é an ceol, cosúil le folcadán te a thógáil nó píopa tabaic a chaitheamh.

Folcadán te nó píopa tabaic mar phléisiúr na colainne. Ba chrua an dréam iad na Sasanaigh tar éis an Cogadh, ar m'anam.

Bíonn áthas orm i gcónaí in aon siopa leabhar, go h-áirithe i siopa leabhar athláimhe, agus caoiním fúthu nuair a gcailltear iad. Scríobh mé ceanna seo faoin bpoll a tháinig sa shaol i gcathair na Gaillimhe nuair a dhúnadh Kenny's. Tá an siopa leabhar Dandelion Books imithe ó Sráid Aungier anseo i mBleá Cliath le fada anois, ach ba bheag nár bhrís mo chroí an seachtain seo nuair a bhfuair mé amach go bhfuil Greene's Bookstore chun dúnadh ar an cúigiú lá is fiche na míosa seo.

Tá suíomh idirlíon ag an síopa a insíonn scéal an siopa, agus is uasal, fada an scéal é. Oscailíodh an siopa i 1843 - in 1843, bhí Domhnall Ó Connaill ina chumhacht anseo in Éirinn, agus Victoria ar a séú bhliain mar Bhanríon na Breataine Móire. Rugadh an scríobhnóir Henry James, agus, ag deireadh na bliana, d'fhoilsigh Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, an ghearrscéal na Nollaig is cailiúla sa domhan.

Nuair a dtéann duine isteach i nGreene's, tá sé cosúil le cuairt a thabhairt ar siopa eigin i scéalta Dickens - an Old Curiosity Shop féin, b'fhéidir. Tá gach aon bhalla sa siopa lán le seilfeanna leabhar, fiú amháin na ballaí staighre. Tá leabhar ar gach aon saghas ann, seanleabhar Laidine go dtí seafóid dá chuid Jaqueline Susann. Agus tá an seod seo le dúnadh anois. Díolfar na leabhar ar an idirlíon as seo amach, ach ní hé sin an rud céanna ar chur ar bith le dul isteach i siopa cosúil le Greene's. Bhí caoineadh mór ann nuair a dhúnadh Bewley's, ach cad ab fhéidir a cheannach i mBewley's ach borróga? Nuair atá do bhorróg ite agat, tá sí thart, ach beidh do leabhar agat le do linne, agus, má tá an t-adh leis, tar éis do bháis, beidh sé féin suite i siopa leabhar athláimhe éigin eile, ag fanacht ar an seans a dhraíocht a théaspaint ar duine nua.

Bail ó Dhia ort, a Ghréinigh, a sheanshiopa leabhar uasal - mo léan, ach táim cinnte agus lánchinnte nach mbeidh do leithéid arís ann.





Technorati Tags: Gaeilge, siopa leabhar, Baile Átha Cliath, léamh, Greene's Bookstore, scríobhnóireacht

Of Sense Forlorn - Mayo's Quest Begins Again in Salthill

For John O’Mahony, picking his way through the thickets of An Taoiseach’s house purchase, as published by the Sunday Independent yesterday, is as child’s play compared to picking his team for the game against Galway in Salthill in six days’ time.

For instance, consider the number three jersey. A case could be made for it to be filled by any one of Liam O’Malley, James Kilcullen, David Heaney, Billy Joe Padden, James Nallen, David Brady or Uncle Tom Cobley if it comes to that. And that’s just one shirt of the fifteen. The only one who’s assured a place on a line is probably Conor Mortimer, and even then all it takes is one nocturnal trip to Super Mac’s on the Square for Conor to get on the wrong side of Johnno, and next thing you know there’s a Fine Gael motor car going over hill and down dale in Louisburgh blaring “Austy! Austy! Are you there Austy?” from the megaphones.

This is a very strange game from a Mayo perspective. There’s been a lot of old yak in the papers about Mayo’s fragile psyche and subtle psychological scarring and all this old chat. What happened in Croker last September amounts to a whole lot of nothing in Salthill in May, but if Mayo are to get September closure they will have to dispatch a lot of heavy hitters, such as our friends and neighbours who choke the heron for sport, on the way. That’s what comes of leaving All-Ireland titles behind you. If Mayo had given a good – or even a reasonable – account of themselves against Kerry in 2004 or 2006 it’d be something. They imploded instead, and now they find themselves in some strange sort of limbo until they return to that grand stage and exorcise their demons. Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, Mayo stand accursed, and will get no relief until they resolve what happened them in two Septembers of the last three.

