Pete's Football Articles

Who Shot PD’s Trousers?

2007-09-26T15:08:00.001-07:00

Tuesday 8th June.
A date that sent shockwaves around the world. Most people remember vividly exactly what they were doing when they heard the news that Pat Dolan’s trouser leg had been splashed. For those of us present on that traumatic occasion, counselling is only making slow inroads into our personal nightmare.
In case you have been living on Mars all summer, playing with your new-found Beagle, the shocking event happened as the teams and players were trudging off the pitch at Tolka. Shelbourne fans were regaling Pat Dolan as he made his way to the tunnel. “Ah, you’re a daycent old skin, Pat!” was one oft-repeated comment. “You’re looking very dapper, Pat,” was another. The shy, retiring Cork City manager was blushingly accepting all the generous tributes, when it happened!
Out of the darkening Tolka sky, a water balloon was launched. As spectators and players looked on in horror, its murderous trajectory caused it to come to earth just inches from the great man’s shoe, sending a spray of deadly water onto his grey flannel trousers. Women shrieked, grown men fainted, Ollie got an uncontrollable fit of giggling, which he later ascribed to shock.
For many, it seemed that the next few seconds happened in slow motion. A deeply traumatised Dolan wheeled around, water flowing copiously from his turn-ups. Gunther, his faithfully assistant, started screaming uncontrollably and tried to crawl away from the scene in panic. The Cork City kitman, who had also been splashed in the same incident, fell stricken to the turf.
The security forces were quickly on the scene. Many formed a human shield in front of Dolan, in case of a second attack. Stewards ran up the New Stand, where they quickly apprehended a suspect, with telltale evidence of water on his hands. As news of the catastrophe was relayed around the globe, the Gardai announced they had arrested Lee H. O’Swald, a ten-year-old misogynist, who had reputedly spent time in Waaaaaterford.
Scheduled programmes were interrupted around the world, as tearful newscasters relayed the shocking event to disbelieving viewers. A vigil was set up at the Mater Hospital, to where Dolan’s trousers had been rushed. At 12.20 am on the morning of Wednesday 9th June, the Master of the Hospital, Dr. Takin da Micki, announced that the trousers had been declared irreparable.
Dawn broke to a much changed world. The outpourings of grief from the global community were little comfort to the people of Cork, who had taken Dolan’s trousers to their hearts. Most people stayed off work and tuned in to Sky News, eager for any further insights into the tragedy.
Meanwhile in the Bridewell, Lee H. O’Swald was being brought from his cell to the courtroom, when a local wide boy, Seamus Ruby, stepped through a doorway and threw a paper cup of water all over him. He stood no chance. His t-shirt was drowned.
But it was this latest twist in this saga that caused people to question whether O’Swald really had been the protagonist in the attack on Dolan’s trousers.
Unfortunately, film footage of the incident is rare and inconclusive. A TV3 film seized by Gardai purports a shadowy figure to have been seen lurking in the grassy knoll in the penalty area at the Drumcondra end of the ground, though Gardai fatuously claim that this “shadowy figure” was in fact, Dolan’s shadow. Eyewitnesses claim that a second water balloon was launched from the Riverside stand, which heightened the conspiracy theory.
The rumour-mill began to grow. It was the Mafia, the Cubans, the Order of Malta, the Waterford Baptist Community, disgruntled St. Pats fans. A Public Commission was immediately set up and quickly came to the conclusion that O’Swald had been acting alone. For many people, this was too pat, too convenient.
Seamus Ruby claimed his attack on O’Swald was carried out for personal vengeance, yet it was soon discovered that he had links to various organisations. He had been photographed entering the premises of Champion Sports on Henry Street. He had worked for a brief period in the nineties for the mysterious firm, HMV. He made regular trips from his home in Artane to a house purporting to be the Cat and Cage in Drumcondra.
Almost 26 million people lined the streets of Dublin as the trousers made their sad way to Glasnevin Cemetery. Millions more watching television around the world were struck by the poignancy of Dolan’s underpants saluting as the cortege filed slowly past.
Bono’s epic and totally unpretentious ballad “Wide [In the Name of Jaysus]” echoes the sentiments of many of us:

“Tuesday evening, eighth of June,
Balloon flies out in the Tolka sky.
Relax, they got your pants,
They did not get your tie.”

The truth will probably never be known. Oliver Stone is reputed to be bidding for the film rights, and rumour has it that he has already lined up Dennis Hopper, Brendan Gleeson and Elliott Gould to play the part of Pat Dolan, while Gabriel Byrne has auditioned to play the trousers.

To Hell or the Connaught Street End

2007-09-26T15:07:00.000-07:00

The other day, I had a near-death experience. My third wife, whom I had idly noticed had been coming home with her hair matted with semen, accidentally spilled some rat-poison into a homemade soufflé without noticing. As I fell to the ground in agony, my life flashed before my eyes, particularly that episode with the sheep. I felt myself floating upwards, and looked down to see my grieving wife searching frantically for my life insurance policy. Then I was travelling down a long tunnel, like the Jack Lynch Tunnel without the stationery traffic. I emerged into a blinding light which, as my eyes focussed, I recognised as a giant floodlight, shining majestically down onto a giant football pitch.

Great, I thought. Football in heaven. I nudged the angel next to me. “Who’s playing?” I asked.

“Catholics against Hell,” replied the other. “Cup Final. Christians beat the Mormons in the semis. The Mormons refused to allow the trainer on the pitch. Hell pissed on the Baptists. Literally.”

I settled down among the 500,000 crowd to watch. Pontius Pilate seemed to be dominating the midfield for Hell, and Hermann Goering was playing a blinder on the wing. Still Jesus in the Catholics’ goal seemed to be saving everything. Then I rubbed my eyes in amazement.

“That can’t be….” I said. “Pat Dolan the referee?”

“Logical choice for a game between the Christians and Hell,” replied my neighbour. “Can’t differentiate between good and evil, you see.” Then, seeing my quizzical expression, he added, “Undead. Didn’t you know?”

No, I hadn’t known, but it explained a lot. However, my idle musings were interrupted by the roar of the crowd. Hannibal Lector had just skinned the hapless St. Stephen and put over the perfect cross. Hitler’s header was well directed, but Jesus tipped it over the bar.

“St. Stephen not having a good game?” I ventured.

“Probably still stoned,” replied the angel, and went into paroxysms of laughter.

The game continued. Baron von Richthofen was winning everything in the air at the back, which was a blessing for Dracula, in the Hell goal, who seemed to shy away from long, high balls coming in from the wing. However, he was quite surprised when the obvious joke failed to materialise.

Satan, the Hell manager, was pacing his dugout. It was clear he was thinking of pulling off Attila the Hun, judging by the way Attila was backing away from him nervously. However, he was pre-empted by Genghis Khan who suddenly decapitated Mother Theresa with a scimitar. Even Pat Dolan had no alternative but to send him off. Genghis made the long, slow walk to the dressing room, giving the fingers to the Catholic crowd on the way.

Joan of Arc was on fire for the Catholics in midfield. The dismissal seemed to give her new heart and she gave Cardinal Richelieu a proper roasting. Lazarus had also seemed to have got a new lease of life up front and he led Salome a merry dance.

And then it happened! Brother Ignatius, a Trappist monk, who had been remarkably quiet throughout the game, slipped Oliver Cromwell and passed it inside to Vincent de Paul. Vincent de Paul fed St. Barnaby the Bloody Starving, who punted a long hopeful ball upfield. As Dracula came rushing out to collect, Padre Pio challenged him for the high ball. Somehow the ball sailed over Dracula’s head and bounced into the empty net.

Half of the crowd went wild with delight. Strangely enough, it was the bottom half, while their top halves remained perfectly motionless. But down on the pitch, the Hell players were contorted with fury. They surrounded Pat Dolan, [well, a quarter of him anyway] and gesticulated furiously. Padre Pio, wearing an air of injured innocence, was pointing at his stigmata and claiming it was the “Hand of God”. Satan came storming onto the pitch and had to be restrained by the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Dolan pointed at the centre-circle maintaining he had seen nothing wrong. Fu Manchu retorted that, as he’d had his face in a lemon meringue pie at the time, of course he hadn’t seen anything. Dolan gave him the yellow. Idi Amin challenged Dolan to a wrestling match. Dolan abandoned the game. God was furious and sent down a plague of locusts onto the pitch. The crowd started to move out.

“What happens now?” I asked my newfound friend.

“Replay next week at Hell’s ground,” he replied.

“You mean…”

“Yeah, Richer. God, I hate that kip.”

All around me, angels and devils were filing out, still arguing over the match. Suddenly, I felt myself being hauled back by a member of Frontline.

“Ticket!” he bellowed in a thick Longford accent.

“Ticket? Umm...”

“No ticket? Okay, son. Out you go!”

“But I’m going out anyway. Are you brain-dead, or something?”

Unfortunately I seemed to have hit something of a raw nerve here for he gave me a dig in the head and a boot up the backside. The next thing I knew, I was sailing back down the paradisiacal equivalent of the Jack Lynch Tunnel before I landed in a crumpled heap on our dining-room carpet.

I groaned and lifted my head. Above me, my darling wife was biting her lip in sheer frustration.

“Hello, darling,” I said. “I’m back! And guess what? I have some good news and some bad news.”

“What’s the good news?” she asked, mournfully.

“The good news is that they have football in heaven. Isn’t that great?”

She looked unconvinced about the need for celebration, which was hardly surprising. “And the bad news?”

I hesitated. This was the person who had clapped with delight when Chukunyere scored the last minute winner against Shels in the Champions League. The person who had hung Paul Osam’s photo over our bed. The person who had said that Bohs deserved to win the League.

“The bad news is that Genghis Khan’s suspended for next week,” I said, rising slowly to my feet.

“Why’s that bad news?” she asked tremulously, uncomprehending.

“Simple, darling,” I smiled, reaching for the candlestick on the dining table. “You’re taking his place.”

Tide of Woe Dammed by Beavers

2007-09-26T15:06:00.000-07:00

At the end of a week where Shels cup of woe threatened to overflow, the Super Reds logged another win against Bray at the Carlisle Grounds last night.
In the first half, Shelbourne had a steady stream of chances, and were amply rewarded when, after a flowing move down the right, Stephen Geoghegan set up the indefatigable Stewie Byrne to lash home a shot that would have made Riverlinho proud.
However, the floodgates failed to open, as Bray bravely stemmed wave after wave of the red tide. The equaliser, when it came, found Steve Williams all at sea trying to cope with a long deep cross, and in the ensuing melee the ball was stabbed home.
The ever-impressive Mark Roberts continued to drown out memories of his inauspicious start at the club, but it was late substitute Paul Beavers who finally sunk Bray with six minutes to go, his header leaving the Bray goalkeeper high and dry.
Shels have now quietly floated up to second in the league.

The Tin Man Getting Rusty??

2007-09-26T15:05:00.002-07:00

Home Farm, St. Patrick’s Athletics, Dundalk, Glentoran, U.C.D., Shamrock Rovers, Sligo Rovers, Longford Town, Dundalk, Finn Harps, Athlone Town, Home Farm, Shelbourne and Kildare County – what do all of these clubs have in common? All of them have, at one stage or another in the last thirty years, employed the services of one Dermot Keely as a player or a manager, or in three instances –U.C.D., Shamrock Rovers and Sligo – as player-manager. It begs the question, what has he got against Bohs?

Quite probably the most successful individual ever to have graced [graced??] the League of Ireland, Keely’s medal haul is impressive. As a player, he won five league medals, four F.A.I. Cup medals, one League Cup medal and three Cup medals north of the border. As a manager, he has won the league four times, the FAI Cup twice, the League Cup and the First Division Shield, as well as gaining promotion with both Sligo Rovers and Finn Harps. Suffice to say that silver polish must form a sizeable part of the Keely household budget.

Faced with such impeccable credentials, it seems typical Irish begrudgery to question or criticize the man. His record speaks for itself and the directors of new boys Kildare County feel that, in Keely, they have the ideal manager to lead them through their formative years. But have they? The signs are there that the iron man of the Eircom League is showing distinct signs of metal fatigue. Questions are being raised about his man-management skills, and also about his ability to commit himself to a club for more than a few seasons.

I’ll nail my colours to the mast on this one. I’m a Shels supporter and recently experienced, from the terraces, four seasons of Keely the manager. Two championships and a Cup win in four seasons would be the envy of most clubs, and for the first three seasons, Dermo was God. It was only last season that the man, who once described the league as a bit of tin, was himself somewhat tarnished.

I suppose it was the three-nil defeat to Rovers that really set it off. A lamentable refereeing display caused Dermo to make his infamous “corruption” allegations against the league. For someone who insists on strict discipline in his teams, it was a strangely indisciplined outburst from a manager who should know better. Most Eircom League fans view the standard of refereeing as incompetent: to imply corruption was going somewhat OTT.

Far be it for me to imply that Keely’s subsequent “breakdown” had anything to do with the almost inevitable charges of bringing the game into disrepute. I am not privy to the inner circle at Shels and so cannot comment on that. What was clear, though, was that the stress was getting to him. Big time. We were all used to Keely shouting obscenities at his own players during a match, but at times it was bordering on the personal. If I was a player and he started screaming at me that I was “f_______ sh___”, because a pass of mine had gone astray, I don’t think I’d have taken it. Different players have different needs. Some need a kick up the arse, some need encouragement. It seemed as though the schoolmaster in Keely only recognised the former. The stress of keeping a big club on top of the league was clearly playing on him, and it was decided, rightly, that he should take a sabbatical.

Noel King and Alan Matthews took over in Keely’s absence and Shels went on an unbeaten run that stretched into the New Year. The joke at Tolka was not who would win the player of the year, but who would be the manager of the year. Dermot started coming to the games again, content with sitting in the stand. The talk was how we would accommodate all three managers once Dermot was ready to take over again. Should we disturb a winning team and let Dermot take over? Should Dermo be offered something akin to director of football? Whatever was going to happen, it was clear that it would have to be done with a large amount of tact and diplomacy.

What actually happened was that Dermot got annoyed during a game and took over there and then. Afterwards, he told the press that Alan and Noel had done a good job, but he couldn’t sit back and watch Wes running around like a headless chicken. Not the greatest display of man-management the League had ever seen. King disappeared from Tolka and Alan Matthews left at the end of the season. Two of the men most responsible for Shels second championship in three years were publicly humiliated by Keely.

Despite Dermot’s alleged rehabilitation and new-found enthusiasm, it was clear to all that he was still suffering from stress. That the Pat’s registration issue was taking its toll was obvious. Shels form wobbled alarmingly and it was only Pats being deducted 15 points that gave Shels the title. Comparisons were made between Pats and Keely’s expensively assembled team, to the detriment of the latter. Pat Dolan frequently asserted that they were the best team in the league. Comparisons were also made between the King / Matthews team and the Keely team, again not favourably to the manager in situ.

But Shels stumbled their way to the league championship. The league won, we had to fulfill our final fixture in Dalymount. It was the final game of a highly stressful season with nothing at stake. The sun shone. A “Six” reject entertained us at half time. Bohs won 4-0. The view of most Shels fans [most eL fans, I dare to venture] was that thank God the season was over.

Not so Dermo. Dermo spent the game having a go at his own players. At one stage, I thought Peter Hutton was going to come over and hit him. They had a running battle throughout the match.

After the game, Keely resigned. He cited the inept and lacklustre display by the team as one of the reasons, saying that Shels fans were entitled to better. Most of the fans, though stung by the heaviness of the defeat, recognised it for what it was – a lacklustre display in the final game of a season best forgotten. For a man who had been shown so much understanding by the Shels board, it was incredible the complete lack of understanding he showed towards his players. Every team has off-days –if a manager resigned every time he felt his team didn’t put in 100% effort, each team would have four managers a season. And this was not even in a match of any importance!! It was decidedly odd, to say the least.

Of course, this was not the first time that Keely had done this. He’d resigned from Sligo Rovers in the early nineties after a bad defeat to Athlone Town. When reinstated, he gave free transfers to three players, including Dennis Bonner.

In fact, Dermo seems to make a habit of resigning on a “matter of principle” – ask anyone up in Ballybofey about his resignation, when a consortium failed to take over the club. Other managers get the sack – Keely resigns.

His resignation was announced on April Fools Day, but it was Shels who were the fools. From having had three top-class managers in the space of a season, we now had none.

The second reason he gave was his total disenchantment with the league. “It’s the worst administered league, probably in the world,” he said. “I feel very low and its been coming for ages. Watching this drama unfold in the papers doesn’t make you proud to be part of the league.”

Yet, despite this explanation, he announced 22 days later that he was interested in taking over from Rico at Rovers. But what about his disenchantment with the league? I’m bored, he replied. During his three week absence –during which time he’d been on holiday, and much shorter than a normal close season – he had missed the league so much that he couldn’t wait to come back!!!

Six days later, after failing to land the Rovers’ job, he was unveiled as the manager of the newly formed Kildare County. “The novelty attracted me here,” he explained. Ah, yes, Dermot. But what’s going to happen when the novelty wears off?

It is his ninth managerial appointment in the last fifteen years. On average therefore, his management tenure has been less than two years at each of his clubs. [I am not counting his eight games in charge of UCD in 1983] This does not augur well for Kildare County, who need a period of stability to gain a foothold in the First Division. Their cause is difficult enough, without having management upheavals. Keely’s management record suggests that he lacks the character to stay at a club for any period of time. His man-management style is disciplinarian and is not geared to team spirit. Tactically, he has few peers at management level, but he lacks the willingness to give his players the freedom to express themselves, both on and off the field, and underestimates the importance of team spirit. He also appears to have the attitude that if success isn’t instantaneous, then he’s not going to be there for the long slog. Or maybe it’s a pressure thing – a new manager at a club is given a period of acclimatisation. Pressure to achieve is directly related to time spent. Keely’s inability to handle pressure may explain his lack of longevity at the helm of any club.

Recently, after Kildare lost 2-0 to Finn Harps in the first leg of the First Division Mickey Mouse Shield, Keely came on Newstalk 106 to publicly lambast his players for their lack of effort. During this tirade, he made the observation that he wasn’t going to stick around if that was the level of performance he was going to get out of his players. Sound familiar? [History attests to the veracity of that remark, as he doesn’t seem to stick around anywhere for very long.] That aside, the policy of giving his players a public bollocking would not, I suggest, galvanise those players into walking through walls for him. Jim McLoughlin never criticized his players in public, nor does Pat Dolan, nor Mick McCarthy nor any top-class manager. Its generally regarded as a no-no. Dermo does it regularly. To give him the benefit of the doubt, I don’t believe it’s a planned strategy, but something that spills out in the emotion of the occasion. But a manager of his experience should possess the ability to bite his lip. Players don’t generally like being bollocked at the best of times, but they would prefer it to happen in the dressing room or on the training ground, rather than in the media. If you don’t show loyalty to your players, you cannot expect to receive any back.

That particular outburst was so reminiscent of his diatribe after the Bohs – Shels game, that one sympathises with the followers of Kildare County. Players not putting in the effort in a game that had very little meaning. The writing seems to be on the wall already in Kildare, and they’d be well advised to keep an eye out for a replacement, particularly if the Thoroughbreds come up against an incompetent referee, or the level of performance isn’t quite what’s desired.

Having said all that, Dermo could just as easily prove me wrong and in 2012, be celebrating his fourth league championship with Kildare. I don’t think so though. More than likely, he’ll have worked his way through every club in the league and be starting off all over again. Its time the Tin Man started showing his mettle.

The Smallest Crowd

2007-09-26T15:05:00.001-07:00

Attendances, everyone keeps telling us, are up. Of course, this is impossible to prove or disprove, because, unique in the civilised world, we do not publish attendance figures, so we have no gauge to measure crowd increases on. Attendance figures usually come from a journalist hazarding a guess, or asking the person next to him. The difficulty in estimating the size of a crowd is well demonstrated on various clubs MBs after a big game, where the discrepancy between guesses can run into thousands.

However, word of mouth and the evidence of our eyes tell us that crowds are indeed on the increase, which is very encouraging, given the complete absence of marketing. [Incidentally, did you know that there are only eight leagues in Europe where the average attendance in the top division is over 10,000? Okay, we still have a long way to go to achieve this figure, but, unlike the Poles, Rumanians, Bulgars etc, we’re heading in the right direction.]

Given the absence of worthwhile statistics regarding crowd attendances, it is impossible to know which club holds the record for the highest attendance at a league match. In the modern era, anyway, I would suggest that some of Cork City’s crowds this season must come pretty close.

However, I would like to put forward my nomination for the most poorly attended league match in recent history. This is, of course, entirely subjective, and if anybody can better it, I’d be delighted to hear from him or her.

Naturally enough, the game involved Home Farm. Home Farm were famous in the eighties for only having one supporter. You’d arrive in Tolka Park – the Farm’s home ground in those days – to be confronted by this one blue-and-white bedecked fan. The butt of many a joke, he nevertheless has to be a strong contender for Supporter of the Century in my eyes. In those days, there was only one division, with no relegation, and Home Farm usually finished bottom, with UCD just above them. So to be a Home Farm supporter entailed a fair degree of masochism.

But this particular game was not played at Tolka, but at that cold-bed of Irish soccer, Harold’s Cross. Older fans will remember how impossible it was to generate any atmosphere at the Cross. No fans ever stood behind the goals, or on the far side of the pitch. Everybody congregated on the steps of the stand, with a fence and a greyhound track between them and the pitch. For those of us who were shortsighted, it was often impossible to make out the action on the far side of the pitch.

There were also large run-off areas behind the goal, and ne’er a ballboy in sight. So whenever a shot went wide, the goalie used to have walk a hundred yards to retrieve the ball. This would have been great if we were winning 1-0 with minutes to go, but unfortunately such scorelines were few and far between, and it was often our goalie, Freddie Davies, who would have to do a sprint to retrieve the ball, rather than a leisurely jog.

Advanced senility on my part means that unfortunately I cannot be 100% certain as to the year that this particular match took place. I know it was the final match of the season between Shels and Home Farm and it was probably 1983-1984, though it could have been the season previous. Hopefully some stato out there can put my mind at rest.

The season had officially finished the weekend before and Shels and Home Farm were merely fulfilling an outstanding [I use the word humorously] fixture. Shels had finished third from bottom, and Home Farm as usual had been the strongest team in the league. The result was not going to alter any positions.

In order to maximise the crowd potential, it had been decided to play the game at 4.30pm on a Thursday afternoon, always a great time for pulling in the armchair supporter. I can’t think why more teams don’t go for that time slot these days. To make things more enticing, Ireland were playing a friendly international on the telly at the same time.

I arrived at the ground a good quarter of an hour early to avoid the mad rush. As I recall, there was nobody on the turnstile, and the gate was open, so I saved £2 immediately. I joined the massed throngs on the terraces and awaited the start of the match. People were streaming in all the time, and by kick-off, the numbers had swelled to nine.

As I recall, a couple of lads arrived during the match, but some more buggered off to the Greyhound to watch the international, so the size of the crowd remained pretty constant throughout. It’s not often in the top division of a country, that the players outnumber the crowd, but this was definitely one for the record books.

The game actually did have an interesting edge to it. Kieran McCabe, the Shels midfielder, was in line for the League’s Golden Boot award. Basically, whoever scored twenty goals in a season won a trophy and a packet of Tayto, or something. Kieran came into this game having scored seventeen goals, not bad for a midfielder in a struggling team.

The Shelbourne players were naturally aware of this and spent the game trying to set Kieran up. It reached farcical proportions when Paddy Joyce rounded the Home Farm keeper and held the ball up on the line waiting for Kieran to run up and tap it in [he didn’t, and the ball was cleared!]

Midway through the second half a ball was played out of Shels half and Kieran, running on to it was through on goal with the keeper to beat. The ref [I think it was Carpenter] promptly blew up for offside. When Kieran protested that he had run from his own half, Carpenter realised his error, put his head in his hands and apologised profusely! [This has to be some kind of first in itself.]

As it transpired, Shels won 3-1, but Kieran only scored the once, which was a huge disappointment to the enthralled masses on the terraces. I think he was just pipped for the Top Scorer award by a single goal – probably Alan Campbell or Brendan Bradley.

So I put it up to you – how low can you go? Which team is the proud holder of the record for the poorest attendance at a league match in this country? [Friendlies don’t count, by the way] Were there ever more on the bench than on the terraces? Did you ever sing, “I am the Limerick, the Limerick FC” or “I’ll Support you Evermore”? No prizes, just instant immortality to the winner.

