"Gas" on Mars

CNN is reporting "scientists" as saying that the gases currently escaping the surface of Mars are annual events of the Martian springtime, as homely in their Red way as leaves on our Earth trees coming into bud. And it's not the cruel and inhuman (human! ha! humanity! double ha!) miltary junta that has ruled Mars with a mailed fist for the past two hundred years launching their death-dealing missles against the Earth at all. Oh no, they wouldn't do such a thing, the little green bastards! Oh, the Earth is run by fools, such fools! Where's Dr Zarkhov when you need him?

Technorati Tags: Politics, humanity, Mars, Martian War Effort

How Do You Solve a Problem Like McDonald?

John Maughan’s is the latest voice to join this strange cacophony clamouring for Ciarán McDonald to play on the inside line for County Mayo. Joe Brolly and Colm O’Rourke, the Podge and Rodge of football analysis (and let’s hope neither Joe nor Colm go shilling for the TV license like the precocious puppets – and I thought they were rebels! Bah!), were apparently making the point on the telly at half-time last Sunday that inside was the only spot for McDonald, that he was wasted out the field. Now Maughan has added his two cents, saying that Mayo need goals and Ciarán is the boy to get them.

Is An Spailpín Fánach the only man to think they’re talking through their hats?

Maughan is possibly being a little mischievous in his comments. When Maughan managed Crossmolina and in his second coming as Mayo manager, he put Ciarán McDonald at centre-half forward and left him there, so it’s likely that his comments are more a cut at the two boys who took his bloody job, and you can never blame any man for that. Nobody loves a carpet-bagger. Brolly and O’Rourke are harder to figure, and the only conclusion that An Spailpín Fánach can come up with is that neither Brolly nor O’Rourke really thinks that much about it. They come up with the usual soft chat that’s now more or less de riguer for the GAA media, as mentioned in this place before, and certainly don’t appear to bother their backsides sitting up looking at tapes, or phoning contacts in different counties, to scratch beneath the surface and find out what’s really going on – you know, like journalists are supposed to do.

An Spailpín Fánach couldn’t play football for nuts when he was of an age and hasn’t got any better now he’s old and fat, but God help me, I love the land where I was born and I try very hard to understand what I’m looking at when I go to a football game, because football is Mayo and Mayo is football. Here’s what I can figure out. Maybe I’m talking through my hat, but this makes logical sense to me. If I’m jumping the shark and completely off-base, maybe some wiser head might drop me a mail.

Ciarán McDonald is the most accurate foot passer we have in Mayo, if not Ireland. Because it is axiomatic in football that the ball should do the work, the intelligent, accurate pass is the best option a team has to open a defence and create scores. Therefore, to be a successful team, you need a centre-half forward who can collect possession gained at midfield through either high-fielding and collecting the breaks, and use that possession to feed the rest of the forward unit. McDonald is clearly the best player in Mayo to fulfil that role. If he is not, who is?

Much of the criticism of McDonald centres on his tendency to drift deeper and deeper during the course of a game. This is not a good thing of course, but would it not be more correct if we were to look at the issue from a different angle, and wonder why the cursed ball coming out from the backs is so damned slow? Because if it wasn’t, McDonald wouldn’t have to keep going back to look for the damn thing. It’s called football – Mickey Moran ought to let them kick it once and while, instead of this perpetual slobbering with handpassing that would sicken a goat.

As for the man to score goals, isn’t it odd that the management, which includes the massive intellectual force of John Morrison, you know, didn’t think of looking for a few sharp-shooters during the league, which is, of course, what the league is there for? It’s getting a little close to the bone now to be wondering when a goal-scorer will pop up. Unless I’m mistaken, Mayo’s leading goal-scorer in the league would have been either Ger Brady or Billy Joe Padden, both of whom are getting stick at the minute, proving, of course, that some people are never happy. Personally, An Spailpín would vote for An tIolar Breá Iorrais to go on the edge of the square, for the simple reason that I can’t think of anyone else on the team that tries as hard as Billy Joe. But the poor man has been shuttled about in so many different places in the last two years he mustn’t know if he’s going for a haircut or decapitation on any given Sunday.

