Tom's Sporting Almanac

Passing on the Mantle

2008-03-04T00:44:00.003Z

Apart from being male, not being called Colleen O'Shanahan, not being from New Jersey and not having red hair, I feel much like a former Rose of Tralee today. You see, just like the expired Rose does in the Dome every year, I have handed on the tiara and sash of Best Irish Sports and Recreation Blogger after a glorious one year reign.

Arseblog is the new one who's lovely and fair as a rose of the summer (insert gag about that being the only thing Arsenal will win this season here), and a heartfelt and thunderous congratulations on taking on the mantle. A fine blog and well worthy of this none-more-prestigious honour.

Unfortunately I couldn't be there in person to pass on the baton, but am delighted that another blogger's hard work was rewarded. And personally, one year of helping deaf pandas avoid landmines in Borneo and playing tennis with Kofi Annan is enough for anyone.

Run, TSA, Run

2008-02-27T23:07:00.004Z

It was a combination of factors, really, that made me decide to take up running. I have run before, of course. For buses, away from the responsibilites of adulthood, even away from a gun-toting Adolf Hitler in a particularly vivid childhood dream.

But real running - with times and distances and some vague structure or plan - a confluence of reasons.

First was, with February - a month I like, despite, or maybe because of its can't-be-arsed brevity - drawing to a close, the ghost of Christmas pudding past still clung to my midriff; this long, long after even the last Peanut Cracknel had left the Quality Street tin and life's moderate norm should have restored reasonable abdominal tautness.

Second was some friends are training for a marathon. Normally, the flights of folly of friends raise nowt but the quizzical eyebrow and doleful head-shake in TSA. The marathon is, quite obviously, alongside sexual acts with young boys, the worst idea the ancient Greeks have given us.

A chap called Pheidippides - clearly a clown of the highest order - was so cock-eyed with excitement by victory for the Athenians over the Persians, that he ran all the way from the town of Marathon to Athens to impart the news, and then proceeded to drop dead. For some reason, this act of questionable wisdom is celebrated the world over, often by people wearing gorilla costumes and tutus - the traditional battle uniform of the ancient Athenians, of course.

But still, hearing about the training and the striving, the sweating and the chafing, the pain and the fatigue, all from the mouths of quintessentially sedentary modern males, whose lives are in every other way as cosseted and comfortable and air-conditioned as my own....it kinda got me to thinking.

There was a certain nobility to it, I grudgingly conceded. The wracking of the body for no point other than, well, because it was there. Like an old cat sitting in the corner getting fat on easy Whiskas, sometimes you need to kick the body out the back door and tell it to "go catch a frigging mouse."

Thirdly was - and linked with reason number one - the desire to do something notable in the exercise genre while age still permitted it, before the slow death of golf club membership began to loom.

The first thing you have to do is buy good runners. That's what they all say, all the websites and the experts. Seems to me you can position yourself as an expert in running for beginners armed with that information alone. "Buy some good runners, and then, er, run!" is the pleasingly spartan doctrine.

So not only did I buy proper runners (Asics, the doyen of the running shoe, they're even perched high up on the sports shop display, peering superciliously upon the Nikes below), but also - and this is the crossing of the Rubicon, the moment of truth, after which there is no turning back - proper running shorts. Short shorts with briefs like real athletes wear. The kind that wiry distance runners pull over their bits and bobs, so minimal, barely there, and in pointed contrast to the baggy, self-indulgent sort worn by footballers.

So with these shorts, not even the fragrant enticements of the chipshop will stop TSA. Watch me go!

Tricky Eddie Exits the Valley

2008-02-25T11:54:00.006Z

It'll probably take the departure of Eddie O'Sullivan himself for the World Cup to be totally consigned into history.

When that will come, we can't know: perhaps he will preside Castro-like for decades until ill-health finally forces him to step aside (presumably John Hayes will still be playing, patched up and repeatedly repaired like the old 1950s Cadillacs that roam the streets of Havana).

Or perhaps he'll soon tire of being the pantomime villain, the man the rugby writers and pundits hiss and boo and attribute the gamut of ills from the lack of an alternative outhalf to the frigging credit crunch to. Rather than doing a Castro on it, he might go out like Dicky Nixon, scowling "you won't have Eddie to kick around anymore" at his persecutors.

Whichever, only after his demise will the rank, pestilent stench of RWC 2007 totally clear and the air be fragrant and fresh as 'twas ere that benighted tourney.

Nonetheless, three games into the Six Nations, and despite the grumpy little fella still calling the shots, the fog of France is definitely clearing. The old, fondly remembered Ireland came into focus enough times on Saturday to finally suggest - in the nick of time for O'Sullivan - that this team as presently configured can do some of the fine things our big talkin' once suggested.

Brian O'Driscoll reminded one of Micheal O'Hehir's line about Bernard Brogan "drilling for oil" when his incision into the Scottish line helped set up Rob Kearney's try. The pass to Kearney was definitive World's Greatest Centre™.

Ronan O'Gara's sumptuous form all season suggests that he left France behind the moment Boeing left tarmac at Charles De Gaulle. Finally those around him are enjoying the same Gallic amnesia. For Tommy Bowe's first try the team got back into that Roman groove that we once thought would conquer the world.

And best of all, Geordan Murphy. The Leicester louche had endured a prolonged period of being used in turn by O'Sullivan and the press pack as a stick with which to beat each other.

The press would batter Eddie with calls for Murphy's inclusion, castigations of his treatment by the coach and general hypotheses that O'Sullivan's inability to use Murphy properly proved conclusively his fundamental unsuitability for the big job.

O'Sullivan would throw Murphy in, and upon the player's admittedly repeated failings, drop him with undue brutality, in order that the point be made to his foes: "look, see! See what you know!"

Best to put that sort of stuff behind everyone. Girvan Dempsey may be a wet dream for a belt-and-braces man like Eddie, but really, if Murphy's on the money, you have to put the house on him.

No talk here of the bad things from Saturday, there's been enough of that. Maybe we will have Eddie to kick around for another while. And as Nixon also said: "only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain."

(On the other hand he had just been forced to resign for instigating the most grievous threat to the American democracy since the Civil War. Anyway, maybe Eddie ain't so bad.)

Minor European Football Leagues Unite, You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Chains

2008-02-22T15:07:00.005Z

Probably like any football club, supporting Celtic has given me equal numbers of profoundly depressing episodes as moments of tingling ecstasy.

Well, I did grow up in the 1990s.

For every Seville, there's a Neuchatel Xamax. For every 6-2 Old Firm win, there's a drunken fan plummeting from the top tier of the North Stand, while on the field Rangers are winning the league and a referee bleeds. For every scarves-aloft, lip-trembling rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone at Parkhead, there's vile, tuneless Provo doggerel being croaked on a grim ferry trip across the water.

Wouldn't have it any other way though. Good for the soul; Kipling and triumph and disaster and all that business.

Rarely though, have I felt the two impostors in the same match.

The 3-2 defeat to Barcelona brings no shame on Gordon Strachan's team. True, many of the players will lament that they did not wear their best suit to the big occasion. But cursory glances at the opposing teamsheets and, indeed, balance sheets mean the harshest cross-examination of Wednesday's proceedings should be avoided.

Back to the agony and the ecstasy. Half time and no Celtic supporter, save the grizzled Lisbon generation, could ever have been happier. Forty-five sensational minutes of football, in which Celtic had played a part - admittedly a supporting one - but nonetheless, the neutrals purred with appreciation. And the impertinence of the two goals: "don't care who you are, lads, this is Parkhead, we'll set aboot ye" (if paraphrasing Rangers-supporting, terrorist-thumping baggage handler John Smeaton is allowed).

But the second half. Oh dear God. It was like coming home to find your wife in bed with Brad Pitt, being forced to watch, and fetching the cuckolder a cold beer afterwards.

Receiving a footballing lesson shouldn't ever be reason enough for the onset of profound depression. Only a game etc. However, during the extended longeurs of Barcelona possession, thoughts turned to the inequitable and constrictive organisation of European football: a feudal oligarchy over which a handful of despots rule, gorging themselves on the fat of the land, while the chieftains on the rocky periphery starve.

What was depressing was not the act of Barcelona's otherwordly dominance, but the system that has allowed it be so. Until Wednesday, we who pledge our support to those teams outwith the opulent palaces of England, Spain and Italy could dream: dream of Porto, 2004; dream of Ajax in '95; dream of the Lisbon Lions.

But the feeling that this club, like many in similar countries around Europe, will never again be able to fulfil its potential is what we were left with. To be so distant from the best, through no fault of our own other than the laws of commerce and geographical accident - that's depressing.

To bring through a player like Aiden McGeady, carefully, attentively cultivating his skills, to find that your opponents have half a dozen similar and better, some even on their bench - that's depressing.

Throughout the last several centuries, in other worlds, at other times, people took to the streets, marched and revolted at being told they could never be the best they could be, that they could never push through glass ceilings, into reserved enclosures.

We all know what happened then. To the barricades!

Toasting the Health of the Cup

2008-02-18T11:48:00.006Z

Medical opinions differ regarding the health of the patient. Hale and hearty on Saturday morning, when Bristol Rovers' throwback ground rambunctiously cheered its team into the quarter-finals; fighting fit when Barnsley picked off the eminently shockable Liverpool, the FA Cup slipped back into intensive care at Old Trafford, when Arsenal couldn't even be roused to care about it by the presence of their arch-enemies.

All that Manchester United's victory proved was that 75% of Alex Ferguson's best team was better than 75% of Arsene Wenger's, thus justifying the Arsenal manager's decision to ensure he would have at least two fewer fixtures over which to stretch his squad come the late season crunch.

If the FA Cup is a sickly patient, John Motson maintains a bedside vigil, mopping its brow. With the long term diagnosis necessitating a restorative visit to ITV, the BBC will soon abdicate the responsibility of administering CPR to the battered old trophy.

Shame really, as the job perfectly suits Motty. Being a classic old English eccentric, he's made for the task of stubbornly championing a beloved, but crumbling, national institution. Unable to confront the fact that neither of the teams he was watching would have traded three measly league points for a year looking after the old trophy, his voice crackled with bewilderment.

But the thing about these people - the types who hand out leaflets protesting the closure of libraries or who spend their free hours weeding a decrepit churchyard - is that they're usually right. Something valuable will be lost if their quixotic campaigns were to fail.

The 'magic of the Cup' thing is routinely - and rightly - derided as cash-in hokum. How often will the Beeb refer to the 'magic of the Cup' when they have but the footsoldiers of Five Live to tell its stories?

But equally, how many of an English football season's truly memorable, or at least unique and touching, moments come in the ancient competition? Chasetown, Havant & Waterlooville, Bury, Bristol Rovers, Barnsley - haven't they all at least sewn a colourful, individual edging into the occasionally monotonous blanket of league football.

Arsene Wenger and Rafa Benitez may have been thinking more of their impending duels with Milan's finest than navigating the road to Wembley, but, despite its interludes of poor health, the Cup can pack a mean punch when you're least expecting it.

Caught In A Trap

2008-02-14T09:40:00.004Z

Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

So did the FAI fall ass-backwards into the appointment of Giovanni Trapattoni, or did the intrepid Band of Three track down the highly decorated Italian like expert hunters on the trail of a grey-furred, catenaccio-advocating bear.

Whither Denis O'Brien? Is his largesse, as John Delaney claimed, merely a case of a footy fan with a few quid chucking loose change into the kitty? Can a governing body of a major sport, really have a billionaire media magnate paying half the wages of their most prominent employee, without any conflicts of interest, muddied ethical waters or general funny business arising?

Oh, that it would be straightforward! You know, the old-fashioned, orthodox way of things: football association seeks manager, football association finds manager, football association hires manager.

But hey. There's always another day, another phone-in show, another back page to ask all the questions. For a brief, beautiful interlude yesterday - possibly for the first time since Tony Galvin waddled the left wing and John Aldridge had a moustache - FAI, fans and media existed in a harmonious, Zen-like utopia. All was Trap, and Trap was good. Trap transcended. The power of a twinkly-eyed pensioner with a rucksack full of scudettos achieved the seemingly impossible.

With a few words of his strange Germano-English, Trap washed away our sins: the cheap shots about John Delaney's haircut, the whistling at Croker, Robbie on the Late Late. Just for a few moments the pesky duty of asking those - hah! - pertinent questions was abrogated, and we, each and every man Jack that holds Irish football dear, were lost in a reverie of promised turgid 1-0 wins all the way to South Africa.

We should send him down to Cork.

Good Job, Bearded Hippy Types

2008-02-01T12:05:00.000Z

Blogger glitch now fixed, may we never gaze upon the face of De Burgh again.

The Curse of De Burgh

2008-01-31T22:48:00.001Z

Blogger appears to be a bit mental at the moment, as my latest post - the one on fat Spurs players - is followed by a post from September 29th on Argentina's rugby team. All posts in between seem to have vanished. I think this has happened before. I also think it has something to do with a photo of Chris De Burgh being on the Argentina post. Creepy, eh?

Apologies, presumably various Blogger geeks in San Francisco have sprung from their beanbags to sort it out.

Spurs Player Busting A Gut

2008-01-31T19:10:00.000Z

It was amusing to read in recent days of Spurs manager Juande Ramos' shock, upon meeting his new charges three months ago, at finding that he would be managing a male, twentysomething version of the Roly Polys. Apparently the players' fondness for previous manager Martin Jol extended to developing rotund physiques a lot like the Dutchman's.

It seems that a key part of Ramos' epic adventure to 11th place in the Premier League and a Carling Cup final place has involved putting the podgy Spurs players through a version of RTE's Operation Transformation, only with the consolation of having Gus Poyet manning the scales instead of Slobberin' Gerry Ryan.

Ramos' instigation of a strict new dietary regime saw the cream buns banned from the training ground canteen, with immediate benefits. Tom Huddlestone has been the most high profile Weight Watcher doing the Ramos Diet, but the overall effect of improved diet on the squad helped them to their five-goal thrashing of Wengers Waifs in last week's Carling semi-final.

All well and good, but did it really need a foreign manager with the customary battalion of sports scientists and nutrionary boffins to tell the burger-munching Spurs lads that laying off the lard might help their form?

As an amply upholstered, firmly ensconced member of the sedentary class, I always presumed that footballers, being, well, athletes, would have had the avoidance of snack boxes and suchlike as a veritable mantra.

Yes, I understood that previous generations of players refuelled after training sessions with a balanced meal of lager and crisps. But that was the past. We forgive our forebears their mistakes borne of ignorance: slavery, feeding porter to babies, boiling down homosexuals to make glue. But surely the footballers of today know fully and well that a Mars a day doesn't actually make you work, rest and play.

See, because I reckoned that footballers were denying themselves all manner of cream-laden, deep-fried, cheesey, beery pleasures in conscientious devotion to their profession, I turned a blind eye to many of their infamous extra-curricular trangressions.

It's hardly surprising, I reasoned, that these young men, rigourously adhering to a monastic aversion to most common vices, might, as a consolatory treat, find themselves occasionally in the midst of a logistically complex and barely consensual act of sexual depravity. With lifestyles, I contended, that required repeated refusal to yield to the sensual delights of the larder and the keg, how surprising was it that the poor souls might relent to the odd offer of a tri-partite episode of casual rumpy.

But, as Juande Ramos found out when he fetched up in North London, it seems that footballers have been having their cake and eating it.

Striking Similarites

2008-01-29T22:00:00.000Z

Big Jim Larkin and William Martin Murphy. Arthur Scargill and Maggie Thatcher. And now Donal Og Cusack and Frank Murphy. Another fine pair of strikers.

You can't have a proper strike without 'em. Two intractably opposed, obdurately resolute foes; but, really, two peas in a pod. While they sit in their war rooms, plotting their next move, devising the next advance on the No Man's Land of public opinion, they dream of routing their enemy utterly.

But, really, their impulses must be the same. The stubborness, the sense of moral superiority, the ownership of a poker face, and, undoubtedly, the colossal ego required to carry it all, to lead men beyond where they're not sure they want to go.

Because of the similiarities, ultimately, there is mutual respect. Apparently, in squad trips and holidays since they first crossed swords in the 2002 strike, Cusack and Murphy have maintained the utmost civility - "morning Frank", "morning Donal, and a fine day it is too", "it is that Frank, no doubt about it."

The charismatic figurehead is a sine qua non of a strike. The ability to organise a group of disparate individuals into one, unified voice in any circumstance is difficult; to do so while also persuading them to withdraw their services from a hitherto rewarding position is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of great leadership.

Of course, the fact that GAA players are not waiving a salary means they cannot truly be compared with those who strike in the industrial realm. But to be a Cork player over recent months, when many - the majority, by all accounts - of the public do not agree with your stance must have been a frequently buffeted station, with only one's principles to provide shelter.

If there has been a slight veering of opinion towards the players' side in recent weeks, perhaps it has been in recognition of the resoluteness of their stance. No player has broken ranks, no off-the-record "sources" have told of splits within the panels, though I'm sure many have been solicited to do so.

As well as this, the media pincer movement orchestrated by Cusack last week was bold and risky. But if strikes are won in the realm of public opinion, you must make sure to take the high ground. Could any Cork board member be as articulate and heartfelt in his case as Seán Og O hAilpín? It was a masterstroke to put one of Irish sport's most loved personalities forward so.

Whether O hAilpín's call for Frank Murphy's head was indiscretion on his part, or a calculated gambit from the Cusack's masterplan, will all come out in the wash eventually. By then we'll know if Cusack has succeeded where Big Jim and Scargill failed.

Heaven is a Place on Earth

2008-01-22T12:49:00.000Z

Okay, okay. Look, I won't go on about it. I know everyone's a bit Munstered-out at this stage. Enough already, with the skyscraping prose, the sentences built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The Go-To Guy in these situations, Vincent Hogan in the Indo, marked his territory early doors: "The skeletal, white confection trellising the Limerick sky on Cratloe Road speaks almost of an infidelity to the past. Thomond's cadaverous old face is gone now. The new stadium, half-built and muddily chaotic on Saturday, already bears a discernible vanity." Good old Vince, all his geese are majestic, winged sentries of the grey-dappled skies.

No, fair's fair, we'll keep it simple this time: Munster woz great. It rained. O'Gara woz deadly.

Gosh, I feel strangely liberated.

It's easy, you see, to talk about great sporting phenomenon like Munster in the language of epic poetry, especially on days like Saturday, with their portentous skies and formidable foes.

Sometimes, though, in situations like this, I wonder why we aren't equally drawn to the minutiae of these occasions. The countless quotidian chores that, added up, make great victories generally only get mentioned, if at all, in the more considered pages of the cash-in book.

Clearly, had Munster not put masses of painstaking work into perfecting their own line-out and, in turn, plotting the utter decimation of Wasps', perhaps Saturday would be getting recorded now as another dark, dank evening of failure for Irish sport.

Had Ronan O'Gara not spent much of his waking life putting boot to ball, reaching the standard of expertise that allowed him his 'perfect game' on Saturday, we'd surely be talking of the fine, worthy champions that Wasps still were.

If Shaun Payne wasn't as safe as a Sherman tank at the dodgems under the high ball, would we not be pin-pointing Danny Cipriani's up-an-unders as a key factor in the Wasps victory?

Obviously there are countless other small, unsung tasks that are performed to perfection in a victory such as Munster's on Saturday, and the fact that most of us can't see them is what often makes a sporting victory seem so magical, as if the teams are the playthings of unseen gods.

But forget about Deus ex machina, on these occasions, God is in the detail.

Munster The Overdogs

2008-01-15T12:10:00.000Z

Generally, in dear little old Erin - Ma bhrón! Ma bhrón! - we have been culturally habituated to the role of the underdog. Frankly, it's no surprise, given the rarity of occasions on which we can truly be the overdog.

That Eurovision spell in the 1990s perhaps - man, were we cocky then?! Or at the annual World Stout Brewing Championships - I bet the Irish team strut arrogantly about the place at those, laughing in the faces of their bland, watery porter-producing rivals.

But generally, in most sporting circumstances, we are the hapless minnows, the ill-equipped, technically gauche bottom-feeders. The newspaper report will usually read "while the Americans and the Chinese battled it out for dominance, it was a disappointing day for the Irish team of Seamus O'Mara and Cormac Prendergast. A poor performance in the artistic impression category left them in 17th."

In our silk-purse-from-a-pig's-ear way, we make the best of this, trumpeting the occasions on which we overturn the odds, inflating them to the size of a normal culture of sporting excellence, blotting out the vast, arid plains of underachievement.

Every now and then, however, Irish sports teams or individuals throw off the dowdy cardigans of low expectation, and zip up the rhinestone-studded, caped jumpsuit of superstardom: Ronnie Delaney, Roy Keane, Sonia, O'Driscoll, Harrington.

Making this leap is not merely a case of being good at running, or kicking stuff, or hitting things with sticks. These people grew up around the rest of us, yet never got infected by our belching pub tales of shooting at the Brits from behind bushes, or a little Scottish man heading the ball into an English net, or the odd, random Triple Crown amid years of brutal pummelings. Somehow, some crazy way, they went out into the world, and the world backed off.

Which brings us to Munster. Two tries down at half time, half-way to a result that would all but end their Heineken Cup campaign, even the most loyal son of Thomond would have viewed the second half fretfully. How difficult it is to halt the tide away from home, especially against an expensively-assembled, physically powerfully French team.

But that's what Munster did: not only denying Clermont a bonus point, but sneaking one themselves. What a precious thing that point is. Think of Indiana Jones, grabbing the gold idol at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark, legging it past poisoned darts and boulders, finally making it to the biplane as spears fly hither and thither. Indy lost the idol though - Munster held onto theirs.

What this has to do with underdogs and overdogs and looking the world in the eye is this: at some point, Clermont must have suffered a crisis of confidence; small imperceptible doubts in a number of individuals, perhaps, but fatal when multiplied throughout a team. Perhaps it caused them to yield to the pressure that ultimately cost them three yellow cards.

And behind this buckling of the hitherto unstoppable Clermont momentum, responsible for the flickering doubts in previously rampaging players, must surely have been the realisation that this was Munster. Twelve seasons of hard-won respect, numerous legendary feats of courage, countless battles, immeasurable hours of unyielding, sinew-straining effort, numberless last-ditch tackles, multitudinous strength-sapping mauls: all this adds up.

And when Munster go out into the world, the world, very often, backs off.

That Time of Year Again

2008-01-12T17:01:00.000Z

What with the Golden Globes being held in a Portakabin this year, and the Oscars likely to go the same way, 2008 is surely the year the Irish Blog Awards finally takes its rightful position as the most glittering event on the showbiz calendar. I mean, do they have goodie bags at the Oscars?

This year's Blog Awards are at the Iowa primary stage, with the first round of nominations underway. If you want to send TSA all the way to big house on the hill, click here.

This year's first round is being done by a judging panel as well, so there's no need to set up a You're A Star-style poster campaign. Just vote once, and with your hearts, in whatever category is most apt (Best Crafts blog please, I make lovely St.Brigid's crosses). But perhaps Best Sports and Recreation blog would be nice, and maybe TSA can make it two-in-a-row, and begin a Phil 'The Power' Taylor-style era of dominance.

And look, I know the last few months weren't ideal, but remember the good times! April - ahhh April, how happy we were then...before blasted November came along, with its.....distractions....

We'll Go To Tel For This

2008-01-11T12:51:00.001Z

God, hasn't this blog gone to hell recently.

It's like one of those jerry-built, Victorian-era football grounds (Swansea's Vetch Field, perhaps), which once-upon-a-time-once-a-fortnight lovingly housed tens of thousands of huddled working class sorts with all their hopes and dreams and flat caps, but is now a disused ruin, weeds strangling floodlight pylons, dry-rot attacking the directors box.

An elderly security man - once on the ground staff, he remembers the day Bobby Charlton played here - unlocks the padlocked gates once a week, to check that vagrants or squatters haven't taken root in the once-sacred terraces along with the weeds.

A bit like that, except a blog, if you know what I mean.