The Magic of the Cup

2007-09-26T15:04:00.002-07:00

Aaahh, the Cup. Don’t you just love it? That time of the year when the minnows pit their wits against the big fish, the saplings take on the mighty oaks, the Dairylea portions take on the, er, big cheeses. Having said that, it’s also not uncommon to see a dolphin challenging a tuna fish or a haddock squaring up to a ray. Strange days indeed, [most peculiar, mamma]
In addition to this mayhem, its also the time of the year when small football clubs are paired with larger football clubs. And when the smaller club wins, draws or loses 5-0, this is called “The Magic of the Cup.”
It all starts when the names are called out of a hat. Strictly speaking, of course, it’s not a hat at all, more of a large black bag. You’d certainly get some strange looks wearing one of those on your head, although they are currently the height of fashion in some fundamentalist Muslim countries.
Two minor celebrities then pull their balls alternately out of the hat/bag. To their consternation, each ball has a different number on it. Confused, the celebrity calls out the number on the ball.
A suspicious-looking character with a bald head then deciphers the code. Each number corresponds to a certain football club and he performs the translation instantaneously. Although, occasionally, mistakes do occur. I remember a few years ago Finn Harps travelling around the country for weeks trying to find “Number Fourteen” when the translator forgot the code.
Why, I hear you yell rather rudely, do the balls not contain the names of the football clubs themselves, rather than such a cunning code? There are two main reasons.
Security. During the war, German intelligence agents infiltrated the English FA Cup draw. Huddersfield Town, though somewhat bemused at being drawn away to Kaiserslautern, duly turned up for the tie and were promptly incarcerated for the duration. Since then, this coding system became widespread.
The other reason is that it is “The Magic of the Cup.”
Once the draw has been made, there then follows the ritual of the interview with the manager. Contrary to popular belief, managers don’t actually enunciate their true opinions on these occasions, but are obliged to trot out certain stock phrases which translate in football-speak to something completely different.
For example, “They deserve our respect” translates as “Well actually they’re shite but if I appear too confident and the unthinkable happens, then my arse is in the bacon-slicer”
“Our lads are going to go out there and enjoy themselves” really means, “We’re going to get hammered”
“We’ll let them know they’ve been in a match” becomes “They are skilfully superior to us so we’re going to knock lumps out of them to try and achieve a bit of parity”
During this interview session, the phrase “David and Goliath” will invariably come up. It has done already in regard to the Shels v Rockmount tie, although the way our defence is leaking goals at the moment, “David and David’s slightly older brother” would seem to be more appropriate. The phrase is a biblical reference and should not be taken literally, so don’t expect the Rockmount lads to come out twirling rock-laden underpants around their heads.
There was a rather amusing incident in the Welsh FA Cup a few years ago, when St.David’s, the cup holders, were drawn against Goliath Athletic from Sheepshaggers Division 4A, although in retrospect, perhaps it wasn’t particularly amusing after all.
Come the day of the Cup and there’s a magic in the air. Every fan dreams of Cup glory, although I prefer to dream about a Swedish air-hostess and a pair of handcuffs. Very often the entire population of a small town will go to a game, which swells the coffers of the FAI and also the local burglars. Strange things happen. Coachloads of rosette-bedecked males can be seen urinating in front of puzzled cattle all the way along the N7. Chants which haven’t been heard since the sixties – “Na,na,na,na. Na,na,na,na, Hey-ey-ey, Sligo Rovers” – are resurrected to the amusement of more seasoned soccer fans. Clubs like Fairview Rangers can suddenly find, to their consternation, that they are near neighbours of Shelbourne and are drawn to play a derby match against Dublin City. Bizarre? No, that’s just the magic of the Cup.

The Corner Flag

2007-09-26T15:04:00.001-07:00

Have you ever stopped and wondered what life would be like without that great soccer institution, the corner flag? I often have. It seems unthinkable, but my research leads me to believe that such a time existed back in the mists. To you and me, a soccer pitch without a corner flag is like a woman without an arse, or a Status Quo song without a bass line, but to the hardy pioneers of soccer in this country, corner flags were simply unheard of.

In the pre-League of Ireland days at the turn of the century, referees, having as much intelligence as they do today, were finding it increasingly difficult to tell where the goal-line ended, and the side-line began. Hasty seminars were arranged by eminent mathematicians to explain the concepts of perpendicular lines, and ninety-degree angles, but it was all too much for the poor men in black to fathom. It was decided that some physical manifestation of the corner of the pitch would have to be introduced. And so the concept of the corner flag was born.

Thomas O’Connor and Sons, Banner and Pennant Producers to His Majesty, were given the job of producing the corner flag. The first prototypes were crude and unwieldy, over twelve feet tall, with a girth of a two hundred year old oak tree. If they had been unveiled at Tolka, where fans were used to craning their heads around stanchions, they might have got away with it, but it was back to the drawing-board for the men in brown shop coats.

With a fine grasp of the concept of scale, the next corner flags to be produced were two inches tall, with a flag the size of an old sixpence. It was not a success, as the referees’ eyesight was more or less the same as it is today.

The Great War interrupted the quest for the corner flag, and by the time it was over Ireland was a very different place. Thomas O’Connor and Sons had been burnt to the ground and a new mood was in the air. The people were hungry for new corner-flags, and optimism was rife when de Valera sent Collins over to London to negotiate their size and shape. Collins, put in an impossible situation, was pressed on by Lloyd George to accept the triangular pennant. When he came home, de Valera exploded. What was wrong with the square pennant, he demanded? What in God’s name were triangles? A bitter row ensued, and the two men never spoke again [well, to each other, at any rate], but to this day the triangular pennant remains the norm.

A further breakthrough occurred during the thirties, when a shortsighted groundsman in Waterford accidentally planted one of the corner-flags “upside-down” i.e. with the pennant on top of the pole, rather than having it buried in the ground. After the initial hoots of derision, the crowd agreed that the corner-flag looked much prettier that way. Despite objections from the bishops who claimed it was “unnatural” and “against God’s law,” all clubs had adopted this way of planting their corner-flags by the end of the decade.

The War Years were lean years in the annals of corner-flagology. Many flags were stolen to wave angrily at passing Luftwaffe, and many were eaten when rationing kicked in, despite the recommendations of the Geneva Convention. In what became known as Black November [even though it happened in March], no fewer than fourteen League of Ireland games were cancelled due to lack of corner-flags. Questions were asked in the Dail, and the Government fell, although it quickly picked itself up and went limping away with nothing worse than a grazed knee.

The fifties began with Dev eulogising about comely corner-flags dancing at the crossroads – during one of his less lucid moments – and ended with Eric, the first corner-flag to be launched into space aboard Sputnik. Sadly, he was burnt to a frazzle during re-entry and the FAI demanded compensation. Several people turned out to see his funeral procession along O’Connell Street and into a bin on Parnell Square.

The sixties were a decade of colour and fashion and in football grounds across the country, corner-flags adopted the psychedelic kaleidoscopic colours that were sweeping the country. Plain blues and greens were out and polka dots were in. Some corner flags even adopted a revolving bow tie, but many traditionalists felt this was going a wee bit far.

As laughter often turns to tears, so the following years were marred by a series of crippling corner-flag strikes that brought the country to its knees. Some clubs tried to get around the strikes by using sticks with bits of rags on them, but the general public, enraged, boycotted them. Riots ensued and the Government fell again.

And so the story of the corner flag is the story of an age, an evolving, magical mirror of the life of the country. As George Bernard Shaw put it, “Where’s me vest?” Nowadays the corner flag sits proudly in the corner of the pitch and many spectators are unaware of its rich and colourful history. A new Millennium brings new challenges, and already there have been experiments on corner-flags in the areas of luminosity, textiles and reflectability. There are even rumours that a corner-flag has been successfully cloned at a private clinic in Termonfeckin. One thing’s for sure – this story ain’t over yet!

The Chicken and the Egg

2007-09-26T15:03:00.002-07:00

Its European football time again, folks. As I speak, St. Pats are out, having very creditably beaten Rijeka of Croatia and then exiting by the narrowest of margins to FC Ghent, who had the Indian sign over them in more ways than one. Shels are still in with a shout of progressing to the next round of the Champions League after a 2-2 draw away to Hibernians of Malta, while Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk have yet to play.
I am not a clairvoyant of any great note but it does not take deep insight to predict our results in Europe. Shels will make it past Hibs but then succumb to Boavista. Shamrock Rovers will lose narrowly to their Swedish opponents over two legs, while Dundalk will find their Croatian opponents too hot to handle. In short, our clubs’ involvement in European competitions will be over before the end of August, before most countries realise that the competitions have actually started.
I realise that I will be accused of having no faith in our ability to progress. By nature I am pessimistic in football terms, believing that confidence frequently begets a fall, but I doubt there would be many arguments with the predictions above.
The Holy Grail for Irish clubs in Europe of course is qualification for the group stages of the Champions League or the third round of the UEFA Cup. Imagine Real Madrid coming to Tallaght, Juventus in Inchicore, Bayern Munich at Tolka. Imagine the sell-out crowds, the buzz of regular European football, the television companies, the revenue, the profile…’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
The question is – how far away from this idea of heaven are we, and are we even heading in the right direction?
Many of us remember the lean years in Irish soccer, the years when scarcely anybody ever won a match in Europe, never mind a tie over two legs. We were never lacking in effort and achieved numerous moral victories, but we never achieved the elusive breakthrough. And the fact that we never achieved the breakthrough meant we were normally drawn against sides with a higher coefficient than us. [I don’t pretend to understand how coefficients are calculated, other than the higher the coefficient, the higher the seeding.]
The parallels with the international team are interesting. Ireland kept on being drawn into difficult groups, because we had never qualified, and we never qualified because we kept on getting drawn into difficult groups. It took a series of unexpected results for us to make the initial breakthrough –Scotland to beat Belgium, Ireland to beat Bulgaria, Scotland to beat Bulgaria – but once in, we stayed there because our seeding improved.
It may well be that it will take an equally improbable series of results to make the breakthrough in The Champions League [Shels to beat Hibs, Shels to beat Boavista, Shels to beat Man Utd?] This may seem far-fetched but at least we are heading in the right direction.
Our club sides are now expected to beat the minnows – the Luxembourgs, the Cypriots and the Maltesers, which explains why a lot of people were somewhat disappointed that Shels only drew away to Hibernians. [How many years did we go without an away win?] We are also expected to at least hold our own against the next group of countries up the international scale – the smaller East European countries, Switzerland, Iceland etc. We have a difficult task against the next group of countries – the bigger East European countries, Scandinavia and France – and the gulf is probably too large when faced with teams from the European super powers [Bohs take a bow].
Viewed from this angle, Pats results in Europe this season were remarkable. That they defeated a Croatian team over two legs was surprising, but the fact that they only narrowly missed pipping a Belgian side was truly stupendous. Two years ago, such results would have been unthinkable.
The big breakthrough will come eventually, and it will probably take a bizarre set of results, or a very favourable draw to turn it into reality. When it happens, it will be the biggest night in the League’s 80-year history. Not alone the huge amounts of money that will come into the League through attendances and television rights, not alone that we might have a decent carrot to entice our young players to remain in Ireland, rather than chancing their arms in Walsall reserves, not alone that domestic players might get called up to international squads, not alone the profile that our domestic game will receive around Europe, but it will also raise our coefficient, and make qualification a lot easier in the future for all of our clubs.
The rewards are immense. Huge. Incalculable. It will transform our domestic game completely. Imagine a domestic league with full houses, with international players on show, with , God forbid, English players looking to come over here for a chance to play in European football.
As I said, it will be a fluke when it happens, but we must do everything in our power to lessen the odds stacked against us. If Pat Dolan wants a league game postponed to help his side, it should be postponed. If he wants a fortnight to prepare, give him a fortnight to prepare. Shels travelled to Malta five days before the match to acclimatise. This is good, this is professional. If Shels beat Hibs and then draw the away game against Boavista, we must ensure there is a full house for the return, even if it means the gate receipts aren’t maximised. Petty jealousies must be put aside to ensure that the full weight of the league is behind the clubs striving for that elusive European breakthrough. We’re heading in the right direction – we just have to break the circle.

The Case for the Jacks

2007-09-26T15:03:00.001-07:00

At the beginning of the season, a certain well-dressed and articulate football manager – who shall remain nameless – put forward the theory that teams outside the Pale are somehow discriminated against; that Dublin clubs, by the very nature of their Dublinness [Dublinity?] have certain advantages over their more colourfully-necked brethren. The main reason cited for this is that, with five clubs from the real capital, Dublin teams do not incur the huge travelling expenses that provincial clubs endure, thereby having spare cash to spend on decent strikers, better oranges at half-time, louder music etc. Like the Millennium Spire in O’Connell Street, it is a good point well made, but, like that famous fairy tale, “Goldilocks and The”, it is only half the story.

The sad fact of the matter is that Dublin teams operate at a terrible disadvantage. The likes of Waterford and Cork take the clean, wholesome air for granted – St. Pat’s training sessions, on the other hand, are frequently interrupted by Tony Bird fumbling through the smog and accidentally falling into the Camac. Take Ollie Cahill, as another example. Came up to Dublin two years ago, a fresh-faced youth with a rude complexion. Now look at him. Whiter than an Italian flag and probably in the early stages of TB. Summer soccer is killing him, because when he plays away games down the country, his eyes can’t take the sunshine.

There is also a financial downside to operating out of the capital. Insurance, for example, is far higher in the metropolis. Bobby Ryan tried to insure his good looks, but found he couldn't afford the premium. Had he stayed in Limerick, he could have afforded to insure his hair as well.

And don’t think us fans have it any easier. True we don’t pay as much in coach fare to get to away games, but there are other expenses. Fines for daring to poke a wheel into the bus lane, the cost of getting the clamping people back out, the cost of the stevedore’s chain you need to avoid getting the thing robbed by budding Michael Schumachers, the sessions at the psychiatrist after taking two hours to travel half a mile – all these things add up, and suddenly the idea of spending a couple of hours a fortnight in a nice air-conditioned coach doesn’t seem all that bad. Very often, Dublin fans need to let out their box-room to a family of Latvians in order to subsidise a post-match drinking session, the cost of Guinness being so high within the city walls. We notice it when we’re coming back from games and stopping in Monaghan or Athlone or somewhere, and we hand over a fiver for a pint and the landlord calls us back to give us change. In Dubland, he’d be holding out his hand for the rest.

Not only that, but our Dublin derby games have an extra edge. Shels, Pats, Rovers, Bohs –in games between any two of those four teams, the formbook goes out the window, down the lane and into the Spar at the bottom of the road. Home advantage counts for very little, and very often victory depends on getting fewer players sent off than your opponents. There are twelve derby games a season for each of the above clubs – for obvious reasons I’m excluding UCD – the results of which are usually a lottery. Well, a lottery without a load of numbered balls and your man from Stokes, Kennedy, Crowley anyway. Country teams don’t currently enjoy that kind of rivalry, and their success depends very much on form, tactics etc, which is how championships ought to be decided.

Clubs down the country also have the ability to turn their stadia into a “fortress”. Fortress Brandywell, for example. Not men in silly helmets firing muskets at hordes of infidels, but places where it’s hard to come away with anything, except a feeling of being ripped off. If we wanted to turn Tolka Park into a fortress, it would mean a lot of brown paper bags being handed over to our esteemed locally elected representatives.

Of course, we all know the real reason why our hillbilly cousins feel we have an unfair advantage over them. We’re better than them. Sadly, they are unable to accept their inferiority and thus invent strange reasons to account for it. In actual fact, all Dublin clubs with the exception of Pats, Rovers, Bohs and UCD should be given ten points start at the beginning of the season, to compensate for the terrible disadvantages we are obliged to endure. Only then will parity be seen to have been achieved.

The Book of Oliver – Chapter 11

2007-09-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

[Another extract from the soon-to-be-published Book of Oliver, a 3000-year-old manuscript only recently unearthed in Drumcondra]

And it came to pass that Oliver was sitting in his palace at Tol-ka and the heavens opened. And it rained and it rained and it rained some more. And Oliver looked from the windows of his palace and saw that the sacred field of Tol-ka was awash with fish and whales and other creatures of the sea.

And Oliver was sore afraid, because it was approaching the time of the Feast of the Final, one of the holiest days of the year. And the Feast of the Final was to take place on the sacred field of Tol-ka.

And he gathered his tenants about him and saith unto them in a tone that was firm but gentle: Thou may labour and play and ply thy oxen and covet thy neighbour’s wife, yet I forbid thee to enter upon the sacred field of Tol-ka lest it should be defiled before the Feast of the Final.

And his tenants answered him, Sure.

Among the tenants of Oliver, however, there was a man named Buck-ley. And Buck-ley had led his tribe of nomadic warriors to great victories in the field of battle. And he said unto himself, Wherefore should I answer to Oliver? True he is my landlord and I must pay unto him many shekels, but must I bow to him on bended knee forever?

And Buck-ley ignored the warning of the great Oliver and he did lead his men into battle with the children of Bow-ez upon the sacred field of Tol-ka.

And when the battle was over, Oliver came out onto the sacred field of Tol-ka. And he looked upon the defilement of the sacred grass. And he saw that it was not good. And he bowed down his head and rented his garments and wailed and lamented to the Lord.

And the Lord appeared to Oliver in the shop behind the field. And he sayeth, Fear not, Oliver, for I will send an angel to help you prepare the sacred field of Tol-ka in preparation for the Feast of the Final. And his name shall be Men-ton.

And it came to pass that the angel Men-ton did come to Tol-ka. And he assisted Oliver’s servants to prepare the sacred field. And Oliver looked and saw that it was good.

And on the day of the Feast of the Final, two tribes did come to join in battle on the sacred field. And one was a barbaric, fearsome tribe from the north, and the other was the tribe of Sham-rock, led by the aged warrior Buck-ley. And many people did come to Tol-ka to look upon the great battle. And Oliver looked and saw that it was good.

But in the middle of the battle, a miraculous thing happened. A steel pylon suddenly caught fire for no reason at all. And Oliver was afraid, and he looked into the burning pylon and saw the face of the Lord. And the Lord spoke to Oliver thus: Look into your heart, Oliver.

And Oliver replied, But you know I do not have one, Lord.

And just as the Lord was about to reply, there was a breath of wind from a red canister and the fire was extinguished.

And it happened that the barbaric men from the north gained victory at the Feast, and among their number there was much yelling and drinking and shouting and showing of arses. But Oliver was troubled and pondered deep into the night the message of the Lord. And he prayed long and hard unto the Lord that he might give him guidance.

And it passed that in the middle of the night, the Lord appeared again to Oliver, saying, Well, what do you want now?

And Oliver replied, About your message this afternoon…..

And the Lord said, Look, Oliver, you really…..

Excuse me, sayeth Oliver. I did not interrupt you; will you kindly not interrupt me? As I was going to say, I would appreciate it if you did not insist in speaking in riddles all the time. What do you mean by telling me to look into my heart?

And the Lord replied, I am the Lord, the Creator of all things, the Light of the World, the Supreme Being. A fat man in his underpants is questioning me at four o’clock in the morning. Go figure.

And the next day, Oliver looked into his heart, as the Lord had bade him to do, and he summoned the aged warrior Buck-ley to his presence.

And when Buck-ley appeared in his presence, Oliver said unto him. Buck-ley, my tenant, you have given me many shekels for many moons. But you disobeyed me when I told you not to enter upon the sacred Field of Tol-ka when you fought the men from Bow-ez.

Consider the man who sows his seed on watery ground. The seed will wither and rot and die.

And Buck-ley replied, Not if it is rice seed.

And Oliver was vexed with the answer and said, Foolish tenant. I took you to my bosom with love and tenderness and you repay me with wisecracks. Go now, take up thy bed and thy oxen and thy kith and kin and be gone from my sight, forever to wander the ends of the earth, yea, even unto the place they call In-chi-cor.

And Buck-ley replied, What are kith?

And the Lord looked down and saw that it was not good. And he came down to earth and when Oliver was passing, he jumped out at him from behind a corner flag.

Ah, my faithful Oliver, said the Lord. How’s she cuttin’?

And Oliver replied nervously, Grand, Lord. Not a bother.

And the Lord looked around and said, Where is thy faithful tenant, Buck-ley, Oliver?

And Oliver wiped the sweat from his brow and answered, Er, he’s just popped down to the shops, I think.

Foolish man! cried the Lord. Do you not think I cannot see inside your own head? You have done wrong by thy brother Buck-ley. Now you will receive vengeance from me.

And Oliver was sore afraid, and ran squealing into the Holy Dressing Room. And the Lord sent down a rain, the like of which had not been since for many moons. And he commanded the waters of the river to rise up and wash over the sacred field of Tol-ka, yea into the boardroom and even into the bar itself.

And the waters continued to rise and Oliver gnashed his teeth and rent his garments and threw himself on the ground and rolled in the dust and put on sackcloth and wailed and lamented. And at length, he called out to the Lord, Oh, all right, I’m sorry.

And the Lord looked down and stilled the troubled waters.

The Book of Oliver

2007-09-26T15:01:00.002-07:00

[This is an extract from the soon-to-be-published “Book of Oliver”, one of the lost books of the Old Testament. It was recently discovered behind a bookcase in the sitting-room of a house in Gracepark Avenue, and, despite being written in ballpoint pen, archaeologists estimate it to be nearly 4,000 years old.]

And the Lord appeared to Oliver in the midst of the battle with the Patricians. Fear not, He said, for I shall smite thine enemies. And I shall rent their tongues from their mouths and cause a plague of locusts to descend upon their heads.

And while the Patricians were thus occupied, the Lord guided the foot of Stew-art-Byrne. And he smote a mighty blow deep in the hearts of the pagans. And among the children of Shel-bourne there was much rejoicing and praising the Lord.

But the good Oliver, who had been beset by his tormentors throughout the entire battle, leapt to his feet and made certain signs to his tormentors and told them to go forth and multiply.

And the Lord saw this and saw it was not good.

And He guided the foot of Russ-ell and the great warrior O-sam and together they caused great distress among the children of Shel-bourne.
And the great Oliver, on seeing so much distress among the children of Shel-bourne, broke down and wept. And he rent his garments and gnashed his teeth and then he rent his teeth and gnashed his garments. And he called out, My Lord, My Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me? Have I not been a good and faithful servant all my life? Why do you not confound mine enemies and scatter them to the ends of the earth?

And the Lord replied, Shit happens. Get over it.

Chapter 8

After the second battle with the pagans, the children of Shel-bourne were angry with the great Oliver. There were mumblings of discontent amongst the faithful.

The great Oliver heard of the discontent of his children and he summoned them to a great meeting in the hall of Tol-ka. And all the elders were assembled and a great feeling of dissatisfaction pervaded the hall.

And the great Oliver took the Lord aside and said unto Him, My Lord, how am I to deal with this multitude for they are sore vexed?

And the Lord replied, Try faking a bit of humility.

And the great Oliver stood up amongst the children of Shel-bourne and addressed them thus. My children, he cried, wherefore art thou wailing and gnashing of teeth?

And one of them replied, Thou hast caused disgrace to visit the heads of thy children. Yea, even though the cuckoo lies down with the rabbit, so the lion will lay unnaturally with the camel.

And the great Oliver replied, Get thee behind me Satan! Hast thou forgotten how I lead the children of Shel-bourne out of the wilderness after thirty years of wanderings? Hast thou forgotten how I brought thee into the Promised Land of Cham-pions League? Hast thou forgotten how I put great gifts of silverware into thy trophy cabinet? Hast thou forgotten how I fought the evil Do-lan and carried away his fifteen points? Hast thou forgotten how I fought the men from the north when they uttered blasphemies on their flags? Hast thou forgotten….

Okay, okay, called the children of Shel-bourne. We get the picture.

And the Lord looked down and saw that it was good.

And when next the children of Shel-bourne took the field in battle, he breathed into their nostrils and put fire up their arses. And the men from the wilds of Long-ford were put to the sword.

Shirt Kissing in the U.S.A.

2007-09-26T15:01:00.001-07:00

[Actually, this article has nothing to do with the U.S.A. I just couldn’t come up with a better title.]

I was down at the always impressive Stadium of Light the other week, and enjoyed a very entertaining contest between Pats and Shels. Both sides probably felt they could and should have won and a draw was probably a fair result.

Two incidents, [amongst many others, I hasten to add,] stuck in my mind after the match. The first was after the Pat’s second goal. Bennion came and flapped like a man going under for the third time, and Colm Foley, judging his run and jump to perfection, nodded into an unguarded net. Foley wheeled around in obvious delight and, running back to the halfway line, kissed the crest of his shirt.

After the final whistle, Stephen Geoghegan, our two goal hero, came over to Section G and applauded the fans. Grabbing his jersey by the crest, he shook it at us, before planting a big wet smacker on the three castles.

This apparent display of infatuation with football jerseys is by no means confined to Messrs. Foley and Geoghegan. Week in, week out, up and down the country, players who are fortunate enough to find the net, often seize the moment to indulge in a spot of shirt snogging. The question is – why?

I do the goods inwards for a small manufacturing company. If, as occasionally happens, I succeed in taking in a particularly difficult or awkward delivery, I feel no compunction to kiss the tacky polo shirt that I am obliged to wear. The languid and disinterested youth who occasionally serves me in Macdonalds, rarely, if ever, displays any affection towards his rather fetching brown and yellow uniform, even after successfully collecting four different burgers, chips and four different drinks and depositing them safely on my tray. It appears to be a phenomenon associated solely with soccer players.

What a footballer of course is saying when displaying such intimate feelings towards his jersey is, “Look at me. By this simple act, I am symbolically showing my undying love and devotion to the club for whom I am performing.” Of course, he might not be able to articulate such sentiments, but he is experiencing them nonetheless.

This is of course a very praiseworthy and laudatory gesture, and the supporter will usually respond to it by roaring encouragement at the player concerned. Fans, by their very definition, are supremely loyal to a club and admire displays of loyalty by their players.

But one nagging question remains. Why do players only ever make this gesture of supreme loyalty at a celebratory time of the match [e.g. after scoring a goal or immediately after the final whistle of a match narrowly won?] Suppose Colin Hawkins next week were to slice a horrible clearance into the roof of his own net. The chances are he will not run over to the faithful in the Jodi Stand and give his club crest a bit of tongue sandwich. If he did, he would certainly be looked at oddly. But why not display your loyalty to a club at bad times? Surely it is easy to be loyal when experiencing great personal success, but a lot more difficult when things are going against you.

And therein lies the nub of the problem that I have with this lip service to loyalty. Because that’s all it is – lip service. With a very few notable exceptions, a professional footballer will gravitate towards the highest possible weekly wage that he can achieve. Suppose Bray Wanderers decided that they’d have to halve Jason Byrne’s wages and Paul Doolin came in and offered him double [unlikely, yes, but its only an example] Robbie Keane’s more famous cousin might love Bray, but the smart money would envisage him plying his trade at Belfield in the not-too-distant future. If Birmingham or West Brom come in for Wes Houlihan, he’d be off like a shot. Not because he’s going to win more medals [because he’s not], but because he’d be maximising his earning potential.

It may seem that I’m criticising players for their mercenary attitudes, but really I’m not. The company I work for have been fairly good to me, but if the firm next door offered me double what I’m on now, my loyalty would go flying out of the window. Loyalty to a club reached its pinnacle in the fifties and early sixties, before the abolition of the maximum wage. It was a lot easier to be loyal when you knew you were earning the maximum amount of money at your present club. Once the ceiling on earnings was abolished, and clubs could pay players whatever they liked, transfers mushroomed. The cream of Irish footballers now looked to England as their Mecca, as the financial rewards were so much higher than League of Ireland clubs could afford.

My point is that professional footballers, no more or no less than every working man or woman in the state, will try to earn as much money as they can. If its worth my while to change my employer, I will. We should not blame players for their apparent lack of loyalty. They are paid employees of a football club. They might enjoy being a part of the club, they might feel a spirit within the club, they might give their all for a club – but how many of them would continue if asked to play for nothing?