As for McDonald himself, he’s the best player Mayo have, and the best Mayo have had for some time. Brolly and O’Rourke must share a lot of the blame for the misconceptions about McDonald over the years, with their hateful and lazy characterisation of him and Conor Mortimer as “Swedish maids” in 2004. The two experts (An expert is the boy that doesn’t have to back up his opinions with money, as Chuck Noll once dryly observed), who are paid good shillings for the job that they do, never bothered to look beyond the bleached blond hair, which is lazy in the extreme. There is no other word for it. Conor Mortimer and Ciarán McDonald are as different, personality-wise, as chalk and cheese, but Brolly / O'Rourke analysis didn't go beyond the haircuts. Is this the Sunday Game, or What Not to Wear with Trinny and Susannah? For God's sake. If either expert had bothered to do his homework he would have quickly found out the differences between the two men; instead, we’re left with the caricature. Brolly and O’Rourke ought to be ashamed of themselves.

The other reason people object to McDonald is because they feel he’s too damned big for his britches, and want to see his cough softened. It’s not that terribly noble a thought, of course, but it’s very true to human nature. Well, not all footballers are created equal, whatever the politically correct priesthood would tell you, and when a manager discovers an incandescent talent like McDonald he builds the team around him, and doesn’t try to break a butterfly on a wheel.

Even the most rigorous of team men, the managers who are all system, system, system, know that there is such a thing as talent, and that you have to make exceptions for talent. Consider Jack Charlton, who famously left David O’Leary out in the cold as an example of his rigid rule. The same Charlton made exception after exception for Paul McGrath, for the simple reason that Charlton quickly realised that, for all the reputation O’Leary had, Charlton could do without O’Leary but he could not do without McGrath, because McGrath was playing at a different level.

Man management. Talent management. You don’t pick it up from books in the self-help section in Eason’s about Tao. But all County Mayo is hoping and praying that the current management have enough of it to let Ciarán McDonald give full expression to his talent, and that’s the only way they’ll have a shot at winning the All-Ireland. We’ll miss him when he’s gone, you know.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA, Mayo

Grá Átha Cliath

Tá do Spailpín Fánach i bhfad ró-thinn tar éis oíche fada beora aréir chun Béarla a scríobh inniu, ach tá buille bachaille (nó buille speile, b'fhéídir, agus spailpín i gceist) ag fanach agam ar Uinseann Ó hÓgáin tar éís an slíocht seafóideach seo a scríobh sé ar maidin. Agus shíleas go rabhas tinn sular léigheas é - ó hó hó!

Technorati Tags: Gaeilge, CLG, iriseoireacht

Reading Johnno: Deconstructing the Sultan of Spin

One of the many fine passages in Flann O'Brien's masterful novel The Third Policemen concerns the narrator’s attempts to retain his sanity while Policeman McCruiskeen is showing the narrator his inventions, each more fantastic and reality-bending than the next. The narrator desperately focuses his mind on the mundane, such a whistling tunes, mentally reciting poetry and wishing he was coiling stout rope on a boat in the South China Seas, anything but to be here watching this madness, in order to keep his mind from becoming unhinged by the remarkable things before his eyes.

One gets a very similar feeling reading John O’Mahony in the papers, or seeing him being interviewed on the television.

Johnno has mastered the art of the media interview. Whereas current Mayo manager Mickey Moran either runs and hides from the media, or else just turns up to have a good whine (“Galway were very rough”, “club games have my life’s work ruined”, “why is everybody writing us off”, “John Morrison invented in the internet,” and so on and on and on), Johnno, our Manager-in-Exile, keeps talking all the time. But clever Johnno has mastered a very special art – at the knee of some swami high on a barren mountain top no doubt, like that whiskery buck that was in Kill Bill II - of saying less and less the more he talks. The misfortunate reporter only realises when he or she gets back to the office and reviews the tape that Johnno spent twenty minutes saying nothing at all. If not even less than that.

Mastery of what the military spooks call Black Ops, and what the GAA man calls being cute enough, or way ahead of you, is one of Johnno’s many gifts. Which is what makes Johnno’s column this week in the Western People so odd, and what makes an Spailpín sit back and wonder: What the Hell is Johnno up to now?

On the face of it, Johnno abandon's all previous fence-sitting to lay his cards in plain sight on the table. Johnno reckons that Mayo simply have to turn up on Sunday, and brush the Laois threat casually away from their regal presence. McGarrity and Pat Harte will bottle up Clancy and Quiggers handy enough, the Mayo backs will incarcerate the Laois dangermen of Sheehan and Munnelly to the degree that they be as twin Napoleons, exiled on Elba away from the reigns of power, while a fusillade of long balls launched from half-way and further back will rain down on the Laois goal, manna from the Heavens on which Conor Mort will feast, and be full sated.

An Spailpín Fánach doesn’t see it that way. And he’s willing to bet his Doctor Martens’ boots that neither does Johnno.