However, the cyberspace local council will have no hope in trying to sell this shambling old arena to a metaphorical supermarket chain (like Bolton's Burnden Park, now an Asda, for shame!). Nope, the TSA toilets might stink, the pitch might evidence a pronounced slope and the uncovered corner terrace may be crumbling - but no internet property developers shall turn us into another soulless social networking site.

That analogy stretched like poor old Mike Teavee on Willy Wonka's chewing gum stretching machine, let's move on to the Republic of Ireland manager's job!

What? You'd rather read another laborious, meandering metaphor designed to show off the writer's impeccable football luddite credentials, when really he's never drunk Bovril in his life? You people are weird! Well you do hang around sports blogs which are uncannily reminiscient of jerry-built, Victorian-era football grounds, which once-upon-a-time-once-a-.....

Big Sam, King Kenny, Gerry the Frenchman: they're all incidental, cameo characters in the epic costume drama that will come to be known as El Tel: The Oirish Years. Actually, if you've not grown weary of grandiloquent metaphors - it is Friday after all - the saga of the Irish manager's job is really a metaphor for life: a series of pointless meetings, tedious lies, forlorn hopes, and looming with crushing inevitability at the very end, when naught else remains, is death, or Terry Venables in this yarn.

And I leave you with the thought of Sir Edmund Hillary, having passed from a life of the most tumultuous achievement, being ferried to the afterlife by the aforementioned Venables, a cackling celestial cabbie, rabbiting about "that Benazir Bhutto what I had in the back a few weeks ago"....

Capello To Raise England's Game

2007-12-18T12:43:00.000Z

Like a new headmaster walking into his first assembly, Fabio Capello would have critically surveyed the horde gathered to welcome him. This one will be trouble, that's a cheeky one, this one could be useful.

Equally, like a bunch of surly schoolkids presented with their new headmaster, the gentlemen of the English press would have analysed the new manager carefully. Possible nicknames, quirks of mannerism - curious turns of phrase to gleefully satirise must wait, for a month at least - the sketched outlines of a soon-to-be-familiar caricature will have been drawn.

The basic structures have already been put in place: the classic sergeant-major character will be the template; 'grumpy' the fittingly infantile adjective most prominent so far. The more forward thinking opinion-formers will already have the permutations of both success and failure mapped out: if victorious, the Roman general - or emperor? - if a failure, a bungling pizza chef.

Far away from Soho Square, in the TV rooms of Premier League club training grounds, or the audio-visual chambers of preposterous footballer mansions, Capello will also have been getting the once over. Few of the England players will view the Italian's appointment in the same way that many of the public and press have: that being the procurement of an exquisitely-crafted, staggeringly-expensive designer Italian shoe, to be launched hard and true at the complacent posteriors of England's finest.

No, with vast wealth usually comes a shield of self-righteousness. The players will have ascribed their absence from Euro 2008 as solely the fault of the toothy mediocrity that led their failed qualifying campaign. They will see themselves as the precious metal, and Capello as another goldsmith charged with making the priceless masterpiece.

But the myth of England possessing a stellar generation of footballers has long been exposed as, at the very least, a wild exaggeration. Quite sensibly, many in English football are not so much equating the current squad with the star-filled rosters that Capello led to nine league championships, but are rather doubting if the Italian can work his magic on a group that is barely average in many areas.

At this point, little also has been said of Capello's methods. Chased out of Madrid despite delivering La Liga in both of his single season spells, in Spain they quip that Wembley will be bored to tears. But after the humiliation they have just endured, few in England have the spirit to demand winning with style.

For us on the outside though, the whole point of the England team is the show, the familiar yet captivating plotline. It's why we secretly curse when they don't qualify for major championships. The vaulting ambition, the groundless optimism, the heartbreaking and hilarious defeat. Steve McLaren's small-time operation never even allowed them the momentum to hyperinflate their expectations. Capello, on the other hand, will have them thinking they can rule the world.

Thing is, they might just be right this time.

Munster Ramble On, As Black Dog Catches Leinster

2007-12-11T12:15:00.000Z

Remember that old rock bedtime story about how if you played Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in sync with The Wizard of Oz, that it all made freaky sense, dude? Well, you could probably do the same with Munster's win in Llanelli the other night and the soundtrack to Led Zeppelin's reunion concert last night in London.

"Ah-aaaaaaa-ah, Ah-aaaaaaa-ah! We come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow....Hammah of the Ggghodds""

Imagine those ear-bursting riffs and that heavy metal pack, the storms of rain and wind swirling as if from the darkest depths of Mordor itself.

I shudder to picture Anthony Foley barechested in skinny, cucumber-packing leather jeans, but the veteran number eight showed yet again that no-one thumps out a more infectious rhythm for his pack than he.

If ever there was a soundtrack to a team, or a particular performance, this is it: Page, Plant and co. would have been far better plugging amps effects pedals into the rickety Stradey Park than the comparably sedate O2 Arena.

Not that the godfathers of heavy metal and Irish rugby's monsters of rock are always so suitably in tune. On occasion, like in the loss to Leinster a few weeks ago, Munster can veer into prog rock excess: the big riffs are there, but it just doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Leinster also played on Friday night, running through a set that had all the hits at the start but tailed off somewhat in a second half full of stuff from that cocaine-fuelled self-indulgent period they went through a few years ago.

They certainly have beefed up the rhythm section though: no more the tinny, boyband jangle of their erstwhile pack; the current lineup rocks hard, and in Jamie Heaslip has a virtuoso, Jack White-type multi-instrumentalist.

But there is still the problem of creative differences elsewhere. With the low-key, Bill Wyman presence of Chris Whitaker missing from scrum-half, the psychedelic excesses of Felipe Contepomi are utterly unchecked. For each sweet, chiming melody he produces, there is a perplexing, Japanese industrial funk-influenced solo project which, sadly, none of his baffled teammates know how to play along with.

For Leinster, despite the encouraging new direction, the song, too often, remains the same.

A Hair-raising Evening

2007-12-06T11:02:00.000Z

I had the great pleasure of travelling to Funtasia in the Dromore Industrial Park just outside Drogheda on Tuesday night in order to glean wisdom and insight from the mouth of John Delaney, who was there to launch a book on the history of Drogheda United.

Fair play to John, he did throw me gristly morsel of a scoop in the news that a third 'wise man' was to be appointed to the FAI's crack team of international manager headhunters, before Ray Houghton's employers, RTE and The Star, served up the juicier fillet of the actual identity of the new man the next morning.

Delaney seems like a nice fellow. He's certainly well regarded by the grassroots types that were gathered in Drogheda; though I think the event organisers were delighted just to have someone of repute to headline the evening, otherwise the irksome, ginger-bearded town mayor would have been the main man, and no one wanted that.

Far from the Machiavellian political animal of reknown, whose skill in the committee room as he finessed his way to the top of the FAI tree sees him generally portrayed as more Richelieu than Richmond Park, Delaney came across rather normal off-record.

He enthused about his esteemed guest Michel Platini, whom he would shortly afterwards join for a sumptuous banquet back in Dublin. Perhaps there he would point out to Platini that, only a short time ago it was cocktail sausages and ham sandwiches in Funtasia in Drogheda, and that, Michel, see, was the secret of his power: knowing the time for foie gras and the time for fish fingers.

On record he was admittedly, a walking advertisement for whichever PR consultancy firm was brought in to transform the image of the FAI from Keano-baiting chancers of yore to that Blairite smoothocrat thing that everyone from the manager of your local petrol station to the CEO of your local multi-national does these days.

It's all about those hand gestures that say "I'm serving these eye-catching initiatives to you like a pastor would serve the host to his flock, dear child", the hands always moving forward to underline the progressiveness of these fabulous words, but never forming off-putting fists or jabbing fingers.

The omnipresent "going forward" peppers the content, as does "it is important that we remember...", another nod to the vicarspeak that did so well for Tony Blair.

But there were no outward signs of the bungling incompetence of which his battalion of critics often accuse him: he didn't insult anyone; trip on any carpet while walking up to the stage; he didn't declare how great it was to be here in Athlone; his flies were resolutely closed.

In fact that only vestige of haplessness the man offered up was his now notorious hairdo. Delaney has always had trouble with his barnet, a scruffy mop that looks as appropriate to its environment as a Romany halting site on a roundabout. The latest look, which you might have seen on the news yesterday, was a cross between pudding bowl chic and Roman slaveboy.

Clearly, there is a clue to the man's success in the FAI in the story of his tonsorial plight. Did he, arriving at a crossroads outside of Dungarvan some years ago, meet the devil himself? And did the Dark Lord offer him the stewardship of the nation's football destiny in exchange for - no, not your soul, oh no, I have enough of them boy! - his previously stylish and immaculately coiffured hairdo?

Been Busy?

2007-12-04T11:21:00.000Z

It is with regret that I announce that the contract of Stephen Staunton as 'latest post' on Tom's Sporting Almanac has been terminated by mutual consent. TSA will now appoint a committee to recommend where to find funny photos of Terry Venables to put up instead, preferably one of him wearing a sombrero in the Eighties.

It's a been a while, I give you that. Not that there has been anything much happening in sport to write about since October 16th. Just yer international managerial escapades, the denouement of a Rugby World Cup, the first ever general player strike in Gaelic games history, the familar clank of Brit-failure that brought the Formula One season to an end, a football season that has ratcheted up the usual manager-disembowelling count and much more.

So yes, not writing about sport over the last six weeks or so is a bit like Santa going off somewhere nice and warm in late November, then ambling back into the elves' workshop mid-January and idly querying of the little toysmiths "been busy?" (An analogy which works only if Santa is indeed involved in the toymaking process, not if his only job is, as such, dispatch. In which case it's no skin off the elves' noses what he does, it just means "there's a big pile of bloody toys lying out the back waiting to be delivered, you great fat, brandy-quaffing, christmas cake-munching oaf!")

Unlike this indolent Santa, TSA has been exceptionally busy of late, seeing as how I've started a new job and that. Having gotten through that opening six week period of a job wherein one suppressess those natural characteristics so unappealing to new employers - negligible personal hygiene, workplace narcolepsy, tendency to attempt seduction of boss's wife/daughter/mother -
I feel I can now relax and renew the idle, yet exquisitely-gentrified lifestyle of the blogger.

So where were we? Ah, the old San Siro once again. As part of my sabbatical, a trip to the Celtic v Shaktar Donetsk match last Wednesday was squeezed in, to witness yet another eye-rubbingly unlikely Champions League win for Celtic at Parkhead.

Two last minute winners and a deflection have given Celtic the nine points from which they hope this evening to springboard to the knockout stages this evening, and a bit more of that sort of fortune will be needed.

The hopes of Celtic fans - the bluster about "going there to win" to win aside - have strayed this past week to Messrs Strachan and Ancelotti being fellow members of some sort of managers' freemason group, through which a particular prematch handshake will signify the ensuing of the most gentlemanly, inoffensive, tedious scoreless draw imaginable.

However, even were Celtic to arrange a scurrilous carve-up, you can be sure some hapless calamity will befall one of their defenders early in tonight's game, and a probably-terminal goal conceded.

No, Celtic will get no favours this evening, unless they navigate themselves to the closing twenty minutes on level terms, in which case an informal armistice may materialise.

Although, even then, Inzaghi will probably scuff one in off his kneecap. The little shit.

It's a Vision Thing

2007-10-16T11:05:00.000+01:00

It was mentioned last week - by some members of the mongrel pack that huddle at the side of Malahide United's pitch for gristly morsels of quotes from the Republic of Ireland manager - that Stephen Staunton seemed in relatively "good form".

Some speculated that it was due to the bludgeoning being dished out on Eddie O'Sullivan, that the erstwhile paragon of Irish international managerial excellence was now occupying the stocks to which Staunton was usually bound. That line sounds glib, but, by the infantile standards of Staunton's usual public justifications, nonetheless believeable.

More likely, however, is that the manager was enjoying the hubris of suddenly-realised invulnerability. The trip to central Europe had been characterised by similar - if not quite as disastrous - incompetencies to the Cyprus fiasco of 11 months previously, yet the support of Staunton's employers for their manager rang out more loudly than the clamour for his removal.

The same selectorial eccentricities, further erroneous substitutions and a continuing overwhelming lack of sense of purpose were evident.

This is not to suggest that the players' commitment to the cause was lacking in any way; one of the redeeming features of Staunton's management is the undoubted efforts his players continue to provide. But no-one questioned the commitment of the soldiers at the Somme as they were ordered towards their doom, neither does anyone credit their commanders for it.

The fact that a dismal return from the pivotal qualification matches resulted in voluminous backing from the FAI must surely have emboldened Staunton thereafter, perhaps explaining then his levity of mood last week.

Nothing that happened on Saturday will have damaged or abetted the manager. The attitude of the players was once again excellent; the performance of Joey O'Brien another success for the blooding policy of this campaign.

But that sense of purposeless is highlighted at home more than anywhere. The understrength Germans' general comfort with proceedings pinpoints the sad demise of the Irish international team. No matter how low we think we are, in these days when we are constantly reminded to redefine our expectations, no international side, especially one denuded of most of their best players, should expect to sleepwalk their way through an international in Dublin.

The lack of a vision for his team is something which our manager should now be eliminating. The fact that Andy Reid has gone from pariah to the central hub of the team in the space of two games demontrates the haphazard nature of Staunton's stewardship. The tossing in of Andy Keogh on the right wing another random, surreal whim of a selection.

By this stage we should expect - whatever the other flaws - to have a notion of how Staunton's Ireland would ideally line-up and play. That we don't is the fundamental problem with this ramshackle, irrational operation.

We'll Answer Our Hemisphere's Call

2007-10-10T12:39:00.000+01:00

Is there a word - a noun like patriotism, or nationalism, or jingoism, or sectarianism - for a devoted love, support and defence of one's hemisphere? Hemiphilism, being a hemiphiliac maybe? An odd word like that would work, to fit the feeling of spending a weekend cheering on a hemisphere!

Perhaps it's something that will catch on. Instead of children being taught about the flag and the struggle and the history at school, instead the little 'uns will be reminded regularly about their responsibilities as Northern Hemispherians.

"Remember sonny, north means 'on top', ok?"

Maybe the brain-bleeding drone of the argument over the Irish rugby team's anthem could be rendered obsolete by the simple use of two, new Hemisphere anthems: Land Down Under by Men At Work for the South, Up On The Roof by The Drifters for the North.

That's all for the future. But with our own group of tortured souls long returned from France to attend meetings with irate commercial endorsers brandishing small print, England, France and Scotland all enjoyed the benefits of this new Trans-Hemisphere support.

Say what you like about us Northern Hemispherians, but we stick together when the chips are down. Frankly, we'd had just about enough of folks criticising our hemisphere. We knew how Lynyrd Skynyrd felt when writing Sweet Home Alabama: "I hope David Campese will remember, Northern Man don't need him round anyhow!"

Yes indeed, there's nothing we Northern Hemispherians like more than getting one over on our old enemies in the south. Even the French kept their end up, despite being forced to play away from home at their own World Cup (that's the Northern spirit for you!).

Scotland couldn't quite make it a perfect weekend for God's own hemisphere, but then the Argies are honorary Northerners anyway, what with Contepomi being more Leinster than the Leinstermen themselves, and all those grizzled forwards playing in France.

Gosh, with England and France, our two Northern brothers, playing in the semi, I don't know who I'm going to support!

The Parkhead Pimpernel

2007-10-04T12:50:00.000+01:00

Old William Gaillard at UEFA's seen plenty of tough cases but nothing like the sickening act of violence that put a World Cup and Champions League winning goalkeeper out of football for possibly hours.

The lethal nature of the blow inflicted on Dida by the Buckfast-fuelled trespasser will surely not help Celtic's cause. The speed, precision and force of the blow were such that the television cameras did not even pick up its full impact.

Such was the stealth at which the (surely black-belt martial art practising) assailant inflicted his attack that Dida himself did not realise the grievous pain he was suffering for several moments. The brave goalkeeper gave chase, reacting like the true warrior he is, but his highly trained adversary had the fleet of foot to evade Dida's vengeance, escaping just as the crippling pain began to invade the unfortunate Brazilian's nervous system.

The timely intervention of AC Milan's doctor stabilised Dida's condition, and he is believed to be recovering well, though dropping in and out of consciousness. Seemingly, in lucid moments, he desribes his assailant, muttering "he was so pished," or words to that effect.

So who was this Parkhead Pimpernel, this Glaswegian Bruce Lee? No-one knows, but bystanders did report a shadowy figure disappearing down the London Road carrying what apparently was "a kebab of some sort."

A fearful football world turns its eyes to UEFA.

Death in the Family

2007-10-03T11:37:00.000+01:00

The use of the world 'post-mortem' in relation to the fall-out from Ireland's disastrous Rugby World Cup campaign is instructive. The insinuation is of death, that we are standing around a slab in a chilly mortuary looking at the lifeless corpse of Irish rugby.

The inclination to view a sporting collapse in such dramatic terms is common.

I remember, when Celtic lost to Basle in the qualifying round of the Champions League early in the 2002-03 season, feeling such a sense of void that it seemed like the upcoming season was stillborn. Nine months later, Celtic were playing in a UEFA Cup final, providing the club's supporters with such rich memories that seemed so unlikely at the start of the season.

Rumours of the demise of the Irish soccer team are unlikely to exaggerated at the moment. However, while the sense of terminal decline pervades the Stephen Staunton era right now, even the blackest-mooded depressive cannot say that there will be good times again sometime in the future, most probably depending on how long the current manager lasts.

The mourning over the Irish rugby team is so pronounced because it's reminiscient of the untimely passing of a brilliant, much-loved child. It is hard to do 'perspective' when one looks at the scale of what just happened in France.

We all know the lines: the best team in our history, the best-prepared, at the peak of their powers. The Pool D table makes horrific, chastening reading for even those who approached this World Cup with excessive caution. "We'll lose to France, and will just squeeze by Argentina," said those priding themselves on not being drawn into the mass cheerleading.

If only, eh?

But perspective I will urge, dammit. Clearly those who call for the head of Eddie O'Sullivan are no mere fickle Salomés. The list of mistakes, flaws, cataclysmic errors of judgement, and basic poor man-management that O'Sullivan is responsible for is long and very, very damning. Were it not for the man's curriculum vitae, I would take aim myself.

But has the coach not buttressed himself to any degree with his previous achievements? The would-be executioners are now treating the successes of the last few years as pure chimera, Mickey Mouse honours in a weak Six Nations, devalued Autumn international success against teams looking at the long game of France '07, rather than Lansdowne Road '06.

But where was such wisdom at the time?

Sure, the hype over this team has exceeded their achievements. But just as those who watched the dismal fare in the early games from France could not be codded by post-match pleadings of improvements and individual errors, when we watched Ireland over the last few seasons it was with a sense of awe and exhiliration that simply cannot be deemed to be worthless now.

There's no need to throw any more mitigating circumstances into the pot; everyone knows about the timing of the tournament, the difficult draw etc. Clearly hard questions need to be asked. Big, big mistakes were made, some of them - the failure to develop a sufficiently deep squad - were being made even at the height of our success. O'Sullivan has to address severe question marks over his control-freakery, the overly-structured play and the cold-hearted squad management.
But he has, just about, earned the right to answer them.

But a bit of perspective please. Nobody died here.

Don't Cry For Them

2007-09-29T11:58:00.000+01:00

Damn those happy-go-lucky Argentines. They need taking down a peg or two.

"Aren't they wonderful, the team spirit, the way they've dragged themselves into the elite in spite of the hindrances of world rugby's powers-that-be?"

Pah. Not in the mood. Feck them. Let's take them apart.

Never mind the complete, utter illogicality of Ireland getting four tries and winning by more than seven tomorrow. Never mind the fact that any neutral looking on would surely root for the Pumas, whose courage in prising the win on the opening night from France and professionalism in securing all available points since makes them the team of the tournament so far.

Screw the fact that the sort of effort it would require of Ireland to beat Argentina while racking up the requisite stats would appear to require a performance completely outwith even the most bizarre graph of form imaginable.

To hell with the notion that two of the areas in which Ireland have struggled so far - recycling quick possession and breaking down crowded blitz defences - would appear to be Argentina's strongest suits.

Cry "poppycock!" at those who point at the purpose, cameraderie and leadership that the Pumas enjoy, in comparison with the seemingly lost souls in the Ireland squad.

A couple of World Cup wins in soccer aside, Argentina is no more comfortable with success than we are. The country's history is sad and violent; they dance the dark and passionate tango, not the get-yer-ya-yas-out samba.

So let's hope tomorrow will be a bad day for Argentina. A national catastrophe. Ireland v Argentina in the 2007 Rugby World Cup needs to go down with the economic crisis of the late 1990s, the death of Eva Peron, Maradona's drug bust, Rattin's sending off against the English and the birth of Chris de Burgh as black events in the Argentine annals.

(Good taste precludes the inclusion of the sinking of the Belgrano in that list. But perhaps The Irish Sun could have the headline "Gotcha" on standby?)

Ooooh-klahoma Where the Football Coaches Are Insane!

2007-09-27T13:46:00.000+01:00

In the clip below, Mike Gundy, coach of Oklahoma State college football team unleashes the most spectacularly virulent attack on a newspaper columnist I've ever seen. Frankly, it makes Billy Morgan sticking an Irish Examiner journo's dictaphone down his pants look like an act of Christ-like generosity.

Gundy's rant was aimed at Jenni Karlson, writer of this piece in The Oklahoman newspaper, which criticised the poor form of Oklahoma State quarter-back Bobby Reid.

It is of particular interest to GAA managers, given Gundy's belief that Reid's 'amateur' status (college footballers are unpaid, but their hardship is offset by scholarships worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition fees, accomodation etc.) should protect him from criticism. This is an oft-whinged managerial line in Gaelic games, as in "dem fellas sayin' dem things about dese fellas who have to go to work on Monday morning, 'tis a disgrace."

But that's not all, Gundy's contention that anyone who is a child of a, er, parent should be absolved from critical analysis could, were it to catch on, rather narrow the options for those in the punditry game.

And the classic "where are we at as a society today"? Spoken like a true, grumpy old dad!

Top Tournament Turnarounds

2007-09-26T10:22:00.000+01:00

Old Mother Almanac often recounts the bitter day the doctors wrapped a newborn TSA in swaddling clothes and gave her the dreaded news..."Madam, I'm afraid the child has the optimism."

No sir, not for these parts the gloom and gnashing of teeth that passes for discourse among Irish sports fans these days. Hence, these midweek days have seen the staff at the TSA Institute for Cock-Eyed Optimism busily at work formulating a plan for Ireland's erstwhile rugby heroes to avoid the very real prospect of a stoning upon arrival at Dublin Airport.

Nope, stop the presses, oh Irish Times, on those Fintan O'Toole pieces suggesting that the arc of Ireland's prosperity was symbolically bookended by Italia '90 and France '07. We've identified five occasions when tournament turmoil was turned into open-top ovation.

England - 1986 World Cup

The pedantic among you will point out that England did not win the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, and were, in fact, eliminated at the quarter-final stage, that Rubicon which Sven was so chastised for being unable to cross.

But after the first two group games in Mexico, a quarter-final seemed as likely for England as Margaret Thatcher having a pint of bitter in a working men's club in Oldham. A 1-0 defeat at the hands of Portugal was followed by a mind-numbing 0-0 draw against Morocco. In addition, England lost both their midfield lynchpins, Bryan Robson to a shoulder injury, Ray Wilkins to a red card.

But, lo and behold, a rejigged England - with Peter Beardsley, Peter Reid, Steve Hodge and Trevor Steven drafted in (fancy that, using your squad!) - walloped Poland 3-0 in the final group match, courtesy of a Gary Lineker hat-trick.

Paraguay were dispatched by the same score in the second round, before Bobby Robson's side achieved the greatest victory of all in English eyes: a moral one at the hands of a dirty, cheating Argie genius.