Peter Hutton’s move from Derry to Shels is a case in point. Peter spent 10 years at Derry and then unexpectedly signed for Shels. The Derry fans were incensed. They called him a Judas. If that was the case, every player who has ever been transferred up the footballing ladder is a Judas. Every player that Derry signs is a Judas.

One of the main differences between fans and players is the money issue. Fans don’t get paid for supporting their team. Just imagine that Dublin City decided to pay their supporters, say, €100 per match, would I transfer my loyalty from Shels? Much as I love Shels, I would be forced to admit that Dublin City valued me more than Shels did. But in the real world, fans follow their teams out of loyalty. They normally lose money through their support. It is a true act of love to follow your side through thick and thin, to follow them through the lean years.

Fans should not expect players to be as loyal as they themselves are. We go along to a match once a week. It is a past-time, a hobby. A passionate, obsessive hobby, but a hobby nonetheless. For a player, it is his livelihood. The standard of living for himself, his wife and his children is at stake. It is a completely different set of criteria, and fans have no right to expect the same degree of loyalty as they themselves show.

So why do players insist on shirt kissing? Snogging a piece of nylon does not mean that player is loyal to a club, that he loves that club. It is a piece of ostentatious codology on a par with Ciaran Fitzgerald’s “Where’s your f-----g pride?” or Vinnie Jones’ fist clenching. It is playing to an audience and I’m sure that the other players on the team see it as such. Unfortunately, the fans seem to take it at face value.

I remember, nearly ten years ago, a young Cork lad playing for Nottingham Forest in the English Premier League. He scored a goal for the struggling club, and slid on his knees towards the corner flag, kissing his shirt as he did so. The crowd went mad. Three weeks later, the same player started making “Come and get me” overtures to Manchester United. The Forest fans were incensed, but the young lad had no need of them any more. [I often wonder what became of him, by the way.]

So, lads. Leave it out. Put the effort in on the pitch, work hard, go in bravely. We’ll love you. But leave out the oral sex with your shirt. Unless you’re coming to the end of your career, you’ll probably be looking for a transfer sooner or later and then your enthusiastic displays of loyalty will seem all the more hollow.

Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Missing Letter (unfinished)

2007-09-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

It was the in the early years of the new century, and the old queen clung grimly to the throne, while her eldest son impatiently rogered his mistress. Sherlock Holmes, in dressing gown and deerstalker hat, was snorting cocaine and playing the violin in his Baker Street lodgings. Oddly enough, he was blowing it like a trumpet.
Sitting in the armchair opposite him, I sighed and laid down the “Times” crossword. “Can’t get fourteen across,” I grumbled. “Body Canal. Ten letters.”
“Alimentary, my dear Watson,” Holmes replied instantly, ceasing for a moment his musical and narcotic peregrinations.
I laughed heartily, and was about to return to the “Times,” when there came the sound of boots running up the stairs outside. They stopped outside of Holmes’ door, shuffled uneasily for a while and then came a single peremptory knock.
“Forty three years old. Served with the army in India but was shipped home after a scandal with a young elephant. Has fallen on hard times, but has hope of returning to his former status. Married twice, the first time to a Filipino waitress, the second time to a packet of cornflakes.” Holmes uttered these words with an affected casualness.
My long acquaintance with Sherlock Holmes should have inured me to amazement, yet he never ceased to dumbfound me. I crossed the floor to the door and swung it open.
“It’s the pizza boy,” I called in to Holmes, bringing in two steaming boxes.
Scarcely had I closed the door on the delivery boy, when there came again the sound of boots pounding two at a time up the front stairs. Outside the door the boots stopped, then suddenly performed the tap-dancing routine from the Gene Kelly musical “Gee! She’s a Swell Gal, ain’t she Bob?” followed by several large poundings on the panelled door. I glanced quizzically at my companion, but he was studying intently the mushroom topping on his pizza.
For the second time that evening, I crossed over to the door and proceeded to open it. I was however nearly bowled over by the large, burly figure that crashed into our parlour. He had the wild-eyed look of a foreigner and his hair stuck out like a mad toilet brush. He stopped in the middle of the floor, his head darting crazedly between Holmes and myself.
Holmes stopped sprinkling cocaine on his pizza and eyed the foreigner curiously. “You are an old Etonian,” he addressed the stranger. “You prefer haddock to whiting, but you wouldn’t be seen dead with either. You have a dog called Tibbles. You once severed a nostril in an incident in a library, and your name, unless I’m very much mistaken, is Lionel Edward Mentary.”
“Good Lord, Holmes!” I ejaculated. “How could you possibly know that?”
“L.E. Mentary, my dear Watson. I went to school with him when I was a boy. A time, dear friend, that I have often maintained, is the best one for going to school.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” interjected the stranger. “But you must be confusing me with somebody else. My name is Oliver Byrne. You may have heard of me. I used to drink with David Johansson.”
Holmes snorted loudly and reached for the leather bound copy of “Who’s Who” on the bureau shelf. Flicking impatiently through the pages, he came at last to the desired page. “Here we are,” he said. “Byrne, Oliver, football…Shelbourne…cigarettes..Johansson, David.”
“Rugger?” I exclaimed hopefully.
“Association Football,” remarked Holmes deflatedly. “A minority sport practised by ruffians, I believe.” He turned to our visitor. “Well, Mr. Byrne,” he said coldly, indicating a seat, “What brings you to London?”
Oliver Byrne sat down heavily in the proffered chair and wiped his brow profusely. He was a large, burly man, one who might have been considered handsome, but for the fact that he wasn’t. He glanced towards me nervously.
“Watson is my oldest and most faithful friend, Mr. Byrne,” interjected Holmes, seeing the other’s distress. “As well as being the father of my children. You may speak in complete confidence before him.”
“Oh, Mister Holmes,” began the other, “I have travelled this very day from Ireland to visit you” – here I saw Holmes reaching for the atlas – “about a matter that has tormented me for a considerable period of time. It all began several months ago. As you know, I run a very large and profitable association football club in Dublin. That is in Ireland, Mister Holmes. This club is called Shelbourne.
In this city of Dublin, I have numerous rivals, but the greatest of these is a large, portly chap named Dolan. To say that he is the bane of my life is an understatement. He runs a rival football club, named St. Patrick’s…”
“After the saint?” I ventured.
“Indeed verily,” he answered, “but let me assure you, Mister Watson, there is nothing saintly about this football club. A bigger gang of ruffians you never saw in your life. Dolan is the mastermind. Everything goes through him. Oh, but he is very clever, Mister Holmes. He keeps his nose clean at all times.”
“How so, Mister Byrne?” questioned Holmes sharply.
“Well, with a hanky mostly,” replied Byrne. “But lately, there have been tales of dark deeds coming out of his organisation. One of his minions was caught without registration. There were stiff penalties imposed on St. Patrick’s. But Dolan has power. He controls people. He got the penalties rescinded by people more powerful than himself. I have been vilified in the press in Ireland. I have even..” and here he began to sob uncontrollably, “I have even been criticised.”
“I fail to see your problem, Mister Byrne,” purred Holmes. “What do you want me to do?”
“Mister Holmes, Dolan is an evil man. He threatens to take over my organisation. If I could only find the letter he purported to send….”
“Letter?” said Holmes suddenly, sitting bolt upright in his chair. “Did you say letter?”
“I did, Mister Holmes. Is it significant?”
“Not really,” replied Holmes. “I just had a piece of tomato in my ear and couldn’t hear you properly. Pray continue.”
“Dolan claims the letter was sent by ordinary post. The recipients said they never received it. The only explanation is….”
“That it was lost by the Post Office?” I scoffed. “Come now, that’s hardly very likely, is it?”
“Preposterous,” added Holmes.
“My feelings exactly,” cried Byrne. “Yet, here is the mystery. Dolan has produced a receipt for the letter!”
I stood up quickly. “What a bounder this fellow Dolan must be,” I stated. “How dare he malign such a venerable organisation as the Post Office?”
“He has a hard neck,” replied Byrne sorrowfully, “though the rest of his body is quite soft.” He turned to my companion, “Mister Holmes, will you help me?”
“Watson!” commanded Holmes with a smile. “It seems that we travel to Dublin this very night. Pack a valise for me, there’s a good chap. Make sure you pack my nightie. The peach one with the lacey bits.”
* * * * * * * * * * *

The hansom cab rattled over the glistening cobbles of London’s smoky streets. This however had no bearing on the story, as Holmes, Byrne and I were descending the gangway in Kingstown, a coastal village ten miles south of Dublin. The journey from London had been largely uneventful save for a horrific train accident and the accidental sinking of the passenger ferry with the loss of 500 lives. Holmes however was in playful mood and continually pinched our companion’s backside until he protested.

There were no hansom cabs to be had on the quayside in Kingstown, so we hired an ugly one instead. Byrne had wired ahead to arrange our lodgings in a reputable tavern in the city centre, and within an hour, Holmes and I were comfortably ensconced in our room, our host having retired to his own abode, with promises that he should meet us at ten o’clock the following morning.
“How did you find this Byrne chappie, Holmes?” I asked, as I clipped my toenails merrily.
“I didn’t. He found us. Remember?” Holmes replied. “Bit of a rum chap. Kept on asking if I wanted a cigarette. When I declined, I caught him pushing one into my pipe."”
“Good Lord, Holmes!” I began, but Holmes suddenly put his hand to his lips and tiptoed deftly towards the door. I picked up the largest object I could find, which happened to be a bronze statue of a squirrel defecating in Donadee Forest, and stomped noisily to the other side of the door. Holmes carefully reached for the door handle and I raised the statue above my head. Then on the count of three, Holmes swung the door inwards, and I just caught site of a small, sprightly figure tumbling into the room, when I brought the statue down on its head.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“How could you, Watson?” Holmes said for the twentieth time, as he paced the narrow confines of our prison cell.
“I’m sorry, Holmes,” I repeated crestfallen. “How was I to know that the Archbishop of Dublin was staying down the corridor, and that he was just leaning against our door while adjusting his mitre?”
“Yes, yes, dear friend. I’m sorry,” continued Holmes magnanimously. “I continually credit you with having an intelligence similar to my own, yet in reality you are as thick as the smog we have left behind in London. Please forgive me.” And he kissed me passionately on the lips.
“Steady on, old chap!” I cajoled him, though secretly feeling rather pleased.
“I wonder where that Oliver Byrne chap is,” murmured Holmes. “I sent him a wire two hours ago to come and bail us out.”
“How did you know his number, Holmes?” I enquired wonderingly.
“I didn’t. I just sent him a piece of wire,” replied the other disingenuously.
“Pardon me, sir!” said a voice to our left. We both turned around sharply. Then, for the devil, we turned around bluntly. There, before us, stood a little, wizened old man. I estimated his age to be four hundred and seven. He was barely five feet in height, but seven feet six inches in width. He had a recalcitrant baboon on his shoulder and wore a rather fetching orange trouser suit. His hair was long and plum-coloured and on his feet he wore flippers. As the only other occupant of our cell, I wondered idly how we hadn’t noticed him before.
“Pardon me, sir!” he repeated, “But I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Are you expecting the imminent arrival of one Oliver Byrne?”
“What of it?” demanded Holmes peremptorily, striking the man firmly on the buttocks. “What business is it of yours?”
“Forgive me, sir, for appearing so forward,” replied the other, “but you won’t see Mr. Byrne within one hundred yards of a polis station, sir. He doesn’t like them, you see, sir.”
“And how do you know this, man?” cried Holmes. “Come on! Speak, you rat! Speak! Speak!”
“He can’t, Holmes,” I interjected. “You’re squeezing his lips together, old boy.”
Holmes relinquished his grip on the man’s lips, and the latter sank back onto the bench. He took several deep breaths, and then gave them back again.
“I work for Dolan…” began the man. At these words, Holmes immediately sprang into a crouched position and made the sign of the cross with his arms. The old man regarded him oddly and continued.
“I do odd jobs for him, like. He’s very good to me is Mr. Dolan. Gave me one of his pies once. Took it back immediately, of course, but…”
“What kind of “odd jobs” do you perform for that fiend?” cried Holmes, seizing the man’s left nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
“Just odd jobs, sir,” replied the other. “Hiding the roller. Forging receipts from the Post Office. The usual sort of thing.”
“The roller?” quizzed Holmes. “You mean, he likes to curl his hair?”
“On the contrary, sir,” retorted the old man, as a small trickle of urine ran dejectedly down his leg. “He plasters his hair down on to his head, as though he’s afraid it might fly away.”
Holmes resumed his pacing of the cell. “This is a very singular development, Watson,” he muttered to me behind his hand.
“How so, Holmes?” I asked, bewildered.
“Well, in so far as it’s not a plural development, I suppose,” my friend replied. “Must you question me on everything?”
Suddenly, there was a rattling of keys and the cell door swung open. A police constable eyed us malevolently.
“You were born on a small satellite of the star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion,” snapped Holmes immediately. “Your mother was a failed cocktail waitress who made it big in the movies. There is a mole just on the left-hand side of your groin, but it normally sleeps during the daytime. You once had a horse called Kylie and you store the cheese that you pick between your toes in a jamjar.”
“Yes, sir,” said the constable condescendingly. “Your bail has been paid. You’re free to go. You must surrender your passport. You are not permitted to leave the country except when emigrating. You must report to the desk sergeant every afternoon except Wednesday, when he has ballet classes.”
“Come, Watson!” cried Holmes, “We have a mystery to solve!”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Holmes and I purchased some rather sickly looking mussels and cockles from M. Malone & Co [Shellfish Importers], and proceeded to a nearby tavern to review the evidence so far. I had just achieved the double-sixteen, much to Holmes’ disgust, when the burly figure of Mr. Byrne pushed his way through the rowdy throng to our table.
“Mr. Holmes, Mr. Watson,” he exclaimed, displaying a remarkable memory and shaking us firmly by the leg. “I am so glad to see you. Have you heard the latest developments?”
When Holmes and I both replied in the negative, he produced a copy of the Evening Standard and unfurled it roughly on the table. “There!” he pointed triumphantly. “Read that!”
“ ‘William Gladstone Ate My Hamster,’” I read out loud. “Good Lord, Holmes! Gladstone is carnivorous.”
Mr. Byrne’s hand roughly tore the paper out of my grasp as he perused it wildly. “There! There!” he pointed, slamming it back down in the beer slops.
“Impartial Adjudicator Rules In Dolan’s Favour,” I read again. “What can it mean, Holmes?”
My companion, who was slyly retrieving his third dart from the hatstand, was quick to answer. “I think you’ll find, Watson,” he said quietly, “that the impartial adjudicator has ruled in Dolan’s favour.”
“Good Lord, Mr. Holmes!” cried Byrne. “You’re spot on. He has. Dolan is in the clear…..”
“And the reputation of the Royal Mail is in tatters,” finished Holmes. “I smell something decidedly fishy here, gentlemen.”
“That must be the cockles you secreted in your waistcoat pocket, old boy,” I said, rather pleased with my own powers of deduction.
“I think,” said Holmes, ignoring me completely, “that the time has come for us to pay a visit to this Mr. Dolan. Where can we find him, Byrne?”
“Find him?” echoed the other incredulously. “You cannot find him. He is but a shadow in the night, flitting half-sensed from one foul abode to the next under cover of darkness. His companions are stealth and cunning, and a large bag of chips. If you seek him, he will be watching you. He has the third eye and can sense danger. Some say he has the features of a bat, some say he looks like a teapot. The truth is, nobody knows for certain. His Machiavellian mind plots and schemes………” He broke off as he realised that Holmes was watching him carefully under raised eyebrows. “Inchicore,” he finished, deflatedly.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The hansom cab rattled along the cobbled streets of Kilmainham as twilight fell with a startled cry. In the back, I idly wondered how much faster we would be travelling, if the wheels had not been stolen two miles back. Our horses flinched nervously, as though eager to flee this accursed place.
“I feel a strange foreboding,” said Holmes who was sitting on my lap with a curious expression on his face. He flung back the curtain of the cab, and gazed out at the wretched creatures staggering along the grimy street. “Look at them, Watson. Like the very residue of Hell itself. Notice the red and white scarves they sport. Obviously some kind of secret society, some foul devil-worshipping pagan cabal. Come, Watson, let us get this business over with.”
Rapped premptorily on the ceiling of the cab, the driver stopped immediately, and Holmes bounded through the door and into an old dilapidated house, leaving me to pay the fare. I idly wondered why the driver was a giant black bat, but bid him a hearty “Good day!” even though he moaned dejectedly when I had nothing smaller than a penny.
Hurrying through the ramshackle door, I ascended the narrow staircase with urgent haste, pausing only once to consume a tomato and lettuce sandwich. At the top, I came upon a large door marked ‘Door’ and pushed through it.
There were two men seated in the room on opposite sides of a wooden desk. One was my friend, Sherlock Holmes, whom I recognised immediately. The other was a large, corpulent man dressed in a black waitcoat and striped shirt. Curiously, he was naked from the waist down.
“Ah, Watson,” exclaimed Holmes, displaying once again his remarkable memory for names. “Allow me to introduce Mr. Dolan. Mr. Dolan has just invited me to sample a slice of gooseberry pie. Simply delicious. Would you care for a slice, old boy?”
“Not too big now,” interjected the larger man, nervously.
I declined, having once being the victim of an unsavoury incident at Eton involving a gooseberry and a bicycle pump. Since then, I have been unable to look a gooseberry in the eye without breaking into a cold sweat.
“So you see, Mr. Holmes,” Dolan continued, “your journey to Dublin appears to have been a wasted one. As you see I have a receipt for postage. Mr. Byrne is a very deluded old man. I am surprised that a man of your abilities could have been hoodwinked by such an imbecile.”
“This is a blank piece of paper with the word 50p written on it in ballpoint pen,” snapped Holmes impatiently. “It is like a barrister with no legs – it wouldn’t stand up in a court of law.”
Dolan allowed a faint smile to play around the corner of his lips, then told it to come in and get ready for bed. “I think you will find that the Impartial Adjudicator found in my favour, Mr. Holmes,” he said softly.
Holmes however had spotted a paper handkerchief lying on the desk. He snatched it up eagerly and opened it out. There in letters big and bold was the word ‘Lies’ repeated some four dozen times.
“I put it to you, Mr. Dolan,” exclaimed Holmes, “that this is a tissue of lies!”
Dolan blanched visibly. Then he blanched invisibly. Then visibly again.
“Enough blanching, Dolan!” called Holmes, leaping to his feet and drawing his cane.
“Nice picture, Holmes,” I murmured, when he showed it to me. “Good use of colour.”
Suddenly there was a puff of smoke and a large explosion and Dolan disappeared. We just caught a glimpse of a big bat in a black waistcoat flapping out of the open window. I made a mental note of the fact that it was the first time I had seen a flying cricket bat.
“What knavery is this, Watson?” called Holmes, dashing to the open window and gazing out into the smog of the Inchicore evening.
It was a difficult question. By the time I was ready to articulate an answer, Holmes had bounded down the staircase, caught a cab back into town, and spent several days observing the activities of the city’s postal workers.
(Unfinished due to boredom)

One Player’s Influence

2007-09-26T14:58:00.001-07:00

The Roy Keane / Saipan incident caused deep divisions in the Irish footballing fraternity. Like Civil War politics, it split families, friends, colleagues. I decided quite early on to avoid getting into arguments over it, although that was not easy when you heard the huge amount of verbal effluent spouted by non-football people on both sides of the divide.
I’m not going to rake up the whys and wherefores of the situation again. Most of us are sick to death of the subject. But there were two statements of opinion that kept on, and keep on, recurring whenever the argument rears its ugly, little head: -
1] It was Roy who got us through to the World Cup in the first place.
2] If we’d have had Roy, we’d have reached at least the semi-finals.
These two statements assume that one player can win a match, or indeed a succession of matches on his own. Is this possible?
We have all become accustomed, in the hysterical hyperbole that is the sporting press, to encountering the phrase “match-winner” or “potential match-winner”. Invariably, these players are forwards, which is a bit of an insult to the other nine players on the team.
Of course, anyone has the potential to win a match. Oliver Kahn’s performances helped Germany to the World Cup Final. Paul Osam bosses it at Pats. Bruce and Pallister were twin towers at the back for United. But can one player, on his own, really win a match?
The example that frequently comes up is that of Maradonna in the 1986 World Cup Finals. To most people, his performances in that tournament were the closest we have seen to perfection. His goals against England and Belgium took your breath away. [Why do English people have the nerve to keep bringing up the “Hand of God” goal, after Michael Owen has blatantly dived in two successive World Cups to gain penalties against Argentina?]
Maradonna’s influence on that Argentinian team was immense, and most serious commentators doubt they would have won the World Cup without him. We shall never know for sure, but Argentina was still a pretty useful team without him. In the Final itself, Diego had a very quiet game, although it could be argued that Germany paid him so much attention that it allowed other players to express themselves more.
But, the question remains – if Maradonna were Welsh, would Wales have even got to Mexico, never mind won the damn thing? I seriously doubt it. Individual brilliance may turn a match on its head, but there are many ingredients which make a good team. George Best may well have helped Manchester United to the European Cup, but he was still there when the inevitable slump came a couple of years later. And despite his brilliance, he never dragged Northern Ireland into the World Cup Finals. And, if Best couldn’t do it, it seems absurd to claim that Keane was able to do it.
Best and Maradonna were geniuses. They could do things other players couldn’t do. Keane is more of an inspirational player. He doesn’t possess breathtaking skill, but he does the simple things better than almost anyone. He will inspire his teammates, in much the same way that Mick McCarthy used to for the Republic of Ireland. [The comparison is not merely mischievous, but probably an indication of why there was a personality clash there]
Whereas it is possible for a player to turn a game on its head by some breathtaking display, for a team to be successful over a period of time there are other attributes that are needed. Managerial nous is important. Organisational ability, tactical acumen, motivational skills all combine to allow your better players to express themselves. As France found out at the recent World Cup, you can have the best players in the world, but that doesn’t always translate into success. You need players of a decent footballing ability who will give their all for the cause. You need a good goalkeeper, a defence that works as a unit, a midfield that both spoils and distributes, and forwards who, if not scoring themselves, will allow other players the opportunity to get forward and score. And, most importantly, you need luck. We rode our luck in qualification for the Finals, just as we rode our luck during the Finals themselves. Its better to have an average but lucky team, than a brilliant but unlucky one.
Lets examine the important games in our qualification group, viz. the two games against Holland and the two games against Portugal. We won one of those games, thanks to some brutal finishing by the Dutch, and drew the other three. If truth be told, given the ability of our team, we could not have expected more. Roy Keane played in all four games.
In Japan and Korea, we again drew three games, against Cameroons, Germany and Spain.
Germany and Spain, in particular, I would put on a par with Portugal and Holland.
Now, how come we could not beat Portugal or Holland in three of the four games with Roy Keane, but people are saying we would have beaten Germany and Spain if he had been present? It doesn’t make any sense at all.
He’s a great player and his presence could only have strengthened our side, that’s admitted. But Holland and Kinsella played out of their skins, and more than compensated for his absence.
And don’t forget, Ireland and Man United have both lost matches occasionally when Roy has been playing. He is not Superman.
At the start of the Charlton era, when Liam Brady fell out of favour, there were numerous calls for him to be reinstated in the team. How could you not pick a player of his ability? These people seemed to forget very conveniently the games in which Brady was absolute rubbish for Ireland [the 1-0 defeat away to Norway springs immediately to mind]. Roy, on the other hand, rarely had a bad game for Ireland, but to listen to some people talking, we won every game when he was in the team. This is the rose-tinted brigade up to their old tricks again.
To say that Roy was solely responsible for our qualification for the Finals is extremely insulting to the management and the players who got us there. You could argue that we wouldn’t have drawn in Lisbon if it weren’t for Matt Holland’s goal. Therefore, Matt Holland got us through to the Finals. Or Jason McAteer. The truth is, it was a combined effort, everybody helped, and you cannot say that it was thanks to one player alone that we got there. Roy was not a great player in a mediocre side; he was a great player in a good side. And in Japan and Korea, he was a great player not in a good side. It is easy to claim we’d have got further with him – for that is an opinion that is impossible to contradict – but logic dictates otherwise.