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

So, even if Mayo do beat Galway on Sunday, it won’t really count, or at most, it’ll count for very little. Sunday’s is a game that Mayo can only lose. Winning is just one step closer to the only game that counts. If that sounds harsh, then that’s because it is. One of the reasons that winning All-Irelands is so great is because losing them is so wretched. The most telling quote from last year’s debacle was Jack O’Connor remarking that Kerry got more hunger from their one year without Sam than Mayo did from their fifty-five. And counting. That still smarts.

That’s the macro picture from a Mayo perspective, taking 2007 as a whole. On the micro level, taking the year one game at a time, Galway stand in Mayo’s way and it’s very damned hard to know what they will be like. Nobody was revealing very much in the phony war between the counties in the League semi-final, and we’re as wise about Galway now as we were then. The strangest thing coming down the wires from heron-choking central is how very unhappy they are with Peter Ford’s stewardship, which is baffling, to be honest.

We were wondering earlier about who’ll play fullback for the County Mayo. Whoever gets the nod might end up playing centre-half, if Pádraic Joyce goes rambling, as he did in the semi-final. It’s hard to know what Galway will do. If, as in the semi-final, Galway have Cormac Bane and Michael Meehan in the corners, then they have men inside that can bottle lightning and do Mayo profound damage if they light it up. The languid Bane looked stealthily, slyly dangerous against Mayo. Meehan has yet to cut loose in the Championship the way he has, on occasion, in the League, but the talent is there, simmering away. If Meehan can harness it, and if he gets a supply of ball coming into him, it’s hard to know how anyone can stop him.

Other than cutting off the supply at source, of course. Kevin Walsh continues to be missed in midfield as Galway chop and change, looking for a replacement. As things stand, any of the possible Mayo combinations of Davids Brady and Heaney, the timeless James Nallen, the industrious Pat Harte, Kilcullen or even Billy Joe should be able to stand their ground in the centre, unless Galway have dug up another Liam Sammon and Ford has him hidden under a blanket in some hayshed outside Tuam. If Mayo can get a grip at midfield, then it’s up to the forwards to keep the scoreboard ticking over, something that they’ve been struggling to do of late.

The low scoring returns of the forwards, Conor Mortimer excepted, is a source of growing concern. With the sort of form-line the forwards have been showing so far, they need someone in there who can give them an edge by the breath and depth of his passing vision. Regular visitors to this soapbox will know of whom I speak. Ciarán McDonald, like his Holiness the Pope, has been granted the keys to the kingdom; his is the power to loose and to bind. But Ciarán McDonald has hardly kicked ball since the All-Ireland, and he was half-crocked then. If Mayo are to beat Galway, the forwards need to step up.

If Mayo lose, it’s not, strangely speaking, the end of the world. Martin McHugh remarked to Paul Collins on Setanta recently that, because whoever loses on Sunday has seven weeks until the first round of the qualifiers, whoever loses has enough time to rebuild, and to treat the game in Salthill as just a once-off thing. Of course, things were much more thrilling back when the two sides met at this time of year on a hot day in Castlebar nine (nine! Can it be?) years ago, when it was still a real Championship and Mayo went spiralling out of it before the children had been given their summer holidays. What a cat summer that was.

If Mayo win, marvellous, and we look forward then to Leitrim or London on June 24th in the Connacht semi-final. If Mayo lose, darn, but it’s still back to training and focus shifting to the start of the qualifiers on July 7th, the difference of a fortnight. Whichever path Mayo tread, the demons stay with them:

Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn'd round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

Coleridge again. STC was from Devon himself, a pretty little town called Ottery St Mary, but the poet clearly knew what it meant to be a Mayoman. We can expect a week’s thrills and spills as the Candidate and the Boxer fight their phoney wars, and An Spailpín Fánach can do no better than recommend his fellow toiler in the fields of the Lord, Willie Joe at the Mayo GAA Blogspot, for all the latest. Willie Joe plucks all the latest news from ether the way his namesake used to pluck footballs from the azure vault of the skies, and I, for one, shall certainly be relying on him for the full skinny. Up Mayo.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA, football, Galway, Mayo