Kerry - 2006 All-Ireland

It's easy to forget, as Jack O'Connor occupies his place in the Kerry football pantheon after managing the county to two All-Irelands, how close his regime was to ignominious collapse last summer.

Losing to Cork in the Munster final replay was bad enough, but the team captain, O'Connor's Dromid clubman, Declan O'Sullivan, had been booed off the field. Rumours abounded that the camp were at each other's throats, that the O'Sés were at loggerheads with the management.

All of it nonsense, it transpired. O'Connor hit on the brainwave of putting Kieran Donaghy in at full-forward, and his explosion onto the national conciousness in the quarter-final win over Armagh helped Kerry coast to an All-Ireland that looked likely in July.

Italy - 1982 World Cup

It was the tournament which begat the maxim about Italian teams starting slowly. They drew their three opening group games, 0-0 with Poland, 1-1 with Peru and 1-1 with Cameroon. Manager Enzo Bearzot was heavily criticised for starting striker Paolo Rossi, who had just completed a 2-year ban for involvement in a betting scandal.

The Italians sneaked through to the second round on goal difference over Cameroon, where they faced Argentina and Brazil in the tournament's experimental second group stage. The Argentines were defeated 2-1, thanks in no small part to defender Claudio Gentile's brutal subjugation of Diego Maradona.

Then came the unforgettable 3-2 victory over Brazil, in which Rossi repayed Bearzot's faith with a hat-trick. Rossi got another two in the 2-0 defeat of Poland in the semi-final, and scored the first in the final, a 3-1 win over West Germany.

England - 2003 Rugby World Cup

Ok, bit of a tenuous one this, given that England won all their matches on the way to winning the tournament.

But the sweet chariot looked wobbled a little early on. Samoa were unconvincingly disposed of 35-22. Then came the quarter-final, and a Welsh side who'd just frightened the All Blacks. Jonny Wilkinson endured a jittery first half, with Wales leading 10-3 after 43 minutes.

But Mike Catt's introduction at half-time steadied the future world champions, the veteran putting a metaphorical arm round Wilkinson's shoulder. A try from Will Greenwood and 23 points from the young fly-half took England clear, and onwards to Sydney.

Another Miracle Match Please

2007-09-24T11:55:00.000+01:00

Well, you know, it wasn't such a bad weekend for Irish rugby after all. All four provinces winning their opening Magners League fixtures and all? That's good isn't it? Feel better?

Indeed.

The Irish Rugby World Cup campaign has gotten so bad that people are beginning to compare it to England's effort at the football World Cup last year. The talk of a 'golden generation', the misplaced optimism of the public mood, the overbooked endorsement diaries, a 'Goldenballs' figure who isn't quite as good as he thinks he is, a coach rewarded with a juicy new contract prior to proving himself worthy of it; all followed by dismal, disjointed performances.

All we need is Eddie to embark on an affair with the tealady at the IRFU and a slew of player autobiographies to complete the analogy.

But here we are now. In need of a miracle. Did someone say 'miracle'? As in 'miracle match'? Well why didn't you say so?! Don't we have just the men to do it right here!

Cast your mind back to a cold and wet January Saturday in 2003, when Gloucester arrived at Thomond Park needing to avoid both defeat by 27 points or more and the concession of four tries to eliminate Munster from the Heineken Cup. Remember what happened?

Wind forward a few years, 2006 this time, Sale Sharks had to be beaten by four tries lest Munster's Heineken Cup quest fail again. Remember what happened?

Ah, if only those happy-go-lucky Argies could be brought to Thomond, and if it only it was January, and if only our rugby players had a few hard months of toil under their belts.

And if only it was somewhere far away from this oppressive, claustrophobic World Cup, with the haunted looks on the faces of the players and their coach as they try to figure out answers to questions we can't even get our heads around to ask.

It's been mentioned in several reports how the Argentines have given the impression of greatly enjoying their World Cup experience. Trevor Brennan, in his national anthem polemic in last Friday's Irish Times, described how he rang one of his Argentine colleagues at Toulouse, who was at that moment on the team bus back from training last week. "What's that in the background?", asked the Barnhall Bruiser. "Singing," responded his Puma friend.

Singing. Can't imagine our boys giving it The Fields on the TGV. Not that Eddie should start handing out lyric sheets instead of conducting DVD analysis. Nothing, of course, makes a player happier than good results, but the sense of embattlement, unease and a general lack of wellbeing has pervaded for weeks now.

Which is why, on Sunday, necessity and - good God man! - the milk of human kindness dictate that O'Sullivan should send his team out with the most minimal instruction. "Go and enjoy yourselves lads." It's about time. And it might just work.

Roman Calls The Tune

2007-09-21T10:12:00.000+01:00

Taken from us in the dead of night, was Jose. Just like that. The health hadn't been the best of late, but it was still a shock when it came.

Hard to imagine life without him, isn't it? A principal character in the Premier League soap opera has been killed off. I can see the compilation of his best moments now, from the extraordinary cameo appearance in Porto's victory over Manchester United in the 2004 Champions League last 16 to last week's 'egg metaphor' press conference. Maybe soundtracked by I Know Him So Well, Elaine Page and Barbara Dickson's classic 1985 version, of course.

Plenty other central characters could be following Mourinho into the footballing equivalent of Holby City. Mourinho's greatest achievement at Chelsea, aside from the tangibles of two Premiership titles, one FA Cup and a Carling Cup, was the team spirit and loyalty he engendered at Stamford Bridge: he created a heart in a club where such a thing shouldn't have existed.

Aside from John Terry and Frank Lampard - the former recently announced himself, Lampard and Mourinho to be the three-pronged fork of righteous justice that would lead Chelsea to global domination - Didier Drogba, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Michael Essien and Claude Makalele are all reportedly not best pleased at the way Mourinho's constructive dismissal was carried out.

It certainly appears to be a watershed for the club. Whether the Wormtongue presence of Avram Grant represents a long-term alternative as manager, the Israeli faces an enormous challenge in marshalling Mourinho's loyal footsoldiers under his command.

The duration of his stewardship, of course, will be precisely as long as Roman Abramovich's patience lasts. The Sacked Managers Union that represent most of the football punditry industry will line up squarely in support of Mourinho at this point. The outrageousness of a chairman and club owner dictating how a manager should do his job will be stated and underlined at length.

But the idea that any sort of normal moral compass applies in the world of Abramovich and Chelsea is utterly redundant. In the world that the Russian oligarch has created around Stamford Bridge, there is no right or wrong way. There is only Roman's way. It is a mini-moral universe in which Abramovich's word is the Truth.

And anyone who enters that world, lives by that word.

So if Abramovich felt that he - the creator and intelligent designer of this world - was unsatisfied that his hundreds of millions had failed to produce what he desired, the elusive winning-with-style conundrum, then Jose's fate was sealed. In short, Roman saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. But not great.

The ultimate irony in Mourinho's departure is that the man who portrayed himself as the quasi-supernatural 'Special One', was undone in a perfect enactment of the Christian theology that even the greatest man is subservient to the superior being.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Shakh-ing Night For Celtic

2007-09-19T11:44:00.000+01:00

2-0, and as Shakhtar Donetsk manager Mircea Lucescu said, it could have been six. Everyone knows the statistic: fourteen Champions League away trips, no wins, just the one draw.

Looked at like that it reads like a formality, these pastings Celtic routinely endure on their travels. Like it's just part of a script, an intricate footballing protocol that features rousing home performance on one page, depressing away capitulations on the other.

Belief in the inevitability of it is backed up by the respective chequebook stubs of Celtic and Shakhtar. Celtic's summer business was constituted by the £8.1 million spend on midfielders Scott Brown and Massimo Donati, and the strikers Scott McDonald and Chris Killen. Shakhtar spent £35 million, largely on strikers Cristiano Lucarelli and Nery Castillo. Go figure.

But there is nothing inevitable in sport, as several of the Celtic players from last night would tell you from their experience seven days previously in Stade de France. Alex McLeish's Scottish side defeated France thanks to a courageous defensive performance, one borne of a collective understanding of what would be required to get a result against France.

Gordon Strachan's Celtic last night, on the other hand, were set up in a manner that seemed to ignore their previous struggles away from home and presume that they should take on the lucratively assembled Shakhtar side toe-to-toe. Ten minutes in with a 4-4-2 formation that left their rearguard flooded, and another awayday nightmare was in progress. Paul Hartley's redeployment to the same holding job he performed against France for his country came too late to do anything other than limit the damage.

There is also nothing inevitable about the sort of individual error that gifted Donetsk their opener. Stephen McManus, the defensive rock on which Scotland's resistance was built last week, gaffed the ball to the feet of Donetsk's creative lynchpin Fernandinho, and the game was up right there.

So whether it was destiny or decision, it was yet another harsh 'lesson' for Celtic. Still, if the standard Champions League curriculum is followed, AC Milan will be swept aside in a night of high emotion at Parkhead in two weeks time.

It's inevitable, isn't it?

Eddie The Assassin

2007-09-18T13:33:00.000+01:00

So Eddie has acted. Are the changes merely rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, or will they shore up the giant hole in Ireland's Rugby World Cup campaign?

If you were looking for a sacrificial lamb amongst the Irish team from the first two games, sticking a pin randomly in the teamsheet would probably have served your purpose just fine. But Peter Stringer pays the price for being the perpetrator of the most glaring, identifiable error, rather than the bulk of his teammates for their part in the astonishing malaise that has gripped the Irish team.

Eoin Reddan's elevation to the starting XV has met with much approval for the player's calibre (being the scrum-half on the current Heineken Cup champions is pedigree enough), but also no little dismay that the Wasps player has had virtually no prior test match experience. Reddan's selection raises serious alarm bells about Eddie O'Sullivan's preparations, and the suspicion arises that the coach is now implementing panic measures.

Only a short few days since he was considered the third best number nine in the squad, Reddan is now being called upon to instigate the forward momentum and pack management that has been virtually non-existent in the opening games. It's a bold move by Eddie; in poker parlance, the coach is 'all in'.

Andrew Trimble and Jerry Flannery are more straightforward changes, both bringing more explosiveness around the field than the men they replace, the under-par Denis Hickie and the injured Rory Best.

But it's the banishment of Geordan Murphy from the 22, replaced by the unheralded Gavin Duffy, that has caused the greatest consternation. Murphy, O'Sullivan claims, is paying the price for errors against the French in games seven and nineteen months ago. It hasn't required mind-reading skills to figure that O'Sullivan does not trust Murphy, his preference for Girvan Dempsey long being used as evidence for the 'Steady Eddie' characterisation of the coach.

But you could forgive O'Sullivan having Murphy on the bench with Dempsey at 15, the thinking being that, were a game-breaking, or -saving intervention required, at least Murphy's unpredictable talents could be drafted in. Now, if we require a dash of magic, we can replace the dependable Dempsey with the, er, also dependable Duffy. Hmmm.

Still, there it is; the bloodletting has occured. The changes will have energised the stiffs outside the regular 22 at least, with three of their tackle-bag carrying number having been asked to saddle up.

Whether Eddie's bold moves do the same for the rest of the underperforming squad remains to be seen.

The Way of Things

2007-09-17T19:32:00.000+01:00

Not the greatest week for Irish sport, was it? The accelerating pointlessness of our international soccer team, the bewildering collapse of the rugby team, and another lopsided, anti-climactic All-Ireland football final.

All we need now is for Padraig Harrington to test positive for cocaine (those post-Open celebrations at Stackstown Golf Club having gotten out of hand) and Aidan O'Brien to be caught in a compromising position with George Washington for the full set.

But while the All-Ireland wasn't the riveting spectacle we always hope for it to be, after a week of mediocrity there was the consolation of savouring the quality of a Kerry side that now begin to look their legendary predecessors directly in the eye.

The day after last year's All-Ireland final I wrote about having reservations about this Kerry team, following their hammering of Mayo. They needed, I felt, a championship-winning campaign that involved a titanic, defining victory over a similarly serious side, probably Tyrone, to ascend to that nebulous state of 'greatness'.

This year feels different. They had tough games; the three victories which preceded yesterday's were by small margins: two pints over Cork in the Munster final, one over Monaghan in the All-Ireland quarter-final and were two better than Dublin in the semi.

But there no longer seems the need for them to have conquered one of the other great teams of the era at their best. The fact that they appear to have outlived Tyrone as Gaelic football's masters might be part of it. But the simple, unequivocal total of Sam Maguires totted up is the main reason. Eventually, you have to stop speculating about the true worth of a team, stop trying to put their success into the context of the time and simply allow the weight of trophy numbers to win the argument.

Along with Kilkenny's hurling championship victory, Kerry's third All-Ireland in four years seems to have engendered a belated appreciation for the merits of the GAA's dynastic powers. After the vogue for the bench-pressing, wife-ignoring, self-flagellating preparation methods as espoused by the Ulster giants early in the decade, there's a definite re-evaluation of the merits of Kilkenny and Kerry's seemingly unforced cultures of success.

Without suggesting for a moment that the twin pillars of the GAA's intercounty temple don't scourge themselves in the gym and in laps of the winter fields, there's a naturalistic quality about their success that doesn't seem to be the result of the concerted efforts of a group of special, determined men, but rather is the involuntary expression of their people's sporting identity.

Both counties have had to ride out sustained periods where their pre-eminence was challenged over the last 15 to 20 years. Sooner or later other counties will come again, and take joy in knocking Kerry and Kilkenny off their perches. But eventually they'll return to where they belong, stronger and better than ever, restoring that feeling of permanence again. That's just the way it is.

Kerry On Winning

2007-09-14T12:48:00.000+01:00

Moving on, then, to the major field sports at which we can't suffer international embarassment...

Funny old All-Ireland, this one. Barely more hype and hullabaloo than a decent provincial final. In fact, many have described the feeling ahead of Kerry v Cork as not much more than that of a Munster final, with the location, date and reward being a minor footnote.

As well as the distractions in France and in central Europe, it's the flipside of all the good things the qualifier system has brought us. All the novel pairings, all the hitherto neglected counties having their 15 minutes of fame, the extra fixtures - it's all done wonders for Championship GAA. But when you get a final like this one, it feels like getting an invite to the afters of a wedding: you're more than welcome to come along later, but, you know, it's going to be quite a private ceremony.

Funny, though, I recall much more anticipation for the Tyrone v Armagh final in 2003. Perhaps that was the novelty of the fixture, or the interest in what, at the time, seemed like a frightening new epoch of Ulster dominance. (Remember when RTE sent Tommie Gorman to make a documentary called The Men Behind Maguire shortly after Tyrone won that year. It seemed like Gorman was playing Leni Riefenstahl to Mickey Goebbels and Adolf Kernan at the time).

Leaving aside the likely disappointing viewing figures for Up For The Match tomorrow night, this is still an intriguing final between two very fine sides. I hesitate to tagline it as a battle between the forwards of Kerry and the backs of Cork; both have oodles of quality in the opposing halves, particulary Cork with the return of sharpshooting James Masters.

But why complicate things? Cork will succeed if they dominate the Kerry forward machine. Graham Canty is the type of defender you'd go to war with, and if anyone can subdue Kieran Donaghy, it is he. But the loss of Anthony Lynch hurts. The Gooch loves All-Ireland finals. He just does.

In the Munster final, which Kerry won by two points, Cork enjoyed a spell of dominance when they wrested control of midfield. The Rebels are strong here with Nicholas Murphy and Derek Kavanagh, and Michael Cussen will presumably be brought out again to buttress that area for Cork. They pretty much strangled Meath here in the semi, and Sunday demands a huge game from Darragh O Sé to hold the fort here.

But Kerry are not Meath. They seem to putting together one of those wonderfully timed Sam Maguire runs that they are able to do by second nature. Doing enough against Cork in Munster, Monaghan in the quarter-final, releasing the throttle a little more to pull away from Dublin.

With a bench bursting with impact players, Sam should make that familiar trip again this year.

I Can Picture It Now...

2007-09-12T11:42:00.000+01:00

One of keys to success, so they who know about these things claim, is to visualise it. That way, when it comes to the moment of truth, when your mettle is tested, it will feel like you have already done it before.

Being open of heart and generous of nature (just ask my servants) I have always longed for Steve Staunton to be a success as Ireland manager. Not just because, having the word "Eireannach" on my passport, it's expected; nor because of the long and dutiful service the lanky southpaw gave his country as a player.

Mainly, it was just so the poor wretch would not have to endure any longer the full, double-barrelled barrage of this nation's Industry of Ridicule, be they the amateur bar-room satirists of the general public and the (ahem) internet blogging community, or the professional firing squad of the media.

Such has been the torrent of denigration that Stan has endured (not all of it due to his 'interesting' team selections and 'minimalist' press conferences), it would not require Our Lady of Lourdes to wish for some mercy for the chap.

But back to the visualisation thing. In rooting for the guy, during those short interludes when his reign has been characterised by relative calm, I have often tried to picture success for the Louthman in the Ireland job. I have tried to visulaise Stan the Conquering Hero, striding onto the Croke Park turf - in Churchillian style, if you will - to take the acclaim after defeating Germany next month.

Or Stan the Master Tactician, who earns a respectful nod from Karel Bruckner, having just outwitted the grey Gandalf of European football in tonight's contest in Prague.

"A well deserved victory, Stephen, playing Richard Dunne up front - I had no idea. Alex Ferguson, Ottmar Hitzfeld, Capello and I are going for a Staropramen after the game, interested?"

"Ah no thanks Karel, I'd like to be with my boys."

Or Stan On The Late Late, spinning yarns to Pat about Mick Byrne's antics, recounting funny tales of the trip to the finals in Austria and Switzerland, holding the audience rapt, until Bono and Larry Mullen come in to present him with, I don't know, a saxaphone or something (I'm speculating on Stan having a rich cultural life, unbeknownst to his persecutors in the outside world).

But....I'm struggling. All I can see is Stan the Sacked, Stan the Bitter, Stan Blaming the Media, Stan the Newspaper Column Aimed At Taking Potshots At His Successor. I can see all them dancing in my brain like the results of a particularly bad acid trip. Stan the Success? He seems to have gone the way of Michael O'Leary the Humble, or Beckham the Publicity Shy.

I just hope Stan's better at this visualisation lark than I am.

A Little More Action Please

2007-09-11T10:26:00.000+01:00

One by one they filed in, each with the same bowed head, hand-wringing, but taking it like a man. Eddie, Brian O'Driscoll, Gordon D'Arcy; Marcus Horan turned up on RTE Radio 1, Shane Horgan took the notion of collective responsibility seriously on Newstalk. No doubt Paul O'Connell and David Wallace will minutely document the pain of it all in their Sunday newspaper columns.

The flipside of the ubiquity of this Irish rugby team - how did they fit any training in around all those advertising shoots? - is the necessity for accountability. And, fair play, they haven't gone to ground, you know. Horgan and Horan talked about yesterday's video analysis session, presented, one presumes, by Wes Craven. Guys fronted up, in the parlance of the sport; hands were raised in admission of culpability.

Which is all well and good. It's certainly better to hear than the line of being top of the group with a bonus point to boot. That one was floated by some, and sank carrying all crew of the S.S. Optimism to their graves.

While we're glad of their honesty, we don't need the articulacy of our rugby players to spell out the grim nature of Sunday's performance. Watching the game again on the Setanta repeat yesterday, commentator Mark Robson was reduced to reciting, like a Rabbi chanting the script of the Torah, the list of Namibia's previous results, stunned by the incongruity of what was in front of him.

"They lost in qualifying to Tunisia and Kenya...Georgia and Romania beat them in the Nations Cup....they only defeated Uganda by a point in June...Australia of course put 142 points on the scoreboard four years ago....they lost 32-20 to the South African Students, then South Africa beat them 105-13...."

Nowhere in that lot was there the remotest context for what happened on Sunday night, against a team for whom winning the competition was considered within the realm of reason.

The poverty of the Irish display was such that it cannot be simply ascribed to the seemingly random misfortune of individual errors. This wasn't a bad day at the office. This was more like turning up for work to find the office had been demolished by a bomb.

Very obviously, this team have not been properly prepared for the start of the World Cup. The idea that the Irish team that ran out of puff against Namibia could, had the draw placed them there instead, have matched France or Argentina in their opening game is laughable.

But there's the rub. Ireland's World Cup did not really start last Sunday. Sure, the points difference escape tunnel has now been blocked off. But, if the preparation of an international rugby side is as scientific as I think it is, one imagines that Stade de France a week on Friday is intended to be nearer the top of the graph the Stade Chaban Delmas two days ago.

It's a straw, and I'm clutching at it.

Not that there weren't abysmal things about Sunday that were nothing to do with conditioning and ring-rustiness. The gameplan, that familiar O'Sullivanism, for example. Why did we attempt to play this match as if we had just stepped off the pitch in Rome last March? Why not simply kick for territory and keep the Namibians pinned back, allowing ourselves to feel our way into some sort of fluency, rather than simply assuming it with through looking for midfield gaps that hadn't yet appeared?

The breakdown was disastrous, Ireland recycling ball with the urgency of a hen laying an egg (apologies to all hens if the egg laying process is, in fact, carried out in an urgent manner. I always imagine it to be a serene and sedate process. If not, you should complain more. Like female humans).

But on the other hand, Namibia killed so much ball illegally that referee Joel Jutge's failure to issue a yellow card was the greatest act of charity towards an African nation since Bob Geldof and the black babies.

They're smart men, our rugby boys; they speak well and they're no fools. They know more than you or I about what went wrong on Sunday, and have done enough in recent years to warrant a bit of faith.

But there's only so much talking you can do.

Must Do Better

2007-09-10T13:29:00.000+01:00

Little Eddie O'Sullivan sat nervously outside the headmaster's office. His eyes were still puffy from tears; tears of embarassment, tears because he wasn't used to being in trouble.

Beside him, though, was Stevie Staunton. He knew all about the headmaster's office. He was no stranger to the sting of the birch, Stevie. In fact, he'd made the long walk up the corridor a few too many times lately; the head was talking expulsion, or so it was whispered in the staff room.

Little Eddie looked up at Stevie. "What you looking at, squirt?" drawled Stevie. "Ahhh, nuttin," Eddie stuttered, looking away. He swung his legs (which didn't quite reach the floor), faking nonchalance.

With a creak which chilled the soul of even the hairiest sixth-year, the door of the headmaster's office opened. He looked at the two boys in turn. Stevie he treated to a disdainful growl; Eddie a mournful shaking of the head.

He beckoned them both inside. "I expected this of him," he said to Eddie when they were all seated, jerking a thumb in Stevie's direction. "But you, Eddie? We had such hopes for you." He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "The reputation of the school! It's taken a few blows lately, what with this.....character!" The thumb jerked again.

"I am here y'know, in fairness," Stevie protested. "I'll come to you in a minute," the head snapped.

"I'm sorry sir, it was shocking. Horrible stuff. I just didn't get my ducks in a row. But we move on."

"Well I'll be the judge of that, I think," the head said with eyebrow raised. "I haven't seen so many unforced errors in our great uniform since....". His eyes drifted towards Stevie. "Well, indeed. The lack of composure, the poor decision-making, the shoddy line outs....really, very disappointing I must say."

"I've a lot of work to do this week, sir, but make no mistake, no stone will be unturned in putting things right." Eddie fixed the head with a determined look. He was a good lad, the head knew that. In all probability this was a one-off; the end-of-term report card would be time enough to judge young O'Sullivan.

"I fear that you may have been the subject of a.....negative influence, Mr. O'Sullivan," the head eventually pronounced, his eyes shifting to the slouched presence in the other chair, who was considering the produce of his nasal passage with the interest of an philatelist examining an original Penny Black.

"I'm not sure what you mean, sir," little Eddie chirped.

"I think you know very well what I mean. The lack of cohesion, the failure to capitalise on a good start, the absence of leadership. Oh this is vintage Staunton all right!" The head by now had turned his attention to Stevie, who ceased the study of his snot upon the mention of his name.

"I get blamed for everything in this place!" Stevie exclaimed, his face reddening.