Nutsy Fenlon and The Cup of Setanta

2007-09-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

“You’re a wizard, Nutsy.”
Pat Fenlon was in his third term at Tolkwarts, and he still got a lump in his throat when he recalled those words. Headmaster Ollibus Byrnelbore –Grand Wizard of the Order of the Three Castles - had spoken them and they had changed Nutsy’s life forever.
Olbus had told Nutsy about his destiny, how he had been born to counteract the evil Lord Dolanmore, and lead Tolkwarts into a glorious Golden European age full of plum ties against classy opposition. Nutsy had scarcely believed it, but it explained the mysterious pain in his backside whenever he sensed Lord Dolanmore was near.
Nutsy remembered the many battles he had had with his arch-enemy over the past three years. Though Dolanmore – Nutsy’s friends still blanched whenever they heard the name – was infinitely more powerful, still Nutsy, through cunning and tactical nous, had managed to overcome him on many occasions. Even when the evil Lord had summonsed all his most dastardly magic to trip Nutsy up, still Nutsy had fought back valiantly, and his “Sad man perplexed by Shels” thrust had struck Dolanmore a fearful blow, from which he had been forced to withdraw.
But today, the common room at Tolkwarts was rife with hurried whispers and hushed conversations. You Know Who had been toppled from power and banished from the kingdom of Munster. His wand had been confiscated and even now the fearsome Dementors were escorting him to Prison at Limerick, though even they were loathe to give him the fateful kiss that would suck all the joviality from his body.
“Looks like you’re safe now, Nutsy,” said his pal, Eamonn, slapping him on the back. Nutsy liked Eamonn, although he had once lived in an absolute kip, that even the rats had abandoned.
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Eamo,” Nutsy replied to his impetuous friend. “Remember the time Ollibus thought he had him trapped and cornered by a registered envelope, and he changed into a snake and wriggled free. I imagine he’s out there somewhere, licking his wounds and plotting his revenge. Mark my words, Eamo, Dolanmore will be back in some shape or form.”
“I heard a rumour he’s going to join forces with the great Hufflepuff himself at Rovers,” announced a fresh-faced student, turning on a sixpence and beating five lunging defenders.
“Come, come, Wes,” said Eamonn. “They could never work together. Besides, the Hufflepuff isn’t half the man he thinks he is.”
Unnoticed in the melee, Ollibus Byrnelbore, the wise and great headmaster of Tolkwarts had slipped into the room, carrying a large plastic bag. Widely loved by all the students, it was rumoured that he had been at the school for nearly seven hundred years.
It was Nutsy who noticed him, as he tried to push his way through the exultant mass of students, who had broken into chants of “You Know Who is gone.” Worried at Byrnelbore’s demeanour, he edged closer to the older man. As he did so, he felt a slight twinge in his backside.
“Good morning, Byrnelbore,” exclaimed Nutsy breezily, planting himself squarely in front of the burly figure.
“Oh, good morning, ah, Nutsy, isn’t it?” replied Byrnelbore distractedly. “Run along there now. Must prepare for our next game, you know.”
Nutsy watched him disappearing out of the door on the far side of the room, and felt a sickening in the pit of his stomach. He barely noticed Eamonn coming up beside him, was not conscious of his friend’s penetrating stare.
“What’s wrong Nutsy?” asked Eamonn. “It looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Nutsy scratched his scrotum thoughtfully and said, more to himself than to Eamonn,
“Pies. The bag was full of pies.”
Eamonn looked dumbstruck. “Pies?”
“Yes, pies. Maybe Dolanmore’s defeat down in the village is not all it seems. Maybe he’s going to try a different tack at destroying Tolkwarts. From within!”
“Rubbish, Nutsy,” countered Eamonn. “Old Byrnelbore would never join forces with You Know Who. He loves Tolkwarts too much, for a start.”
“Maybe not willingly,” retorted Nutsy. “But perhaps Dolanmore has some kind of hold on Byrnelbore, perhaps he’s put him under a spell. Come on, Eamonn, we must follow him!”
“I’m not so sure,” said Eamonn. “Follow Byrnelbore? It’s unheard of. Besides, I’m getting bored with this story, and can’t think of a way of ending it.”
Nutsy shrugged. “Yes, you’re right,” he said resignedly. “I think we should just finish it off in the middle of a”

Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be

2007-09-26T14:56:00.000-07:00

Hemmed in during half time in Section D at Tolka recently, I was verbally mugged by the old man sitting next to me. He was wrinkled and wore a dark, shabby coat and I estimated his age to be around 108, although a Pats fan would probably put it nearer the 200 mark. When he started talking, I knew I was in for a long fifteen minutes and settled back to listen.

“You know what’s wrong with footballers today, son?” he asked. “Too much money and too much free time. And no characters. I remember all the great players, years ago. Did you ever hear tell of Badger O’Shaughnessy? Badger played for Drums in the twenties and thirties, great big ox of a man, muscles on his muscles, played left back. In those days a left back was a left back, none of this poncing up and down the wing overlapping,” – here he stuck out his arm to demonstrate the concept – “no, in those days it was the left back’s job to mark the outside right, stop him getting to the line and whipping the ball over.

“Do you know why people called him Badger? Some people said it was on account of the grey streak down the middle of his hair, and other people said it was because he used to eat mice and crap in the woods. To settle the matter, I decided to ask him. “Badger,” I asked him, “Why do they call you Badger?” and do you know what he said? He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Because that’s me name.” Oh, he was a gas man, was Badger.

“Anyway, myself and Badger went to school together, he was a big lad even in school, and we left at fourteen to work down the Inchicore Rail Works and I’ll always remember it, one day, Badger was pulling two carriages into a siding, when this swanky geezer in a sheepskin jacket and a big cigar came over and introduced himself.

“I’m Jimmy Gregory, Badger, but you can call me Fat Bastard,” he said. In those days of course. Fat Bastard was a term of endearment. “There goes Jimmy, the Fat Bastard,” people used to say. Anyhow, Badger turns around and says to him, “Hello, Mr. Bastard” – always the true gentleman was Badger, even when he was sending an outside right into row 17, he’d always apologise afterwards – and Jimmy turns around and says to him, “Do you know who I am?” and of course, Badger knew full well who he was, but he didn’t let on, see, and so he turns around and says, “Yes, I know who you are. You’re Jimmy Gregory, you’re only after telling me. Other than that, I don’t know a thing about you.” And Jimmy Gregory turns around and says, “I’m the manager of Drumcondra. I’ve heard you’re a pretty decent left back. I’d like you to come and play for me,” and Badger turns around and says, “That’s very interesting, Mr. Bastard,” he says, “How much are you going to pay me?” Oh, he was the cute hoor, was Badger, you couldn’t catch him out on anything, and Jimmy Gregory looked him in the chest and said “Thruppence a week in winter and tuppence a week in the summer. Do we have a deal?” – which was a huge amount of money in them days. You could travel around the world for sixpence – and Badger turns around and says “Fourpence,” and Jimmy Gregory turns around and says “Thruppence ha’penny” and Badger says “I won’t be browbeaten over a ha’penny. Its fourpence or nothing,” and Jimmy turns around and says “Done.” And they both shook hands and then they both fell over, what with turning around so much.”

“Now Badger had a brother, see, and his name was Dormouse, on account of him being so small, see, and Dormouse used to play outside left – did you ever hear of him, no? – and Dormouse always told the story of the time he went for a trial at Bohemians, and the Bohemians manager turned around to Dormouse and said, “You’ll never make a footballer. You’re too small and too skinny.” And Dormouse used to tell that story everywhere until people started avoiding him. And the gas thing was that the Bohemians manager was right, he was too small and he was too skinny and he never made a footballer after all.

“Anyway, back to Badger. Badger was a left back, a big barnstorming man, built like a brick shithouse. I remember one time Drums were playing Sligo in the Cup, and Sligo had a winger called Jimmy Bestall, little whippet of an outside right, and he was up against Badger, and Jimmy Gregory had told Badger to stick close to Jimmy Bestall, so Badger did. He stuck to him like glue from the very first whistle, never gave him a kick of the ball, and half time blew and the teams went in for their oranges and Jimmy Gregory turns around and says, “Where’s Badger?” and the next moment there’s a big commotion in the corridor and isn’t it Badger being physically ejected from the Sligo dressing room. Always the gentleman was Badger. Thick as shite but always the gentleman.

“Badger played over 300 games for Drums and never got booked once. Normally he’d just get sent off straight away. Not that he was a dirty player. He was a pussycat, with a heart of gold. He just hated outside rights, that’s all. They kind of brought out the worst side of him.

“There was only one winger who ever got the better of him, Jimmy McIlkenny, played for Fordsons in Cork. Badger liked to let the outside right know early that he was around, so he used to go clattering in to him at the first opportunity. “They won’t skip past me, if their leg’s broken in four places,” he used to say. He was a howl was Badger. Anyway in this game, after a few minutes, the ball gets played out to Jimmy Mac on the right wing and Badger comes charging in, and Jimmy Mac does a kind of a swerve and a sidestep” – here he stuck out both arms to demonstrate – “and Badger does a crunching tackle on…..nothing! By the time he’s collected his thoughts and turned around, Jimmy Mac’s thirty yards away down the line. Anyway, this happens again, and again, and Badger’s getting more and more worked up, but try as he might he can’t lay a boot on Jimmy Mac, whose making Badger look a proper eejit. And in the end, Badger gets so wound up, he pulls a Smith and Wesson out of his shorts and shoots Jimmy Mac in the thigh. “That’ll slow you up, you little bollix,” he says to him, which it did, true enough. He was fortunate though, because the referee didn’t see it, and of course there was no video evidence” – here he spat out the words – “in those days, so he got away with it, and there were very few wingers tried to get past him after that.

“Did you know that in all the years he played for Drums, Badger never scored a goal? Not one! “My job’s stopping goals,” he used to say. “If you want me to score them as well, you may pay me double.” “I leave the hero stuff to the namby pamby forwards,” he used to say. “Dribbling here and sidestepping there. They should be in ballet school, not on a football pitch.”

“Despite all this, he very nearly scored in the last game he ever played for Drums. They were playing Waterford and didn’t Drums get a penno? And Drums were 5-0 up at the time, and the Drums captain Arsey McGlynn, he says to Badger, “Go on and take it” and Badger says no, he’s not a ballet boy, and Arsey says, “Are you scared?” and this rises Badger, and he says “I’ll take your penalty for you” and their keeper had been injured in the first half –but of course there weren’t any substitutes in those days, so he had to stay on the pitch – so the keeper’s there on his line in a wheelchair, and Badger’s running up and everyone’s thinking, he’s going to score his first goal for Drums, and just as he’s about to kick the ball, bugger me, doesn’t he get hit by a meteorite? Flattens him into the turf. That was the end of Badger’s career. End of his life too, actually. Pity, because he had another couple of years left in him. The ref didn’t know what to do. Badger was buried under a half a ton of rock in the penalty area, so he couldn’t be taken off. Every time after that, when Drums played the ball up, the whistle’d go, because Badger was in an offside position, although the Drums players were going mad, saying he wasn’t interfering with play. That’s what’s missing in today’s football. Characters like Badger. Hard but fair, and always a gentleman. Hush up, now, the teams are coming up out for the second half.”

Murder by Death

2007-09-26T14:55:00.002-07:00

The police constable pulled the roller off the flattened figure on the pitch, and Detective Inspector McBiscuit reached down and removed a wallet from the breast pocket.

“Hmm,” he mused, and scratched his nose thoughtfully. When this didn’t work, he scratched the constable’s nose thoughtfully. “John Clapper,” he said. “Clapper? Clapper? That name rings a bell…..”

“Plays left midfield for Pats,” volunteered the constable. “Or, rather, he did…”

“Thank you, Constable,” remarked McBiscuit. “Are you any relation to the famous landscape artist of the nineteenth century, by the way? Never mind. Now, does anything strike you as remarkable about the body?”

“You mean, apart from the fact that he’s twelve feet long, eight feet wide, but only an eighth of an inch thick, sir?”

“Yes, Constable. Look – he was found beneath a roller. Does it not strike you as suspicious that there should be a roller here, in Richmond Park?”

“Good Lord, sir! You don’t mean….”

“Exactly, constable. I’m starting to smell a rat.”

“Yes, sir, they come up out of the Camac, sir..”

“No, no, you misunderstand me, you buffoon. I mean that I am starting to suspect that something may be afoot.”

“That big pink thing there,” pointed the constable. “I think that’s a foot. God, what a mess.”

“Foul play!” continued McBiscuit unperturbed. He removed a packet of walrus flavoured pretzels from the pocket of his trenchcoat and offered one to the constable. As the latter put out a hand, McBiscuit quickly withdrew the packet and sniggered. “I suspect foul play, constable.”

“At the Stadium of Light, sir?” replied the constable, feigning surprise. “No, I don’t believe it! It can’t be! There’s never been a hint of foul play in Inchicore! Never! Its impossible…”

“Enough of the sarcasm, Constable,” rebutted McBiscuit. “Tell forensics to get cracking. I see some footprints all around the body. We are looking for a murderer with very small circular feet.”

“They’re football studs, sir.”

“I knew that,” retorted the D.I. sharply. “A footballer, eh?”

“Yes, sir. Almost as implausible as the roller, what?”

McBiscuit removed the pipe from his mouth. Strangely enough, it was three feet long and made of galvanised steel. He idly wondered why he’d had it in his mouth in the first place. Suddenly, he got down on all fours and began examining something in the grass through a magnifying glass. After about five minutes, he beckoned the constable down beside him.

“What do you think this is?” he asked, handing him the magnifying glass.

“It’s a magnifying glass, sir,” replied the other.

“Thank you, constable,” replied McBiscuit, straightening up. “Just as I suspected. Now, tell me, who found the body?”

“The groundsman, sir. Quasimodo O’Reagan.”

“Quasimodo? Quasimodo? That name rings a bell. Bring him to me. I want to question him.”

As the constable disappeared, McBiscuit paced the touchline with a frown. Then he sent the frown away and paced the touchline with a grin. Finally he tried it with a frown and a grin at the same time.

At length, the constable approached with a wizened old man. “Quasimodo O’Reagan, sir,” he announced.

“No, I’m D.I.McBiscuit, constable. Try and remember that. Who’s this?”

“Er, the groundsman, sir. You wanted to see him.”

“I know that.” McBiscuit then turned to the old man in front of him and opened his notebook. “You are Quasimodo O’Reagan?”

“I know.”

“First name?”

“Quasimodo.”

“So far so good. Now Mr. O’Reagan, can you tell me where exactly you were on the night in question?”

“I can do better than that, officer,” responded the old man. “I wrote it all down for you.” And from a pocket, he produced a crumpled paper handkerchief, covered in writing. “I hadn’t got any proper paper, see,” he added, offering the object to the D.I.

McBiscuit took it and scanned it quickly. Then he held the offending article up. “I put it to you, Mr. O’Reagan, that this is a tissue of lies. It says here you were in the Post Office at the time of the crime. Everybody knows that employees of St. Patrick’s Athletic don’t know the way to the Post Office.”

The old man hung his head. Then he hung his shoulders and finally the third knuckle of his left hand. “It’s a fair cop, guv,” he said. “And I’d have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky kids.”

As he was led away in handcuffs, D.I. McBiscuit allowed a small smile to creep slowly across his lips………….

McCrummo, Ref!!

2007-09-26T14:55:00.001-07:00

Recently, I was browsing through the “On this Day….” section of the newspaper when I came across the following mind-blowing piece of information:

“On this day in 1890, William McCrum, a linen manufacturer from Armagh, invented the penalty-kick.”

So amazed was I at this startling piece of information, I promptly spilled my bowl of Coco Pops into my lap. While mopping it up, I resolved to unearth the truth about this miraculous invention. Minutes of detailed research later, I came across a story that will have movie producers knocking on my door.

William McCrum was born in Armagh in 1860, the son of his parents. According to local folklore, he was present at the birth, as was his mother.
From an early age, it was clear that the young William [or “Dickhead” as his friends affectionately called him] was no ordinary youth. Instead of pulling the legs off daddy-long-legs, like normal boys, William would stick extra legs onto them and marvel at their increased velocity.

But it was his love of football, allied to his penchant for inventing, that brought about a revolution in the beautiful game. [In those days, of course, it was known as the “reasonably-good-looking” game.]

In 1884, the first breakthrough came when he invented the penalty spot, basically a lump of turf with a white circle painted on it. The prototype was a bit of a failure, as the circle measured approximately nine feet in diameter. However, when Alexander Graham Bell introduced him to the concept of “scale”, things really started moving. The penalty spot was unveiled to stunned crowds at the 1886 Scientific Exhibition in Paris, and McCrum’s moon was on the rise.

Despite the success of the penalty spot in Paris, McCrum was stung by criticism in certain quarters that his invention had no practical application in the real world. Enraged, he shut himself in his laboratory and only emerged three years later, tousle-haired and rather hungry. A watching world held its breath as he explained the concept of the “penalty kick” and its place within the laws of association football. When he had finished, thousands of cheering fans carried him shoulder-high through the streets of Dublin, before dumping him unceremoniously in the canal.

The first penalty kick ever awarded was in a game between Bohemians and Shelbourne at Dalymount Park in November 1889. The history books tell us that the Shels goalkeeper, Harry “Big Fat Bastard” O’Hara actually saved the kick from Paul Doolin. However, a furious row broke out subsequently with Bohemians protesting vehemently at the positioning of the penalty spot two yards from the corner-flag. An international tribune was set up to examine the issue and, in their report delivered three months later, they recommended that the penalty spot should lie “twelve yards from the centre of, and perpendicular to, the goal line” where, of course, it has remained ever since, except during the war years, when it was brought inside for security reasons. The tribunal also recommended that, whenever a penalty was awarded, the defending side should “protest vehemently at the decision” and that the referee should “listen intently to all cogent arguments put forward by the defending side and should be prepared to overturn his decision if so persuaded.”

Nowadays, of course, the penalty kick is accepted by football teams all over the world, with the exception of Burkino Faso, where defenders still prefer to apologise and pay a small fine.

As for William McCrum, a great inventor he may have been, but unfortunately he possessed all the business acumen of an amoeba. Had he patented or copyrighted the idea, he need never have manufactured linen again, and the “McCrum kick” or the “McCrummo” would have given sub-editors the world over much greater scope for headline writing. [“Few McCrums of comfort for Baggio”, “Southgate McCrumbles” etc etc] Just imagine the amount of royalties that could have been earned at, say, sixpence a penno, and you’ll get some idea of the amount of money McCrum passed up.
As it was, he died penniless in Athlone when a stoat attacked his nose. Thousands of people lined the streets of Dublin for his funeral and he was buried beneath the penalty spot at Glenmalure Park. He is now an integral part of the foundations of no. 43, Milltown Gardens. A fitting end to a great man.

Love in Section E

2007-09-26T14:54:00.000-07:00

Richie Baker took the ball neatly on his instep, and cut in sharply from the right wing. Stephen Geoghegan glanced at his watch and timed his run to perfection, ghosting between the two defenders, as Richie flicked the ball through. The goalkeeper came out, but Geogo swivelled and shot low and hard into the back of the net.

As the net rippled, the crowd erupted with a roar. Geogo whipped off his shirt and, twirling it around his head, ran delightedly to his adoring fans in Section E. Standing there, one arm raised, armpit hairs glistening in the floodlights, he took the acclaim.

Pandemonium ensued. Arms punched the air in glee, klaxons blared, somebody lit a flare. In the midst of the tumult, Kevin felt a body tumbling over the seats behind him and into his back. He only just managed to save himself from a similar fate, which was a shame, as it might have created a really interesting domino effect.

He turned and helped the figure to its feet. It was a woman. Kevin recognised the lumps immediately. He had known a woman once, many years ago……

The woman brushed herself down and turned to face him. She had long, dark hair, which, as Kevin idly noticed, was coming out of her ears. Other than that, she was completely bald. Yet there was something familiar about that glass eye, that moustache….

“Kevin?” whispered the woman breathlessly. “Is it really you, Kevin?” And she stood there staring at him, not bothering to re-attach her artificial leg.

“Aoife?” whispered Kevin, not daring to believe.

“Paula,” she corrected him. They gazed into each other’s eyes. Then they gazed into each other’s ears. Finally they inspected each other’s nasal hairs. Geogo trotted back to the centre circle and the crowd resumed their seats. Kevin and Paula stood facing each other until an apple core hit him just below the eye.

“Siddown ya bollix!”

The pair sat down. He took her hand in his. Then her ankle. He could smell the familiar odour of smokey bacon on her breath, and the memories came flooding back.

“Whatever happened, Kevin?” she whispered, a pained expression on her face.

“Richie flicked the ball inside and Geogo……..”

She raised a gnarled finger and put it against his lips. It smelt of squirrels’ droppings.

“To us, Kevin?” she sighed, her breasts heaving like, well, like two breasts. “What happened to us?”

“Come out! Come out! What the Jaysus are staying on your line for?” bellowed a voice behind them, as the ball whistled menacingly across the Shelbourne goal.

“Dalymount Park, 1996. Cup Final Replay. Penalty to Pats. I couldn’t bear to look. When I opened my eyes you were gone.” Tears swam in his eyes, then got tired and began wading instead. “Where did you go to, my lovely?”

“Oh, Kev,” she cried. “I went down to the railings. And Goughy saved it. And from the corner….” Her voice trailed off, and she blew her nose forcefully.

“Keep it on the floor, Creepy!”

“I know darling,” smiled Kev, stroking her bald head with affection. “Geogo’s goal. The excitement, the delirium. It was too much. Like having a bath with Felicity Kendal.”

“After that, “ Paula continued, “everything was an anti-climax. You know how it was. Nothing could compare to that. The cross, Geogho sliding in, the ball hitting the back of the net, the Pats fans inconsolable…..”

“That’s the third time ref!”

Kevin picked his nose, rolled it in a ball and flicked it absent-mindedly towards the pitch. “Paula,” he said, awkwardly, examining his fingernails with sudden interest. “Do you think it possible….I mean…..can you envisage……us…..”

She stopped him by poking her programme into his eye. Her hand found his. It was at the end of his arm. She squeezed it gently, like she used to, many years before, until he yelled with pain. And, as Jim Crawford came thundering in to whip the Longford winger’s legs away from him, their tongues entwined.

How to walk with Dignity

2007-09-26T14:53:00.000-07:00

No, this is not going to be an essay on how to march up and down your sitting room with a copy of “Mein Kampf” perched precariously on your head. Aspiring genteel young ladies need read no further. The walking I am referring to is the so-called “Walk of Shame”, the long, slow agonising trip back to the dressing-rooms after incurring the referee’s wrath. Whereas once this ignominy was reserved for the hard men of football, the change in the rules prohibiting body contact and repartee have meant that virtually every footballer will be red-carded at least once in his career. It is therefore a shame that so few footballers know how to react to the situation.

Do you remember Jim Gannon down in Cork? An off-the-ball incident and the ref goes running over, brandishing the red. Jim walks immediately – no histrionics, or arguments or exaggerated expressions of innocence. Some commentators have said that he must have done something, because he didn’t argue. Not so. There are still some professionals about who know that arguing with the illegitimate so-and-so is complete waste of breath. How many times have you seen a ref produce a red card, and then change his mind? No, nor me neither. Jim Gannon’s sending-off should be shown at coaching schools throughout the country as a prime example of how to walk with dignity.

Mick McCarthy, in his “Captain Fantastic” autobiography, recounts the time in France when he was sent off playing for Lyons. Apparently, the referee congratulated him afterwards for being the first player he had ever sent off who hadn’t argued!

Contrast that dignified way of “taking yer oil” [as the Derry fans say] with the usual prevarications. Remember the Derry full-back who could so easily have broken Wes’s leg with a dreadful lunge? Couldn’t believe it. Went for the ball. Travesty of justice. Certainly most reluctant to receive the oil that was handed to him.

Remember Kevin Moran’s lunge at Peter Reid in the FA Cup Final. My estimation of Moran went down a hundredfold after that. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the decision [and I was probably alone in Ireland in thinking that he deserved to go] Moran’s reaction to it was disgraceful. He lost it completely and had to be escorted off the field by team-mates.

Remember the Traitor’s brother getting sent off for Rockmount against us in the Cup? Not only did he spend a half an hour remonstrating with the ref, but actually gave us the two fingers while walking off. There must be something in the genes. All that he was saying was “Look, I can’t handle pressure.” It wasn’t even as if he was doing it for the benefit of his own fans.

The most obvious ploy in avoiding the red card is to go down injured yourself. The amazing thing about this is that referees still fall for it. Or maybe in waiting for the injured player to get up, he has time to reconsider. I know I’m not a very nice person, but I love seeing an opponent feigning injury to avoid getting sent off, then, when he gets gingerly to his feet, the ref produces the red. Love it!

Of course, if a manager is really quick, he can substitute the offending player before the ref has time to deal with him, particularly if he’s distracted by the welfare of the injured party. Doesn’t always work but one to file away in your managerial book of tricks.

I wonder how much would honesty work with a ref? Suppose you were a full back and had just put the opposing winger into the third row of the stand. Mr. Officious is galloping over, fumbling in his top pocket. Instead of saying, “I never touched him,” or “He should get an Oscar for that”, how about if you tried a totally new tack, something like, “Ref, I totally agree that was a terrible tackle, and I know I fully deserve to be sent off, but is there any chance that you could show some leniency? I promise there will be no further repetition of my hot-headedness.” You never know – this could totally confuse a referee weaned on confrontation, and you might just get away with it. Then again, perhaps not.

Of course, there is walking off and there is walking off. The speed at which you exit the field of play is always in direct contrast to your team’s fortunes off it. For example, if your team is doing well, you walk off slowly. If you are doing badly, run off. Remember Eric Lavine last year. Sent off for making a rude gesture to the linesman, Longford were drawing with us at the time. Lavine then took fifteen minutes to walk off, choosing to interpret the rule literally that says the offending party should go straight to the dressing-room, even though he was beside the touchline at the time. What would have been really interesting was if the ref had have sent him off again. That would really have sent the league’s administrators scuttling for their rule books.

Of course, I am a complete hypocrite. Anytime I ever crocked an opponent and saw the ref running over, I would gesticulate furiously at my dazed victim and loudly castigate him for unsportsmanlike behaviour. But, as my Dad used to say, “Don’t do as I do, do as I say.”

Exit, Stage Left.

With Dignity.

Grandad

2007-09-26T14:50:00.000-07:00

Grandad! Grandad! Where are you?”

The young girl’s shrill voice seemed to cut a swathe through the gloomy atmosphere of the garden. Ted Carroll raked some more crispy brown leaves onto the pile and straightened up slowly. God, he hated gardening. He was only doing it because the author wanted to re-enforce the idea of old age through the autumnal metaphor. Bastard! A few seconds later, the girl’s flushed face appeared through the strands of the weeping willow.

“Grandad! There you are! I have a question for you. Mr. Doherty said to ask you. Who was Wes?”

“Wes?” The old man took off his cap and scratched his balding head thoughtfully.

“Yes, Wes. Teacher said you’d know. He was a footballer years ago, I think.”

“Ah, Wes.” Ted Carroll smiled to himself warmly. He laid the rake carefully against the weeping willow and sat down gingerly on a sad old tree trunk. Beckoning the young girl to him, he lifted her with an effort onto his spindly leg.

“Wes,” he repeated. “Yes, madam, I remember Wes. In a nutshell, he was quite simply the best footballer I ever saw. And not only in a nutshell. Anywhere! He could turn on a five Euro piece. There wasn’t a defender could stand up to him, when the mood was on him. Sheer class. Do you know what they used to call him? Wes. Yes, Wes by name and Wes by nature.”

“Who did he play for, Grandad?”

“Well, my poppet, I first saw him playing for Shelbourne back in the noughties. When he first appeared, we all thought, who’s this ten year old kid? He looked like he’d be more at home in the school playground. But when he got the ball, he was poetry in motion. People said, ah, he’s too small, defenders’ll kill him. But they had to get near him to kill him, heh, heh, heh.

Anyway, after a couple of years, he got transferred to a team in England called Blackpool….”

“Why would he want to go to England?”