As An Spailpín sees it, Johnno is doing a little bit of spinning here. Johnno reckons the long ball is the way to go, and the long ball paid rich dividends indeed during his first few years with Galway. What is not the way to go is this short hand-passing out of defence – in the unusually direct words of the great man himself, “it would be suicide to try and carry the ball from one end of the field to the other with five yard passes.”

Suicide, no less. But short hand-passing out of defence is exactly what we will see from Mayo on Sunday, and the only long balls that will be whizzing about little C-Mort’s head will be those launched by Ciarán McDonald’s infamous and talented cos ciotóige, as ever. Everything else is more than likely going to be pass the parcel, as that’s the Mickey Moran way.

This does not mean that Johnno is tugging Mickey’s chain, of course. All he’s doing is pointing out how easy it will be on Sunday for Mayo to beat Laois by playing a long ball game. If Mayo do not play this way, and end up being beaten by Laois, no-one will be more surprised than Johnno himself. Sure wouldn’t any eejit know those five yard passes are a disaster, and all the more so with Laois there for the taking?

Which means that when you deconstruct the narritive, as the academics delight in saying, this article from Manager-in-Exile is really saying: I haven’t gone away, you know.

If I was Enda Kenny, I’d be sweating. The last thing any boss wants to do is recruit a man who’s smarter than himself. That doesn’t leave poor Enda with much of a pick but that, of course, is another day’s work. Dia is Muire linn, Maigh Eo.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA, Mayo

Cad a Dhéanamid Feasta Gan Muire?

Tá roinnt maith scríofa ar fhir gortaithe Mhaigh Eo, agus scríobhfar níos mó céanna, sílim. Ach tá duine amháin a bhfanadh leis an gContae seamróige is fraoich go síorí atá an ruaig curtha uirthi anois, agus bhur Spailpín Fánach ag insint sibhse, ní mhaith an rud é, agus ní mbainfidh aon mhaitheas leis.

Le linn peile Mhaigh Eo, bhí "Dia is Muire Linn" againne mar mana, taobh thíos círín an Chontae. Tá círín nua againne anois, agus mana nua fréisin, "Críost linn," ach tá Duine caillte againn ar an mbealach. Agus é Maigh Eo ceann de na trí áit amháin ar tháinig Muire gan Smal ar chuairt tar éis a linnse féin ar an domhan eadóchasach seo, nach breá an rud é anois go bhfuil doirse an chontae dúnta ina h-aghaidh, mar a bhíodh doirse Beithile dúnta Di ar oíche stáriul amháin? Tháinig Banríon Neimhe ar stábla ar an gCéad Nollaig sin; ba chóir an t-ádh a bheith uirthi má thiteann Sí ar ticéad ar Chnog a Shé Déag Dé Domhnaigh seo chugainn.

Tá dealbh mhór in ómós an Mhaighean Mhuire i lár Chrois Uí Mhaoilína. Ba mhaith leis an gComhairle Chontae Í a bhogadh, chun gluaiseacht an bhaile a dhéanamh níos easca, ach bhí fios maith ag daoine Chrois gurbh Í an bhean chéanna a thóg an baile slán ón nGorta Mór, agus tá an dhealbh ann fós, agus beidh, go dtí go dtiteann ár dtír bhocht ins an bhfarraige ar dheireadh.

Níl an múinín chéanna ag Bord CLG Mhaigh Eo i mBanríon an Bealtaine, de réir cosúlachta. Tá sí scríosta amach mar chuid den seanscéal, cosuil leis an doras ar oscailt i rith an oíche agus an fáilte ar chách, rudaí sean-nósach nach gcoimeadann go maith le hÉirinn an "Celtic Tiger."

Beidh fios maith againne nuair atá gá againn Uirthí agus nach bhfuil Sí ann. Nárbh breá an rud é, agus na foirne ar chomhscór agus dá nóiméad fagtha sa cluiche, gascíoch mór Mhaigh Eo curtha cráite ar an dtalamh - an Brádach, b'fhéidir, nó Liam Séosaimh Mac Pháidín, an tIolar Breá Iorrais, nó - Dia idir linn agus an tolc! - Ciarán Mac Domhnaill, Mac an Bhaoil é féin - más fhéidir le roghnóirí Mhaigh Eo féachaint síos an líne agus insint ar Mháthair Dé "déan reidh duit féin chun dul isteach, a Naofacht - tá sé ortsa an lá a thabhairt slán"?