"Yes it rather seems that you do, Staunton!" the head responded in kind. "Oh don't give me your backchat; I don't want hear about the positives, how your results have improved. They couldn't have gotten any worse! No, the janitor saw you Staunton, on Saturday night, up to your old tricks. Picking the wrong team with total disrespect for everyone else at this great institution, the abject substitutions, the failure hold on to possession; you've let yourself down, but most of all you've let this school down."

The head glanced at little Eddie: "O'Sullivan, get back to class!"

"Yes sir, thanks sir," said Eddie, scuttling away like a frightened mouse.

"I don't care if you expel me," Stevie sneered.

"Oh don't worry, when I'm finished with you, you'll be dreaming of expulsion!" the head roared.

He then reached into his drawer, where he kept his instrument of discipline.

"Dreaming!" he cackled, as Stevie shifted uneasily in his chair.

Formez Vos Bataillons!

2007-09-06T19:47:00.000+01:00

It's the World in Union, sang Kiri Te Kanawa, deploying the play on words still beloved of Rugby World Cup organisers to this day.

Except it's not, of course. It's mainly the former British Empire, various pug-nosed French peasants, some Argentinian polo players and motley frightening Pacific Islanders...in Union.

Still, though, it's not a bad old collection of half-men, half-buses that will occupy our front centre of the sporting stage for the next God knows many weeks. The quadrennial installation of the All Blacks as favourites has been duly completed, and the quest of the men from those damp islands on the derriere of the globe to add the seal of the William Webb Ellis Trophy to their generally held position as the best team in the world will be compelling.

But the RWC (if you don't mind us referring to it as that henceforth), despite having a short history, is nonetheless in thrall to that past. All wizened experts, seeking to justify their wizenedness, point to the stumbles of highly fancied All Black teams in past tournaments: to the suspicious dose of Jo'burg belly that did for them in 1995 and the wily French and Australian outfits that outfoxed them in '99 and '03.

They can't handle the pressure, say the sceptics, who are invariably supping from a can of Fosters and driving a Ute at the time. Australia, masters of the sledging arts, have been poking the All Black beast in the belly since the Tri-Nations game in Melbourne in June, which the Wallabies won 20-15. "Awww, same awwld Awll Blacks," they've been drawling since, "ye can get to 'em, eh?"

Wallaby nous could very well test Kiwi mettle in the semi-final (should New Zealand overcome their quarter-final opponents, more of whom anon..), in a repeat of the 2003 semi. Yes, the All Blacks are bigger, better, deeper, stronger ( did I mention bigger?) than ever, but.....

We'll deal with the holders with the short shrift their reign as world champions deserves. With the departure of Clive Woodward, the retirement of Martin Johnson, Matt Dawson and Neil Back, and the descent into infirmity of Jonny Wilkinson, English rugby went through its most dismal period in perhaps three decades since that evening in Sydney four years ago.

The appointment of Brian Ashton as coach and the desperate re-arranging of the deckchairs on this doomed vessel will do little to discourage the view that a tame defence of their title is likely. Their pool game against South Africa should be of interest to geologists, replicating - when the two packs meet - the movement of the earth's plates. The Springboks have class all over the field; they should meet an equally immovable object in France in the semi-final, but one a little lighter on its feet.

If there is a surprise to be caused, and it is not at all a surprise, it should be Italy to emerge over Scotland in Pool C, repeating their Six Nations victory. Scottish preparations have been marred by the decimation of their domestic game, and it's now or never for Italy.

Wales's regression since their Grand Slam of 2005 is a fascinating demonstration of how the game of rugby changes. Back in '05 'offloading' was the word - everyone was doing it, it was the cool new craze!

But if you happened to catch Wales's recent warm-up match against France, you would have witnessed how the coaching intelligentsia responded to that tactic: defence, my boy, defence. Bigger, tighter, blitzier than ever and, according to those who know these things, likely to be the central theme of this tournament, unfortunately.

Now then, who have I forgotten? Ah yes. Samoa. No, okay; how are we going to do? We'll lose to France, beat Argentina and lose to the All Blacks. It is written by the prophets.

Had Ireland won the Grand Slam this year, the leap of faith to the semi-finals (i.e., topping the group and avoiding the All Blacks in the quarter-finals) would have been imaginable. Look at England in 2003. They didn't sit around in meetings telling each other they could win the World Cup. They had been the best team in the world for the previous two years. They knew they could win the World Cup.

The RWC is too gruelling, too taxing and too inhospitable a place to play yourself into title-winning form. You can't go there and find yourself. You rather need to have located yourself well in advance.

Ireland won't win this World Cup because they will sustain injuries to irreplaceable players, they will struggle in the scrummage against any of the other rated nations, they tend toward inconsistency too much, and because, fundamentally, they know they are just short of what is needed.

And Ireland will not top their group, avoid the All Blacks etc., etc., because they will be facing the future world champions in their third game. Excuse the crudity of the term in advance, but we have been 'ridden' by the draw. This France side are, as we already know, the real deal; they have extraordinary depth, and ferocious power. They are not the 'flair' side of old, only deploying the Rougeries and Dominicis when games are well won now; but my, they are strong.

All that, plus the "Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons!" bit in La Marseillaise resounding from the patriotic-when-they-want-to-be-as-long-as-there-are-no-bullets-involved French public in Stade de France, means they could be unstoppable.

There's an Achilles heel though. I'd rather like to have my half-back pairing sorted out on the eve of the tournament, thank you very much. Fragile Freddie Michalak might wobble at the right time for Ireland.

And then you never know.

Sheff The Greatest Brings Down Curtain on '07

2007-09-05T10:23:00.000+01:00

You can see the kind of clear thinking and ruthless logic that has made Brian Cody the most successful manager in the modern GAA in his comments about Henry Shefflin the other day. Not only is Shefflin the best player of the current era, according to Cody, but he must be the greatest ever, simply because it is not possible for any player to have been better.

"I haven't seen better. There have been terrific players, I mean you go back to D.J. and there are so many players but there couldn't have been a better hurler than Henry Shefflin. There couldn't have been because it couldn't be possible," said Cody.

It's a logical construct worthy of the greatest classical thinkers, that one. It kills debate before it can even start. Which is also pretty much what Kilkenny did to Limerick in the opening minutes of Sunday's All-Ireland final, ending what had been a thrilling and heart-stopping hurling summer with the cold steel of the assassin's blade.

Limerick were the story of the summer of course: that county's morose and grim recent history being shaken off with the vigour of a Richie Bennis bear hug. The three-match series which resulted in ultimate victory over Tipperary was a perfect advertisement for the power of positive thinking.

Despite being ten points down deep into the second match, clearly Limerick were never actually beaten, which, when you look at that deficit again, is an extraordinary compliment to the belief they must have had even then, and which took them further than anyone could have imagined this year.

Everything went right for them in the semi-final against Waterford, sure, but again, what utter boldness of mentality they showed in coming through that game.

Waterford trooped disconsolately from Croke Park that day, with the back cover of the history book closing in on this team. That, of course, might be an over-dramatic, simplistic reading of their current station, but the sense that this year was their time was so strong, causing as it did that feeling that the nation was willing them to finally breakthrough.

One suspects that the two games against Cork drew just a little too much gunpowder from their arsenal, and there was a notable flatness to the team that couldn't quite rise to Limerick's ferocious challenge.

Still, the absence of a Kilkenny-Cork final this year at least eliminates that sense of drabness that had begun to hang around the sport in recent seasons. Now the questions are manifold: three-in-a-row for the Cats? Did Waterford miss their chance? Can Limerick scale the heights again? Will the Rebels rise up in 2008? And what of the 'lunatic' fringe in the West?

He always seems to get the last word, that Loughnane fella.

Music To Watch Games By

2007-09-03T17:39:00.000+01:00

It was a well-earned holiday week for TSA, but not a great sport-watching one. The main attractions for this correspondent - Celtic's Champions League qualifier against Spartak Moscow and the All-Ireland hurling final - were seriously compromised.

The former kicked off shortly before a return flight from Edinburgh to Dublin. The first half was fine, watched on BBC Scotland in TSA's sisters' house; no problems. The only mild inconvencience was the presence of TSA's 2-year-old nephew in the vicinity.

Due to the little fella adopting the same attitude to learning the English language as Long John Silver's parrot, the usual profanities that would accompany a match of this magnitude were forbidden. The only oath that crept out was an imprecation to the son of God on the occasion of a misplaced pass, which the child duly picked up like so many pieces of eight. Haha, Professor Dawkins! Another generation imprisoned by the irrationality of religion!

The second half, however, was less satisfactory. Wetherspoon's in Edinburgh airport isn't listed as one of Scotland's top pubs in any guide books I've read, but it isn't the worst of the genre. However, showing a crucial Champions League qualifier with the sound muted and the musical stylings of Avril Lavigne accompanying the action won't recommend this hostelry for future sporting occasions.

"Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated," the sulky Canadian once sang, and I couldn't disagree as boarding for the flight to Dublin was called in synchronisation with the commencement of extra-time.

I stomped my feet and stormed to my metaphorical bedroom, like Queen of Teen Spleen would have wished. Extra-time and penalties had to be consumed in bite-size portions: three terse text messages from my sister, like telegrams delivered to war-time widows (Mrs. Smith Stop Husband Dead Stop Line of Duty Stop King and country etc....).

They read:

1. V of H missed pen.

2. Penalties.

2. Yes! Yes! Yes!

In fairness, as coverage goes it was better than most of the match reports I read in the aftermath.

Pity she wasn't in Ireland to tell me about the All-Ireland hurling final yesterday. An executive decision by the organisers of the Electric Picnic meant that it wasn't being shown at the boutique music festival (boutique in the sense of being smaller, an adjective which didn't stretch to the piles of poo in the toilets by Sunday afternoon).

Never mind; one of the more resourceful food vans - which had a nifty, booming soundsystem previously used to showcase suitably EP-type hipster tunes - switched to RTE Radio 1 for the duration, so that the fittingly melodic tones of Micheal O Muircheartaigh chimed through the Stradbally air.

The sound formed was a sort of, er....sorry about this Micheal, but I believe the current parlance is "mash-up"....blending the bard of Dún Síon with unlikely bedfellows in the Beastie Boys, playing the nearby Electric Arena. As the opening riff of Sabotage cranked up, Kilkenny's charge to another title was nearing completion.

And to think that the Kilkenny panel sang the bloody Rose of Mooncoin in the dressing room after the match.

Jesus lads, as my 2-year-old nephew might say.

Spillane The Beans on Kerry's Success

2007-08-24T11:46:00.000+01:00

Pat Spillane, talking to Uncle Des on RTE Radio 1's Drivetime Sport on Wednesday evening, spoke about the simplicity of Mick O'Dwyer's approach to managing his great Kerry team.

Never, said Spillane, in all of the hundreds of team-talks before matches and after training sessions, did 'Dwyer' ever as much as mention the opposition. Neither their tactics, nor their star players were given the slightest consideration by the Waterville wizard.

The belief - reinforced without possibility of question by the record books - was that if Kerry went out and played their game, the fact that they were better players in every position would assure victory. That superiority complex - the sense that the identity of the opposition is irrelevant, that they were oblivious to the quivering fifteen they had to play - was the key to that team's success, as it is to any dynasty.

The interview with Spillane was similarly brilliant in its simplicity, by the way. Give the guy a microphone and get him to talk about his part in the greatest team of them all. Spillane's ubiquity in the GAA media might blur for some the clarity and articulacy of his commentary. Many have bemoaned the fact that his role as anchor for The Sunday Game has effectively neutered much of his potency as pundit.

He was, after all, in the vanguard of the 'new wave' of RTE sporting punditry that came along in the 1990s (himself, Brolly, O'Rourke and Loughnane in GAA and Hook and Pope in rugby being the Sex Pistols and the Clash to Dunphy and Giles' groundbreaking New York Dolls), the author of the still-stinging 'puke football' rebuke.

One of the many transfixing moments in the interview concerns, unsurprisingly, the Kerry and Dublin rivalry of the era, which has its latest revival this Sunday. Dublin had won the All-Ireland in 1976 and 1977, enjoying famous victories over the Kingdom each time, the latter season featuring the classic All-Ireland semi-final which has been revisited so often in recent weeks.

Spillane detailed how the tide was turned: "We learned from the defeats of '77 and '76...we sat down and looked at our performance and we felt we weren't putting in as much training as Dublin; they were fitter than us, they were stronger than us. They were more determined than us. We noticed that when Dublin fouled, or when Dublin hit, they hit hard. When Kerry fouled it was a pull on the jersey. We felt they were knocking us around. The only way we could succeed against Dublin was to go toe-to-toe with them; to take them head on.

"The first chance we got to do that was in a game to raise money for Sister Consilio's home for alcoholism in early '78....the game became a bloodbath. But it was the day that Kerry stood up to Dublin. After the game there was broken noses and a lot of rancour. It was a filthy game. I think we won. But it was the turning point; it was our watershed moment, that no longer were we going to be pushed around. Then we got the missing piece in the jigsaw in the 'Bomber' (Eoin Liston, who first appeared for Kerry in that season) and that was it.

Great stuff. Will Sunday be Dublin's turning point?

Vick Looking at a Spell in the Kennels

2007-08-23T10:55:00.001+01:00

Regular readers of TSA, that devastatingly attractive and impossibly sophisticated strata of society, will remember the foul case of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick's indictment for alleged involvment in a dogfighting ring. Rather like the way Dr. Gillian McKeith returns 6 weeks later to see how her You Are What You Eat victims are progressing, only to find them knee-deep in pies, let's check up on how the Don King of the canine world is getting on.

Well, as Frank Drebin would have said if this were a Police Squad episode, it looks like Vick will be doing his quarterbacking up in the state pen. for next season. Vick has agreed to "take full responsiblity" for his part in the dogfighting ring, and will plead guilty to the federal conspiracy charges.

Vick could face anywhere from 1 to 3 years imprisonment for the charges, although the maximum sentence possible is five years. However, a government official speaking anonymously to The Associated Press said that federal prosecutors will seek a sentence of a year to 18 months.

Why Vick's u-turn from the traditional 'looking forward to clearing my name' guff? Well, there's no honour among thieves it seems, after Vick's three co-defendants Quanis Phillips, Purnell Peace, Tony Taylor cut a deal with the authorities, pleading guilty to their parts in the dogfighting operation, but also agreeing to testify against Vick.

With the witnesses stacking up against him, including now those most closely involved in the alleged ring, ones who would be able to testify that Vick executed dogs as recently as this year, the quarterback's options were limited. The touchdown pass was thrown by the feds, who were preparing a racketeering indictment for Vick, bringing him into the high end criminality area of hefty possible sentences inhabited by Mafia bosses.

Even if Vick emerges from Sing Sing in 18 months or so, whether he returns to the NFL depends then on what suspension the league impose on him: whether they follow the term of his imprisonment, or decide on a harsher ban befitting the public outcry at the horrid nature of the crimes.

Still, it could have been worse, as The Onion reports....

(**Cap doffing to SI.com for reporting.)

Child's Play

2007-08-21T18:01:00.000+01:00

I love this time of year.

Is it the almost audible sigh of the trees as they begin to lose the first of their summer coat of leaves?

No, trees don't sigh, you ponce.

Is it the first chill in the air, that crisp holler of the impending autumn?

No, it's been Baltic and chucking it down all summer - put a sweater on.

Is it the way the children's play seems more precious and to be treasured, as the holidays' end beckons?

Stop looking at my kids, you bloody nonce!

No, it's none of those things. It's the league tables I love. Look at them, they're ridiculous! Aren't they wonderful?

They're like a painting entitled "My House" that a kid in junior infants might do (Oi! Get away from those school gates!). It looks vaguely like a league table, but just as the young fella's version has a tree growing out of where the chimney should be, there's Manchester City on top! Ah bless.

And look, much like the way the door on the kid's picture is smaller than the dog the daft little blighter has drawn next to the house, there's a Wigan Athletic, right there in third where the Liverpool should be! Arf, arf, arf! Silly little sausage!

Yes, plainly the league tables at this time of year are a work of surreal naive art. Silly little men with goatee beards and large teutonic boyfriends might stare at them for hours on end, were they hung on display in some Arts Council-funded 'space'. "Spellbinding...I've...never quite seen anything like it. Hold my hand Gunther."

In some ways looking at a league table that has Manchester City on top of it, Wigan in its upper echelons and Manchester United in its nether regions does make one feel child-like.

Oi, you again! Oh, sorry, thought you said "feel a child, like".

Maybe it's because the table itself is young, charting a season alive with juvenile possibility, prior to its descent into decrepit, crotchety, latter-season predictability.

Possibly it reminds those of us over the age of 25 of a time when a Norwich City, an Aston Villa or a West Ham might reasonably inhabit the table's prime positions until the season's end, albeit they would fail to win the title in, invariably, heartbreaking circumstances.

Whatever, it's pure escapism, looking at a league table like the current Barclays Premier League one. Like those long summer days of childhood, scampering through the fields, staring at the shapes in the clouds, pretending the holidays would never end.

Right! You, that's it............!

It Was Acceptable in the Eighties

2007-08-20T12:37:00.000+01:00

As Eighties revivals go it was more Kajagoogoo's greatest hits than The Smiths reunion tour.

Less Gordon Gekko, more Roland Rat.

Not exactly The Breakfast Club, more TV-AM.

More Sinclair C5 than time-travelling DeLorean.

Yesterday's first All-Ireland semi-final between Cork and Meath demonstrated that, despite what the fashion press might tell us, vintage clothing doesn't look good on everyone. The fact that the lead-up to the game concentrated almost exclusively on dredging up frighteningly aged-looking members of those famous Cork and Meath teams of late 1980s and early 1990s meant that the modern version looked like a sanitised Disney remake in comparison.

Perhaps it was the deficiencies in the public profiles of the two teams that led to such a focus on the era of O'Rourke, Tompkins and co. For a team playing in its third All-Ireland semi-final in a row, this Cork side remain possibly the most strangely anonymous bunch to make a Sam Maguire decider in recent memory.

Perhaps this is due to the tameness of their departures back down the N7 after their recent visits to the capital; the fact that they haven't contributed to a single memorable game in HQ in an era full of them.

It doesn't help them that they (the county's footballers) have, for the last decade, laboured in the shadow cast by their infinitely more successful and charismatic hurling counterparts. Following on from that, the paltry attendance, and resulting flat atmosphere, at Croke Park yesterday cannot have been helped by wallet-fatigue in the county, being the fourth game the hurlers and footballers have played in Dublin over the past three weeks.

Meath, while receiving the garlands of back-slappers like myself for their impressive displays up until yesterday, have also been relative strangers to the front rows of the public consciousness of late, although they did boast, in Graham Geraghty, Darren Fay and Anthony Moyles, some refugees from their last excursions in the big time.

But hey, all that aside, you couldn't blame the meeja for dusting down the archives for the historical perspective on this game, certainly when you got a few glimpses of the action from 1987 and 1988 in particular. Des Cahill's perambulations around the country for The Road to Croker took him to Ratoath last week, a show which featured delicious slices from the ripe old rivalry of that time.

You'd almost have put your hands over the children's eyes such was the extremity of the violence on show. The next time a Heated Debate erupts over the issue of clouting and schemozzling in the GAA, a perspective-inducing viewing of the tape from the 1988 All-Ireland final replay should be insisted on. Quite honestly, today's game is like rhythmic gymnastics in comparison.

Regardless of the harsh light of history or the echoing buttresses of a half-empty Croke Park, yesterday's semi-final was a disappointing affair in itself. None of the responsibility for that rests with Cork, however, who absolutely destroyed Meath, dominating every blade of grass and all the key areas with embarassing ease.

Hopefully now the likes of Nicholas Murphy, Derek Kavanagh, Donnacha O'Connor, Kevin McMahon and Pearse O'Neill will emerge into the limelight their hurling brethren have long enjoyed, and in which their historical predecessors once revelled.

Never Had It So Good?

2007-08-14T18:22:00.000+01:00

So off they went, thirty bold adventurers and true, to acclimatise, presumably due to France being a country with the occasional day without biblical rain-showers.

For most of them, the announcement of the squad on Sunday morning would barely have necessitated a pause in the crunching of corn flakes, so certain were they of their autumnal travel plans. But a few would have dreaded Eddie O'Sullivan's Dear John phone call like the icy finger of the Reaper himself.

Four years ago many of the same players endured a similar Sunday morning in August before embarking on a campaign which ultimately petered out in a quarter-final defeat to France.

Expectations are higher this time, but the challenge ahead seems even greater. So how does Eddie's 2007 squad compare to the 30 of four years ago?

PROPS

2003: Reggie Corrigan, John Hayes, Marcus Horan, Simon Best.

2007: John Hayes, Marcus Horan, Simon Best, Bryan Young.

HOOKERS

2003: Keith Wood, Shane Byrne, Frankie Sheahan.

2007: Jerry Flannery, Rory Best, Frankie Sheahan.

LOCKS

2003: Paul O'Connell, Donncha O'Callaghan, Malcolm O'Kelly, Gary Longwell.

2007: Paul O'Connell, Donncha O'Callaghan, Malcolm O'Kelly.

BACK ROW

2003: Victor Costello, Simon Easterby, Anthony Foley, Keith Gleeson, Alan Quinlan, Eric Miller.

2007: Simon Easterby, Neil Best, Denis Leamy, David Wallace, Alan Quinlan, Stephen Ferris.

SCRUM-HALVES

2003: Peter Stringer, Guy Easterby, Neil Doak.

2007: Peter Stringer, Isaac Boss, Eoin Reddan.

FLY-HALVES

2003: Ronan O'Gara, David Humphreys.

2007: Ronan O'Gara, Paddy Wallace.

CENTRES

2003: Brian O'Driscoll, Kevin Maggs, Jonathan Bell.

2007: Brian O'Driscoll, Gordon D'Arcy, Gavin Duffy.

WINGERS

2003: Shane Horgan, Denis Hickie, Anthony Horgan, John Kelly.

2007: Shane Horgan, Denis Hickie, Brian Carney, Andrew Trimble.

FULL-BACKS

2003: Girvan Dempsey.

2007: Girvan Dempsey, Geordan Murphy.

Immediately, for all the cribbing over the second-string results in Argentina and Scotland, a greater strength in depth is obvious. Only at fly-half was the 2003 squad actually stronger, although prop, hooker and lock seem much of a muchness.

In some positions cover was embarrassingly light four years ago. Neil Doak? Jonathan Bell? Anthony Horgan? John Kelly (forced into action against France)? Kevin Maggs started every game! No genuine cover at full-back!

The five games in 2003 saw just 21 of the squad featuring in the starting line-ups, with eight starting every game. The back division remained totally unchanged, apart from John Kelly's enforced start against France for the injured Denis Hickie, and David Humphreys getting the nod at fly-half for the Namibia and Argentina games.

2003's final act was the disappointing quarter-final against France, when a plainly exhausted Ireland simply ran out of puff. While the recent friendlies have shown that we don't necessarily have an All Black-style alternative XV, looking at this year's squad, we should at least have viable options both to allow the resting of front-liners, and also to provide impact substitutes in the big matches.

In the outside backs, for example, the trio of Carney, Trimble and Murphy all carry the potential to skewer a tiring opposing defence if needed. What foe would welcome the sight of a bloodthirsty Neil Best charging on for ten minutes of barely controlled mayhem? And the option of Trimble provides a modicum of insurance in the event of the dreaded worst happening to O'Driscoll and D'Arcy.

Sure, we remain utterly dependent on the central core staying fit, but compared to last time out, Ireland look to have packed more than just the bare essentials.

TSA Report: Limerick's Tale of the Unexpected

2007-08-13T13:52:00.000+01:00

Sport, like a bold child crushing an insect, is cruel and thoughtless.

All summer, Waterford was its Story, the fulfilment of their long struggle for an All-Ireland the central, captivating theme of this year's Championships. It would be good for hurling. Great for hurling, in fact.

Casually, however, Waterford's wings were pulled off yesterday, and its wriggling body squashed under Limerick's ferocious heel.