“Ah, my sweet,” Ted laughed. “I know its hard to believe, but once upon a time, if a young footballer in Ireland wanted to get on, he used to have to go to England. England had a big league in those days. They paid their footballers silly money. Thousands and thousands of Euro a week, just to kick a ball about. And truth be told, most of them were not much better than the players who stayed behind.”

“What happened?”

“What was bound to happen. Too much money going out of the game. The whole set-up in England went kaboum. Clubs went bankrupt, owing millions.”

“And Wes?”

“Wes was with Manchester at the time. You wouldn’t believe how big they were. They were the Limerick City of their day. Had their own television channel and everything. Then it all went pear-shaped. Wes came back to Ireland. Signed for Athlone Town. Athlone had qualified for the Champions League and they were looking to Wes to strengthen their squad. This was a long time before Irish teams started winning the Champions League, of course. In fact, no Irish team had got past the qualifying round, when Wes signed for Athlone.."

“Ah, go away…”

“No, I’m serious, we never used to do very well in Europe. In fact, it was Wes who started it. Him and Ronaldo. Ronaldo was a Brazilian coming towards the end of his career when he signed for Athlone. Together the two of them forged a partnership that has gone down in history. Wes’d bamboozle the defenders, leave three or four of them sitting on their backsides, then knock it sideways to Ronaldo and bang! Ronaldo’d stick it away. Funny looking feller, buck teeth and a dodgy haircut, but lethal in front of goal. Sheer poetry to watch. That first season, Athlone got to the semi-finals of the Champions League, and I reckon they’d have won it if Wes hadn’t been injured for the away leg against Sliema. Of course they won it the following year, then Sligo won it the year after that, then Athlone again.”

“Did Wes play for Ireland, Grandad?”

“Did he wha’? He was only the best player ever to wear the green jersey. It was a shame though that for much of his career, he was playing with carthorses. Oh, we’d qualified for a few World Cups, and I think we got to the quarter finals once, but we hardly set the world alight. Then we appointed a manager by the name of Noel O’Connor. He’d brought Limerick City to the UEFA Cup Final, where they only lost on penalties to Barry Town. The man was inspirational. The best manager Ireland ever had. The only trouble was it all came too late for Wes. You know that Ireland won the World Cup for the first time in 2018? Well, the competition before that in 2014, proved to be Wes’s swansong. Ireland were red-hot favourites to lift the trophy after winning the European Championships two years previous. Great team we had then, Wes, of course, captain, O’Shea, Ryan, Goulding. Anyway, 2014. Ireland cruised through to the last sixteen. We then played Germany…”

“Germany??”

“They were a good team back then. Then we beat Iraq and then in the semis we were up against the Faroe Islands. And two days before the semis, didn’t Wes and Noel O’Connor have an almighty row. I think it was about biscuits. Wes liked Rich Teas while Noel preferred digestives. Anyway, Wes told Noel what he thought of him, and the upshot was, Wes was sent home. That’s what started the Civil War. Once upon a time, there were only two jurisdictions on this island. Ah, things were a lot simpler then.”

“Who was right, Grandad?”

“Why, Wes, of course. Anyone knows you can eat Rich Teas till the cows come home, whereas digestives get too filling after five or six. Everybody knows that. Except for them bastards down in the Republic of Limerick of course. Of course, without Wes, the Irish team went to pieces. Faroes won 2-0, went on to beat the Florida Republic in the Final. By the time 2018 came around, Wes was just a fat hape, drugged up to the eyeballs and living on past glories. O’Connor destroyed him. The greatest Irishman never to win a World Cup winner’s medal, was Wes. Oh, but you should have seen him in his heyday, waltzing through the opposition midfield like they didn’t exist, a body swerve here, a drop of the shoulder there…”

“Oh, Grandad, you’ve wet yourself, “ exclaimed the young girl gleefully, hopping off the old man’s leg in excitement.

Ted looked down mournfully at the dark patch on his trousers and then glanced up bitterly at the author.

“Happen you’re right, love,” he sighed. “But you should have seen him in his prime…”

Fourth Officials

2007-09-26T14:49:00.002-07:00

I realise that I am not alone. Thousands of people out there have a terrible affliction, for which the only known cure is time. Yes, I am cursed with a teenage son.

Two years ago, he was gregarious, talkative, happy, smiling, willing to help and friendly. Now he is surly and uncommunicative, reverting to a Neanderthal series of scowls and grunts and lazy as shit. His non-school life revolves around telly and the play-station and he will only lift a finger in the house if promised money. Naturally, being a wonderful parent, I often wonder how he will fare in later life, what profession he will go in to. Unfortunately, most of them require a certain amount of work [sad, but true]. However, at Tolka the other week, my eyes were suddenly opened to one job, where the amount of work is at an absolute minimum – the fourth official.

As usual, the match at Tolka was fast and entertaining, but I kept one eye firmly on the official in question [sadly, I didn’t catch his name] to see just exactly what his job entails. I even managed to jot down his significant contributions to the night’s entertainment: -

Pre-match – Walked onto the field carrying a bag of footballs in each hand.
Removes tracksuit bottoms in home team dugout.

Game commences – Acknowledges signal from referee Hugh Byrne. Folds arms and leans against side of dugout.

18th Minute – Folds hands behind back. Continues leaning against dugout.

26th Minute – Reverts to folding arms. Obviously a lot more comfortable.

29th Minute – Scratches arse. [I think this is what he did – I just caught the end of the movement out of the corner of my eye]

40th Minute – Puts tracksuit bottoms back on.

45th Minute – Is told by Hugh Byrne that there is to be one minute of injury time [Funny, I always thought it was the fourth official who determined the amount of injury time] Adjusts board. Holds up board with a “1” on it for approximately seven seconds.

Half Time – Walks off the pitch carrying one back of balls.

Probably by now, you’d think the fourth official had been taking things easy. However, he was in for an arduous second-half, with barely time to draw breath between incidents.

Second half – Returns after half time, carrying one bag of balls. Obviously anticipates a hectic second half, as he does not bother removing his tracksuit bottoms. Acknowledges signal from Hugh Byrne at the start of the second half. Folds arms and leans against dugout.

52nd Minute – Player booked. Reaches behind him for notepad and pen. Writes something down. Replaces notepad and pen.

55th Minute – Ball kicked out of ground. Removes ball from bag. Kicks it ten yards to nearest player. Rearranges ball in bag. Checks the next ball for correct inflation.

60th Minute – Player booked. As 52nd minute, except he’s obviously uncertain who has been booked. Asks away team manager.

62nd Minute – Squeezes pimple on his forehead.

69th Minute – Goal! Reaches for pen and pad. Writes something down. Replaces notebook and pen.

74th Minute – Substitution. Walks to halfway line with the player. Holds up board. Takes down board. Holds up board again with a different number on it. Returns to dugout.

80th Minute – Ball kicked out of ground. As 55th Minute.

84th Minute – Player booked. As 52nd minute.

88th Minute – Substitution. As 74th Minute.

90th Minute – Responds to Hugh Byrne holding up four fingers, by holding up four fingers of his own and nodding vigorously. Fiddles with board. Holds up board with a “4” on it for approximately five seconds.

91st Minute – Substitution. As 74th Minute.

93rd Minute – Ball kicked out of ground. As 55th minute, except that seeing it’s so close to the end of the game, he doesn’t bother checking the next ball for inflationary accuracy. Wipes sweat from brow.

Full time – Walks off carrying two bags of balls.

And that, dear friends, is the sum total of the night’s work. In fairness, though, I must point out that a] it was entirely possible that I might have missed some significant arm-folding somewhere down the line, as I was concentrating on the game, and b] I am obviously not privy to all the hard work that the fourth official does out of the public eye [checking the battery in his electronic board, putting the footballs into the bags etc etc] I am also unaware as to how much a fourth official gets paid for his nights work, though even if he only achieves the statutory minimum wage, its money for old rope. I mean, even my young lad would soon get the hang of it, apart, perhaps, from the bit about changing his tracksuit bottoms.

Four Saves

2007-09-26T14:49:00.001-07:00

I’ve always been an admirer of goalies. Having played a few games in the loneliest position on the park, my inadequacy between the posts has only served to show me what great skill there is in net-minding. Judging one’s run and leap to perfection to take the ball off an opposing forward’s head is an art form in itself, every bit as beautiful as a Titian masterpiece or a Byron verse.

My footballing memories stretch back as far as the late sixties, too late to have seen such luminaries as Swift, Yashin and Trautmann, more’s the pity. However, in the intervening thirty odd years, I have picked out four goalkeeping saves that will live with me until senility sets in. These are not necessarily the best saves I have witnessed, but the most memorable. Two of them are English, two of them Irish, two of them are world famous, two of them aren’t, two I saw on telly, two in the flesh. Each was a thing of beauty.

The first is probably the most famous save in the world – the Banks save. Everybody over the age of forty remembers it, and it is still widely spoken of. At the World Cup in Mexico in 1970, England and Brazil met in a group match. It was a game that sparked the imagination of the world. England were world champions, Brazil were the favourites. England had angered the locals by their refusal to eat Mexican food and their lack of openness, whereas Brazil were the world’s favourite team, probably the greatest team the world has ever seen. And whereas both teams were widely expected to progress through to the quarter finals, the psychology of victory was held to be paramount, as both teams were widely tipped to meet again in the final.

The haziness of the television pictures somehow heightened the drama. Tostao, Gerson, Rivelinho, Pele, Jairzinho – what a forward line. Yet England held firm and with Bobby Moore playing out of his skin, the Brazilians were getting more and more frustrated. And then Jairzinho slipped Terry Cooper and got to the by-line. With Gordon Banks at his near post, he clipped the ball towards an unmarked Pele towards the back of the goal. As the ball came over, Banks turned frantically, but as Pele’s head directed it towards the inside of the far post, Banks still had a long way to go. The ball bounced just before the line, but to everyone’s amazement, Banks’ hand caught it on the up and ballooned it over the bar.

Nobody in the stadium, nor at home, nor Pele even, could believe it. It was one right out of the top drawer. Rumour has it that Pele even shouted “Goal!” as the ball left his head. The beauty of the save though was that if Banks had merely dived to his right, he would have missed the ball. In that split-second, he had the intelligence to dive across and backwards, thus giving himself that extra fraction of a second to reach the ball. Brazil eventually won the match 1-0, but the column inches afterwards were all about the Banks save.

Three years later and an all-conquering Leeds United were playing Sunderland in the English FA Cup Final at Wembley. Leeds, the aristocrats of English football, not particularly loved due to their cynicism, but definitely feared. Sunderland were a second division outfit at the time [first division in today’s money] and were widely tipped to be the sacrificial lambs on the Revie altar.

Football, however, is a beautiful game. Sunderland scored midway through the first half after a ball broke loose in the Leeds penalty area following a corner, and then pulled everybody back behind the ball. Leeds spent the rest of the game camped in the opposition half, but for all the wiles of Giles, Bremner, Gray, Lorimer, Clarke et al, the Sunderland goal remained unbroached, as their players threw every part of their anatomy in front of the shots that rained in.

During one such bombardment, the Sunderland keeper, Jim Montgomery, was forced to dive full stretch to keep out a rasping drive from the left hand corner of his penalty area. It was a good save, but those of us cheering for the underdogs, could only look on in horror as the ball fell invitingly for Peter Lorimer, Leeds inside forward and reputedly the holder of the hardest shot in football. Lorimer was on the six yard line, unmarked and he gleefully side-footed the ball into the empty net. Except it didn’t get that far. It struck the crossbar and bounced out. Lorimer, totally confused, appealed. Like most of the television audience, I couldn’t make out what had happened. We had to wait for a break in play and for the slow motion action-replay. Even then it took two or three repeats for us to realise that Lorimer hadn’t missed. Montgomery had saved it!

The ball had fallen instantly to Lorimer from Monty’s full-length save. Lorimer hit it first time towards the empty net. Somehow, Montgomery had completed his dive, turned and dived backwards towards his goal, before the ball went in. The ball struck the top of his outstretched hand and ricocheted up to hit the bar and bounce away to safety. As a young teenager, I was awestruck, and as a middle-aged fart, I still am. Of course, there was a certain element of luck involved – Monty just dived back towards his goal and the ball struck him, rather than vice versa. But the tremendous, almost miraculous agility made the luck. The story goes that after the game, when Bob Stokoe, the triumphant Sunderland manager, was asked about the save, he replied, “Ah, yes, but you should’ve seen the save ‘e made at ‘Ull.”

Move on now twelve years to May 1985 and a barren and windswept Terryland Park. Those who know me are aware that I’m always banging on about this game, which I regard as the greatest match I have ever seen. It was the final game of the season, a rearranged fixture, Galway at home to Shels. Shels needed a win to survive in this, the first season that relegation was introduced. If they drew or lost, Sligo would be safe. The game was to be played on a midweek afternoon, just three days after Galway had lost the Cup Final to Shamrock Rovers.

The crowd barely reached three figures, half of which were Shels, forty-nine fiftieths were Galway and there was one representative from Sligo. The latter must have been ecstatic as Galway plundered two goals in the first half, and we were totally dejected.
However in the second half, we got an early goal back, which gave us a bit of hope, but we couldn’t get the second. Not that Galway were out of it, for we were constantly in danger of conceding a disastrous third.

I think Galway got a corner and the ball was half headed clear. There was a Galway midfielder lurking unmarked [typical Shels] just outside the penalty area, in a fairly central position. As the Reds’ defenders scrambled to close him down, he hit it the ball with venom towards the top left hand corner of the goal. John Motson would have called it a screamer. I was down at the other end, by the Galway goal, and the shot was right in my line of vision. To borrow another of Motty’s clichés, the ball had goal written all over it. Then suddenly a figure arced upwards and to his right. Freddie Davis, then dark-haired and lean, sprang out of nowhere and tipped the ball over the angle of post and bar. He must have been unsighted when the ball was struck, and it was hit with such power, but still he got a hand to it at full stretch.

Galvanised by that save, Shels pressed forward and got the equaliser ten minutes from time, and then, unbelievably snatched a winner at the death. First out of the ground was the Sligo official – I didn’t envy him his drive home. But for Freddie, I dare say his trip northward would have been a lot more enjoyable.

My final wonder save happened this year. Tolka Park, Shels again, this time facing Bohemians in a critically important end of season battle. Bohs had led the league from the off, but Shels had slowly but surely pegged them back. With three games to go, Shels were only four points behind. If they could beat Bohs at home, the advantage would swing their way for the first time that season. Could Bohs pick themselves up after such a critical defeat?

Understandably, the game was hardly a classic. Nerves got the better of both sides and the play was scrappy, which was entirely predictable, as the game was being shown live on TV. Midway through the second half, Shels got the best chance of the night. It was a move somewhat similar to the great Banks save thirty three years earlier. Richie Jairzinho Baker crossed the ball from the right wing. Ashley Banks Bayes in the Bohemians’ goal had to turn away from his near post and dash back to the centre of his goal. Ollie Pele Cahill, not quite as unmarked as he had been in 1970, was on the edge of the six yard box in a fairly central position. He jumped and, like all good forwards, nodded the ball downwards into the empty net with Bayes still scrambling to get back. At least, that’s what I saw in my mind’s eye as Ollie headed it downwards.

Unfortunately, Bayes somehow got down to it and knocked the ball off the line with his arm. The Shels fans couldn’t believe it. We were in a crouching position, arms ready for the leap. But it never came. The speed with which Bayes got down to the header was incredible – it had to have been a reflex action. He didn’t have so far to dive as Banks, but he had much less time.

As history shows, Bohs scored the only goal right at the end of the match and clinched the championship. But I am convinced that if Ollie’s header had crossed the line, we’d have been champions. Ironically, that was Ashley Bayes last competitive game for Bohs, and boy, did he go out in style!

Those four saves stand out in my memory. There have been plenty of others which have drawn gasps of admiration from me, but it takes a lot to render me speechless, as those four did. And, hopefully, there will be more in the future.

Everyone to Blame for Cyprus Debacle

2007-09-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

As the horror of Cyprus’s deserved 5-2 drubbing of the Republic of Ireland National team sinks in, the blame game has begun in earnest, with fans up and down the country demanding heads on plates for the debacle.

To be fair, it is difficult to think of a more disappointing result in our recent soccer history. The 4-1 home defeat to Denmark in 1985 that marked the end of Eoin Hand’s tenure as manager served as a marker as to how far behind the European powers we were at the time, but it was generally acknowledged that the Danes were a bloody good side.

The draw with Egypt in Italia 90 was used by Eamonn Dunphy to beat Jack Charlton with, but most fans simply accepted the result as a combination of bad luck and our opponents’ total defensive-mindedness. The Liechtenstein game, set against a beautiful Alpine backdrop, still has grown supporters waking up in a sweat, but again, has been simply ascribed as “one of those things.”

Mick McCarthy’s “I had a Macedonia” has now been irreversibly replaced with “I had a Cyprus,” but it is difficult to come up with mitigating circumstances for this most recent rout. This was not an odd-goal defeat, a sneaked goal, combined with frantic defending. The Cypriots thoroughly deserved the victory and all credit must go to them for hauling themselves up by their bootlaces after their own hammering by Slovakia.

But, with due respect to Cyprus, even in the farcical seventies, we would not have succumbed so easily against a team perpetually on the bottom rung of football’s hierarchy. So how did we get in this situation?

Not unexpectedly, the primary target of the fan’s ire has been the manager. After two competitive games, it has been decided that he is not up to the job and should go. This is the Premier League equivalent of hiring a manger at the beginning of July and sacking him in the second week of August, but the general feeling is that a mistake was made in his appointment.

Certainly, Stan’s communication skills have not helped his cause, where his too-often glib pronouncements have garnered the suspicion that he is a man of soundbites but little substance. His lack of managerial experience has now become the rod to beat him with, and certainly he bears little resemblance to the “world-class manager” that John Delaney promised us after dismissing Brian Kerr.

There have also been calls for the aforementioned Mr. Delaney to join Stan in the sacrificial pot. Staunton was very much Delaney’s man in the interview stage, and there has been a certain amount of sympathy for Stan after Saturday night. He was assistant manager at Walsall, the club with the worst defensive record in the English league, so how could he expect to make the transition to international manager? Surely, the comments seem to indicate, the man who appointed him was guilty of a serious error of judgement.

The players, too, have been pilloried in bars up and down the country for their abject performance. Some of them, it has been suggested, “should never play for Ireland again,” though it is hard to see where their replacements are to be found. It is facile to say that such a player would have done better on the night. No-one can ever know, and when top-class players play as though they’ve never been introduced to each other, it is difficult to see how a newcomer could fare better.

So, there we have it. Everybody is to blame for the Saturday evening horror show. Except of course the fans and the media. But even they can’t quite escape some soupcon of responsibility for the debacle.

The seeds of this nightmarish vista were sown four years ago in a tiny island in the North Pacific Ocean. Saipan did much more than divide a nation and thrust two men into the glare of the international spotlight. It signified the first real media campaign in this country to have an international manager dismissed.

We had always risen above that. We watched as successive English managers were lampooned and pilloried in the national media, and sat smugly back, as we thought it could never happen here. True Con Houlihan had persistently dogged John Giles toward the end of his managerial stint, and Eamonn Dunphy had led the calls for Eoin Hand’s removal, but the general concensus in the country was that these managers had been given a fair crack at the whip and it was time to go.

Eamonn had again been a thorn in Jack Charlton’s side for the final six years of his reign, but reaching three final tournaments dented his ability to convince the footballing public that the Geordie was in fact holding back our country’s aspirations. But when the Saipan earthquake rent Ireland in two, he found plenty of backing for his campaign to oust McCarthy.

In Dunphy’s eyes, Roy Keane was all saint and no sinner in the affair, and McCarthy was “a clown,” despite the fact that standard procedure for both club and country instances of a player criticising the manager in public is suspension / fining / sending home. Though there was almost overwhelming support for McCarthy’s stance in the footballing world, in Ireland, the horror of going into a World Cup Finals without our best player pushed both media and fans into the Keane camp. One radio station even admitted that it had made an editorial decision to back Keane and ridicule McCarthy.

So we limped home from Korea, having reached the knockout stages of the World Cup with what was arguably a worse back four than that which faced the Cypriots on Saturday. In reality, only winning the World Cup could have saved McCarthy. His first two games in the subsequent European Championships, away to Russia and home to Switzerland, ended in defeat and he was gone, as both fans and media used the poor results as an excuse for bloodletting over Saipan. We had emulated our near neighbours in a media-led campaign to whip up support for sacking the international manager.

Of course, the problem was that the role of international manager is a very specific one. Top class club managers don’t often translate into good international managers and the problem is you never know what you are going to get when you appoint. We had been supremely fortunate in having two very good and successful international managers in succession. The odds on getting three in a row were small indeed.

Brian Kerr was, and is, a good manager, but the vagaries of international management conspired to thwart him in his quest for qualification. He was nearly there but not quite. With Steve Staunton, it appears we almost got him by default, when a host of other, probably more deserving, candidates were overlooked. Certainly, a Mick McCarthy-inspired side would never have capitulated so readily to the likes of Cyprus.

Those who clamoured for McCarthy’s resignation were more interested in avenging the perceived hurt of Roy Maurice Keane than in the future of the Republic of Ireland football team. They too, both media and fans, should look to themselves when lashing out in fury after the Cyprus game, and see whether or not, they too bear some culpability for Ireland having hit rock bottom.

Don’t Light Up!!

2007-09-26T14:47:00.002-07:00

Last week, in a well-thought out and reasonable article in Hospital Pass, Dermot Looney presented the case for retaining the use of flares at Eircom League grounds, providing certain conditions are met. In a classic example of insulting one’s host, I would like to suggest that he is talking through his arse.

At the start of the season, Commissioner Dooney issued a directive that flares should be banned from all Eircom League grounds. Dermot takes issue with this, wondering whether the bould Roy is getting his priorities right, citing summer football, attendances, marketing etc as being more worthy of the Commissioner’s attention. Hmm! Which is more important – health and safety or club administration? Sorry, Dermo, I’m with Roy on this one. Heysel, Bradford, Hillsborough all have shown us where the real priorities are. It only takes one incident for a catastrophe to take place, and surely it is better to remove the possible cause of the catastrophe before it occurs.

But, “there has never been a serious flare incident in the history of the Eircom League”. No, there hasn’t, I agree. The fans who tend to wield these contraptions have so far acted very responsibly, as far as I am aware. Having said that, it is also true to say that there has never been a serious wounded rhinoceros incident in the history of the Eircom League, yet I would actively try and dissuade people from bringing said unfortunate beast to Jackman Park.. Its like the man who builds his house on top of a volcano, arguing that it hasn’t erupted before, so it won’t in the future.

Dermot then proposes that since these marine flares are readily available to the public, the law could hardly take the view that they should be banned from football grounds. Another interesting leap of imagination here. Bottles of whiskey and steak knives can both be bought in my local Dunnes Stores, but are generally regarded as unacceptable accoutrements at a football match.

Where do you draw the line? Should fireworks be allowed? Firecrackers? Smoke bombs? Why not permit hand grenades, providing they are in the hands of responsible people who are well known to the stewards? When a flare is lit in a crowd, how is a steward supposed to know who has lit it?

Anyway, whatever the arguments about the validity of flares, the fact remains that they have been banned, not by the legendary Mr. Dooney, but by UEFA . This does not mean that they are only banned for European games, but that they are banned for domestic games as well. And UEFA have the power, and in fact have wielded the power, to close grounds where flares have been lit.

UEFA did not take the banning of flares lightly. It was not merely a whim on the part of some nameless beaurocrat in Geneva, [or wherever UEFA lives] There is a litany of flare-related incidents across Europe, of which these but constitute a few:

Ø August 1999 – St. Etienne fans threw lit flares into the Marseilles fans’ enclosure.

Ø September 1999 – Polish fans threw lit flares at English supporters [okay, that’s more of a reason for retaining them – sorry]

Ø September 1999 – Italian police found explosives hidden in a cache of flares at the home of a Fiorentina fan.

Ø October 1999 – Fiorentina showered Man United fans with red and yellow flares at a Champions League game.

Ø October 1999 – A 17-year old fan was killed by a flare thrown from the terraces as Red Star and Partizan Belgrade fans clashed after a derby.

Ø November 2000 – At an AC Milan – Juventus game in Serie A, rival fans hurled flares at each other.

Ø November 2000 – Pavel Srnicek, the Brescia goalie, was struck by a flare at half time of the Serie A game with Reggina.

Ø January 2001 – The Cup match between AEK Athens and Olympiakos Piraeus was abandoned when rioting fans threw missiles and flares onto the pitch.

Ø March 2001 – Hertha Berlin supporters bombarded the pitch with flares in the game versus Energie Cottbus. A steward was struck in the face by a lit flare.

Ø August 2001 – Flares were set off and thrown on to the pitch at a game between Hadjuk Split and Mallorca.

Ø April 2002 – Sevilla fans in the visitors’ enclosure were bombarded with lit flares by Real Betis fans.

Ø May 2002 – Police were pelted with lit flares after the Millwall vs Birmingham playoffs in England.

In all of the above instances, UEFA came down very hard on the clubs involved. All were heavily fined, and some clubs had their stadia closed.

The problem that I have with flares is that they can kill you. They are marine distress flares, designed to be seen for miles and miles if lit on a boat in the middle of the ocean. So, if one of them hit you, or fell on you, or was thrown at you, it could do you serious damage.

As Dermot points out in his article, when a flare is lit, there is a movement away from the flare. This in itself can cause problems on a steeply sloping terrace, people pushing to move away, people falling over etc

Another danger with flares is that the smoke generated can affect certain people, particularly older people and those who suffer from asthma. This is particularly true in an enclosed area, where the smoke has no immediate way of escape. Thus, far from creating a great atmosphere, as Dermot suggests, the flare, for the asthmatic, has the exact opposite effect.

But, of course, the greatest danger lies in the hands of the person who wields the damned thing. In this country, they tend to be used responsibly, but it only takes one eejit to put out an eye. What if stewards wade heavy-handedly into away fans to retrieve a flare and violence ensues? Can’t happen? Won’t happen? And the Titanic was unsinkable.