Ar aghaidh Léi i lár na páirce, agus an pocléim thuas sa spéir. Thíos Léi arís, sealbh na liathróide Aici, an ghualainn - crua, ach cothrom - ar fear Laoise, agus ar aghaidh Léi ar bealach an Chnoic. Scréadail an slua, a scíorta togtha suas ag Banríon Síochána, Ise ag rith ar chosnochta thar an líne caoga méadar, an líne daichead - féiceann Sí suas, ligtear an liathróíd síos, an cic árd, árd, árd - agus thar an trasnán! Corrón Sam Mig Uidhir ag filleadh ar áis ar an gContae Maigh Eo, agus buíochas mór ar an Maighdean Muire!

Ach ní thárlóidh. Is foinse náire Í anois, tá na pictiúrí beannaithe togtha síos ón mballa i ngach teach, agus tá Banríon na nGrást imithe mar pátrún peile Mhaigh Eo. Nach bhfuil ar ndóthan mallachtaí ar an gContae sula seo, gan tróid a dhéanamh leis an bhFlaitheas?

Technorati Tags: Gaeilge, spórt, CLG

Mayo v Laois - a Hop Ball Game

One of the great platitudes in Gaelic Games is to say that there is only a hop ball between the competing teams. In the case of the upcoming semi-final between Laois and Offaly – a replay of the 1936 All-Ireland Final – it is certain fact. Both punters and investors will look at the 6/1 quoted by Paddy Power on the draw, and reach for the wallet in a reflex action – pausing only to lick the lips, of course.

Cast your eye where you will, it’s hard to see anything between the teams. It looks like a fairly even contest at midfield between the Ballina Stephenite alliance of Mayo, Ronan McGarrity and Pat Harte, and the Terrible Twins of Laois’ Timahoe, Padraig Clancy and this young man recently returned from Australia, Mr Quigley. He certainly looked a footballer against Offaly, but those two Stephenites aren’t too bad either, and all of the county Mayo will be lifted when news seeps out that another Stephenite is back in training and hoping to bring new resonance to the phrase “impact sub.” Indeed, An Casúr Ó Brádaigh, as he’s known in the Ballina Gaeltacht, could very well be making a claim for a starting spot, leaving Paddy Harte to join a forward unit that’s looked a little anaemic so far.

The Mayo forwards would be fine were it not for issues of personnel, position and tactics. Professor Morrison’s infamous “nut” formation is now beginning to assume the same albatross proportions as Brian McDonald’s car pushing training sessions, and the county would be deeply grateful if the forwards were let play Gaelic Football as understood from Dickeen Fitzgerald on down, and leaving the Freud and Jung two-man inside line stuff for some other day. In November, ideally. This means, of course, freeing Ciarán McDonald from confinement in the corner, and letting him at the cockpit controls of centre-forward. Disappointing news then for Ger Brady but as the days have lengthened so Ger Brady’s influence has waned, to the extent that it might be better to leave him on the bench, and see what those charging runs from deep might be like were he introduced with fifteen minutes to go and all to play for.

Conor Mortimer needs company on the inside line also and, while Michael Conroy might be the romantic option, Kevin O’Neill might be the more realistic. Trevor Mortimer is denied Mayo through injury so the hope would be that the Knockmore exile’s greater experience and nous, to say nothing of an appetite that must be whetted as sharp as the Count of Monte Cristo’s, and for much the same reasons, to outweigh O’Neill’s lack of pace.

The Laois forwards are one of the class attacks of the modern game, as has been stated in this place before, with Ross Munnelly a glorious throwback to the days when wing forwards shot and scored from under the stands, and not scrubbed in the dirt for ball like the wing forwards of another code. That said, it is hard to see Munnelly getting much change out of David Heaney so perhaps the fangs of the tenacious Mayo defence will reduce the Laois attack to Mayo’s level of mineral deficiency, and level up that particular encounter.

Thus leaving us to wonder where that hop ball will come from that will decide all. Goals have been an issue for Mayo for a number of years. They were an issue for Kerry this year, but Kerry seem to have got around that since, the hoors. Wouldn’t it be marvellous to see Billy Joe streak forward and crash one home like Eoin Brosnan has been doing lately for the Kingdom? Could that make the difference?

Or could the difference be on the sideline? We are aware, through Mickey Moran’s references, that the fecund brain of John Morrison teems with 200 solutions to any given problem, but we are also aware that Mick O’Dwyer has so many All-Ireland medals that he uses one to mark his golfball once he reaches the putting green. O’Dwyer’s record as a manager is beyond parallel, as none other than Páidí Ó Sé once memorably remarked. Advantage Laois, but fate may yet dictate that O’Dwyer’s influence may be limited, if he is banished to the stands for pitch incursions in prior games. A harsh punishment for one of the true greats of Gaelic football, but one that could be the hop ball that bounces Mayo’s way.