And as the beaten down Waterford faithful scuttled away, turning their eyes from the sight, those remaining in Croke Park stood to acclaim Limerick. The new Story. As easy as that.

It sounds ludicrous to say that Limerick blindsided Waterford, given that the hurling Championship is so small, and that the counties have already played each other this year. But since last weekend, the gauntlet laid down to the team that wishes to challenge Kilkenny rested in Waterford's hands. Limerick were a formality to be negotiated, like the pre-match parade.

It wouldn't take the most eminent sports psychologist to figure this one out. Richie Bennis managed it fine. One presumes that the portly pied piper of Patrickswell strayed little in the past week from simply underlining to his players the indignation and affrontedness they should feel at their expected roles in Waterford's grand plan. And every ripple of the Waterford net, and bone-shattering shoulder charge, and clenched fist celebration was evidence of that.

Of course, there was more to it than the old familiar snarl of the underdog. Limerick's gameplan wasn't massively dissimilar to that employed in the Munster final. Not that they have another gameplan anyway. The policy of all-out war fell short that day due to Limerick's forwards' ineffectiveness and the ruthlessness of their Waterford counterparts.

Yesterday, the reversal of that situation was the difference. Limerick's front three struck hard and clean when given the chance, and were pleased to find that their defenders - the full-back line of Reale, Lucey and Hickey in particular - had decided on August 12th 2007 to produce the games of their lives.

Waterford's wide count was excruciating, but the statistics don't reveal the pressure that every Déise man was under when striking for the posts. A more useful statistic would be the number of blocks that Limerick defenders made. In the Munster final, Limerick got in close but drifted away. Yesterday, they got in close, then got closer.

Whether the double-header with Cork had taken the pep out of Waterford that they had used in Thurles to pull away from Limerick, or whether Bennis's key use of substitutions helped his team last the course, Waterford were unable to put in sprint finish that has marked their successes this year since the League final.

That was the shocker, the unexpected. Limerick kept it going when the Story said they should be gallantly standing aside.

And now, they are the Story.

Football - Fifteen Years On

2007-08-07T14:08:00.000+01:00

When football was invented in 1992 by a brave, visionary group of television executives, none of them could possibly have foreseen the juncture at which we now find ourselves, on the cusp of the sixteenth season of what those founding fathers lovingly called 'the Premiership'.

Looking back on those days is like watching footage of the Wright Brothers first successful flight: how did this unlikely contraption, firstly, stay airborne, and then, eventually, soar?

Back in 1992 most of the early footballers were actually British or Irish, and all the clubs were owned by British people - sounds ridiculous, I know, but check the record books if you don't believe me.

Quite how the humble but ambitious TV men persuaded millions to watch what must have been horrifyingly unsophisticated football, practised by podgy, ale-quaffing Brits rather than lithe, pasta-slurping foreigners is unfathomable now.

But here we are, 15 years later, and this thing called football is better than ever. We know this because the TV people (now called Sky) are paying £1.314 billion of lovely cash to show it to us, and other TV people called Setanta are paying £392 million to show us even more of it, and people from foreign places (where the footballers come from) are paying £625 million to show it to other people from foreign places (presumably so they can learn how to be footballers when they grow up).

Some people - you can't please everyone! - don't like how great football is now. They think it's a bad thing that, say, Pol Pot, could, of an afternoon, after a morning spent pottering around massacring a few hundred thousand bourgeois intellectuals, fetch up with his life savings and buy himself an Everton or a Derby County.

A bad thing? They wouldn't be saying that when Pol Pot's investment secures a tidy little £16 million deal with add-ons for Steed Malbranque!

Some people - honestly, I know, but we live in a democracy, what can you do? - don't like how all the lovely footballers get all the lovely cash. Duh, hello? Have you seen Footballers Cribs? How could you possibly expect Robbie Savage to maintain that wonderful home on anything less than £40,000 a week?

Could Sheree Murphy have had that 360 degree mirror in her downstairs toilet on an Emmerdale salary, without Harry Kewell chipping in with the few quid for housekeeping?

Some of these people - were Pol Pot's methods so wrong? - even think that the TV people put too much football on, which is ridiculous, given that a) as we know, the TV people invented football, you cricket-loving pinkos, so they can do what they like!.....and b) have you seen the telly lately? It's rubbish! Even Big Brother is crap this year. And it's either that or bloody CSI! More football please!

Yes indeed, fifteen years on from the birth of football, and what a fine young adolescent it has become! Not surly, irresponsible, strange-smelling, pock-marked with unsightly boils, vaguely repulsive and utterly self-centred like many other adolescents at all.

Oh no, not at all.

My Secret Meath Shame

2007-08-06T12:10:00.000+01:00

I have an embarassing admission to make. Rather like the son of landed gentry who has taken up with one of the servant girls, I'm in the midst of an utterly inappropriate infatuation.

This Meath team, well, Papa, you see the thing is I'm afraid I've rather fallen for them. I know it's wrong, and it goes against the very laws of nature, and no good can possibly come of it. But our eyes met across a crowded stadium and, gosh, I was captivated.

Pretty much since that drawn Leinster quarter-final game with Dublin announced them as rosy-cheeked debutantes on the summer season, they've drawn plenty of admiring glances. For me, it was the invigorating directness, the liberating absence of complexity, the can-do gumption that did it.

Since then they've only gotten better, and the defeat of Tyrone on Saturday would make a Dub swoon, so full was it of heart and skill and countless almost-lost Gaelic football attributes.

Is it so wrong to love this Meath team?

The doctrine of Colm Coyle's All-Ireland semi-finalists (for the first time since 2001) is so blindingly straightforward as to create the image of countless rival inter-county managers smacking their foreheads in self-chastising disbelief that they hadn't thought of it before.

Firstly, populate the spine of the team with experienced but still hungry old heads. Brendan Murphy (the one-time-Premiership goalkeeper), Darren Fay, Nigel Crawford, Anthony Moyles and Graham Geraghty bring the know-how. Then surround them with a group of youngsters oozing fresh-faced chutzpah.

Then - and this is the best bit - larrup in the ball to your forwards whenever you have it, trusting them to win it and score, and seeing them grow through the sheer fact of being empowered to do so. See how Stephen Bray, Brian Farrell and Shane O'Rourke begin to inhabit the Croke Park manor over which their predecessors once lorded.

This current infatuation has nothing to do with seeing one of the old heroes of one's boyhood restored to former glory. No, while Meath were one of the big shots of the late 1980s and early 1990s, no-one actually liked them. They were rough and tough and mean and lean and they wouldn't have had the poets of the press box reaching for the Book of Heavenly Metaphors.

No, there isn't really any residual goodwill for the county; and I can't remember many shaken-headed conversations in recent years in which Meath's rehabiliation was yearned for.

So it's caught me by surprise, this feeling of excitement for the next time I see them play. I haven't felt like this for some time, you see!

TSA SPL Preview: It Takes Two

2007-08-02T13:48:00.000+01:00

When is a two-horse race not a two-horse race? When it's a one-horse race.

Ask anyone on this dirty old planet who has even the most fleeting acquaintance with football matters about the SPL, and your reply will, in every case, include the words "Celtic" and "Rangers", and perhaps also "Mickey" and "Mouse".

But while, in broad historical terms, the notion of the two-team cartel is reinforced by the record books, the last couple of decades have seen, in general, monopoly rather than duopoly.

From the late 1980s until the late 1990s, Rangers utterly dominated Scottish football, their eminence powered by the liberal chequebook of owner and chairman David Murray. Celtic, along with all other rivals, were cowed into distant inferiority by the Ibrox club's financial clout.

Then, as Murray's efforts to extend his team's success to the European theatre petered out with the dwindling of his financial largesse, the club now known as Celtic plc found the on-field general to match footballing success to their stronger financial situation, when Martin O'Neill became manager in the summer of 2000.

The title count in the years since has been 5-2 in Celtic's favour, with the two Rangers successes being nailbiting, last day finishes; the first while their rivals were distracted by a UEFA Cup campaign that saw them reach the final, the second in O'Neill's final days as manager, when his aging team threw the title away in the dying moments of their final game against Motherwell.

Celtic's triumphs, on the other hand, have been by 15, 18, 17, 17 (from Hearts in second in 2005-06) and 12 points respectively, and in each of those seasons the champions were 'pulling up' before the finish, foregoing meaningless points that would have meant even bigger margins of victory, often in favour of experimentation with young players.

So, will the 2007-08 season, which starts on Saturday with Rangers' lunchtime visit to Inverness (Celtic unfurl the league flag against Kilmarnock on Sunday afternoon), see the SPL return to close combat between the Glasgow big two, or will Celtic's domination continue with another canter to the title?

In purely financial terms, the Parkhead club look to be operating with much superior weaponry than their old enemy. Celtic outbid Rangers for the signing of Scott Brown, the £4.4 million Gordon Strachan's side paid being far in excess of the fee Rangers by which had hoped to secure the highly rated youngster.

Scott McDonald arrived at Celtic from Motherwell after also being a target for Rangers, joining Chris Killen, the New Zealander recruited from Hibs. Massimo Donati's signature from AC Milan has thus far concluded Strachan's summer business, although many expect further movement in the remaining month of the summer transfer window, with full-backs especially seen as a priority.

Rangers have also been extremely active, even if Walter Smith's budget has not matched those he enjoyed in his first spell as manager. The new men may not be of the calibre of Brian Laudrup and Paul Gascoigne, but the likes of Carlos Cuellar (£2.4 million from Osasuna), Lee McCulloch (£2.25 million from Wigan Athletic), Stephen Whittaker (£2 million from Hibs), as well as free transfers DaMarcus Beasley (PSV Eindhoven), Jean Claude Darcheville (Bordeaux) and Roy Carroll (West Ham) demonstrate that, at the very least, the Ibrox faithful will have the novelty of new faces to enjoy.

Most observer expect Rangers' challenge to be immeasurably more competitive this season. Walter Smith's return inspired a retrieval of self-respect from the second half of a season which had brought only embarassment and internal strife under the stewardship of Paul Le Guen.

Smith's wealth of experience and keen understanding of the Scottish game should ensure Rangers will be a stronger force at home this season, even if the manager's record in Europe during his first period in charge does little to promise a badly-needed, revenue-generating Champions League run.

As far the rest, the hope inspired by Vladimir Romanov's initial arrival in Scottish football that Hearts might become a genuine third force has long been dissipated in a firestorm of managerial rows, player revolts and peculiar transfer dealings. Aberdeen, third last season, will be happy to repeat the feat having lost captain Russell Anderson to Sunderland, while Hibs have been victims of their own successful youth policy, Brown and Whittaker joining the long list of Easter Road talent who have left for bigger things.

This season, it seems, those running Scottish football would be perfectly happy to have the much maligned two-horse race back in place, rather than the procession it often, actually, is.

Hollywood Hurling

2007-07-31T12:17:00.000+01:00

In the summer blockbuster season, no CGI beast or shape-shifting robot could possibly have the fearsome durability of this Cork hurling team. In fact the cinematic creation the Red Monster most resembles is the old T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Much like the Connor family's bother with the terrifying sentient machine played by Robert Patrick in the 1991 movie, Waterford are finding that the Leesiders die hard, to borrow from elsewhere in the action genre.

Having frozen Cork in liquid nitrogen in the Munster semi-final and shattered them into little pieces, imagine their dismay as the Rebels reconstituted themselves into an an even more formidable form of red liquid metal for Sunday's All-Ireland quarter-final.

Like any good actioner, the big, explosive set piece was saved till the end, and - crucially - the sequel is nicely set up. Unlike most box office franchises, however, the formula these two have reworked repeatedly over recent seasons shows no sign of becoming tired.

In fact, given that box office stars like Messrs ó hAilpín, Cusack and O'Sullivan missed out on the last instalment, and in the case of the first two, returned to take starring roles on Sunday, expect queues round the block for the next big release this Sunday.

Who knows, perhaps Sunday could even end up like The Godfather Part 2 - a sequel which many believe to be better than the original.

The Gaelic Athletic Company is Proud to Present!

2007-07-27T16:17:00.000+01:00

Roll up, roll up! The Great Hurling Big Top comes to town FOR ONE WEEKEND ONLY!!!

BEING FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR.MCCARTHY, THERE WILL BE A SHOW ON THE LIKE OF WHICH THE SONS OF ERIN HAVE NEVER LAID EYES!

Come see the Fantastic Shefflor, the Master of Hypnosis, as he makes defenders involuntarily entangle themselves in STRANGE CONTORTIONS!

Witness Loughnane the Lion Tamer, as he DICES WITH DEATH in the lair of the wild beast, using only his TONGUE for protection!

Observe - if your nerves permit - Mark Foley, the INCREDIBLE MANBEAST - hear him crunch on the BONES OF HALF-FORWARDS!

LAUGH till your sides split at Wexford Clown Troupe - fifteen men to get a ball over the bar, an easy proposition surely? Not for these HAPLESS jesters!

Be GRIPPED in awe at Shanahan & Mullane, the fearless acrobats of Old Waterford Town!

GASP with TERROR at the incredible TIGHTROPE WALKERS Cusack, O'Sullivan and O'hAilpín, as they navigate precarious HIGH MORAL GROUND without faltering a step!

PUZZLE in bemusement at Ticketmaster, the illusionist, who makes a paltry sum of 35 shillings transform into 35 shillings and sixpence by simple sleight of hand!

IT WILL SURELY BE THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH!!

Donegal On The Mend?

2007-07-26T15:55:00.000+01:00

The last time we caught up with the men from God's own county, things looked bleak. If the drab and lucky win over Armagh had raised questions, then the hammering by Tyrone had answered them: Donegal were springtime wonders, the most pertinent example of a league competition whose leading lights had faded to black by summer.

Donegal were dead men walking, their existence in the Championship a mere technicality of the qualifier system. They were the last-round, punchdrunk fighter, waiting for either the bell or a fist to put them out of their misery.

Some sages even thought Leitrim would inflict the fatal blow, and pointed 'smart' money Shannon-side ahead of the sides' round one qualifier meeting. Even when Donegal pulled through that one, those who know about these things rested easier with Westmeath in the next round than the fallen-giants of the north-west.

So Donegal went from the status of Sam Maguire Maybes to hopeless qualifier pond-life in, literally, a matter of weeks.

Not that the GAA's chattering classes weren't within their rights to take this view. This sheer descent of esteem reflects the feeling many have about Donegal: like an ex-convict in your employ, you take their rehabilitation at face value, but a couple of misplaced handpasses later and they've made off with the takings.

Truly Donegal's defeat to Tyrone was abject viewing. Those of us who watched it through the gaps in our fingers consoled ourselves by using the other hand to throw garlands at Tyrone. But Tyrone's performances either side of that game - a stodgy and narrow win over Fermanagh, and a business-like, but hardly earth-shattering defeat of Monaghan in the Ulster final - don't help alleviate concerns over the troubles of Tyrconnell.

The direct play which had served Donegal well in the league vanished shortly after their 8th minute goal, to be replaced with the futile funk of the pass-the-buck football that represents Donegal at their worst. Tyrone's half-backs attacked from deep at will, brushing aside the overrun Donegal backs, and midfield (an area in which it is normally felt Tyrone can be got at) was ceded totally. It was as bad as it looked.

But, despite receiving the last rites, a spell in the field hospital of the qualifiers has, it seems, rightly rejuvenated Brian McIver's side. They had the stomach to repel a feisty Leitrim side, and then went down to Mullingar and demolished a confident Westmeath, the 5 point win being, reportedly, a 10 pointer in real terms.

No better test of their health than this Monaghan team, then, who have been one of the coming sides for several seasons now. Having more than held their own against Tyrone and having two weeks recovery time, they should not be experiencing any post-provincial final depression, the curse of many a side at this juncture.

Let's see if Donegal's bandages will hold.

The Age of Padraig?

2007-07-24T17:18:00.000+01:00

So can Padraig do it again? Will this year's Open winner go down in history with Paul Lawrie, Mike Weir, Ben Curtis, Rich Beem, Shaun Micheel and countless others as another man for whom the stars aligned just the once?

Or will the irrefutable sheen that only multiple major wins provide soon be applied to his career?

Using Jack Nicklaus' last major win, at the 1986 Masters, as an arbitrary date to begin 'the modern era', and looking at all the players who have begun multiple major winning records since then, where does 35-year-old Harrington fit into the age profiles of those who've done it once, and come back for more?

Clearly Padraig is in the more mature bracket of the list - only Mark O'Meara was older winning his first major, albeit Vijay Singh and Nick Price were only months younger than the Irishman on the occasion of their first triumphs.

While this list includes players who are still active, and therefore might yet push out the age of their final triumph (or in Tiger's case, will definitely push out that age) you can clearly see that the 30s are to golfers what the 20s are to footballers, or the teens are to female gymnasts for that matter.

So if Padraig - 36 next month - is to add to last Sunday's win, it'll very likely come over the next three or four seasons.

Greg Norman
1st: 1986 Open - age 31
Last: 1993 Open - age 38

Nick Faldo
1st: 1987 Open - age 30
Last: 1996 US Masters - age 38

Curtis Strange
1st: 1988 US Open - age 33
Last 1989 US Open - age 34

Payne Stewart
1st: 1989 US PGA - age 32
Last: 1999 US Open - age 42

John Daly
1st: 1991 US PGA - age 25
Last: 1995 Open - age 29

Nick Price
1st: 1992 US PGA - age 35
Last 1994 US PGA - age 38

Lee Janzen
1st: 1993 US Open - age 28
Last 1998 US Open - age 33

José María Olazábal
1st: 1994 US Masters - age 28
Last: 1999 US Masters - age 33

Ernie Els
1st: 1994 US Open - age 24
Last: 2002 Open - age 32

Tiger Woods
1st: 1997 US Masters - age 21
Last: 2006 US PGA - age 30

Mark O'Meara
1st: 1998 US Masters - age 41
Last 1998 Open - age 41

Vijay Singh
1st: 1998 US PGA - age 35
Last: 2004 US PGA - age 41

Retief Goosen
1st: 2001 US Open - age 32
Last: 2004 US Open - age 35

Phil Mickelson
1st: 2004 US Masters - age 33
Last: 2006 US Masters - age 35

Harrington the Hero

2007-07-23T16:35:00.000+01:00

And so it became a battle of the fretting family members. As Padraig plunged into the Barry Burn twice on the 72nd hole of the 2007 Open Championship, it was Caroline Harrington who wore the countenance of the seafarer's wife, scanning the suddenly stormy seas in hope of her man's safe return.

Then it was the Garcia family's turn to worry, the chipmunkish features they share with Sergio changing from pearly grins to gnashing of teeth as their boy's putting woes refused to abate and the play-off was set up.

In the end, it was little Paddy Harrington who swung it. Only the cruellest sporting god (the Don Fox one, perhaps) could have permitted Harrington junior to ask his father in a few years time, "Daddy, remember that time I ran onto the green to meet you at the Open? Was that the one you threw away with a six at the last, spurning your best opportunity to win a major and forever lumbering me with the schoolyard taunt of being the son of a choker?"

No, Paddy Harrington will now be known as the son of a hero, a man whose sustained excellence at this most challenging of sports at last has the timeless imprimatur that only a major can provide; who will now enter the pantheon of individuals alongside Delaney, Roche, O'Sullivan, Doherty and a very few others who left this isle and conquered the world.

If the gods weren't appeased by the sight of the profligate Irishman's youngster bounding onto the 18th green at Carnoustie, they must have decided to give Harrington a second chance based on reconsideration of that traumatic six on the final hole. While the four shots that preceded them felt like daggers into the heart, the fifth and sixth shots were a miraculous kiss of life for Harrington's hopes. The fortitude he mustered to retrieve that six, and at least ask Garcia the toughest of golfing questions, was truly of champion quality.

Champion is a proper description of Harrington's golf yesterday as a whole. Like he has done in several recent majors, the Dubliner got himself into contention on that last day through three battling, consistent rounds, with only the tricky conditions of Friday dragging him over par. This time, unlike at the US Open last year, or in Augusta this year, he produced a final round which was almost martial in its momentum, and had he managed to negotiate the last uneventfully, would surely be regarded as one of the finest major-winning final 18s ever.

The scoreboard tells of a staccato rhythm of birdies - 3, 6, 9, 11, and 14 (an eagle) - but fails to mention the two lipped putts on 12 and 13 which would have been just reward for the sort of magnificient approach shots he was serving up yesterday with the frequency of a casino dealer dealing blackjack hands.

It was another one of them on the first play-off hole that took him to twelve feet from the cup. Then came the birdie that gave him the lead that he held onto as tightly as he would later hold the famous claret jug when it was all over.

Well done, Padraig.

Entry List Announced for TSA 'Golfers With Funny Or Slightly Rude Names' Invititational

2007-07-20T16:20:00.000+01:00

The field has been announced for the TSA 'Golfers With Funny Or Slightly Rude Names' Invititational to take place at Miccosukee Golf & Country Club, Miami. Competing for the suggestively shaped trophy are:

David Shacklady
Brian Gay
Notah Begay III
Dicky Pride
Briny Baird
Bubbas Watson and Dickerson
Frank Lickliter II
Tag Ridings
Tripp Isenhour
Bernhard Langer
Fred Funk
Vance Veazey
Duffy Waldorf
Johnson Wagner
R.W.Eaks
Dick Mast
Boo Weekley
Ben Bunny
Bo Van Pelt

Stick With It Son

2007-07-19T15:41:00.000+01:00

It's been getting very heavy around here lately, all the scandal and the vice.

So here's a little light relief. According to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, nostalgia is "a feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain."

What, no mention of Bagpuss and Spacehoppers?

Anyway, some bloke called Craig Cullen has detonated a bomb in the Hoover Dam of reason and modernity, unleashing a raging torrent of footballing nostalgia, by creating a website which has the entire, completed Panini sticker albums for 1983-84 and 1984-85 seasons, or Football '84 and Football '85 as the understated titles went.

Presumably Craig discovered booze and women sometime during the summer of '86, for the collections which represent the peak of my own sticker career, Football '86 and Football 87, are sadly not included.

While Football '86 was a collection which saw my brother and I finding our feet in the sticker collecting game, by the time Football '87 game round we were at our glorious peak. We swapped doubles and trebles with hard-nosed savvy of Marrakesh bazaar traders; we could sense the presence of precious foil stickers in unopened packs at the newsagent; we could summon the most heart-rending guilt-trips to persuade our parents to stretch to another few packs - food for the baby sisters could wait.

We finished Football '87 by sending off for the final 16 stickers. Neither of us would accomplish anything so profoundly perfect again.

Anyway, check out the '84 and '85 vintages here, including helpful search engines for mullets, taches and perms.

Dogged By Trouble

2007-07-18T17:20:00.000+01:00

Sometimes, whether it's Craig Bellamy with a golf club or some GAA players on the razzle, it pays to take a step back when in the full flow of a moral outrage. And there's no better agent of perpective than a glance across the Atlantic. Not to say that a footballer on a drink-driving rap is not worthy of condemnation, but yesterday's indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick on charges of running and sponsoring dogfighting sort of reaffirms the fact that everything, even scandal, is bigger in America.

Vick is the owner of 1915 Moonlight Road, near Smithfield, Virginia, a property which was raided earlier this year and found to have been used for both the training of fighting dogs, and the staging of actual dogfights. Approximately 30 dogs, various items of training equipment, kennels and a fighting 'arena' were found in the raid by local police in April.

Vick's response at the time was to protest that although he owned the property, he had no idea that it was being used in this way. He blamed family members who lived in the property for the shocking findings. "It's unfortunate I have to take the heat," he told reporters after the case initially came to light, "lesson learned for me."

However the details of the indictment published yesterday would appear to place Vick very much at the centre of the operation, and named him as one of four men charged by the U.S. District Court in Virginia with conspiracy to commit interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities (the actual trafficking of the animals between states, a charge which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years prison and a fine of $250,000) and to sponsor a dog in an animal-fighting venture (1 year, $100,000).