Basically, the use of the flare in Irish soccer is an attempt to emulate and recreate the atmosphere of Serie A matches in Italy. But whereas a host of flares igniting in the San Siro may look very impressive, the same image is not generated in Tolka or Richmond or Belfield. Dermot seems to think that they often look “awesome.” Unfortunately, it is a view not shared by all. Shania Twain even wrote a song about it. They put me in mind of big kids playing with sparklers at Hallowe’en. We are Irish. We have our own individuality – why must we appropriate football chants from England and Spain, and flares from Italy? Have we no imagination?

Atmosphere is generated by numbers, by nervous tension, by flags, scarves, hats, by singing and chanting, yes, even by those bloody irritating air-horns. Whereas flares might also add to the atmosphere, they are not a be-all and end-all in the atmosphere stakes. At times, I would suggest they even detract from the atmosphere. No need to bother singing – sure, we can always light a flare! The Shed End Invisibles would be better off saving up their €8 and buying a Flymo for Paul Marney senior.

In conclusion, therefore, I would argue that flares are a disaster waiting to happen and the rest of Europe has learned this through bitter experience. Does somebody have to die or be blinded or scarred for life before we accept what Europe has learned the hard way? Wise up, boys – don’t light up.

Deck of Cards [Updated]

2007-09-26T14:47:00.001-07:00

During the recent Iraq conflict, an Irish soldier was arrested for playing cards when he should have been butchering some people who had different religious and political views to his own. At his court-martial, the charge was read out, witnesses were called and finally the soldier was asked if he had anything to say in his defence. Looking the Presiding Officer straight between the knees, the soldier replied: -

“When I see the ace, I think of Tony Sheridan and the goal he scored against Pats at Lansdowne in 1996.

When the two comes up, I am reminded of Donal Broughan and Richie Purdie, now both with Kildare County. If they’d been out here with me, the war would have lasted 27 days less.

The three puts me in mind of Terryland Park in the days of yore and its seating capacity. I actually once saw four people sitting on the roller, but they were all kids.

I look at the four and I see Derry’s away support at Tolka last year. Either that, or the so-called Best Supporters had discovered the secret of invisibility.

I see the five and I remember the time of the morning we used to get to bed on away trips to Ballybofey. Are ye right there, ladies and gentlemen, please?

The six reminds me of October 2001, a rainy night at Dalyer and goals from Nutsy, Richie, Geogo, Jim Gannon, Davy Byrne and Jim Crawford, and the seven accurately describes the heaven we were in as the final whistle blew.

When I turn up the eight, I am put in mind of the great Pat Dolan, and what he did to all the pies.

The nine, on the other hand, doesn’t remind me of anything at all, although for some reason images of unregistered players, and 32p stamps and Inchicore Post Office and docked points keep on invading my consciousness. Maybe I’ll figure out the connection later.

As I turn over the tin, I think of St. Mels Park and the state of the art facilities they have down there. That shed must surely be listed by An Taisce.

The Jack puts me in mind of a balding Bohs centre-forward who never did very much against us, save put the ball in the net with three minutes to go. You thought you had him shackled for eighty-eight minutes, one piece of skill and boom, three points to Bohs. Rest in peace, Jackie.

The Queen reminds me of many things; of Derry City fans and their money, of that crass song “We are the Champions”, and of my best friend out here, Private “Sheila” O’Reilly, but we’d better not go into that.

When I look at the King, I see a narky little Shamrock Rovers midfielder, now a dishevelled television pundit, with a peculiar dress-sense. How I used to wish him a broken leg when he played in the Rovers four-in –a row team, along with Eccles and Keely.

The joker brings to mind Neil Trebble, one of the most interesting erm, players to have worn the famous red over the years. How he fooled us into believing he could play football, I’ll never know. God bless you, Neil, we had many a laugh at your expense.

I spread out the cards and I see four suits, recalling instantly Roddie Collins and his humility. I don’t begrudge him at all his immense success in England.

The clubs naturally remind me of the 22 current members of the eircom League; the hearts recall Gary Mackay and the team he used to play for; spades put me in mind of the new National Stadium, which will never be built, and when I turn over a diamond, I think of Neil Diamond, and how he can play at Croke Park, while soccer, being a foreign culture, can’t.

When you count the number of cards in a suit, you come up with the number thirteen, which is the number of stanchions that block your view at Tolka Park. There are 52 cards in a deck, which is the number of times in a game that you shout at Willo to come off his line. And if you add all the spots in a deck, it totals 365, which coincidentally is the number of hairs that Paul Doolin has left on his head.

And, so you see, sir, this deck of cards serves me as an almanac, a bible, a diary, a calendar and a pretty Easter bonnet.”

When he had finished speaking, the courtroom was in tears. At length, the Presiding Officer cleared his throat and spoke: -

“That’s a load of shite,” he said. “Take him out and shoot him.”

Death of a Legend

2007-09-26T14:46:00.000-07:00

It was with great sadness that I opened up the newspaper the other day and discovered that Myles “Gobshite” Aweigh, the celebrated former League of Ireland referee, had passed away following a nasty lawnmower accident.

Conceived and born out of wedlock, Myles was, from the earliest age, supremely qualified to follow his chosen career as a referee. Profoundly short-sighted, he attended Peadar Kearney’s [Victuallers and Grocers] for five years, before discovering that the school was next door.

Fellow-pupils recall the tousle-haired future referee with affection. “He was a complete tosser,” said one. “A right bastard,” said another. Former school principal, Ned O’Crikey was more circumspect. “A geek of the highest order,” he said. “Couldn’t stand the little bollix.”

As his personal magnetism grew, so did his ego. He left school at sixteen and went home, causing much disquiet within his family, who had forgotten about him. It was then that he saw an advert in the local paper. “Are you unpopular?” it read, “Have you a thick skin and a schizophrenic personality? Then come and join us at the Dublin Refereeing College….” Myles applied and so impressed the interviewers that they emigrated. His family waved him off proudly on his first morning and then moved.

For three years, Aweigh learned his trade at the college. It was said that he was the loudest whistler ever to attend the institution, much to the annoyance of the sausage factory next door, whose workers frequently mistook his whistling for the lunch-break hooter. He quickly mastered the intricacies of coin-tossing and was able to recognise the difference between heads and harps on most occasions. He was somewhat slower at picking up the principle of the ten-yard rule, though, and even during his professional career, he would often pace out the required distance in the style of a triple-jumper.

Starting at the bottom, the fledgling ref immediately made a name for himself in the Dublin & District U-6 league when he sent off four players from one team for incontinence. Promotion was rapid, and on the 20th October 1973, he proudly ran out at Dalymount Park to referee the big Dublin derby between Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers. Unfortunately, as a solitary groundsman pointed out to him, the match was on at Milltown and so he had to wait another week to make his debut.

For the next twenty years, “That old shitehawk”, as he was affectionately known, was a permanent fixture on the League of Ireland’s referee list, save for a brief two-week suspension he served for accidentally sending off a linesman. The highlight of his career was being picked by FIFA to officiate at the prestigious World Cup Qualifier between Burkina Faso and Tanganyika in 1985, a game which unfortunately had to be abandoned when it was discovered that the Burkina Faso currency didn’t have a harp on it.

He was quite forthright in his views. When questioned about the amount of personal abuse he got from the terraces, he replied, “Abuse? I thought they liked me,” and sidled away nervously. He was asked on many occasions about what had drawn him into the world of refereeing. “It’s the uniform,” he said. “There’s just something about black that turns me on.”

He officiated at many Cup Finals, the most infamous being the “Twenty Minutes of Injury Time” Cup Final of 1982. “Forgot my watch,” he explained later, “and I was trying to judge it by the sun.” Controversy reigned again in 1988 Cup Final when, awarding a free-kick just outside the penalty area, he insisted on both teams standing ten yards away. After twenty minutes, he realised his mistake, but most of the crowd had gone home by this time.

He refereed his final game on December 21st 1992 in Terryland Park. A crowd of over 20,000 turned out to shout abuse at him one final time. Though nearly at retirement age, Aweigh had probably his finest game in the black, with the visitors winning 2-2. After the game, the FAI presented him with a plastic whistle as a memento of the occasion, which brought him close to tears.

Aweigh used his retirement profitably and penned his now-classic “Off You Go, You Bastard,” whose sales quickly reached double figures. In the book, he expounded at length on his career in the game and at the new challenges facing referees today. He was totally dismissive of referees wearing purple, claiming it eroded the players’ confidence and didn’t match one’s hair. He was equally scornful of referees’ assessors, likening them to “putrid pus-filled baboons with no idea of the pressures of the job.” Ironically, he became a referee’s assessor himself a week after the book was published.

On behalf of everybody here at Shelbourne FC, I would like to extend sincerest sympathies to his guide dog, Bessy, in her sad loss. Before the match tonight, there will be one minute’s giggling as a mark of respect.

Confessions of a Soccer Guru

2007-09-26T14:45:00.002-07:00

To the great unwashed, I am just an ordinary soccer supporter. I go to Tolka Park every other Friday and usually sit in Section D. There are a few people with whom I have a nodding acquaintance, but mostly I am content to sit on my own, spend ninety minutes shouting abuse at the referee and then go home. Most people around me are completely unaware that the balding, buck-toothed, middle-aged man in their midst is actually responsible for most of what goes on in the eircom League. Nevertheless, it is true. I am the Clark Kent of soccer in Ireland, the puppeteer par excellence. Let me explain.

I was always interested in football, even as a foetus. Most expectant mothers are thrilled when their babies kick. I used to do diving headers and sliding tackles as well, much to my mother’s discomfort. And when her womb eventually lost patience and gave me the red card, the midwife held me up and announced, “It’s an inside-forward.”

Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that my passion for soccer was only matched by my complete ineptitude at the game. As the saying goes, I had two left feet, which wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d have been left-footed, but the sad fact was that I wasn’t even right-footed. I was completely talentless, the football equivalent of Gareth Gates.

However, I was undeterred in my love of soccer and resolved, from an early age, to become a soccer guru. To this end, I haunted football grounds, I made the acquaintance of managers, players, ballboys, and fourth officials. Not only did I live football and sleep football, I danced, dined and fornicated football, though not necessarily all at the same time. I took night courses in Soccer Guruism in Bolton St and participated in the era-defining Soccer-Gurus-against-the-Bomb marches of the late seventies, which paved the way for the safer world we live in today.

Emerging as a fully-fledged guru in the early eighties, I was distressed to learn that the bottom had fallen out of the guru market. Throughout the country, gurus were leaping to their deaths from tower block windows as the depression bit. I have to admit that in the darkest hours, I sometimes felt like following suit, but I only had the courage to jump out of a ground floor window, with negligible effect.

It was Jim McLoughlin who inadvertently pulled me through. He had just left Dundalk after accepting the Rovers job, and quite frankly he hadn’t a clue how to go about transforming the fortunes of the Hoops. I gave him a quick course in tactics and advised him to acquire certain players – Pat Byrne, Noel Larkin, Dermot Keely amongst others. He took my advice and the rest, as they say, is history. We often laughed about it afterwards, though not in each other’s company.

Throughout the late eighties and the early nineties, my reputation grew. In those days, of course, gurus weren’t allowed to advertise, but word of mouth was such that a steady stream of managers beat a path to my front door, which was great, as I’d always wanted a path. Some of my successes were more spectacular than others. Back in 1993, an ex-footballer, recently returned from England, came to see me. He had been offered the manager’s job in Cork, but was unsure whether it was a good career move. I laid it on the line for him. “Damien,” I said. “Go for it. You’ll be a success. After a few years, you’ll land a big Dublin club. However, it’s well to have a back up plan as well. Here’s a dictionary. Learn ten words a day and I guarantee you, you’ll pass as a television pundit within ten years.” He still sends me a Christmas card every year, wishing me felicitations for the nativity sojourn.

In 1998, another young manager came to see me. He had remembered me from years earlier, when I’d advised his brother to take up boxing.

“Pete,” he said, after giving my path a bit of a sweep. “I’ve just taken over at Bohs. Things didn’t go well in Bangor, and frankly, I’ve no idea how to manage. What should I do?”

I took the sweeping brush off him. “Roddie,” I said. [He always insisted on me calling him Roddie. I have no idea why.] “Roddie. Look at yourself. Brown corduroys! I mean to say! And a turtle neck sweater. You should be shot for crimes against fashion. Think threads, man! Go and see Louis, get yourself a whistle. And maybe a hat. You are what you wear you know. You’ll never inspire confidence in brown cords. After a couple of years, you’ll be managing one of the top teams in England, I guarantee you.” He looked nonplussed, the way Ferguson did when I told him to take the United job. But after a while I could see a new, more ebullient Roddie coming to the fore.

I have to be very careful when dispensing my advice though. One current manager, who shall be nameless, came to see me a little over a year ago.

“Pete,” he said nervously, as he tucked into his fifth helping of gooseberry pie. “I can’t seem to motivate my players any more. Help me, please!”

I thought about it for a while, while he attacked the pecan pie. Eventually, I came up with a plan. “What you need to do,” I said, “is to turn the rest of the league against you. Then you can instill in your team an us-against-them attitude, a backs-to-the-wall job”

“How do I do that then?” he asked, turning his attention to the Mississippi mud pie.

“Well, just off the top of my head, how about, say, if you accidentally forgot to register a player?”

“The league would deduct us points. Is that blackberry and apple?”

“Elderberry. You’d get the points back eventually. Make sure you get a receipt from the Post Office. Everyone’ll see it’s a genuine accident. Act aggrieved. Be defensive in the media. Play the I’m-just-a-poor-boy-nobody-loves-me card. I swear to you, you’ll get the points back.”

He leapt up and thrust out a pudgy hand. “Pete, you’re a genius!” he said, wiping the crumbs off his lips. “Thank you, thank you.” And he almost skipped down my garden path in delight. Luckily for me, I’d always liked crazy paving.

“You’d better make damn sure that the rest of your players are registered correctly, though!” I called after him, but I’m not sure if he heard.

And so I sit in Section D on a Friday night unknown and anonymous. Occasionally, Richie Baker will score a goal and run towards me in celebration. Such a nice young man, and always grateful to me for steering him away from the future he saw for himself as a goalkeeper……

Bringing the Game into Disrepute

2007-09-26T14:45:00.001-07:00

Saturday afternoons, in my youth, were great and usually involved consuming large quantities of alcohol in the various hostelries in Wicklow town. Nowadays, having metamorphosed gradually into the archetypal middle-aged boring old fart, Saturday afternoons are a time for doing those mindlessly boring jobs that you can’t be arsed doing during the week – washing the car, hanging up a picture, cleaning shoes, washing windows etc etc. It was on the first of these – the fascinating occupation of removing layers of dirt from my Almeira – that I was engaged, when the host of Saturday Sport on RTE Radio 1 announced that they were going to have a discussion on the implications of the Genesis report.

Now, I’ll lay my cards on the table. I viewed the Genesis report in much the same way as I regarded the band of the same name i.e. with complete disinterest. There was very little of interest for the eircom League as it seemed to concentrate on some squabble on a North Pacific island. So I was about to put a John Otway cassette into the car tape deck, when mine host remarked that Pat Dolan and Ollie Byrne would be in studio to discuss the implications of the report. “Beware of the Flowers [Cos I’m Sure They’re Gonna Get You, Yeah]” was temporarily abandoned as I anticipated a potentially interesting argument between two of the eircom League’s larger than life protagonists.

Pat kicked off wearing his eircom League strip. Why had it been so long since a League of Ireland player had been capped at full international level? Why do our young players need to go to England in transition year and return home stigmatised by failure without an education at 17? The Genesis report had shown the FAI was in need of an overhaul, and eircom League issues had to be a part and parcel of the solution. Bit of a leap of imagination there, Pat, as the Genesis report barely mentioned, and had nothing to do with, the eircom League, but, hey, you’re batting on our side, get in the digs on our behalf, fair play to you.

Ollie’s turn now. Ollie unfortunately isn’t as fluent and smooth a speaker as Pat. Whatever about his ideas and principles, the fact is that he doesn’t come across as favourably as Pat. He started off by saying how honoured he was to be a member of the FAI. Er, the same FAI that’s just been slated as amateurish and incompetent in a professional report, Ollie? The FAI, in the persona of Ollie, bites back. Oh no, Ollie’s not going to take it up the ass like Menton and Corcoran and the rest.

Pat starts to say something and Ollie cuts him dead. “Excuse me, I didn’t interrupt you, so please don’t interrupt me.” Even politicians are starting to realise that that particularly hackneyed phrase is no longer going down very well with the electorate. Ollie is speaking slowly and deliberately and not very interestingly. Not quite as irritating as Bill Bagster, but getting there. The gist of his argument seems to be that the recommendations of the Genesis Report will be implemented in full and that the fact that the FAI commissioned the report in the first place is a step in the right direction.

In comes the Waterford chairman [Ger O’Brien, I think] on the telephone. He is asked about the difficulties of rural sides relative to Dublin sides. Rather unsurprisingly, he comes up with the difficulty of travel. Apparently, there is more travel involved for rural clubs. This surprised me so much I nearly put the squeegee through the wing mirror. He also agreed with his rather more famous counterparts that there was a lot of work in running a football club. For some reason, the words “Sherlock,” “shit” and “no” sprung to mind, though not necessarily in that particular order.

Time for a commercial break and I went inside to change the water. Obviously, a sea change occurred during the interval, because when I returned, Pat was in full flow.

Apparently, Pat is very sceptical of the ability of the FAI to change itself. The main reason he cited for this opinion was that the same officers of the FAI who had deducted points from one football club last season [who on earth could he be referring to?] had recently decided not to apply the letter of the law this season and had given Longford their points back. Apparently, if the letter of the law applied last year, it ought to apply this year. And it also appeared that those who shouted most loudly got their own way, he shouted loudly. Again, whoever could he have been referring to?

I had to admit at this stage I was cringing. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Pat’s comments had no relevance to the Genesis report – it was a self-serving, vicious and thinly-veiled attack on the man sitting opposite him in the studio. It was cheap and nasty and did nothing to further the debate.

Now, how would Ollie react? Would a man who advocated professionalism in all things reply in a professional manner? “Pat’s comments are irrelevant to the issue”? “I see no purpose in reopening old wounds..”? What kind of dignified response would elicit forth from those professional lips?

“The reason Pat’s got deducted the points last year was because a certain person told lies..” he began. I wondered idly who the “certain person” was. I put my hands up to my face and got a mouthful of suds. This could not be happening. Pat tried to interject and Ollie played his “I didn’t interrupt you” card. In all, he played it four times during the interview, which any media guru could have told him was a no-no.

Shane O’Donoghue tried to interject, and Ollie rounded on him, more or less accusing him of having got him there under false pretences. “I came here under the illusion that we were going to talk about the Genesis report,” wailed Ollie. “Its great radio for you, but it’s not what I came here for.”

At this point, the Waterford chairman did the Butros Butros Gali bit. “I don’t want to project myself as the good guy here,” he said - [Sorry, but appearing with these two clowns, Ger, you have no option] – “but there’s no point raking up old wounds.”

A good point, which begged a mature response

“It wasn’t me who started it,” said Ollie.

Pat then took up the cudgels again. There should be a blank piece of paper, he said. Why do we need 22 men on a committee? Implement the recommendations and get rid of the dead wood. Which would have been a fair enough point, if you were unaware at whom his comments were directly aimed at, and if you didn’t suspect there was a fair degree of personal animosity couched within the suggestion.

Back came Ollie. The FAI was going to implement the report in full. They were going to appoint professionals to run the organisation. But there would still be a need for the 22-man committee to decide policy and to tell the professionals what to do. I could almost hear the sound of 200,000 radio listeners hooting in derision. What on earth is the point of appointing professionals with large salaries if they aren’t allowed to formulate policy?

The Waterford chairman, although trying to be diplomatic, couldn’t but agree with Pat. A clean start, a blank sheet of paper.

Shane wrapped it up pretty quickly after that although you could imagine the acrimony in Montrose afterwards. It was one of the most bizarre debates I’ve ever heard and one which fills me with despair.

Here we had two of the most recognisable spokesmen for the eircom League sparring in the most immature and pathetic fashion on the public airwaves. How they expected, by their childish behaviour, to enhance the reputation of the league is beyond belief.

These are the two people who came out earlier in the season to pour cold water on the stories of antipathy between the two CEOs. As an example to the fans that the troubles between the two clubs were in the past, and the nasty atmosphere should be replaced by healthy rivalry, they metaphorically shook hands and slapped each other on their not-so-inconsiderable backs. Both Shels and Pats fans were relieved. We needed to draw a line in the sand [where have I heard that phrase before?] and start anew, afresh.

Last Saturday’s nasty little incident was like picking a scab too early. Vast amounts of noxious pus flowed out. Which is okay if you’re doing it at home, in private, but it’s not for public consumption.

Both men keep banging on about professionalism and the need for it in the eircom League. Yet the amateurish and immature way they conducted themselves on Saturday Sport would only have reinforced the beliefs of non-eL listeners that our league is run by petty, spiteful men who are more concerned with scoring cheap points against each other than with grappling with the real problems of the league. I would suggest there is a very good case for hauling both men up on a charge of bringing the game into disrepute. But that won’t happen.

I wonder why not.

Best Supprters, Me Arse

2007-09-26T14:44:00.001-07:00

In a recent football poll of uncertain demography, the Republic of Ireland fans were voted as being the best in the World Cup. We are so fond of repeating this mantra to ourselves, that we are in grave danger of actually believing it to be true. And if we believe it to be true, we are blinding ourselves to the reality that, rather than being the best fans in the world, we are no better, and in some cases much worse, than fans of other football nations.
In what way do we have the “best” fans? Perhaps its because we travel to away games in large numbers but never cause any trouble.
Let’s split that statement up. We travel to away games in large numbers. Isn’t it wonderful that we live in a largely affluent society that allows us to do so? Are we better football fans than the poor bastards in Senegal or Costa Rica, for whom a roof for a school or an AIDS awareness programme might be a slightly higher priority than a trip halfway around the world to watch a football tournament?
And, as far as travelling support goes, I doubt we’re among the most numerous. I guarantee there were more Portuguese in Lansdowne than there were Irish in Lisbon. And the same goes for the Dutch.
We never cause any trouble. Aren’t we great? We’re just like all but three or four other countries in the world. England, Holland, Germany and Turkey all have had various degrees of football hooliganism. We should congratulate ourselves that we’re better than them? We’re great because we don’t behave like scum?
Perhaps we’re the most loyal supporters in the world? Yes, we’re there with the Boys in Green through thick and thin. Although I remember being one of 14,000 people in Lansdowne Road who watched Denmark destroy us 4-1 in 1985. Sorry, I forgot - we weren’t particularly successful then, were we?
Much more recently, we had the Roy Keane incident, and the great Irish fans disgraced themselves once again. How often did we hear that it was Roy Keane who got us through the qualifying group? That the manager and the team didn’t stand a chance without him? Even that we hoped the country actually lost? How does this square up with calling ourselves the best supporters, when we can throw such an insult at the twenty-two players and the manager of our national team?
But we always respect other countries’ national anthems. For the most part, yes. Again, do we deserve a pat on the back for this? However, we think nothing of booing a player because of the team he plays for. Or think he plays for, as per the disgusting occasion at the recent friendly against Denmark. I hark back again to the eighties to a testimonial for Jimmy Holmes at Dalymount. A seventeen-year-old striker was booed every time he touched the ball, because he played for Linfield. At a charity match, for God’s sake!
But we always get behind the team! The crowd is like a twelfth man! Again, I’ve heard Lansdowne like a tomb when things haven’t been going our way. This has been blamed on the corporate block, yet the corporate block makes up only a small percentage of tickets sold. Face it, we only make noise when there’s something at stake and can’t be arsed in a meaningless friendly.
[And while I’m at it, for God’s sake, let’s drop the bloody “Fields of Athenry.” The Brazilians have their Samba music, the Spaniards, [and Longford], have their drummer, and we choose to gee our boys on with a dreary dirge about a 150-year-old corn stealer.]
But the main reason that we’re not the best supporters in the world is that we will spend thousands of pounds following the National team all around the world, yet we can’t make it down to Tolka or Richmond or Turner’s Cross on a Friday night. In this, I am not decrying the many League of Ireland supporters who also follow the Republic of Ireland. Fair play to them. They are true soccer supporters. But they are in a minority. Most Irish fans that were in Genoa or New York or Niigata wouldn’t be able to name three players in their domestic league. Ask them to name twelve black players who played for United, or when Larsson last scored a hat-trick, they’ll tell you no problem. But ask them what they think of the League of Ireland, and the reply will invariably contain a word that begins with sh and rhymes with white. Probe them further if they’ve ever been to a domestic match, and you’ll find they haven’t. But of course, they know its not very good, or words to that effect.
The question is, of course, do we deserve to have a successful national team while the domestic league is so badly supported? More supporters at league matches would generate more advertising and bring more money into the game. Having more money in the game might encourage fifteen-year-olds to stay at home rather than going to Port Vale reserve team for three years. As a result, the standards here would be raised, which in turn could only improve the National team.
Although, as every League of Ireland supporter knows, there’s not much wrong with the product at the moment. If you follow a team throughout a season, there’ll be some good games, some bad games and plenty of excitement. Probably fewer bad games than if you follow Liverpool, if truth be told.
But you’ll never get the Ole Ole brigade to understand this. Best supporters, me arse.