Whoever wins this quarter-final (whenever it is won – that 6/1 looks better and better) will be a worthy winner. Laois have been a adornment to the game in this cynical age, and Mayo – well dammit, Mayo were always stylish footballers, and it’s good to have them around. But style counts for little when the ball hops – at that stage, it’s pretty much at the discretion of the Fates.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA

Superman Returns

From its opening shot, as a cascading camera surfing John Williams' 1978 Superman March follows Kal-El's flight through space from Krypton back to Earth, Superman Returns is a truly gorgeous film to watch. Director Bryan Singer, cinematographer Thomas Sigel and everybody involved in the art design deserve the highest praise for the look of the movie, and for the sheer visual style of thing, from Clark Kent's better tailoring to Lex Luthor's overpowering tailoring, from Superman's new, quite balletic landing technique to the almost chiaroscuro effect of Lex Luthor's ugly new continent, you may safely say that you have seldom seen a movie look quiet as well as Superman Returns. The lessons of Tim Burton's Batman, Sam Rami's Spider-Man, and Singer's own X-Men pictures have been learned, and learned well.

Miserably, the lessons of Joseph's Campbell's Hero with a 1,000 Faces have been learned less well. It's a book as over-rated as it is hideously written but Singer and his team could have done with a glimpse at the Cliff Notes version to find out more about the nature of the hero, because Superman himself is very difficult case for treatment.

In some ways, of course, Superman is a man past his time. You can still see traces of how dated the whole idea is, in that ridiculous rig-out in which Bryan Singer dresses Jimmy Olsen, just as Richard Donner dressed his Jimmy Olsen before him. The fact that Lois still works for a newspaper - in this day and age, she'd be a CNN gal. And is Clark Kent the last man in America to still wear a trilby hat to work?

The notion of a man of steel, faster than a speeding bullet, is a little passé in our popular culture now. Superman is just there, while Spider, Bat and X-Men seem to have that much more going on under the hood. While Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne are struggling with duty and responsibility, Superman is off making sure that kids are eating their broccoli and reminding them, in the immortal words of Springfield's Mayor Wilkins, "there's nothing uncool about healthy teeth and bones."

Superman is, in a word, boring. He can't be otherwise. He is super, and that is his alpha and omega. If Campbell is right, and all heroes are picaresque by definition, what is the nature of Superman's journey? If it's Tuesday, it must be preventing the train crash, Wednesdays are explosions at the nuclear plant. The nearest to conflict that Superman comes is whether or not he should take a serious pop at snapping Lois Lane's garters (and doesn't Richard White have a rough one here with the Joseph the Joiner role?), but of course, he declines. Like a super man would.

In the absence of substance at its centre (and isn't it fascinating how Brandon Routh's Clark looks real while his Superman seems so wooden, while with Christopher Reeve it was the other way around?), Singer at least realises that he's got to plug the gap by making the peripherals as interesting as he can, and he gets extremely lucky with Kevin Spacey as his Lex Luthor. Spacey was a bit player before he won an Oscar in Singer's The Usual Suspects - take a peek at his role in Outbreak to see how that man suffered to make some screen time - and in Superman Returns, Spacey is outstanding as Lex Luthor, hamming it up like he was entered in the Pork Butchers' Championship of the World. Spacey's Luthor is just as OTT as Jack Nicholson's Batman, but underneath his flash (and outrageously tailored) exterior, Spacey gives us a glimpse at the hex of Lex, and it's not too pretty. Think of the scene when Superman confronts Lex on the new continent, and wince.

The rest of the cast are fine, for what they're worth. Kate Bosworth's Lois isn't as sassy as Margot Kidder's - although they both share the same terrible spelling - while Teri Hatcher's Lois on TV was in a different genre, really, and defies comparison in that sense. Lois Lane isn't an easy role of course - what is she but a plot device to be imperilled and then rescued? - but Bosworth does give her Lois a dimension as a woman who had a man run out on her without ever telling her why. There are very few ladies who care for that sort of thing, and it's hard to blame them. Bravo, Kate, but shame on Lois for not getting her kid a haircut. That kid will grow up funny if she doesn't watch it, you know.

An Spailpín enjoyed Superman Returns, but ultimately left the theatre disappointed. There's just not enough there for a substantial night-time feed of cinematic candy. And who-ever has to write the sequel is really going to have his or her work cut out - if Superman Returns is about Superman and Lois coming to an understanding about his sudden exit five years ago, what little conflict the Man of Steel has is now resolved. Where do we go from here? Maybe he'll renounce broccoli, and start talking up beer and chips instead. It's time someone did.

Technorati Tags: Culture, movies, Superman Returns