In 2001 (ironically the same year in which Vick was a 21-year-old NFL draft first round/first pick for the Falcons) Vick and his associates, having bought the property on Moonlight Road, are alleged to have begun purchasing American Pit Bull Terriers for the purpose of starting a dogfighting kennel. According to the indictment, they named their operation "Bad Newz Kennels" and began readying the back yard of the property for their new business, building kennels and training areas, and a fence by which conceal them.

One of the most shocking parts of the indictment, apart from the cooperating witness statements describing Vick and associates sponsoring and providing dogs to compete in savage fights, is the process described as "rolling". "Rolling" is the practice of ascertaining whether a dog possesses the necessary "gameness" for fighting. A young dog is placed in an enclosed area and is then prodded and goaded until it displays the requisite reaction. If the animal responds aggressively, it is considered suitable for fighting; if it reacts timidly, it is not.

While some owners will attempt to find an alternative home for unsuitable dogs, Vick's group are alleged to have killed the rejected animals, or as the indictment states "executed approximately eight dogs that did not perform well in 'testing' sessions at 1915 Moonlight Road by various methods, including hanging, drowning and slamming at least one dog's body to the ground."

Clearly the barbarism of this subculture - which reports have subjected is significantly popular among elite US athletes - is appalling enough, without being compounded by such horrific treatment of animals who do not even make it to the fighting arena.

Vick is currently in the Falcons' pre-season camp in Flowery Branch, Georgia, where he has reportedly been applying himself more diligently than ever, both on the training field and to the hefty tactical curriculum that quarterbacks must undertake, ahead of what was viewed as a critical season for player and team.

If the shocking charges of yesterday's indictment are true, he could soon have plenty time to study the playbook.

Boum Shakes The Game

2007-07-17T17:04:00.000+01:00

It's Tuesday, it must be Bent Football Day on TSA. This week, however, is different. Usually we impoverished commentators must be content to parade around the Sodom and Gomorrah of professional football shouting "Repent!" as the harlots within laugh in our faces.

Now, thanks to the fearless Untouchables of the City of London Police economic crime squad, the long arm of the law picks up a placard inscribed "Ye Shall be Smited", and joins the struggle.

The raids on Newcastle United, Portsmouth and Rangers yesterday are still the subject of cautious reportage, the clubs "extending every co-operation to police" and commenting no further, other than in the case of Newcastle's new owner Mike Ashley, who insisted that the club itself was not part of the investigation.

The stench of corruption in football has been gathering over the past 18 months or so, including, but not starting from, Sven Goran Eriksson's revelation to the News of the World's 'Fake Sheikh' that he had been offered 'bungs', former Luton manager Mike Newell's similar claims, the BBC'S Panorama documentary on the subject and the recent Lord Stevens 'Quest' report into transfer irregularities. Yesterday's actions by the police would suggest that the odour has at last become unbearable.

Of the 17 transfers that Lord Stevens felt unable to "sign off" on, two of them involved the three clubs raided yesterday: Jean-Alain Boumsong's move from Rangers to Newcastle, and Amady Faye's from Portsmouth to St.James's Park, both in January 2005. While Faye's transfer does not appear particularly unusual (he cost Newcastle about £2 million, having been bought by Portsmouth for £1.5 million two years previously, and there were other clubs interested in the player), Boumsong's did raise some eyebrows.

Both players were among Graham Souness's first purchases as Newcastle manager, having taken over from the sacked Bobby Robson in September 2004. Boumsong had moved from Auxerre to Rangers on a free transfer in the summer of 2004, in a deal negotiated by French-based agent Willie McKay.

The transfer appeared to be a major coup for the Scottish club, as, according to Boumsong's own claims, he had been the subject of inquiries from the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Inter Milan.

Shortly prior to his signature for Rangers, McKay had explained the highly-rated defender's decision to plump for the backwater of the SPL in preference to the major European leagues in which he was supposed to have suitors. "Everyone is surprised he is going to Rangers, but I'll tell you why he is," said Mackay. "You have to know the Cameroon people like I do, having worked with the likes of Marc-Vivien Foe and Rigobert Song."

"Jean-Alain was born in Cameroon, he wants security, his contract is up in the summer and he wants to know where he is going to play. He wants to play in Europe. He has looked at what Henrik Larsson has done at Celtic and knows he can earn respect in Scotland. More and more, the top players know if they go to a Chelsea or a Liverpool, they will be in a rotation system. At Rangers he knows he will be king."

After positing this less than convincing theory, McKay also explained the benefits of the deal to Rangers: "If Rangers give him a five-year-contract at£45,000 a week it is going to cost them around £4m in wages for the first two years - and he won't be there for the third because he will be sold on for £8m."

The only flaw in McKay's prescience was in how quickly this scenario would materialise. Just months after joining Rangers, Newcastle's £8 million offer for the player's services was accepted.
Surprise at the size of the fee was exacerbated by the fact that Newcastle were the only bidders in this particular auction, and its timing was perfect for a club in Rangers' financial straits. The player's performances for Newcastle would soon further perplex Magpies fans wondering at the value for money the player represented.

The Stevens inquiry's comments on the transfer were as follows: "There remains inconsistencies in evidence provided by Graeme Souness - a former manager of the club - and Kenneth Shepherd (son of Freddie Shepherd, Newcastle United's former chairman) - apparently acting in an undefined role but not as a club official - as to their respective roles in transfer negotiations." On McKay: "The inquiry is still awaiting clarification from agent Willie McKay".

With the arrival of the Her Majesty's finest at Ibrox and St.James's yesterday, it seems that a the questions arising from this strange deal could soon be answered.

Note: Clarification was also sought by Quest from McKay with regard to the transfers of Benjani Mwaruwari and Aliou Cisse to Portsmouth, two of the other transfers on which Stevens was unable to 'sign off'.

McKay responded thusly: "I'm shocked at the way my full co-operation with the inquiry has been presented in this report. I have not paid any bungs or made any unlawful payments to anyone."

The enquiry later clarified the comments on Souness: "We wish to make it clear that inconsistencies did not exist within the evidence given by Graeme Souness to Quest concerning his role in transfers covered by the Inquiry during his time as manager of Newcastle United FC and neither the Premier League nor do Quest have any concerns in this regard."

The Boumsong deal was not the first time Souness had purchased players from the club at which he began his managerial career. Mark Walters joined Souness at Liverpool from Rangers in 1991, but more recently, in 2001 Tugay was signed for £1.3 million, then in 2003 he paid Rangers £1.4 million for Lorenzo Amoruso and £7.5 million for Barry Ferguson while Blackburn manager.

Boulder and Wiser?

2007-07-16T15:34:00.000+01:00

Dublin's struggle to win the All-Ireland is your classic Sisysphean task. Sisyphus, for those who chose woodwork over classics, was a king in ancient Greece who was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity in punishment for thinking himself cleverer than Zeus. Every time he would get the rock up to the brow of this mythical mount, it would roll infuriatingly back down again.

Sisyphus sounds a bit like the stereotypical Hill 16-dwelling, dodgy-plasma-screen-TV-selling, baseball-cap-tilted-upwards, cocky-son-of-a-bitch Dub alright.

A crafty sort, apparently he was subjected to the perpetual, soon to be eponymous task for conning no less personages than Hades and Thanatos (Lord of the Underworld and God of Death respectively) into chaining themselves up, thereby, er, stopping death, or something (look, this is all vouched for by that most respected repository of classical learning, Wikipedia).

When he got his comeuppance for that and was sent to underworld for his troubles, he even managed to cod the Queen of the Underworld, Persephone, into letting him go back above, after she bought the line that he'd been sent their by mistake. Scamp!

Anyhow, the boulder was soon dug out for Sisyphus, and he was set to work for eternity for his troubles.

I rather think that the gods of Gaelic football (I'm picturing a ginormous Kerryman with a beard as the Zeus-like figure, perhaps an older version of Bomber Liston?) have made a similar judgement on the Dubs as their Greek equivalents made on Sispyphus. Just as his hubris in attempting to outsmart the gods got him in trouble, so the Dubs have been punished for excessive strutting, whooping and taunting in Croke Park on Championship Sundays.

Every year, Dublin push that boulder up the foothills of the Leinster minnows, past the steeper incline of feisty Meath, over the jagged obstruction of Laois, up to within sight of the summit, until suddenly they lose their grip at the sheer cliff-face of another province and then....wheeeee! And so on and so forth.

The torture of Sisyphus's plight is not in the mere fact that the bloody boulder keeps falling down the hill, but rather that he is condemned to repeat the infernal job. Quite frankly, any remotely sane-minded person would have thrown his hat at the thing. Similarly, Dublin come back every year, convinced that this time the blasted rock will stay up, despite repeated evidence of the futility of it all.

However, back at Gaelic football Mount Olympus - which looks like the snug of a pub in, say, Caherciveen, where Bomber Liston-in-robes holds forth with minor deities; a winged-footed Paidí O Sé, Mick O'Dwyer with a trident, etc. - the gods are restless. Some laugh at the poor wretch, pushing the confounded boulder again, the hope of success still not extinguished.

But the Zeus-like figure is concerned. He remembered 1995, when the cruelty of Dublin's perpetual struggle was at its zenith, after repeated scuppering by the slippery peaks of the north, but how they had kept at it again and again until eventually they succeeded.

"Yerra, 'tis likely 'twill happen sooner or later," boomed the Zeus-like figure, smashing his huge fist down on the table, sending pints of divine stout everywhere, "for 'tis quare strong they're looking this year."

The minor deities furrowed their brows at the big man's words, him not being given to unnecessary displays of emotion.

Meanwhile, down below, the boulder inched up another few feet.

Playing at Home

2007-07-13T10:12:00.000+01:00

England prop Julian White has ruled himself out of contention for the World Cup, due to family and 'farming' reasons. White has reportedly purchased a large amount of land in Devon, which is seemingly in more urgent need of his toil than the front row of his country's scrum.

Few would think it likely that a professional sportsman would rather sort out the drainage in the lower field than represent their nation at a World Cup. Still, it's always nice to hear - in these days of 'crucial clashes' and 'must-win encounters' - of someone putting the hidden struggles of private life ahead of sport's overblown priorities.

Could this be the start of a new generation of domestic gods?

Stevie Pulls Plug - Gerrard to Miss Champions League Clash After Plumbing Crisis
Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard has pulled out of the Anfield club's crunch Champions League meeting with Inter Milan tomorrow, after a plumbing problem bubbled up at the star's Cheshire home yesterday.

Gerrard was forced to withdraw from the Reds' squad upon hearing a strange clanking noise, then a sudden "watery thud" coming from his back boiler yesterday. Plumber John Smedley, of Smedley & Smedley Plumbing & Heating Services has vowed to get to the bottom of the dilemma, but admitted yesterday evening that "realistically we won't get round to it until Wednesday afternoon. And we'll need Mr.Gerrard there to let us in, otherwise we can't come round till next week. And we have work on in Widnes all next week, so there's no guarantees even then."

Gerrard reluctantly accepted the the bad news, revealing that "with the missus away, I suppose it's the only choice. I wouldn't trust the neighbours to let the plumbers in after the thing with their dog doing its business in our garden last year. Don't get me wrong, I'd do anything for the club, but that boiler needs fixing."

That's All She Wrote - Harrington Snubs Open for TV Sleuth
Padraig Harrington has ruled himseld out of the Open in Carnoustie after admitting being gripped by the exploits of a geriatric TV detective!

Rather than hitting the fairways to perfect his game ahead of golf's oldest major next week, the Dublin-born European Order of Merit winner has spent recent afternoons engrossed in Murder She Wrote, the American TV series currently being repeated on BBC 1 each afternoon.

The series, which stars Hollywood veteran Angela Lansbury as crime writer-cum-real life detective Jessica Fletcher, first grabbed Harrington's attention while he was resting a mild wrist injury several weeks ago.

"I'd always been wary of the Beeb's mid-afternoon drama slot, having missed out on vital preparations for the 2002 US Masters due to a particularly absorbing run of Quincy episodes," said the Irishman from his living room yesterday, "but this series of 'Murder' has destroyed my game."

"Just the other day Jessica got to the bottom of a sinister development scheme which had used foul play to turn profits. Today she finds herself on the hunt for a killer at an elite prep school. To be honest, golf comes second at a time like this."

And it's not going to get any easier for Harrington - August's US PGA Championship clashes with a rerun of the classic first series of The Rockford Files.

Fed's Off His Noodle
As he finally placed the chopsticks down, Roger Federer knew he wouldn't be able defend his Wimbledon title.

"I saw all the Chinese leftovers I had, even after stuffing myself," said the Swiss World Number One at a specially convened press conference today. "It quickly dawned on me that I could never focus on defeating Rafael Nadal the next day, knowing that there was half a tray of chicken chow mein and at least three sweet and sour ribs lying uneaten in my fridge."

The five time Wimbledon champion choked back the tears, and the regurgitated chicken balls, as he opened his heart to the private torment that ended his chances of a record sixth consecutive title.

"I was really hungry after beating Roddick in the semi," Federer explained, "and fell into the trap of ordering more than I could possibly eat. Beef in black bean sauce, Szechaun pork, spring rolls - I really pigged out. But then I realised 'hey, you're not gonna finish this tonight'. Well anyone who's played me on the court knows I don't back down easily, so I'm going to come back this evening and finish it off, every last prawn cracker too."

Federer apologised for letting his fans down, then burped.

Go North, Young Man

2007-07-11T18:44:00.000+01:00

We don't want to upset anyone during the European club rugby off-season, when the most critical subject for debate is just how grotesque most Irish rugby fans are going to look in the new international team jersey, which reportedly comes in three sizes: 'Brad Pitt in Fight Club', 'Genetic Experiment in Creating the Ubermensch' and 'Superhero'. Far be it from us to arouse concerns about the chilly days of winter when there is a whole World Cup ahead over which to elongate our wafer-thin attention spans for six weeks.

But it needs to be said: my goodness, that's a lot of southern hemisphere types, and particularly All Blacks, that are on their way to English and French clubs, as if they weren't dominant enough over our plucky, rosy-cheeked Celtic contenders.

With the final peep on the whistle in Stade de France on 20th October, whether or not Richie McCaw is at last lifting the Webb Ellis trophy for the All Blacks, many of the leading lights of rugby's most feared international franchise will be staying on in the northern hemisphere.

Prop Carl Hayman (Newcastle), lock Chris Jack (Saracens), centre Aaron Mauger (Leicester), scrum-half Byron Kelleher (Toulouse), winger Rico Gear (Worcester) and hooker Anton Oliver (Toulon) have agreed deals to leave the Land of the Long White Cloud after the World Cup, and it now seems likely that Luke McAlister, the highly rated 23-year-old centre, will sign for Sale.

In addition, many other All Blacks have sent their agents prowling around the big-spending French and English clubs, in the hope of securing lucrative post-World Cup retainers. Of the aforementioned names, only Oliver (32 in September) and Kelleher (30) are in their fourth decade. In other words, most of the talent mentioned are top players, in the prime of their careers, for whom a move north is not the lucrative stopover on the winding road to retirement it has been in the past. McAlister in particular is a player whose loss would be sorely felt by the NZRU and the Super 14 competition.

Several Springboks, including captain John Smit (Clermont-Auvergne), Butch James (Bath), Victor Matfield (Toulon) and Percy Montgomery (Perpignan) have committed their immediate futures north of the equator, with several others believed to be following the lure of pounds and euros.

This mass movement is, of course, being seen as the latest blow to rugby's traditional international order, with the club game in England and France edging closer to being the dominant controlling forces in world rugby, in the way the major European leagues are in soccer. The extra-large slices of the Heineken Cup pie brokered by the English clubs in particular during the recent impasse over the competition's future have only strengthened the power they now wield.

So if the august institutions of international rugby and the southern hemisphere's representative and club tournaments fear denudement of importance, Celtic rugby, that feisty but raggle-taggle entity, must also be petrified at the heavy artillery their English and French rivals can now summon.

Where Irish rugby in particular, and to a lesser extent our Welsh counterparts, have kept some semblance of pace with the clubs of England and France through careful husbandry of native talent via the central contract system, if the world market were to truly open to movement of players to the highest bidder, there could only be one, fat-walleted winner.

In contrast to the glittering names coming north to England and France, Munster and Leinster's main foreign acquisitions thus far are Rua Tipoki (a New Zealand Maori) and 34-year-old former Springbok stalwart Ollie Le Roux respectively. Edinburgh's recruitment of Stephen Larkham, while eye-catching, given the Aussie outhalf's still-glowing talent, is definitely another case of an old-stager's last payday.

Whether the All Blacks will stick to their policy of only selecting home based players for World Cups for 2011, therefore forcing their expatriates home eventually, remains to be seen. But the lure of the English and French lucre is likely to be as hurtful close to home as in the the far-off lands of the south.

All The Fund of the Unfair

2007-07-10T17:41:00.000+01:00

Football Association headquarters, Soho Square, London. FA big cheese requests meeting with West Ham United to resolve questions over the prospective sale of Carlos Tevez.

FA: So who owns this Tevez guy?

West Ham: Us!

FA: Really? How much did you pay for him?

WH: Er, it was undisclosed.

FA: Ok, disclose it then.

WH: Ummmmm....no.

FA: Ok, so if Manchester United want to buy Tevez, presumably they pay you the fee then.

WH: Yes.

Media Sports Investments: (BURSTING THROUGH THE DOOR) Not bloomin' likely, I think you'll find.

FA: What's this all about?

WH: Oh never mind them, you know these shady foreign sorts coming into English football, can't trust 'em, can you?

MSI: Hey, hey! Hang on a minute! Shady foreign sort or not, we want what's coming to us! We kept schtum during the hearings about this nonsensical "tearing up" of our contract so you could keep Tevez for the rest of the season. Don't think we're going to let you away with what's rightfully ours!

FA: Wait just a moment here! I thought you said that you owned this Tevez fellow, and that was the end of it, and that whatever funny business went on in the past was forgotten. Goodness gracious, we've had irate Yorkshiremen - and their lawyers - banging on the door since May, bleating on about "how it were just not reet!"

WH: We do own 'im guv. Head to toe. No doubt about it.

FA: So any transfer fee paid for his services must be entirely yours then.

WH: Yeah, yeah....(LOOKS AT MSI, WHO STARES THREATENINGLY)...well, not all. Can't we give some to them?(JABS THUMB TOWARD MSI)

FA: What do you mean, some?

WH: A bit, maybe.

MSI: The bloody lot, you mean.

FA: But I thought he was yours, this fellow, in his entirety, no doubt about it. Didn't you pay a transfer fee for him? What was it.....

WH: Undisclosed.

FA: Yes, undisclosed...oh this is most unsatisfactory, I thought we'd gotten rid of this lot.

MSI: We're still here you know.

FA: Who are you anyway?

MSI: We're a London based international investment fund. Led by Iranian businessman Kia Joorabchian, MSI has a number of investors based mainly in Britain and Russia..

FA: Why did you tail off like that, it suggests something shifty is afoot?

MSI: Really? Sorry, that's just the way we're described on our website.

FA: So you're an investment fund, and this website claims that among your "current investments" is this Carlos Tevez fellow, the root of the blasted problem.

MSI: Got it in one. $20 million in 2004 we spent on the lad.

FA: So Tevez is an investment of yours, and you quite fancy that any transfer monies recouped on his sale would be forwarded to you in the guise of, well, a return on your investment.

MSI: You're catching on.

FA: Hmmm, quite reasonable, I suppose. Oh dear, I rather think we have botched this job up somehow. I thought those Sheffield characters were simply labouring under some typical northern chippiness and inbuilt sense of grievance. Seems we've rather shafted them with this endeavour.

WH: Hey ho, all's well eh? Them's the breaks!

FA: Enough out of you, with your shady deals. When you said the agreement with this fund had been "torn up", you had actually proceeded to sellotape it back together, didn't you?

WH: Heh, you've a funny way of putting things.

FA: Right, enough of this. "We are in blood stepped so far that to return would be more tedious than go o'er".

MSI: (TO SELF) Bloody English, always with the Shakespeare.

FA: Let's cobble together a face saving statement which says that West Ham will receive the transfer fee in full, seeing as how they own this player of course, then you can sort this lot out under the table....(TO SELF) so much for our bungs enquiry...and keep this quiet, I don't want Sean Bean picketing my house again!

WH: A wise and sensible suggestion, guv.

MSI: A well conceived resolution.

FA: (TO WH) You, get out of my sight. (TO MSI) So you're an investment fund you say? I'm intrigued, do go on....

Waterford Stay On Course

2007-07-09T18:55:00.000+01:00

Everyone happy?

Waterford, ultimately taking Munster in style. Limerick preserving honour through a typically feisty performance, happy in the knowledge that the Tipp-tych of the semi-final took the legs out of them for the last ten minutes yesterday, and holding no fear of (probably) Clare in the All-Ireland quarter-final.

The neutral sees The Great White (and Blue) Hope of hurling dispatch a dangerous foe with a late knock-out, thereby staying on track for a title shot. And the Munster Council watches another provincial championship close with its product in as robust health than ever.

Perhaps only the poor souls getting soaked through on the terrace had something to gripe about.

No doubt indignant Limerick correspondents will claim the right to be peeved at yesterday's events. After all, who loses a provincial final with a smile on their face, especially when 11 years have passed since they last won one? But in reality, they would be merely going through the motions of disappointment.

Limerick displayed the full range of their wares yesterday, and, for roughly sixty-two minutes of the seventy-odd, they proved sturdy and durable. Eventually, however, after enough wear and tear, the seams began to come apart. The denizens in green in Ardán Uí Riain might have cursed the skullduggery of the ref, but there will be few who left Thurles yesterday genuinely feeling their team had been in anyway pickpocketed of their rightful prize.

Yes, they will look at their wides tally (12 to Waterford's 9), and a number of goal chances passed up. But many of their wides were from speculative, long-range efforts, whereas Waterford missed some jaw-droppingly convertible chances from the usually safe hands of Eoin Kelly and Paul Flynn.

Maybe J.P. McManus (whose helicopter landed alongside Mary McAleese's in the greyhound stadium across from Semple, to accompanying cheers from the Limerick faithful for their tireless benefactor) will have been frustrated at the inability of his money to push his beloved county further toward the promised land. But, hey, if he wanted to buy success, the Premiership is that-a-way!

Going back to the neutral (that lowly knave whose ample backside took up the birthright of a deserving disciple of Munster hurling in the stand) and the bigger picture. Had Limerick's guerilla forces derailed the Waterford convoy yesterday, the blow to hurling's self-esteem would have been most untimely, given the tears shed over the past week for the state of things in that godforsaken province to the east.

As it is, Waterford remain the cause célebre for those who are weary of the sales pitch for Liam McCarthy's ribbons: any colour, so long as it's black, amber or red. They won't meet another team who'll challenge them with the close-in ferocity that Limerick did. Most of the scrappy, scrambly squabbles for possession seemed to conclude with a Limerick man emerging with his life and the ball, to the enthusiastic roars from the massed ranks on the town end.

But let Waterford hurl, and hurl they will. When play opened up, the Waterford instinct towards flair and style was irresistible, and where once the Semple field seemed as roomy as a rush hour train, soon its new vast expanses prompted a land grab by Déise forwards. And no man planted his flag more gleefully than Dan Shanahan, whose charismatic and colourful presence makes all the more perplexing the description of him having once been "shy".

The force of personality is strong in Waterford. A good thing too, for it's one thing that any championship winning team needs as much as the prerequisites of talent. A bit of star appeal is as useful in an All-Ireland contender as in a Hollywood blockbuster.

Probably the first time messrs Shanahan, Mullane and McGrath have been likened to Clooney, Pitt and Damon, but you get the point.

Déise To Handle Meaty Treaty

2007-07-06T17:03:00.000+01:00

Ahem. Munster final tickets procured. And not take-your-chances-with-this-cataclysmic-weather terrace tickets either. The stand, no less. Ahem.