Armchair Fans

2007-09-26T14:43:00.002-07:00

Imagine you are ten years old again and your big ambition in life is to become a Boy Scout. It is your dream, your ultimate ambition, your raison d’etre.
And so, you buy a tent and billie-cans, you learn how to tie a sheepshank in your woggle, you learn all the songs and sing them around the campfire, you make trails through the woods using only bits of twigs and deer shit and you go around annoying people during Bob-a-Job week. In short, you do all the exciting things that a Boy Scout does, with one exception – you never go to a meeting.
Question – are you a real Boy Scout?
My pet hate in life is armchair football fans, although strictly speaking that’s a contradiction in terms. Just as you can’t be a proper Boy Scout if you never attend a meeting, so, I maintain, you can’t be a proper football fan if you never go and see a game live, in the flesh, in situ.
Not that I am anti-television in any way. On the contrary, I enjoy watching matches on the box myself. I will gladly watch English football, European football, World football, any type of football, [except possibly Northern Ireland football,] if my wife lets me. I personally think that the advent of “live” football on Sky has shown the English game up for what it is – 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, and that’s why a highlights package is often better than a full match, on the box. There is the same percentage of good games in England, as there are in Ireland, as there are in the Phoenix Park. What the televised English game has, is hype and presentation. Presenters can talk glibly about various aspects of a game in England, the percentage of possession, how many miles a player runs during a match, action replays from every angle etc etc. This tends to mask the fact that a game might be complete crap.
This is turning into a diatribe against English soccer, and that is not my intention. I have nothing against Irish fans spending huge amounts of time and money travelling back and forth across the Irish Sea, giving money to Tony Blair instead of spending it at home. That is their privilege and their right, and at least they are experiencing football as it should be experienced – live. Fair play to English soccer, they have marketed their product very well. My point is that it’s the same as St. Bernard’s Cornflakes – if you can’t taste the difference, why pay the difference?
I firmly believe that there is not much difference between the Premier League in England and the Premier Division over here, except in terms of fitness. English Premier League players are fitter – the game is played at top speed, from start to finish, often at the expense of skill. The skill factor in the two leagues is roughly similar, but the Liverpools and Uniteds beat us every time in terms of fitness and athleticism.
But does that mean that an English match is more enjoyable to watch than an Irish match? Those of us who attend Eircom League matches know it isn’t true. Of course you can get a crap game here, but you can just as easily get a crap game over the water.
But you will never convince the “armchair fan” of this. The subtle influences of marketing and hype can easily convince him that he’s seen a good game when in fact he hasn’t.
And, of course, the “armchair fan” has nothing to compare the televised game with. I, personally, get a great buzz out of the roar at Tolka when the two teams come out, accompanied by the strains of “Let me entertain you.” the manager going ape-shit on the touchline, freezing feet and soup at half-time, the sheer exhilaration of watching the net bulge, the rapport between players and fans. There is no substitute for being there.
The “armchair fan” watches a football match, the real fan experiences it. There is a world of difference between the two.
I could study Sierra Leone as a basis for a thesis in University. I could get all the books out of the library and the videos from Xtravision, and could surf the net picking up information from a myriad of sources. But I wouldn’t really know Sierra Leone unless I spent six months living there, getting to feel the atmosphere of the place.
In much the same way, the “armchair fan” cannot really lay claim to understanding football. A game at first hand is worth two on the box. Yet it is invariably the “armchair fan” who is the most opinionated and vocal, the one who phones up Today FM on a Saturday afternoon proclaiming that Houllier doesn’t have a clue, the one who, in the main, is most vocal in their opposition to the FAI’s deal with Sky Television, the one who is loudest in his denunciation of the Eircom League.
I am not a violent man. I make Mahatma Gandhi look like a crazed axe-murderer. But when I take over the world, I’m going to have all these “armchair fans” strapped into their armchairs and wheeled with increasing rapidity over the Cliffs of Moher. And then watch the action replay from every conceivable angle.

Are you a real fan?

2007-09-26T14:43:00.001-07:00

On the Shels MB during the close season, I was bemoaning the fact that pre-season friendlies were not necessarily fan-friendly – Athlone on a Tuesday night, Newry on a Monday night etc. A Pats fan mildly admonished me with the words, “If you really wanted to go, you would.” This same Pats fan had previously claimed that he hadn’t missed a Pats game for fifteen years.

This got me to thinking about the nature of football support. Compared to this Pats fan – if he were to be believed – I was a very poor supporter. I miss a certain amount of games every season for a variety of reasons – awkward match times, holidays, family occasions etc. But I justify it by saying that every game I can feasibly attend, I do.

Mr. Pats fan obviously takes the view that it is feasible to attend every match. And theoretically, he is right. I could take half days and go and see us playing in Derry on a Thursday night, or Cork on a Friday night. If I won the Lotto, or worked for a company that gave me 30 days holidays a year, I probably would. But I only get 20 days, six of which have to be taken at Christmas. I have a wife who, perversely, likes to go away on a summer holiday. It is not feasible for me to use up the couple of days on football.

During Euro 88 and Italia 90 and USA 94, much was made of the good old boys who’d got money out of the Credit Union, left the wife and kids at home, and gone off for the craic. These were the heroes of the media, and the ones who had made the biggest sacrifices were the most in demand. When, in the latter two competitions, we qualified for the next round, these same heroes vowed to stay on, despite the risk to their jobs and their family finances. The lads would do anything for Ireland.

Strangely enough, there was scarce little reporting of the views of the wife at home, stuck there by herself all day and all night with only one and two year olds for company. Wondering if they could afford the rent at the end of the month, worrying if he’d still have a job at the end of the month. Trying to soothe the baby while he’s drunk in a bar in Gelsenkirchen.

I’m not having a go at single people with no responsibilities here. They can do what they like. I did the same myself, back in the hazy mists of time when I had nobody to think about, but myself.

Let’s do a few “supposes”. Suppose you’re travelling down to Sligo to see your team play, and, going through Boyle, you see a car plunge into the river. You know that to stop and help will mean missing the match. What do you do?

Suppose you’ve had to work extra hours recently. The wife has been at home for six days minding the kids. You have one day off and Shels are playing Bohs. Do you go?

Suppose there are two Cup Finals on the same day. One involves Shels. The other involves your son’s under-eights. Which one do you go to?

If any of the answers to the above are that you would go and see Shels, then I would gladly hold up my hands and admit that you’re a better Shels fan than me. However, being a better fan might not necessarily make you a better person. In fact, if you would go and see Shels in any of the instances above, I would maintain you are a thoroughly selfish person.

To come back to the Pats fan that hasn’t missed a game in fifteen years [the words salt and pinch keep springing to mind, for some reason], I can only suggest three possible reasons for such a claim.

Firstly, he is lying. But of course Pats fans don’t even exaggerate, never mind tell lies, as we all know.

Secondly, he leads an incredibly sad existence, in which football is the only criteria. In the past fifteen years, nothing has ever happened to cause him to miss a match – a holiday, his wedding, his mother’s court appearance, his grandad’s funeral, his wife giving birth, a nephew’s baptism etc etc

Thirdly, he is an incredibly selfish person, who, in choosing between the match and any of the above, has chosen the match. He would doubtless see himself as a great supporter and would get respect for this from his mates, but the cost of this would have been to trample over the feelings of his nearest and dearest. Great supporter, shallow personality.

As Bill Shankly should have said, “Football isn’t a matter of life or death. It comes behind your conscience, your family and friends and your moral responsibilities.”

And now the end is near….

2007-09-26T14:42:00.002-07:00

Two games to go and time to recap on what has been a fairly topsy-turvy season for Shels fans. There have been high points and low points, and I appreciate that all fans have different ideas on the outstanding moments of the season. Here however are mine:-

After an encouraging pre-season, we were brought down to earth 3-0 in Cork. Not just beaten, but thumped. However, a huge crowd in Turners Cross augured well for summer football, and crowds stayed relatively high, at least during the warmer months..

The defeat to Hibernians of Malta at home was a sickener. We seemed to have done the hard work with a score-draw away from home and for 90 minutes we bossed them at home, with only Trevor Molloy’s enthusiasm preventing us from scoring. Then Mr. Chukunyere struck. We’ll probably never hear of him again, but his name will go down in Shels’ history.

Pats away in the Cup. Following a home league defeat, we travelled to Richer expecting revenge, only to be robbed in cruel fashion by a bizarre referee. Following hard on the heels of Hibs, it was turning into a summer of discontent.

Rovers away at Tolka in the League. We ran them ragged and couldn’t put the ball in the net. Wes produced one piece of spell-binding skill where he sent four Rovers defenders the wrong way with a dummy.

Bohs at home. To be fair, they destroyed us in the first half, but we pegged them back. Shero set up our first goal, and then was guilty of an unbelievable miss in front of goal that would have given us a point, and taken three points off the difference between us and Bohs.

The second third of the season saw us moving up a gear. It began with a complete destruction of Cork at home. Our superiority was far greater than the 2-1 suggested. Pat’s away was a rollercoaster of a game, notable for Geogo’s great skill in scoring his first and the drama of his late equaliser for the second.

Davy Byrne’s goal against UCD was one of the highlights of the season for me – a screamer from all of thirty yards that the keeper had no chance of stopping. Similar to that Shearer free-kick they’re showing non-stop in England, only from open play.

The victory over Bohs was one of the sweetest games of the season, with Shels becoming the first team to beat them in the league. A very debatable penalty was awarded to us in the first half. A blatant penalty was not awarded in the second. A great team effort and the 2-1 scoreline belied how far ahead we were.

The defeat away to Cork Will someone please tell me what Jim Gannon was sent off for, because nobody seems to know? Another diabolical refereeing decision gives Cork all three points.

Liam Buckley’s enterprising piece of quick thinking ultimately set up Mark Roberts for the only goal of the game against Rovers at Richer. I shouldn’t jeer – for too long there has been too much gamesmanship in football. One piece of sportsmanship hands us all three points!!

And so to last Sunday’s table-topping, Championship decider. A game that could have gone either way, Bohs closed us down throughout the game and never gave us a chance to settle. Ashley Bayes pulls off the save of the season from Ollie Cahill and then lovely Bobby Ryan hits us with a sucker punch.

All in all, it augurs well for next season. We dropped 22 points from our first eleven games and in the end, they proved costly, similar in a way to Bohs last season. However, Pats looked very strong at the end of last year and look what happened to them. But Pat seems to know what he’s doing [Fenlon, not Dolan] so hopefully we won’t suffer the same fate.

An Uneasy Relationship

2007-09-26T14:42:00.001-07:00

Two of the great loves of my life, with the exception of my weekly pay packet and Felicity Kendal in “The Good Life”, are football and music. Both have been with me since I can remember, yet, to a large extent, they remain very much exclusive of one another. When music and football meet, the results can be terrifying…

Football songs are, with a few notable exceptions, pure crap. I suppose the first one that many people of my generation remember is “Back Home” by the England World Squad in 1970. Got to number one too. “Back home, they’ll be singing and waving and cheering every move.” Like when Jeff Astle ballooned the ball over the bar from six yards, I suppose. Why do songwriters always assume that their team is going to win the bloody World Cup? Why can’t they be more realistic?
“And we’ll really shake them up when we draw against Iran
For Scotland are an average football team,”
is far more realistic and less likely to leave the writer with egg on his proverbial.

Over here, we are not above making outrageous claims regarding the prowess of our national side. “You’ll never beat the Irish,” is not only palpable nonsense, but it doesn’t even have the redeeming feature of being musically competent. In this, however, it is an exception. Ireland has produced some footballing songs over the years, which are not only lyrically well constructed, but also stand up musically too. “Give it a lash, Jack” was very wittily created, “We’re gonna start a fire” was a great tribute to how we got where we were in 1990, “Put ‘em under pressure” many people consider to be the finest footballing song ever written [despite the naff chorus] and “Here comes the good times” was a very honest song with a lot of musical merit.

Shamrock Rovers’ Billy Sullivan produced a CD last season featuring a Shamrock Rovers song, which was both catchy and musically excellent, but unfortunately its release coincided with Rovers horrific slump towards the end of the season, which doubtless affected sales. By and large, though, Irish club sides generally eschew bringing out football songs. I would like to think that this is because they recognise musical integrity, but it probably has more to do with the absence of a market!

In case people argue that I’m being biased, I also have to admit that I secretly liked “Three Lions”, English football’s new anthem. Notwithstanding the jingoistic undertones, I can relate to the hurt and disappointment of those fans who haven’t enjoyed success for years. Long may it continue for them.

Do you remember some of the awful offerings that came out of England in the eighties? Chas and Dave, Hoddle and Waddle, Kevin Keegan –my God, the songs were nearly as bad as the haircuts - all were fortunate not to have been hauled up on crimes against humanity. What possessed people to come up with such muck?

Apart from songs about or by footballers, there are also those pop songs that have been adopted by the footballing fraternity. “You’ll never walk alone”, “Leader of the Gang”, “Daydream Believer” “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” [no, not the Michael Jackson version], the list goes on and on. But they all have to have one thing in common. They all must have an easy hook line that the great mass of the unwashed can easily get their vocal chords around. Nessun Dorna might forever be associated with football, but it will never get sung on the terraces.

Then, there is a third occasion when football and music interact – the music played on the P.A. before, during and, occasionally, after a game. Mostly this consists of bland, unoriginal pop music that the P.A. announcer has borrowed from his teenage sister. Why do commentators assume that, just because we like football, we have no musical taste at all? I was at a friendly in Dalymount last year and the pre-match and half time entertainment was by some tuneless wimp who didn’t quite manage to make it into Six. I mean, can you imagine somebody not talented enough to get into Six? And we paid in, for God’s sake!

A notable exception to this was the P.A. announcer at Richmond Park in the eighties. Where other DJs would be blaring out Donna Summer or Earth, Wind and Fire, the Pats collection was more intellectually stimulating. I remember “Free Nelson Mandela” by The Special AKA, for example, and offerings from Iggy Pop and Talking Heads. I don’t know who he was, but I salute him.

Shels use “Let me Entertain You” when the teams come out onto the pitch on Friday nights and “Another One Bites the Dust” at the end of the match, if we have won. The temptation to use “We are the Champions” has thankfully largely been ignored, although occasionally we succumb. I don’t really like that song – I think Freddie wrote it with the terraces in mind, which is never a good idea.

It has remained a source of complete puzzlement to me that, whereas football is a game of passion and excitement, of despair and elation, the music that accompanies it is, by and large, mindless and insipid. I urge any budding songwriters and musicians to try and come up with a great football song, one that transcends the terraces and would appeal to the wider market, while retaining some semblance of musical integrity. And I’ll see about getting Felicity Kendal to don a pair of rubber boots for the video.

Ah, sure….

2007-09-26T14:41:00.002-07:00

Richie Baker gets to the by-line for one of the few times in the match. The Bohs defenders are all sucked towards the near post, the goalie’s on the floor. Richie drills the ball low and hard across the goal. Tony Sheridan, known as God to many of the Shels faithful, is all on his own, three yards out. This is the man who has scored impossible goals in pressure situations. He must score. You would put your house on it….

The ball, I believe, is still in orbit. Had it nestled snugly in the back of the Bohs’ net, that night in Tolka Park, Shels could well be celebrating their third championship in four years as we speak. Of course, it is churlish to blame God. Even Pele missed sitters, though, tellingly, never against Bohemians. That goal would have put us three points nearer to our Phibsboro rivals, but who knows how either team might have been affected by the extra pressure.

For Shels’ fans, the season was always one of consolidation, until the last few weeks, when the vision of the title cruelly raised its head, only to be snatched away again almost as quickly. We gained eleven points from our first eleven games. Or, put another way, we dropped twenty two points in our first eleven games. That was really the end of our title hopes, and a place in Europe looked to be beyond us. There were mutterings about Pat Fenlon – was it fair to throw him in at the deep end in his first managerial appointment? Why did we not have a decent striker at the club? Thankfully the mutterings remained low-key, as we slowly started to get our act together.

The low spot in that first period was undoubtedly the defeat to Hibernians of Malta. Other clubs’ supporters were quick to label us failures and claimed that we had somehow shamed the league with an inept display, but the reality of the situation was that we metaphorically urinated over Hibs in the second leg. They barely got into our half. But for Trevor Molloy’s enthusiasm, we’d have gone one up. If there was any fairness in football, we’d have gone through, but sometimes fairness flies out of the window. That’s why we all love this beautiful game. Shit happens.

Slowly, slowly, we hauled Bohs back. At times it was two steps forward, one step back, but it was impossible for Bohs, or indeed any club, to maintain the level of form they had enjoyed at the start of the season. However, it was only with about five games to go, that the possibility dawned on us that we might overhaul Bohs. And we nearly did so. Either team could have won the Clash of the Titans at Tolka. Neither team were at their best, nerves saw to that, and in the end it was Bohs who unexpectedly won the Championship with a late, late goal.

Only the most die-hard of Shels fans would begrudge Stephen Kenny and Bohs their victory. Over the season, they were the best side, and we wish them well in the Champions League, where I hope they get the rub of the green.

As for us, a season that promised little ultimately gave us a lot. Pat Fenlon has had a terrific first season and can only mature into a great manager. Jim Gannon and Kevin Doherty have forged a magnificent partnership at the back, with the ever-dependable Barry Prenderville in reserve in case of injuries. Both fullbacks, Eoin Heary and Dave Crawley recovered after shaky starts to the season, to star both in defence and attack.

Richie Baker had a very up and down season. At times he was brilliant, at times dire, but it was amazing how many important goals came through him. Stuey Byrne was probably my player of the season, whereas Jim Crawford was out far too much with injuries. I felt Ollie Cahill was a disappointment in his first season here, only playing well in about four games in the campaign.

Wes Houlihan has tremendous skill, but there were signs towards the end of the season that opposition defenders are starting to get his measure. Also, he could be a lot more productive in terms of goals scored. I will commit heresy now by advising Pat to sell him, for as high a price as he can get.

Up front was where we had our problems. Dessie Baker spent most of the season injured, Trevor Molloy got transferred after the Hibs game, Geogo was Geogo, the man is a living legend, but time is starting to tell, though he has lost none of his predator’s instinct. Nesovic came and went, Martin Gritton came and went. Mark Roberts looked like he was on some kind of medication for six or seven games, but blossomed like a good wine. He isn’t a goalscorer though. Suffice to say that if we’d have had a Glenn Crowe or a Kevin McHugh or a Jason Byrne, we’d probably have pipped Bohs. Or maybe not. That’s football.

A Tale of Two Misses

2007-09-26T14:41:00.001-07:00

Stephen Geoghegan ran onto the ball in the penalty area, a defender trailing helplessly behind him. Only Shay Kelly, in the Bohemian goal stood between Shelbourne and the cushion of a two-goal lead. The red and black half of the crowd put their hands up to their faces; the red and white half leaned forward waiting to leap into the air in celebration.

Jason Byrne, unmarked in front of goal, yelled at Geogo to square the ball. But, as Kelly came charging out, Geogo elected to shoot. You couldn’t blame him for that. One of the deadliest strikers the League has ever seen, one on one with the keeper, he had scored countless goals like that in his long career.

He shot hard to Gregg’s right, about waist high. Some of the Shels fans were already on their feet. But Kelly, with a reflex action, managed to get a hand to the ball. It was an instinctive movement, a great save, but the keeper, falling to the ground, must have been disconsolate as he watched the ball fall perfectly for Jayo.

Jay was on the six-yard line in front of the centre of the goal. The keeper was on the floor, the nearest defender five yards away. The ball came to him slowly, slightly behind him, bouncing. My granny would have stooped down and nodded it in. Jason Byrne was the season’s top scorer. He’d been in electric form for Shels, both in pre-season and during the first six games of the league. He’d scored in ten of the eleven games of his short Shelbourne career.

The Shels fans started their roar. Two nil up against the defending champions, and likeliest rivals for the championship. Not an unassailable lead [nothing is unassailable when you follow Shels], but certainly a great lead to have.

He caught the ball on the up-bounce and it ballooned over the bar. For a moment, there was silence, puzzlement. What had happened? Had the ref blown for an infringement? And, as the dreadful reality sunk in for the Reds’ fans, they sat back down, with their faces in their hands. And from the Riverside Stand came hoots of derision from the ecstatic Bohs supporters. Jason just stood there, shaking his head. More than any of the 6,000 in the ground, he could believe it least. The cliché would be that he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. But it didn’t. Acutely conscious of having perpetrated the miss of the century, he jogged back to face the goal kick, still shaking his head.

Bohemians, seeming to gain some heart from this, got back into the game. They scored two goals, and it was only a last minute strike from Ger McCarthy that prevented them from getting all three points.

As I write this, the following day, I can still scarcely believe what I witnessed. I dare say Jason won’t have forgotten about it either.

My mind goes back to the first meeting of Shels and Bohs at Tolka Park the season before. With twenty minutes to go, Bohs were two goals up and cruising. Then Pat Fenlon introduced former Shels legend Tony Sheridan into the fray. His appearance seemed to galvanise the Reds. He went after the ball at every opportunity, made himself available for every pass, and sprayed the ball around like he had six years previously. He helped set up a goal, and, as the Reds went in search of the equaliser, he was at the heart of everything. Bohs were under the cosh and hanging on by their fingernails.

Then, with minutes to go, Richie Baker got free on the right and cut in. He shot, low and hard, to the near post but Ashley Bayes parried it. The ball came back to Richie and, spotting Shero unmarked eight yards out with the goal at his mercy, swept it quickly to him.

My granny might well have miscontrolled the ball, but my mother would have buried it. Shero, one of the best controllers of a ball in modern times, had time and space to trap the ball and flick it in. He chose to blast it.

Rumour has it that the ball is still in orbit, circling the earth until some future space archaeologists discover it and attempt to explain it’s existence.

Bohs held out for a 2-1 win. Had Shero have tapped the ball in, they would have lost two points and Shels would have gained one. And although Bohs eventually beat Shels to the title by seven points, the margin was a lot closer with three games of the season to go.

It is idle to speculate that if Shero had scored, Shels might have gone on to win the title. All sorts of psychological inferences would have come into play, which renders the exercise useless. As a Shels fan though, I look back on that miss and wonder.

Not that I blame Shero. This is football. Shit happens. Goalies let the ball trickle through their legs, people miss important penalties, defenders score crazy own goals. I bet even Pele missed a few sitters in his time. The mark of a great player is how he copes with the feeling of frustration that he can’t turn back the clock.

I am sure Jason will get over it soon enough. His next goal will go a long way to banishing it from his mind. And, doubtless, Pat and his teammates will remind him that, without his fantastic goal-scoring exploits, Shels would not be sitting pretty on top of the league.

It’s just that we dropped two points to Bohs yesterday, and Bohs gained one. We could have pulled an extra three points clear of them. Three points which might, come the end of the season be extremely important.

A Seasonal Tale

2007-09-26T14:40:00.002-07:00

Twas the night before Christmas and the only sound in the crisp Dublin sky was the lash of whip on reindeer flesh. Not a creature stirred abroad, although there were plenty of them stirring in Ireland.

Ollie Byrne, director and ardent follower of Shelbourne F.C., tightened the pyjama cord on his strong, muscular stomach and drew the curtains. Ah, the old ones are the best, he said to himself, as he proceeded to colour them in. Above the four poster bed hung a large red stocking, secretly pocketed from Dave Mackey’s sports bag after Shels’ last game before the holiday. And, next to the stocking, a piece of paper was thumbtacked into the wall. It was headed “Ollie’s List Christmas 1985”, followed by a long list of requests, including “more fans”, “Tolka Park” and “a decent team”. Ollie sighed. One day, he thought….As he fell into the arms of Morpheus, he was vaguely aware of dogs barking in the back garden. Funny, he thought drowsily, I don’t have a garden….

Ray squeezed carefully between the slightly open curtains in Ollie’s bedroom. He was small and composed entirely of light and radiation from our solar system’s dominant body. In fact, he was a little ray of sunshine. Ollie twitched at his sudden appearance. He had been dreaming about Tolka Park again, only this time it had suddenly become covered in water. Ollie had been sitting on a throne in the middle of the pitch, ordering the waters to recede, when……Christmas!! The word penetrated Ollie’s brain quicker than the rustle of banknotes. He jumped onto his knees and turned around to check his stocking. Nothing!

Somewhere somebody was playing a sad violin and a big tear trickled down Ollie’s cheek. The strange thing was, it was the cheek of his arse. He couldn’t believe it. He’d been a good boy all year. He hadn’t attacked any referees or got points deducted from other clubs. How could Santa forget him?

He was just about to take pen to paper and give “The Red Lad” a right bollicking, when a curious sound caught his ears. Then it caught his nose and the bit of his neck under his earlobe. It was a mixture of a scowl and a moan. A sort of a scone. He dashed to his window and stood there, staring uncomprehendingly. All he could see was flowers, big swirling blue and green flowers standing proudly in a sea of magenta. Tutting loudly, he pulled back the curtains and looked out.

There, pawing at the fresh snow in the garden, were two of the finest greyhounds he had ever seen. Lean and hungry-looking, they gazed up at Ollie with pleading eyes. “Oh, boy!” he yelled, and dashed barefoot down the wooden stairs and out into the snow. The greyhounds leapt on him immediately, licking his hands, his face, his wallet. Ollie laughed out loud and hugged them tightly. He had never had a friend before. Now he had two. “Thank you, Santa!” he yelled at the top of his voice in the clear morning air.

Ollie played barefooted in his garden with his two greyhounds all Christmas morning. The neighbours eyed him suspiciously from their upstairs windows, and contemplated calling Grangegorman. One of them, remarking that the dogs were actually of the feminine gender [through no fault of their own], coined the phrase “Two Bitch Ollie” to describe the Shelbourne director, a sobriquet which stuck faster than a wasp in honey. Over Christmas, Two Bitch Ollie was a regular feature of the Dublin streets, as he walked his greyhounds. It was as though he had found a sort of inner peace at last.

Training recommenced at Harold’s Cross the day after Stephens Day. The players cursed and groaned as an over-indulgence of mince-pies came back to haunt them. Johnnie Byrne showed them no mercy as he directed a punishing routine from the comfort of his armchair.

Suddenly, Ollie appeared, the two dogs at his side. The players immediately stopped and crowded around him, glad of the excuse to stop training for a second.

“Hi, Ollie, How’s tricks?”
“Nice dogs, Ollie.”
“You all right, Ollie?”

Ollie indeed was not all right. The barefoot frollicking with the dogs on Christmas morning had proved to be his undoing. He had caught a chill, which in turn had become a cold, which had become influenza. As the players all gathered around him, he gave an almighty sneeze, which Freddie Davis just managed to tip over the bar.

“Think you’re coming down with something, Ollie,” said Mick Byrne, wiping a large globule of snot out of his hair. Ollie smiled weakly. “Best of luck for Saturday lads,” he said, “Rovers, isn’t it?”

Indeed it was Rovers on the Saturday. Or rather, it was supposed to have been Rovers. Unfortunately, Ollie’s highly-infectious appearance on the Harold’s Cross training ground had serious repercussions. When the team assembled two hours before kick off on the Saturday, there was scarcely a fit man amongst them. Eyes and noses running, sneezing, aches and pains, the Shels players now looked like they played – bloody awful. Arriving at the ground, John Carpenter, the referee, took one look inside the home team dressing-room and immediately ran out, clutching a handkerchief to his mouth. There was a smell – the foul smell of disease clinging to the walls of the dressing room, and Carpenter, for once making an uncontroversial decision, called the match off.