So what kind of Munster final will it be that I have robbed a ticket from a long-suffering Limerick hurling disciple for? What kind of game will the nonagenarian of failing health, whose only wish is to see Limerick win a Munster final before he passes on, be watching on the television? Will it be a classic, the final that the kid who spends every waking moment with his hurl in his hand dreaming of being like Andrew O'Shaughnessy will not get anywhere near?

Enough remorse? Good.

Limerick remain located in the happy, carefree kennels in which the underdog generally resides. They won the hearts of many with the moxie they displayed in coming back so often against Tipperary over the course of that riveting trilogy, and by the end of the third match had developed a force of will that Tipp were unable to quell. But despite growing as a team and finally putting that six-year winless run in the Munster Championship behind them, Waterford can rightfully expect to be considered a superior force.

Not that superior mind you. Rather like Liverpool in the Premiership, Waterford have inveigled their way into being included in "the top three" even though they haven't remotely looked like challenging "the top two" for the only honour that matters. In a hurling parallel to the Three Tenors - Pavorotti, Domingo and the other one - Waterford might share the stage, but there is no doubt who the heavyweights are.

Setting aside Sunday for a moment, many have invested great hope in Waterford this season, seeing them as the only realistic contenders to challenge that Kilkenny-Cork duopoly. However, having watched those latter two last weekend, neither look particular eager to allow the Déise county a slice of the action that has seen the last five All-Irelands greedily hoarded either Noreside or Leeside.

Still, a couple of provincial wins over Cork in recent seasons (including in the classic 2004 final - if Sunday's is half as good I'll care not a jot for expiring nonagenarians and teary-eyed urchins) and a general sense of being just short of at least getting to the céilí mór in September have made their cause a popular one to champion.

The view that this season is a case of "now or never" for Waterford is also a common one, however. With established stars like Paul Flynn, Ken McGrath, John Mullane, Eoin Kelly and Dan Shanahan reaching and passing various stages of maturity, it is probably fair to regard this Waterford side as being at its peak. There has been a self-possession about their two biggest performances this season - the league final win over Kilkenny and the Munster semi-final disposal of Cork - that suggest the many years of hard knocks have provided lessons well learned; a comparison with Armagh on the cusp of their All-Ireland title in 2002 is not too far off the mark.

For all Limerick's fire and brimstone (and to be fair, in the early part of the third Tipp game there was some magnificient hurling in evidence as well), their physicality and ability to prevent themselves being outhurled by making the game narrow and combative, Waterford would have regarded them as an eminently manageable obstacle had they been asked their opinion before the season's start.

Limerick have consistently enjoyed the momentum of positivity throughout the championship so far, due to their outlandish comebacks and also the fact that Tipperary's internal squabbles highlighted their opponents happy state of mind. But Waterford are in a different place than Tipp; beating Kilkenny and Cork over the space of a few months can only breed confidence. If they are men enough to handle Limerick's brawn, they should have the belief to take them through.

And hopefully the nonagenarian will pull through for another year at least.

It's Stephen Roche!

2007-07-05T15:41:00.000+01:00

Those who are sprightly of a weekend morning might tune in to 98FM's Now That's What I Call Sport on Sunday at 9am (listen online here). It's 20 years since Stephen Roche won the Tour de France, and to mark the anniversary I'll be interviewing the great man, hopefully to revisit that incredible Tour victory and to find out his thoughts on the current ravaged state in which the sport finds itself.

Here's a clip of his famous comeback on the climb to La Plagne. With his rival Pedro Delgado having taken a minute and a half out of Roche at one point, the Irishman came back to within four seconds of the Spaniard in a dramatic conclusion to the stage. Roche went on to take the yellow jersey in the final time trial of the tour, which he wore through the finish line on the Champs Elysée, where he found a waiting Charlie Haughey eager to provide his benediction.

Taxing Times Ahead For Leeds

2007-07-04T17:11:00.000+01:00

The demise of Leeds United has been so prolonged and painful that most have stopped paying attention. Three years since their relegation from the Premiership, the club's plight is now so grave that their fans will greet the start of the club's Coca Cola League One program with relief, rather than despondency, for it will mean that Leeds have survived a precarious summer.

Shortly after their relegation from the Championship was all but confirmed, the directors of Leeds United placed the club into administration, thus incurring the Football League's ten point penalty and ensuring demotion. By going into administration, the club's chairman, Ken Bates, ensured that their £35 million worth of debts could be effectively wiped out.

With the agreement of 75% of the club's creditors, Leeds could then be sold to a new company, Leeds United Football Club Limited (one of the major directors of which is, of course, Ken Bates) via a CVA (Creditors Voluntary Agreement).

The fact that Bates himself was one of the club's major creditors, allied to his offer to pay off 1p in the pound of all debts owed to creditors, helped the sale proposal win the approval of 75.2% of the creditors at a meeting in May. Aside from the small creditors who would lose out (the majority of the funds were owed to Forward Sports Fund, of which Bates was a part), the other major loser in this deal was the Inland Revenue, which was owed £7 million in unpaid taxes. Her Majesty's tax collectors, however, were not quite so enamoured of Bates' plan.

Despite Bates raising his offer to creditors to 8p in the pound, the Inland Revenue announced yesterday that it would be launching a legal challenge to the CVA, therefore stopping the proposed sale until such time as the court case is resolved. The club's administrators, KPMG, will remain in control until then. However, should the courts rule that the club cannot be sold under the terms of the current proposal, and no alternative buyer can be found to make satisfactory reparations of the debts, then it is possible that Leeds United will be forced into liquidation.

As English football's top flight begins the first course of the lavish banquet served courtesy of the new Premiership television rights deals, Leeds' plight seems already to belong to another age. The brief interlude of financial caution that chilled the football world earlier this decade, as it became apparent that clubs could simply not borrow and spend endlessly, has given way to a new fiscal reality. For the top English clubs at least, it seems no longer necessary to have to speculate in order to accumulate: thanks to TV money, most have accumulated plenty before before a ball is even kicked.

Leeds' story now resembles the cautionary tales often told against pyramid schemes or bull share markets. Just at the time when it seems as if everyone is a winner, there usually has to be a loser. Of course, while the massive sums received by Premiership clubs from next season appear to provide insulation against cash flow problems, who would be surprised if the forthcoming seasons throw up another Leeds, a club which borrows on the basis of future good times which prove illusory?

The status of Leeds as the forgotten club of the Premiership's first boom-time might have a little to do with the fact that the club were always likely to be unlamented, given their general unpopularity with supporters of other teams. In fact, many supporters have expressed themselves positively chuffed at the idea that the Yorkshire giants might go to the wall, an extraordinary sentiment given that the club in question are one of English football's major outfits.

But perhaps the lack of attention on Leeds' travails is more akin to a case of a group of wealthy diners, who, when seeing a pauperised former member of their number outside in the cold, turn their faces away and change the subject.

Anatomy of a Transfer

2007-07-03T15:57:00.000+01:00

January
Contract talks begin. Club makes "excellent offer". Agent refuses as "Gerrard has lost more than that down the back of his couch." Contract talks break down.

Manager questioned by media about rumoured bid from big time London club. Manager dismisses rumours as "blatant lies," informs media that "it's a disgrace, some of the rubbish you lot come out with."

Manager overheard on phone saying "tell you what Jose, throw in Geremi and I'll think about it."

February
Score winner in local derby to keep club out of relegation zone. Run to fans and kiss badge in celebration, but after turning back towards centre circle, do that pointing with thumbs to name on back of jersey thing, reaffirming status as 'the man' at club.

In post-match interview, refer to goal being "for fans". Wife calls, tell her goal is "for her". Agent calls, tell him goal is for him "to get me another 20k on my next contract".

March
Contract talks resume. Manager and chief executive refuse wage demands, complaining "that's Lucas Neill money you're talking there son!". Contract talks break down.

Tell media that you're sure that something will be worked out, that you love playing for club and are looking forward to winning things "for fans". Tell agent to "get me the hell out of this dump, I should be winning titles at this stage of my career."

April
Club in 15th place, safe from relegation, no hope of Europe. Manager under pressure after several seasons of underachievement, despite heavy investment from club's local pie magnate sugar daddy.

Questioned about pressure on manager, tell media that "the boys are all behind the gaffer, we have to take responsibility for our performances." Tell agent that "the fucker would have got the sack ages ago if it wasn't for me."

Inform teammates that you are running book on successor. Manager hears of players betting on his replacement. Sticks £500 on Keegan.

Contract talks resume again. This time chief executive accompanied not by manager, but by two men, one in leather jacket and shades, the other dressed neatly but with a scar across cheek. Man with scar translates wage demands to man in leather jacket. Argument ensues between them in strange language, during which man in leather jacket performs throat-slitting gesture. Finally, man in leather jacket removes shades and says "nyet". Contract talks break down.

May
Local pie magnate sugar daddy announces sale of club to man in leather jacket, informs media that man in leather jacket "supported the club as a boy in Turkmenistan". Manager expresses excitement at "being part of an exciting new era for the club". Man in leather jacket seen performing throat-slitting gesture.

With club now awash with man in leather jacket's money, visit manager's office in hope that inflated wage demands will now be met. Find manager sitting alone in empty office, cardboard box with belongings on desk, drinking whisky while tearily holding photo of himself with Rodney Marsh and Greavsie from 1970s. Contract talks, and manager, break down.

June
Holiday in Dubai interrupted by call from agent. Informed of Wigan's interest. Tell agent to hang tough, as you would "rather go back to that other shithole than go to Wigan."

Approached by holidaying fans in bar. Inform them that you would "be gutted if the club decided to sell me." Fans claim you are "legend" and vow to start campaign. Call agent. Still no other offers, "not even 'Boro."

Agent leaks rumour that Blackburn, Everton, Newcastle and "one of big four" have expressed strong interest. None deny due to proliferation of too many groundless rumours to deny all. Agent follows up with leaked rumour of enquiry from "unnamed Italian giant," assures you that "frenzy" about to commence.

Mark Hughes, David Moyes and Sam Allardyce meet at charity golf day; Hughes idly mentions their reported mutual interest. All laugh, call agent "shithead".

July
Sign for Wigan.

They Got Game

2007-07-02T21:53:00.000+01:00

Isn't Killarney lovely? All the mountains and lakes you could want. Hotels, B & Bs and diddly-aye pubs as far as the eye can see. Enough Arran sweaters to clothe the entire North American continent. Lovely.

Fitzgerald Stadium? Just lovely too. It looks like a scene from one of the miniature snowshakers sold in the souvenir shops on Main Street. Like someone hand-painted a preposterously picturesque mountainy-lakey background onto a picture of a tidy provincial GAA ground in order to flog it to gullible Yanks.

And lovely football too! Of course, with such a setting, it's no wonder Kerry pride themselves on the aesthetically pleasing nature of their football. Perhaps, during a particularly free-flowing attacking move, the players are being subliminally inspired to create something as breathtaking as the MacGillycuddyreeks that occupy their peripheral vision. Certainly you can understand why the ugliness of blanket defence never truly found a home in the Kingdom; it would have been like putting a MacDonald's franchise in the sacristy of the Sistine Chapel.

If Kerry do feel a certain noblesse oblige to demonstrate the finer aspects of a game of which they are the masters, it's a responsibility that sits easily with their players. The purity of Gaelic football as played by Kerrymen emerges through the innateness of their skills. They are a testament to an uncomfortable truth for sporting ecumenists like me: that true mastery of a sport can only result from complete focus on it, without distraction from others.

Not that Kerrymen don't kick a soccer ball now again. And, of course, Kieran Donaghy has achieved the highest honours in Gaelic football only after initially excelling at basketball (and indeed as brought many of the skills of the latter to the former).

But your archetypal Kerry footballer seems to be spiritually in tune with the game in a way that suggests that call-up to the senior team requires one firstly to spend seven years in a Himalayan monastery with an order of Gaelic footballing Shaolin monks.

Colm 'Gooch' Cooper is, of course, the golden child in this particularly exclusive order. Yesterday was another addition to the long list of Gooch masterclasses. His goal was a classic demonstration of this higher level of understanding of the game that someone like Gooch possesses. His execution is almost always perfect, but the key to a piece of Gooch virtuosity comes in the milliseconds before the magic. The guy is quick with his hands and feet, yes, but also, more importantly, with his mind.

Gooch's footballing brain operates at a speed that goes beyond simple, quantifiable thought or decision-making processes. What he does is instinctive, like the way great songwriters often say that they feel as if they are simply plucking melodies from the air around them, so in tune with their muse are they.

Perhaps Gooch is an exemplar of what Malcolm Gladwell (the journalist and author of The Tipping Point) called "rapid cognition" in his follow-up book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, basically the idea that one's initial, instinctive judgement of a situation is generally the correct one. Gladwell believes that those who are successful can make snap judgements based on the correct evidence, discarding useless or irrelevant factors.

It was there in the pirouette for his goal; in the slide-rule foot-pass along the ground to Mike Frank Russell in the second half; in that moment in the first half when the massed Cork defence froze in front of his serene presence, and he unlocked them with a simple handpass that had been hithero invisible to any normal observer.

Gooch is only the finest exponent of this instinctive 'feel' for the game, but it's everywhere in the best Kerry footballers; in the way on Mark and Tomás ó Sé solo the ball as if it was just a normal part of running, or the way Darragh ó Sé fields, or Mike Frank shapes to shoot.

Lovely stuff.

Jack and the Green Talk

2007-06-29T11:53:00.000+01:00

The threat to his life might not be as serious, and it may not have caused quite such a global incident, but in the context of the past week it has seemed that Keys to the Kingdom, Jack O'Connor's account of his Kerry football managership was the GAA's very own Satanic Verses.

While the prophets of the county's glory years under Mick O'Dwyer got the sacrilegious treatment from a bitter O'Connor, it was the Ayatollahs of Croke Park who cried "fatwa" when the manager's claims in Keys to the Kingdom to have been "reimbursed" for lost earnings during the 2006 season were publicised.

The irony of this most sizzling of GAA hot potatoes - the illicit payment of managers - re-emerging in relation to Kerry is that the Kingdom are generally noted for not being involved in such naughtiness. The honour of managing football's premier franchise has always been considered reward enough, and the issue of payment to managers is more often associated with clubs and counties whose deep hunger for success, and even deeper pockets, lead them to seek the services of managerial mercenaries outwith their own borders.

O'Connor and Sean Walsh, the county board chairman, presented a united front on local Kerry radio yesterday, both pointing out that the reimbursement O'Connor received in return for taking half days from his teaching job came in the form of a family holiday offered at the end of the season. If so, and the honour of Kingdom football has been impugned unfairly, then it was at least a strange choice of words by O'Connor, and peculiar not to refer directly to the holiday being the compensation.

The county board's indignant response to any innuendo over illegal payments can, according to Walsh, be backed up by the detail of their accounts. Cynics will remember that the GAA's last effort to turn up hard evidence on such payments foundered, there being few county boards including the line "Manager's Bumper Salary" in their profit and loss accounts. These payments are instead often classified as travel, accomodation and food expenses, which GAA boards are allowed to pay.

The word 'hypocrisy' is dusted down whenever this issues arises, and yesterday Dessie Farrell, chief executive of the GPA, was the one calling for the discrepancy between the association's saintly stance and the clandestine reality to be redressed. "We all know that many managers at the top level, and even at club level, are being paid. So let's eradicate the hypocrisy, make allowances for what's happening and try and control it in an acceptable way. Managers have to devote so much time, effort and dedication that it has now gone to a professional level," said Farrell.

The preservation of the 'amateur ethos' is such a cornerstone of the GAA philosophy that the tendency of Croke Park to put its fingers in its ears and go "la-la-la" whenever whispers of the existence of such payments become audible is understandable. Denial is an easier option than initiating change that would fundamentally redefine what the organisation reprensents, and how it likes to perceive itself.

By establishing the principal that a person should get financial reward for participating in the association's activities, the GAA would undoubtedly provide the pathway to formal professionalism not just in the managerial ranks, but soon too amongst the elite players (who are, by the way, subject to plenty rumours of "reimbursement" themselves currently).

However, by persisting with the pretence of the GAA's amateur purity, the association are beginning to resemble the propagandists of a failing communist state, broadcasting images of rosy-cheeked youths building the socialist utopia, and ignoring the black market reality on the ground.

Initially, when news of O'Connor's statement about "reimbursement" emerged, it seemed as if the former Kerry boss was about to become a high profile agent of a campaign to take the practice of payments to managers above ground. Despite backing down on the issue, the suggestion that even the Kerry manager, probably the most prestigious job in Gaelic football, might be a part of this secret economy will surely shake the GAA's steadfastness on the matter.

Salman Rushdie might yet have to advise O'Connor of some suitable hiding places.

The Blair Generation

2007-06-27T16:34:00.000+01:00

With Gordon Brown having tea and a Swiss Roll with the Queen, having finally escorted Tony Blair from the Downing Street premises, let's pay tribute to the longevity of the nicest war-mongering liar there ever was by looking at the fate of his contemporaries in sport's biggest jobs on that "glad confident morning", May 2, 1997.

Mick McCarthy, Republic of Ireland manager
McCarthy had his own Iraq quagmire in Saipan in 2002, when he attempted regime change in the Ireland dressing room by way of a pre-emptive strike on Roy Keane. Like Saddam with the UN resolutions, McCarthy was convinced that Keane was flaunting the authority of his stewardship with his behaviour, in particular in a newspaper interview with The Irish Times.

Unlike Saddam, McCarthy soon discovered that Keane did, in fact, possess weapons of mass destruction, mainly in the shape of his intercontinental ballistic potty-mouth.
Still in office? Removed by mob revolt following the home loss to Switzerland in the Euro qualifiers of October 2002.

Glenn Hoddle, England manager
When Blair was asked in an interview for Vanity Fair to what extent he and George Bush were bonded by a shared strong belief in Christianity, Alistair Campbell (the PM's media attack-dog, or Director of Communications and Strategy as he was also known) made the interception: "Is he on God?" said the hovering Campbell, "We don't do God."

Oh that Glenn Hoddle had the benefit of Campbell's secular life-jacket when his peculiar blend of faith and new-age mumbo jumbo plunged him into the soup in February 1999. While having faith healer Eileen Drewery laying hands on England's finest was considered an acceptable eccentricity, suggesting that disabled people were being punished for sins committed in their past lives proved a quirky foible too far for the FA.

Still in office? Hoddle's managerial assassination was complete when, ironically, his equivalent in the Downing Street dugout added his disapproval to the resulting uproar - Blair stated that it "would be very difficult for him (Hoddle) to stay."

Alex Ferguson, Manchester United manager
If there is one figure in public life whose survival skills exceed Blair's, it is Alex Ferguson. Not only has Ferguson survived into pensionable age at the helm of one of the world's biggest football clubs (Tony having only made it to age 54), but he has also bettered him in another sense: being able to survive even his own pre-ordained resignation date.

While many suspected that Blair's decision to announce his departure several months in advance of today's final farewell was forced on him through incessant pressure to do so from his heir apparent, Gordon Brown, Ferguson's pre-announcement of his retirement (to occur at the end of the 2001-02 season) was originally ended to allow the manager to leave in a dignified manner, and presumably with an eighth Premiership title to boot.

However, Ferguson's supposed final season was a disappointing one, the club finishing third in the Premiership (their worst finish since 1991) and it was suspected that his impending departure had affected his authority and ability to exert discipline within the club.

But Fergie had no power-hungry Gordon Brown ready to usurp him in his moment of weakness; he renéged on his original decision, signed a new three-year contract in February 2002, and took his eighth title the following year.

Still in office? You betcha, and this particular premier seems to personify the sentiment once expressed by one of Blair's predecessors, Margaret Thatcher: "I intend to go on, and on, and on".

Ger Loughnane, Clare hurling manager
Like Blair in 1997, in 1995 Ger Loughnane's messianic zeal had achieved the seemingly impossible; winning the All-Ireland with Clare was as great a feat as getting the previously unelectable British Labour Party back into office with a landslide majority.

In 1997, when he steered Clare to another All-Ireland, he was still in the full pomp of his powers, much like Blair was when his hand of history helped push the squabbling parties of the North towards the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

But just as Blair's zealousness and stubborn convictions allowed him to lead his country into an unwinnable war, Loughnane's maddening pursuit of various grievances in the 1998 season marked the point when one of his greatest strengths began to weaken the cause he was supposed to champion.

Still in office? After a prolonged detour on the sporting equivalent of the lecture circuit, Loughnane is currently attempting to to return to high office with Galway.

Correct Definition of Hurling

2007-06-26T14:30:00.000+01:00

TSA is currently engaged in the shameful business of trying to get a ticket for the Munster hurling final, despite being from neither Waterford nor Limerick, nor Munster, and being from a part of the country where usage of the verb 'to hurl' is only necessary at 4am on a Sunday morning following the consumption of twelve pints of lager, six Fat Frogs and a curried chip.

Fortunately, however, TSA's better half, as well as being an infinitely patient and tolerant soul, hails from Limerick, so, should a ticket come my way, by pretending to have been "dragged along" I can offset the guilt of prising a brief from the hands of some doe-eyed 7-year-old in Newcastlewest.

So why the big interest in going to the Munster hurling final, the unschooled in sliothar-related matters may ask, from one who, if handed a hurley in his youth, might have used it to mix a tin of paint with?

Well, maybe some of it is the fact that no Irish sporting competition receives quite as much mythological-sounding prose as the Munster hurling championship (Vincent Hogan in the Indo on Limerick's victory over Tipp on Sunday: "In the end, it became a battle against gravity almost. Limerick and Tipperary just slugging it out on a dark, impostor of a summer's day. Biblical rain."). It's almost as if Irish sportswriters enter their own temporary Celtic Twilight period after stepping off the train in Thurles.

But even those who prefer their daily newspaper to be less Naom Chomsky and more "Naomi, 21, from Leeds" can appreciate the perennially epic nature of Munster hurling matches, and, by extension, the special status of the final in and of itself.

If this year's final channels half the eye-rubbing astonishment of the matches that preceded it then it won't be far off that classic status of many of its forebears. Only Cork v Clare disappointed, especially by providing several weeks-worth of the tiresome Semplegate saga (that -gate suffix shows no sign of well-earned obsolescene, by the way; is it Woodward and Bernstein's most enduring legacy?).

Limerick are the cult heroes of this year's Championship as a whole so far, their improbable comebacks and the passion of their play deserving of a Hollywood treatment of some sort. By virtue of the exposure provided by three gripping matches, names like Andrew O'Shaughnessy, Ollie and Niall Moran and Mark Foley have reached the household status usually reserved for the stars of the traditional powers.

Despite starting Sunday's match brilliantly, and playing some genuinely sweet hurling in the first twenty minutes, Limerick seemed to have become so addicted to coronary-inducing drama that they weren't happy to win it without drawing another hefty measure from the thrill tank. But their superior physical strength was eventually replicated by their will, and from the moment that Mark Foley howled like a prairie dog after flattening an unfortunate opponent, you sensed they wouldn't be denied.

I took in this game in a central Dublin hostelry noted as a watering place on the tourist trail between Temple Bar and Grafton Street. The elderly American couple nearby cooed their appreciation at the action on the telly, each "gahlly" or "jiminy" followed by a "they'd love this in the States". It was easy to see the attraction. Aside from the obvious authenticity of watching two teams with such quintessentially Irish names as 'Limerick' and 'Tipperary' playing this indigenous game, the nature of the play sold itself, making it one of the few games to do that without requiring a prior knowledge of the rules or a 'feel' for its nuances.

For all that, a Waterford fan (voicing his opinion in the toilets at half time) was sanguine about the threat posed by either side come that final a week on Sunday. "Wouldn't be worried about whichever one gets through," said he, the demeanour of the complacent unmistakeable.

Let's hope the fantastic series of games just past gets a better elegy than that, and either or both of the teams can figure later on in the Championship.

Oh yeah, and Up Limerick! (Can I have a ticket now please?)