The players made their way home to their lemsips and their beds. Johnnie Byrne was standing outside the door of the empty dressing room, when he saw the now-familiar sight of a man and two dogs approaching across the pitch.

“Do us a favour, Ollie,” he piped up. “I want to head off. Will you stay behind and let the Rovers lads know the match is off? Isn’t it a shame mobile phones haven’t been invented yet?”

Ollie agreed, and went into the dressing room to ease his weary bones, accompanied by his greyhounds, as Johnnie dashed home to see the last half hour of “The Great Escape.”

Twenty minutes later, a coach pulled up outside the now deserted Harold’s Cross stadium. The Rovers’ players looked at one another puzzled. It was a bad turnout, even by Shels’ standards. Something was obviously wrong.

Jim McLoughlin, Rovers manager, held up a hand. “All right, lads, stay where ye are. I’m going in.” And he stepped out of the coach and strode in through the gates.

A minute passed. Then another. The Rovers players eyed each other nervously. Then, suddenly, the Rovers manager came running out through the gate, a handkerchief over his mouth. He dived into the bus and yelled, “Quick! Reverse! Get out of here!” The coach driver slammed the bus into reverse, screamed past the Greyhound Bar and out on to the Harold’s Cross Road. As he sped off towards Terenure, the players crowded around their manager.

“Boss! What’s wrong? What is it?” asked Dermot Keely.

Jim slowly removed the hanky from his face and gazed around at his worried players. He gulped, and then, in a voice like Sergeant Fraser in “Dad’s Army” said,

“Tis disease, an’ Two Bitch Ollie.”

And the players all replied, “Tra, la, la la, laaah, la, la, la, la.”

A Sacrilegious Suggestion

2007-09-26T14:40:00.001-07:00

Rovers were under the cosh. Shels were all over them and pushing them further and further back, trying desperately to get the opening goal. Wes picked the ball up on the right wing in front of Section B. Cutting inside, he reached the corner of the penalty area, with a mass of green and white bodies between himself and the goal. Shaping to shoot left-footed, three Rovers defenders made a desperate lunge to block the ball. As they dived in, Wes cut the ball back and headed for the goal-line. It was the most sublime dummy seen at Tolka for many a year. In an instant, the green and white defence had collapsed, and Wes was through on goal. As the keeper came out, Wes shot low to his left, but somehow O’Dowd got a hand to it and kept it out.

And there, in one of my highlights of last season, is the essential nub of the enigma that is Wesley Houlihan. Incredibly audacious skill that is worth the entrance fee alone. Brilliance not seen on a regular basis in the eircom League since Shero in his prime or Liam O’Brien at Rovers. Yet on the other hand, ultimately, what worth is he to the team? Does his wonderful skill win games for the Reds, or is it more of a showcase of his talents, an entertainment?

I am acutely aware that Wes is worshipped by many of the Tolka Park faithful. That they see a fantastic future for him, probably across the water, and in the green shirt of Ireland. That we shouldn’t sell him for less than a million. However, I am going to recommend that we sell him now, for as much as we can get for him, and if that’s only £100,000 so be it.

Keely, whatever his faults, had a brain in his head. He gave Wes his start at Shels, slowly introducing him as a sub. He recognised that such a raw talent needed to be nurtured. Eventually he made his full debut. The crowd was shouting “Wesley for Ireland.” People started to talk about him. And then, all of a sudden, Keely dropped him. Kept him out of the team for a few weeks. His explanation was that Wes was starting to believe in his own reputation. No better man than Keely for shrinking a swollen head!

Just before the end of last season, Wes did an interview with an Internet magazine. He claimed that it was rather frustrating still being at Shels. A number of clubs in England had expressed an interest in him but none had come up with a firm offer. He was not interested in going to the lower leagues in England – it had to be the Premier or First Division in England or the Scottish Premier. In any case, he hoped his career at Shels was nearly over.

I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the interview. The incident with Keely served to indicate that perhaps Wes’ attitude had a serious flaw. I have to admit I was astounded at the “self-belief” of the interviewee, but even more surprised that it elicited no response from Shels fans.

Personally, despite his skill, if Wes doesn’t want to play for us, I don’t want to see him play. If he has no affinity for the club and is merely using us as a stepping-stone to future greatness, then sod him. Get rid quickly.

In spite of his undoubted skill, Wes is far from being the complete player he seems to think he is. Too often last season, he’d beat two, three, four players and then lose the ball to the fifth. Too many times, like in the example against Rovers above, a defence splitting dribble was spoiled by a tame, easily-saved shot. Of course, I recognise that you have to give genius a free hand, but if the team doesn’t benefit, what is the point?

If Wes stays at Shels, there are a number of ways his career might go. He might continue to produce the brilliance that has enthralled the Tolka faithful for two seasons. He might learn to score goals – the only goal he scored last season was against Rockmount in the Cup – and might become one of the greatest players never to have crossed the pond.

Alternatively – and there were signs of this at the end of last season – his star might not shine so brightly in the future. Soccer is littered with players who failed to live up to their early promise. Defenders start to get a handle on the shimmies and feints. Particularly next season, when we have to play every team four times, the element of surprise will soon be gone from his play. One of his favourite ploys – trapping the ball and dragging it around 180 degrees all in one movement – was not working towards the end of the season as often as it was in the beginning.

When Richie Baker was young, rumours were rife of an imminent cross-channel move. They never materialised, and Richie stayed with Shels. Though I maintain he is still a very important player, the brilliance that marked his early appearances has gone. And I fear very much that the same might happen with Wes. I don’t think English clubs will come in for him because of his height. Which is nonsensical, but probably true. And he’ll stay, but will never really fulfill the promise shown in his early career.

Another alternative is that he might stay with Shels, and some frustrated defender, annoyed at being made to look a fool, will put him out of action permanently. For some reason, big, hulking defenders seem to go in harder on slighter players, than they do on people their own size. Keegan used to get much more stick than Toshack, for example. So far, Wes has escaped serious injury, but it only takes one muppet, like the Derry left-back last year, to come lunging in and put him out of the game for a long time. And though it shows what a heartless bastard I am, I’d prefer it happened after we’d been paid handsomely for him.

To summarise therefore, I think we should sell Wes as soon as a decent offer comes in for him. Rovers jumped at the chance to sell Hunt to Dunfermline, and whereas we’re not as badly off financially as Rovers, a hundred thousand would be worth three Jason Byrnes. If we hang on to him, or hold out for half a million, I feel we run the real risk that his performances have already peaked and we’ll end up with an average player and no money. But, most importantly, if he wants away, then we should be actively looking to offload him. Wish him luck, thank him, and cash in our chips.

A Hallowe’en Tale by Peter Ghoul-ding

2007-09-26T14:39:00.002-07:00

Damn the blackness! Damn the rain and the wind! Damn that puncture! Damn my forgetting to fix the spare tyre! Damn my addiction to the Rocky Horror Show! Damn the River Nile! Oh, sorry, that’s been done already.

Oh, and while I’m at it, damn that fork in the road that caused me to become hopelessly lost on my way back from Athlone. If I hadn’t have lost concentration trying to figure out what a piece of cutlery was doing in the middle of the road, I would still be safely driving on the N4 instead of some overgrown cattle track.

At least I didn’t have, nor need, a Janet in the car to suggest brightly, “Didn’t we see a light back there?” I’d seen them all right. Four bright lights, shining out of the blackness of the Westmeath bogland, like welcoming beacons. And, as I slid and squelched towards them in the driving rain, I earnestly prayed that I would find someone there to aid me in my plight. Although who I would find at midnight on the last day of October was anybody’s guess.

As I passed through a spooky copse that lay on my direct route, I came across three vile old hags hunched over what could only be described as a cauldron. That’s not exactly true, because it could also be described as a big soup pot, but you know what I mean.

“Stop!” they called out in unison. Unfortunately, I did not understand unison, so they repeated their demand in English. This time I got the message and halted.

“By Beelzebub!” cried out one, “What do you wish to know?”

I thought for a while and then said, “Tell me, you decrepit old crone, when will Rovers next win the Cup?”

The three witches stirred the broth with giant spoons and cackled maniacally.

“Not till Paul Doolin goes to the barbers,” quoth one.

“Not till Pat Dolan can get through the turnstiles at Richmond,” quoth another.

“Not till Jackman Park is full to overflowing,” quoth the third.

I pondered their cryptic remarks. “Not for quite a long time then?” I ventured. “Thank you, fair ladies,” and I rubbed my hands gleefully as I hurried on my way.

Emerging out of the far side of the eerie copse, I could see that the four bright beacons were in fact four giant floodlights at each corner of a dilapidated old stadium with the words “Welcome to Flan-scare Park” written in blood on the walls. I gulped nervously, which, truth be told, has always been my preferred method of gulping, and pushed my way through the rusty turnstile.

The sight that met my eyes as I ascended the steps made my blood run cold. A football match was in progress, but my eyes were drawn instinctively to the crowd. It seemed that the stands were packed to the rafters with thousands of misshapen, zombie-like mutants and miscreants, like thirty thousand Kevin Kilbanes, all baying for blood. Hurriedly, I spied an empty seat next to a headless horseman [or he could have been a horseless headman – the point being I was too afraid to look.] and plonked myself down trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. The sad thing was that I seemed to blend in rather well.

“What’s the score?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

I glanced up at the scoreboard. “Boo-hemians 3 St. Bats 2” I read out loud, scarcely believing the dreadfulness of the puns.

The game appeared to be nearing the full-time whistle. As I watched, the Fourth Dimension Official held up a board with a blood red “4” on it. The two managers leapt out of their dugouts and began exhorting their teams to greater efforts. “More backbone! More backbone!” screamed the Boos manager, Jonathan Spook, at his gangling skeleton of a centre forward. “Show some spirit!” yelled Bats’ manager, Demon Richardson, as Witchie Baker ghosted past the Bats left back. And then I saw him!

Standing motionless in the centre of the pitch, he was dressed from head to foot in black. A cruel smile played about his evil lips, then got bored and started playing about his ears instead. He had about him the air of supreme authority, the air of a man who wields supreme power. Cloven-hoofed and wielding a three-pronged fork, his dark bottomless eyes revealed nothing of the thousands of years of terror that his reign had caused. A cold sweat came over me and I clutched my crotch in terror as I recognised him –Hugo Whoriskey!

As I watched, transfixed, he raised the whistle to his bloodless lips and emitted a loud piercing shriek that surely raised the souls of the dead from their slumber. Half the stadium erupted in howls of approbation while the other half slunk mournfully away, save for one young vampire, who foolishly started to sing, “Who’s the bastard in the black?” before being transformed into a large slug. The headless horseman beside me galloped excitedly down the stone steps and crashed necklong into a steel pylon.
Ghosts and ghouls swooped and dived above the stadium in a cackling cacophony of whooping noises. It was all getting too much for me. My head whirled, like that young one in “The Exorcist,” and the last thing I remember was a giant white ghost telling everyone that he was the Referee’s In-spectre.

And then I think I must have passed out, for the next thing I remember was waking up in a field with a member of the drugs squad performing a rectal search on me, Your Honour.

A Punjabi Fairy Story [Part 2]

2007-09-26T14:39:00.001-07:00

Many more weeks passed before Mr. Kaykay was ready to decide on the dispute between Patya and Shelrika. The other girls were getting impatient, but Mr. Dooneyvara promised them that the quarrel was nearly over.

At last, Mr. Kaykay was ready to deliver his verdict. He stood up in the playground and delivered his findings in the most authoritative voice he could muster.

“Patya tells me,” he began, “and I accept, that the marigolds, that she picked, came from the woods.

She also tells me that many other girls have used garden flowers in their project. I accept her word on this too.

I have no alternative but to find that Patya should be re-instated in the competition, although perhaps she deserves to have her bottom slapped.”

As he finished enunciating his verdict, a howl of protest rose from within the ranks of schoolgirls assembled. Shelrika was furious.

“We’ll see about that!” she cried, and ran from the schoolyard. She ran and she ran until she came to the house of the village leader. Breathlessly, she banged on the door. She heard a shuffling noise on the other side, and the door creaked open a crack.

“Oh, Mr. Elder!” shouted Shelrika. “Patya-picked-some-garden-flowers-for-her-school-project-after-Mr.-Dooneyvara-told-us-specifically-that-we-weren’t-allowed-to-and-now-her-friend-Mr-Kaykay-has-said-its-okay-and-its-not-fair…”

“Go away, you stupid child,” said Mr.Elder. “Get your teacher to sort it out. Can’t you see I’m gaga?” and he slammed the door shut.

Poor Shelrika! As she trudged home, her eyes brimmed with tears at the unfairness of it all. Some members of Patya’s family passed her by on the other side of the street, laughing and joking. Shelrika wanted to run, but with dignity she held her head high as they passed by.

It so happened that Shelrika’s route home took her past all of the plots of land in the valley. As she walked by, she casually threw her eye over each of the gardens, appraising their beauty. Suddenly she stopped. What was it Mr. Kaykay had said? Other girls have used garden flowers? But, as she passed along the plots of land, she could see that only one girl had in fact used garden flowers. All the other girls had kept by the rules and used woodland flowers. But Patya…She gasped. Not only had Patya used marigolds in her garden [which she claimed to have found in the wood] but now she also had roses growing there in abundance!! Surely now Mr. Dooneyvara would see what a cheat Patya had been!!

As she ran towards the school, bursting with her news, Shelrika wished that it was one of the other girls who had made the discovery. Patya would be bound to accuse her of having a personal grudge against her. Oh well, she thought, it can’t be helped.

She barged into the classroom just as Mr. Dooneyvara was settling the girls down.

“Mr. Dooneyvara!” she shouted. “About the gardens………”

“Come now, Shelrika,” said Mr. Dooneyvara, “that’s all been sorted. Mr. Kaykay…….”

“Patya told lies to Mr. Kaykay,” interrupted Shelrika. “She told him that all the other girls had used garden flowers in their plots and it isn’t true. Go and see for yourself.”

“Is this true, Patya?” asked Mr. Dooneyvara.

“Well, Boheena used lupins in her garden last year, when she won the competition,” said Patya.

Boheena jumped up. “I did not!” she stated, “That’s a big, fat, dirty lie!”

“And,” Shelrika added. “Now she has roses in her garden. Surely everybody knows that roses don’t grow in the wood?”

Something in Mr. Dooneyvara’s expression caused Shelrika to pause. She eyed him very carefully. “You knew about the roses, didn’t you? You knew!!”

“I’m sorry, Shelrika,” said Mr. Dooneyvara, looking crest-fallen. “I admit I knew about the roses. I thought that there had been so much trouble over the marigolds, that I didn’t want to bring up the roses.” A large gasp went up from the classroom.

“Patya,” continued Mr. Dooneyvara. “I’m afraid I can’t overlook the roses. We took your word about the marigolds, but now the roses……… I’m afraid I will have to disqualify you from the competition.”

“No!” screamed Patya. “You just try it. Wait till my Dad hears about this. You just wait!” And as she ran through the open door, a big cheer went up and Shelrika was hoisted on to the shoulders of her classmates.

“Shelrika, you are the winner of the gardening competition,” said Mr. Dooneyvara. “Here is your prize. A milking cow to keep your family supplied with milk for a whole year. And, of course, you will represent your school in the regional gardening competition next year.” Shelrika blushed a deep red with pride and happiness.

As for Patya, she went home and told her family what had happened. At first her family were very annoyed with Mr. Dooneyvara, but then some people started questioning Patya about her honesty. It was decided to let the matter drop quietly, although some members of the family found the whole situation quite unfair. For Patya had put a tremendous amount of work into her garden and it was true that her garden was, in fact, much nicer than Shelrika’s. Okay, they said, perhaps a couple of rules had been technically broken, but the upshot was that Patya had produced the nicest garden and at least deserved some recognition for her efforts.

That night, there came a knock on Patya’s door. “Hello, said Mr. Dooneyvara, “Can I come in?”

Patya stepped back from the doorway to allow him in. He walked into the sitting-room where Patya’s family were all assembled.

“I know you all think I’ve handled this affair rather badly,” he started. When no voice of disagreement came, he continued, “but I’ve been thinking about the situation. Patya did produce a lovely garden, when all’s said and done, and I think she ought to be rewarded in some way…”

“You’re letting me back in the competition?” interrupted Patya.

“No,” smiled Mr. Dooneyvara. “Shelrika has her milking cow. But I can offer you the next best thing. Would you care to take a look out of the window?”

The whole family rushed to the window and pulled back the net-curtains.

“Wow!”
“Super!”
“Look at that!”
“Amazing!”

There, standing on the front lawn in the moonlight, was a big rubber milking cow.

A Punjabi Fairy Story [Part 1]

2007-09-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away [India], a new teacher came to a school in the valley. On the first day of term, the teacher held up his hand and called for silence.

“Girls,” he said. “My name is Mr. Dooneyvara. I am going to set you a project for this school term. I want you all to mark out a plot of land in the valley and to make a garden in it. At the end of the term, I shall judge the gardens and the one who has done the best will get a prize”

As the girls all moved to go, Mr. Dooneyvara held up his hand a second time. “You can pick any of the flowers that you find in the wood,” he warned, “but you must not pick the flowers from someone’s garden. If you do this, you will be disqualified. Do you all understand?”

The girls all nodded and left excitedly. Patya, in particular, wanted to win the big prize, but she knew she faced stiff competition from Shelrika and some of the other girls. So she marked out her plot of land in the valley, and went into the woods to look for flowers.

In no time at all, she had dug up a large bunch of violets and buttercups and started to return to her plot of land. As she was leaving the wood, she noticed some beautiful marigolds by the side of an old house. As there was no wall or fence surrounding the house, Patya reasoned that the marigolds were not technically in the garden of the house. Quick as a flash, she ran up to the house, dug up the marigolds and sped back to her plot without anybody seeing her.

A few weeks later, Mr. Dooneyvara was idly strolling around the valley, admiring the girls’ gardens. Suddenly, he stopped at Patya’s garden.
“Patya,” he said. “Marigolds are not a woodland flower. You have broken the rules. I am sorry, but I will have to disqualify you from the competition.” And, saying that, he turned on his heel and walked quickly away.

Patya jumped up from her garden and ran after him. “Oh, Mr. Dooneyvara,” she panted. “I swear to you that I found those marigolds in the woods. I can even show you the ground where I dug them up.”

Mr. Dooneyvara looked into Patya’s big, brown eyes, brimming with tears, and relented. “Okay, Patya,” he said. “You’re still in the competition. But be careful next time, eh?” And he gave Patya a sly wink.

Now, Shelrika, Patya’s rival, happened to be working nearby and overheard the conversation. She was furious.
“Mr. Dooneyvara!” she stormed. “Rules are rules! If you let Patya off, then it is not fair on the rest of us who have abided by the rules. Everybody knows that the marigold is a garden flower. You said that we cannot pick garden flowers, yet you allow Patya to do so! You are turning this whole competition into a farce!”

Mr. Dooneyvara turned to Patya. “What Shelrika says is true,” he said. “I know you have put a lot of work into your garden and it is easily the best, but I must abide by the rules. I am afraid you are disqualified.” On hearing these words, Patya turned and ran away, weeping bitterly.

The weeks passed. The row between Shelrika and Patya festered. The class was divided between the two. Some girls were suspicious of Patya’s honesty, even when Patya showed them the bare earth where she claimed to have dug up the marigolds. They agreed that you had to abide by the rules. Other girls sided with Patya. They believed her story and said that a marigold need not exclusively be found in a garden. They also were suspicious of Shelrika’s motives, saying that she had only objected because she knew that she could not win. Work went on in the class, but the row between the two girls seemed to overshadow everything.

Things were no better outside of the classroom. Patya’s family were furious with Shelrika and a bitter rivalry broke out between the two families, despite the fact that they were near neighbours and had known each other for years. They hurled abuse at each other in the street and each tried to persuade the population of the village to side with them.

Mr. Dooneyvara was very sad. It was his first term as a teacher, and it had all gone horribly wrong. He was therefore delighted when Patya came to him with a proposition.
“Mr. Dooneyvara,” she said. “I think we ought to settle this once and for all. I propose that we bring this problem to somebody outside the school, somebody neutral and independent. And we can let them decide, and I will abide by that decision.”

Mr. Dooneyvara was delighted. “That’s an excellent idea,” he exclaimed. “If Shelrika is agreeable, that is the course of action we must follow.”

As it happened, Shelrika was agreeable, as she wanted to get everything sorted out. She too agreed to abide by the arbitrator’s decision. Mr. Dooneyvara was ecstatic. All he had to do now was find the right arbitrator.

More weeks passed. Mr. Dooneyvara seemed to be having trouble finding a suitable person to adjudicate in the matter. The schoolgirls, and indeed all the people in the village, could not understand what the reason for the delay was. At last, Mr. Dooneyvara stood up in front of the class and said,
“Girls, I have found a person to decide the dispute between Patya and Shelrika. Hopefully this argument is nearly at an end. The arbitrator will be……….Mr. Kaykay, the village gardener!”

Shelrika jumped up from her chair, her whole body bristling with anger.
“Mr. Kaykay?” she screamed. “Mr. Kaykay? How can you possibly call him independent? Hasn’t he been a friend of Patya’s family for years? Is Patya’s father not using the lawn mower that Mr. Kaykay lent him? How can you call him independent?”

“But Shelrika,” stammered Mr. Dooneyvara. “You agreed to abide by his decision.”

“By the decision of an independent arbitrator,” yelled Shelrika. “Not Mr. Kaykay.” And, saying that, she turned and ran out of the room.

Mr. Dooneyvara addressed the rest of the class. “This course of action has already been decided upon,” he said. “When Mr. Kaykay gives his decision, this whole argument will be over.”

But, looking around the classroom, he could see that many of the girls remained unconvinced.

12 Bar Blues

2007-09-26T14:37:00.001-07:00

For those of you who were unable to attend my workshop in DCU last month, I am generously setting down a document, describing how to go about writing “da blues” and in particular, “da 12 bar blues”. It was previously thought that this particular art form was restricted to 70 year old black guitarists from somewhere called “da deep south”. However, I was taught the technique by a grizzled old hobo from Lexington, despite the fact that my own musical talent is limited to playing the bass line of “Walking on the Moon” with the dexterity of Father Ted in the first version of “My Lovely Horse.”

The first thing to learn is that the song must be miserable. John Lee Hooker used to say that if he finished a song and the audience applauded, he had failed. If, however, he looked up and saw slashed wrists and people hanging from the rafters, he’d done good. So avoid chirpiness and optimism at all costs.

For those absolute beginners out there, there are three lines in every verse of the 12 bar blues. The first two lines are the same, and the third line rhymes with the first two. Simple, right?

So we’re ready to begin. The first thing is to choose a title. More often than not, this will incorporate something of the third line of the song. And it has to be “The Something Something Blues”. In this instance, we’ll call it “The Interdepartmental Choreography Blues.”

“Woke up this morning…”

Every 12 bar blues song must begin with “Woke up this morning.” Russian songsmith Igor Buggerov was sent by Stalin to the Gulag for 20 years for starting a song with “It was just before tea-time” It was felt he was too reactionary.

“Woke up this morning, felt right away we’re gonna lose”

Then repeat the line,

“Woke up this morning, felt right away we’re gonna lose”

And, incorporate the title into the third line,

“I knew right away man, I got the interdepartmental choreography blues”

That’s the beauty of “da blues”. No matter how many words you want to fit into the final line, it will always fit. Slim Pickins from Atalanta City, once wrote a song called “The “Our Father who art in heaven….. for ever and ever, amen” Blues”. Walter Wall, a dustbowl slide guitarist from Kentucky, once incorporated the entire Tibetan Book of the Dead in the third line.

So now you have the first verse. For every subsequent verse, the hardest thing you have to do is find a word that rhymes with “Blues” Some people have a rhyming dictionary, others like myself who are too mean prefer to use the “alphabet method” i.e. “bues, cues, dues, fues etc”. But with a word like “Blues” there should be no problem. It would be different if it was “broccoli” or “lifeblood.”

And simply work away, remembering to make it as miserable as possible: -

“Woke up this morning, felt right away we’re gonna lose.
I woke up this morning, felt right away we’re gonna lose.
I knew right away man, I got the interdepartmental choreography blues.

Walked down to Tolka, ain’t got no laces in my shoes..”

[Double negatives are perfectly allowed in da blues. Apparently, grammatical inaccuracies gives the singer street cred.]

Yeah, I walked down to Tolka, got no laces in my shoes.
Feelin’ in my head man, I got the interdepartmental choreography blues.”

When I got to Tolka, I looked at the size of the queues,
Yeah, I got down to Tolka, looked at the size of the queues.
So I got on the end of one, me and my interdepartmental choreography blues.

The man asked for ten Euro, man I could not refuse,
Yeah, he asked for ten Euro, man I just couldn’t refuse.
He let us both in, me and my interdepartmental choreography blues.

Jim Crawford was suspended, Lord, this was worrying news,
Jim Crawford was suspended, man this was worrying news,
That dark cloud overhead looked like the interdepartmental choreography blues.

Sat down in my seat between two black and blind Jews,
Yeah I sat down in my seat between two black and blind Jews,
Both of them suffering from the interdepartmental choreography blues.

There were two bloody stanchions, both of them blocking my views,
Yeah there were two bloody stanchions, both of them blocking my views,
Though all I could see was the interdepartmental choreography blues.

Terry Palmer clattered Weso, gave him a luminous bruise,
Terry Palmer clattered Weso, gave him a luminous bruise.
“Oh Terry” said Weso, “you’ve given me the interdepartmental choreography blues.”

Stephen Grant played a blinder, to give the bastard his dues,
Stephen Grant played a blinder, to give the bastard his dues,
Gave the red half of Tolka the interdepartmental choreography blues.

The Saturday Indo, I don’t think I’m gonna peruse,
Oh the Saturday Indo, I don’t think I’m gonna peruse.
My head will be acing with the interdepartmental choreography blues.”

Next week: how to write a number one hit for Westlife in three minutes.