Silly Billys

2007-06-25T18:23:00.000+01:00

It's full of giddy, Pimms-sipping sloanes. The pervading mood is of plucky,"remember the war" good cheer, despite interminable rain delays. It has a royal box in which actual royals occasionally sit. Cliff Richard singing 'Bachelor Boy' acapella is considered a memorable highlight, and not a gruesome method of torture. It's full of people for whom a jumper is not a jumper unless it is draped around the shoulders. The enthusiasm with which its patrons support British players is the biggest case of misplaced faith since a few lost souls decided that David Koresh made some worthwhile points.

Yes indeed, Wimbledon is the silliest sporting event of all.

The aforementioned items are just a select few symptoms of the silliness that grips SW19 at this time of year. 'SW19', for instance: a tournament that refers to itself as a postcode? Haven't we learned anything from the demise of East 17? Making Roger Federer wear those ludicrous outfits - how apt that, when in Wimbledon, the greatest player of them all must also look like the silliest.

Federer's Edwardian-chic look is instructive. Those that preserve what are usually called the 'traditions' of the tournament have long been engaged in a pitched battle against the forces of sense, although they have portrayed their struggle as being an effort to the preserve timeless values in the face of the heartless juggernaut of modernity.

In reality, however, it is a campaign to reinstate the use of the word "frightfully" in place of the functional, utilitarian "very". It expresses a desire for the middle months of the year not to referred to as the politically correct "summer" but rather, altogether more agreeably, as "the Season". It is the wish to revert to a time when one did not "leave Uni and get a job", but rather "came down from Oxford and took a position".

In attempting to rewind the clock back to the time when Britain was, apparently, Great, they have revealed that, actually, Brittania was just plain silly.

Have no doubt that, in foisting on the unsuspecting but eager-to-please World Number One such a monstrously silly garment as a "sleeveless monogrammed sweater", the forces of Wimbledonism believe they have struck a blow against the lycra-clad, carbon fibre racket-wielding stormtroopers of the 21st century.

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, when field marshals could conduct war via the gentlemanly convention of sending several thousand eager lower-class sorts over the top, whistling on their way as they dodged Bosch bullets; when one's idiotic, philanderer son could be dispatched off out of harm's way to some distant imperial outpost, in which he could pursue all the native flesh he wished; when tea came with cucumber sandwiches, not Penguin biscuits.

Yes, silly times indeed. And for two weeks every end of June and beginning of July, the world can be silly again.

Silliest of all, of course, is the fact that Britain has a tennis tournament of this magnitude at all. What a contortion of reason it is that a country that hasn't produced a tennis player capable of winning its own most significant professional competition since dearest Ginny Wade in 1977 (and in the men's - sorry, Gentlemen's Championship - Fred Perry in 1936) is anointed the centre of the tennis world for a fortnight every year.

Not that the good people of Wimbledon accept their heroes' inadequacies. In the silliest sporting event of all, the silliness quotient reaches its most dangerously high levels when a Brit plays. The amount of silliness being deployed during those few hours is such a drain on the national silliness reserves that one year Ken Dodd was booed off stage at Blackpool pier while Jeremy Bates was playing on Centre Court.

Those were the good old days of course, when Bates carried British hopes. A chap called Jeremy, wearing a sleeveless monogrammed sweater, deploying his flimsy serve and volley game against the Lendls and Edbergs like Greeks laying siege to Troy with pea-shooters.

Then Tim Henman came along. They could just about handle him, mend him into shape for the silliness. He was a good player, nearly too good, but not quite. He competed well on the ATP Tour, attained respectability in the world rankings, reached six Grand Slam semi-finals, deployed a much less flimsy serve and volley game and, at his best, might actually have won the blasted thing.

But his name was Tim. He had a wife called Lucy. He did the angry-clenchy-fist thing when he won a point. And there was no place that more symbolised the arch-silliness of Wimbledon than Henman Hill, and nothing that sounded quite as silly as a lone Centre Court voice crying "come on Tim!"

But then came Andy Murray. A Scot for one thing. And a product of a clay court tennis hot-house in Barcelona, rather than the barley water and flannel trouser approach of the Lawn Tennis Association. And a surly, precocious brat. Not an ounce of silliness there at all. Thankfully he injured a wrist while hitting a ball too dashed hard and won't be there to spoil the fun this year.

So there it is, two weeks of silliness. And there's no harm in that really, I suppose, if kept under control. But we must be vigilant: what if there was a confluence, say, of a "People's Sunday", a Cliff singalong and a Henman revival?

Dear God. That would be frightfully silly.

Historic Sosa Yet To Be Judged

2007-06-22T14:20:00.000+01:00

'Slammin'' Sammy Sosa hit his 600th career home run the other day, becoming only the fifth person in the history of baseball to do so, after Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. The milestone came in the 62nd came of his comeback stint at the Texas Rangers, and, fittingly, was against the Chicago Cubs, with whom he spent 13 seasons and for whom he hit 545 of those home runs.

I saw him hit his 248th of that total, during my first ever visit to a major league baseball game, in which the Cubs defeated the Montreal Expos 9-5 at Wrigley Field. Henceforth the burly Dominican Republican remained a favourite of mine, having indoctrinated me in that most American of pastimes, whooping drunkenly at a home run.

Furthermore, he proceeded to conduct a thrilling chase for the all-time single season home run record with St.Louis' Mark McGwire, and his exploits helped drag the Cubs into a rare appearance at that season's play-offs.

But, unbeknownst to me, however, Sosa's achievements were already being tainted with the suspicion which has hung over baseball's big hitters for a decade. Sosa turned up for spring training prior to that 1998 season having put on noticeable muscle, and that season's 66 home runs had been preceded in 1997 by a mere 36. Sudden bulk and drastic improvement: the cynic's mandate.

Unlike Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants slugger whose record-breaking home run hitting has been marred by his implication in the BALCO doping scandal, Sosa's name has not been directly linked with any organised illegal steroid use. He has also never tested positive for taking banned substances.

Sosa testified before the congressional House committee into the matter of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport and stated that he had never used "illegal performance-enhancing drugs," had never "injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything," and had not "broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic." This statement may have been a tacit acknowledgement that his physical improvement was as a result of a substance like androstenedione, which was also allegedly used by McGwire, but which was not banned by the the baseball authorities at the time.

The stains on Sosa's reputation stretched to his perception within the Cubs themselves. He was reportedly an exceptionally arrogant figure, and one story from the end of his Cubs career illustrates that his popularity with the fans might not have been shared by his team mates.

After being dropped for the last fixture of the 2004 season (his last with the club) Sosa turned up at Wrigley Field only an hour before the game, then left after only 15 minutes. Having used his star player status to monopolise the music played in the dressing room at the Cubs (a privilege usually given to the days' starting pitcher), generally playing pop or salsa music extremely loud, Sosa's teammates used his absence as an opportunity to smash his boombox, an action which brought a symbolic end to his association with the Cubs.

Like McGwire, whose candidacy for the baseball Hall of Fame was rejected earlier this year, Sosa's legacy remains clouded. Many expected that he too would be denied the sport's greatest honour when he becomes eligible, five years after retirement.

However, a thawing in the attitude to Sosa was evident upon the achievement of his 600th home run on Wednesday. After leaving the Cubs, Sosa endured a poor season at Baltimore, before announcing his retirement. After taking a year out of the game in 2006, he has received praise for working his way back into shape, and into the major leagues, with Texas. He has reportedly been a model teammate, and has been commended for the example he has provided to the Rangers' younger players.

Many of those asked their opinion on whether he should be admitted to the Hall of Fame have veered towards a positive answer since Wednesday, citing the fact that he has never failed any drugs test during his career and that the scale of his achievement in joining such an elite band must be noted.

Sosa's rehabilitation in the public's minds is far from certain, however. It seems likely that he will always be associated, along with McGwire and Bonds, with an era in which the game's precious records and milestones were devalued wholesale by the influence of performance-enhancing substances.

They Were A Bit Good

2007-06-21T21:53:00.000+01:00

It's thirty-seven years to the day since football's high watermark. Brazil's World Cup win in 1970 has long been seen as the game's Sistine Chapel, its Ulysses, its Sergeant Pepper (or Revolver. Or Take That and Party. Whatever you're having yourself). Of course, the filter of nostalgia and the immortal splash of colour film in which their feats have been preserved have burnished their living memory, but the clip below reminds us that, in the simple matter of playing ball, the 1970 Brazil team were the best you will ever see.

And Carlos Alberto recalls that fourth goal.

Thaksin Attempts Blue Moon Party

2007-06-20T15:30:00.000+01:00

"Typical City", they'll no doubt be saying in the bars and clubs where Manchester City supporters gather to ponder the latest tragi-comic twists in the affairs of their beloved club. For the club that are the only First Division champions ever to be relegated in the very next season (in 1938) the prospective takeover by the deposed former Thai premier and rumoured recruitment as manager of a certain randy Swede are, indeed, typical.

With the recent flood of overseas capital washing away the old guard of self-made men from the boardrooms of English football, City fans might have been entitled to expect their own American sports capitalist or acceptably shady Russian billionaire to reignite a club whose spirits have dipped after several drab, underachieving seasons.

Indeed, they might have looked on in envy as a member of their own official Hall of Fame, Niall Quinn, chose to harness Irish euros to breathe new life into another of his former clubs, Sunderland, whose self-esteem had plummetted even lower than City's.

Instead, City supporters await the outcome of Thaksin Sinawatra's proposed bid for the club, a takeover which, if successful, according to reports today, would lead to Sven Goran Eriksson becoming the club's 39th manager.

The underlying theme of xenophobia has never been far away during due diligence in any of the recent foreign takeovers of English clubs. It's a common enough response even in non-football takeovers, whether it be in banking, aviation or heavy industry for example, for the loss of indigenous ownership to be the subject of knee-jerk jingoism and doomsaying.

In an industry in which the emotional investment of its 'customers' is as significant as the financial commitment in the boardroom, the idea of the club's 'soul' being casually exported is a predictable cause of supporter outrage.

But English football has subsequently learned to live with its new foreign overlords. Messrs Abramovich, Gaydamak, Glazer, Lerner, Gillett and Hicks arrived, and the clubs they have bought have generally prospered. So any fears City fans might have about the current flirtation with Thaksin are unlikely to be based simply in narrow minded fear of Johnny Foreigner.

On the other hand, Thaksin's eventful recent past is well worthy of furrowed brows down Eastlands way. A controversial, populist figure as Thai Prime Minister, he first came to prominence on these shores during a takeover bid for Liverpool in 2004, which was reportedly to be funded via the proceeds of a Thai state lottery.

He is thought to have precipitated his own downfall by selling off his family's shares in the Thai telecoms group Shin Corp to Singaporean investors. As well as the avoidance of taxes, ironically enough, one of the charges levelled against him was of selling off a national asset into foreign hands.

Street protests and a bungled snap election followed, before last September's military coup in which Thaksin was deposed while he was in New York visiting the United Nations. Just this week, the current military government has frozen $1.6 billion of his assets as part of a investigation into corruption during his rule, and ordered him to return to Bangkok to face corruption charges.

Aside from the accusations concerning his finances, he has also been criticised for operating a draconian anti-crime policy, reputedly including a brutal crackdown on drugs in Thailand which led to the deaths of 2,500 people.

Judging by that C.V., the appointment of Sven-Goran Eriksson as manager might be the least of City's worries, despite the former England coach's established knack for earning vast salaries in return for negligible results. Despite the latest developments in Bangkok, talk from Thaksin's camp has remained bullish. Spokespersons have accused the military junta of attempting to tarnish the former premier and scupper his bid to take over at City.

Worried City fans might note in consolation that the optimistic tone of Thaksin's camp is currently remarkably similar to that expressed in the dying days of his Liverpool bid. But if he does take over, it remains to be seen whether City will be the latest club to benefit from foreign ownership, or if their fans will end up nostalgic for the days of Peter Swales notorious chairmanship.

Honourable Mentions

2007-06-19T15:19:00.000+01:00

"Arise Sir Beefy" acclaimed the tabloids as English cricket's erstwhile swashbuckling hero and charity walker was revealed as the latest sportsperson to receive a knighthood. The Queen's birthday honours list also rewarded Ryan Giggs with an OBE, for "services to sport" and granted an MBE to Teddy Sheringham, though merely for "services to football".

Quite how Sheringham was allowed the honour after his disgraceful recent behaviour is a mystery. The integrity of the institution of Miss Great Britain was heinously compromised by his clandestine voting for girlfriend Danielle Lloyd while judging last year's prize. And there was the speeding thing too.

Aside from high profile gongees like the aforementioned, Mrs Windsor also confers recognition on the 'little people' among her sporting subjects. 'Mighty' Madge Morgan of Carterton, Oxfordshire, got the MBE for services to lawn bowls for visually impaired people.

And what services! Madge took up lawn bowls in 1967, as she began to lose her sight. Blind bowls players use the help of a sighted assistant, who describes where the bowls should go using the numbers on a clock. With husband Max as her trusty aide, Madge proceeded to storm the blind bowls world, representing England on countless occasions, sweeping all before her in disabled World Championships and making the final round of the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta.

She marked her retirement in 2000 at the age of 75 by engaging in a Bobby Riggs v Billie Jean King-style battle with fully sighted England international Les Gillett, which, according to the Oxford Mail, Gillett only came through after a 'stern' test.

Also honoured with an MBE was Mitsusuke Harada, or Sensei as he is known to thousands of British karate enthusiasts. Born in Manchuria in 1928, he grew up in Tokyo, where he attended the famous Shotokan dojo. Shotokan was one of the original forms of karate, developed by Master Gichin Funakoshi and his son, Yoshitaka, the former of whom is credited with bringing karate to Japan from Okinawa.

Harada studied under these masters in Tokyo, even engaging the elderly Gichin to teach him personally after the Shotokan dojo burned down during an American bombing raid in 1945, and is effectively a living link to the martial art's progenitors. After studying commerce at university, he entered banking, and was eventually posted to Brazil. He is credited with introducing karate to South America, founding the Karate-do Shotokan Brazileo with the blessing of Master Funakoshi.

Subsequently he travelled to Europe, first to Paris and then to Britain, where he established the Karate-Do Shotokai in 1966 to develop and teach the new martial art in Britain.

In 1998 he was invited back to Japan to demonstrate with his students at the joint celebration of the 130th anniversary of Funakoshi's birth and the 60th anniversary of the creation of Shotokan Karate. The KDS demonstration proved to be an enormous success and Harada gained acceptance in his own country as a master of Shotokan, almost 60 years after his karate life had begun in Funakoshi's original Shotokan dojo.

With Harada Sensei and 'Mighty' Madge being joined by the likes of Margaret Borley, coach of Tonbridge Bobcats youth baseball team, Eric Hardwick (services to the Hastings Half Marathon), Terry Griffiths, Sir Beefy and the rest, what a fine tapestry of sporting subjects you have, ma'am.

They're Back!

2007-06-18T15:50:00.000+01:00

Quite clearly, they haven't gone away, you know.

The biennial spectacle of Tyrone's footballers in full, voracious flow continues. Whatever it is that they do during those even years when they virtually disappear, they should market it to burned-out executives as the perfect rejuvenation therapy. Maybe they signed some sort of pact with the devil, which, along with having to give the Dark Lord's son a regular game at right corner-back, means their particular brand of footballing devastation can only be deployed every second year.

Whatever, they're back now and that's that. Deal with it.

Mickey Harte's responses to post-match questions used that formula that the Tyrone manager swears by: for howsoever fantastic my team are, I will be proportionally humble. "We have to be very careful here, because we weren't a great team coming into this game so we're no world beaters now," Harte protested, codding no-one.

Now, in the all-time list of abject Donegal performances in the Ulster Championship, yesterday's effort will jostle its way among the many other contenders near the top. All the same, this particular Clones cyclone blew Tír Conaill away to such an extent that the county's supporters' scornful words should have stopped in their throats, to be replaced with acknowledgements of the their opponents' incontestable class.

That Donegal are a team who are operating to some arcane alternative calendar which fooled them into thinking that you must play your best football in February is only a side-issue.

Tyrone's relentless support running, intelligent movement and fierce competition for possession were the matters that should have engaged football's chattering classes in the aftermath of yesterday's game. The performance of Brian Dooher alone will send shudders around the nation.

That they threw in a scatter of horrendous wides is of little consolation to prospective victims, given that one Stephen O'Neill joined in for the final twenty-odd minutes, blowing off the cobwebs with two points.

******

Events in Clones and the return of the Red Hand will engage the GAA's great minds and strategists, but Thurles was the place to be for less sober-minded pursuits. The residents of the Tipperary town can't have seen a weekend like it since the days of Féile. Even the Stunning and the Saw Doctors put together couldn't have generated the decibel levels and general high-octane excitement of two games that provided yet another reminder of the unique magic of Munster Championship hurling.

Quite what to expect when Limerick and Tipperary do it all over again on Saturday is impossible to know. On the face of it Limerick have simply trailed Tipp like a particularly enthusiastic puppy: every time Tipp have tried to shoo them away, Limerick have scampered happily back to their heel. Will Tipp finally rid themselves of the troublesome mutt, or will Limerick eventually bite them on the bum?

If that metaphor is too fluffy to fit the slash and gurn of Munster hurling, then happily Cork and Waterford's canine likenesses tend more towards brawling pit-bulls. Waterford got their third win over Cork this year, and will be hoping that the habit remains unbreakable.

But the loss of the suspended Cusack, ó hAilpín and O'Sullivan for such a game would have felt for Cork like one of those anxiety dreams where you go into a job interview with no trousers on. Add in a sense of grievance over the suspensions that the Rebels can place neatly on their shoulders alongside the chips that reside there already, and Waterford's mood this morning will be a cautious sort of elation.

******

Cautious elation is rarely the prevailing mood of Dublin supporters when they are cheering their team home to victory against Meath. But most will be aware that pulling away from a doughty Meath side late on is not quite the push-start for the Dubs summer juggernaut. However, the amount of criticism that Dublin get when things go poorly dictates that, in the interests of fairness, if not human decency, they should get some credit for the win.

They did manage - just about - to avert another backslide from a winning position, which they'll hope represents the end of that particular pesky foible.

And there were a few more of those long-sought answers to longer-extant questions. Ross McConnell has improved exponentially in the full-back role for one thing. Mark Vaughan is a very Dublin type of darling, but he kicked frees satisfactorily, and, more importantly, showed a lot of character in that period where Dublin's familiar fade began to reappear. Importantly, he never provided any other message to his team-mates than "give me the ball", an enthusiasm which eventually lit the touchpaper for the Dubs win.

An Offaly team at leisure while Dublin have been at war await on Sunday, so caution is justified - not that it will last that long, mind you.

Definitely Not 'Grand Slam Weekend' Ok?

2007-06-15T12:53:00.000+01:00

One of the most familiar complaints of we compliant, huddled masses as we are force-fed our Premiership staple is not so much the content, but rather the packaging. Does the world's most exciting league need to be wrapped in so many sparkly labels telling us so? This weekend's instalment of the GAA Championships provides an interesting case study in the value of the organic, wholefood approach to sports marketing.

Essentially, had the sharp-suited gents in the Sky Sports marketing department got hold of the Championship weekend ahead, there would not be an event short of the Second Coming itself (no, not Price Naseem's return to the ring, the actual one) subject to so much drooling anticipation.

As it is, the mouthwatering program on Saturday and Sunday stands by itself and, soberly noted in the GAA fixture list and the RTE television schedules, looks none the less exciting for not being called 'Weekend of the Titans' or somesuch.

Hell, the GAA even languidly muttered "bovvered?" at the prospect of the Dublin v Meath replay not being on the telly, until the unsatisfactory fudge was reached of having it run against the just as eagerly anticipated Cork v Waterford battle on either side of RTE's channel portfolio. It's an unfortunate circumstance, as one imagines the neutral public will veer towards the low-brow entertainment at Croke Park rather than the high art on display in Thurles (and with my purist kudos now secured, I will secretly don my Beer Helmet and join them).

The weekend's main features divide into two distinct categories: on one hand, both codes see proven recent champions (Cork, Tyrone) take on hungry and in-form contenders (Waterford, Donegal); on the other, two stonking drawn games throw up replays between teams whose bitter local rivalries guarantees zest, but whose ultimate All-Ireland credentials are questionable at best (Limerick v Tipperary, Dublin v Meath).

There's no harm in expending a little hot air at this time of the year on the timeless battle of Leinster's big two, there being space in the early Championship rounds for a bit of hype. The press have passed the time between the drawn game and the announcement of the teams with the traditional tireless deployment of the word "bonanza" in relation to the ringing of the GAA's tills ahead of Sunday's replay. I saw the word so many times I thought Lorne Greene and Michael Landon had been called in to shore up Dublin's troublesome full-back line.

Meath won a lot of friends in that first game, which is an unusual thing to say about teams from that county. Their brand of old-fashioned, give-it-long football was so refreshingly retro that I half expected The Sunday Game to be followed by an episode of Murphy's Micro Quizm. They have firepower as well, which will be augmented by the return of their NFL top scorer Brian Farrell. If they eliminate their poor starts to each half they could spell the demise of another sad, sullen Dublin team.

Cork and Waterford's duels in recent years have been some of the most transfixing in GAA, from the 2003 Munster final, through the classic 2004 version to the damp but thrilling denouement to last year's All-Ireland semi. There has been little between them in that time, and as much epic heroism as any Norse saga. The momentum is with Waterford and a look of steel that won them the league final tips the edge in their direction.

Conversely with Limerick and Tipperary, although the Shannonsiders finished in bravura fashion last weekend, Tipp retain a smidgeon of extra class, evident in the fact that their scores seemed easier crafted than Limerick's, whose effort expended in getting the draw could leave them flat tomorrow evening.

Finally (apologies to Sligo, Roscommon, Louth and Wexford, but you know how it is, pressures of space etc.) to the second test of Donegal's credentials, Tyrone. Armagh were negotiated in a manner about as unconvincing as a performance could be and still be a victory.

Which, for Donegal, could turn out to be a very good thing. Had they breezed past the Orchard county in rip-roaring style, they would have already been subconsciously booking Dublin hotel rooms for September. Now, with a very grave reminder of their own fallibility fresh in their minds, they can apply themselves studiously to a weary-looking Tyrone, a team that, for all their greater achievements, do not petrify Donegal like Armagh do.

And there you have it: a weekend heaving with the promise of pulsating drama, and not a hairy-handed host nor a gravelly-voiced Scotsman in sight.

Viva La Boca

2007-06-14T12:37:00.000+01:00

Last August during TSA's perambulations around South America, we stopped in on La Bombonera in Buenos Aires, home, of course, of Boca Juniors. Unfortunately the visit was as well timed as a Paul Scholes tackle, given that the new season was over a week away, so we didn't get to see the ground in its full matchday pomp, when, it is said, the crumbly old stands shake with the force of the supporters enthusiasm.

The season that followed was a successful one for Boca, winning the 2006 'Clausura' title, which is the half of the domestic league played in the latter part of the year and which determines progression to the Copa Libertadores. Boca have reached the final of that tournament (the South American equivalent of the Champions League) and look in a good position to win it for a sixth time, having defeated Gremio of Brazil 3-0 in last night's first leg at La Bombonera.

As you can see, one Juan Roman Riquelme is proving as influential as ever in his on-loan return to his former club.

What Chance a European US Open Winner or: Don't Bet on Padraig

2007-06-13T21:53:00.000+01:00

Number of 'Majors' held since the first Open Championship in 1860: 400

Ratio of US, European and Rest of World winners of Major championships: 252:105:43

Ratio of US, European and Rest of World winners of Major championships since World War One: 245:35:43

Ratio of US, European and Rest of World winners of Major championships since 1960, when the notion of modern golf's 'Grand Slam' of tournaments is thought to have been defined by Arnold Palmer: 135:21:33

Number of that 21 won by Nick Faldo or Seve Ballesteros: 11

Ratio of US, European and Rest of World winners of Major championships, excluding pre-World War One winners and winners from European golf's 'golden years' of the 1980s and 1990s: 195:17:31

Number of Irish winners of Majors: 1 (Fred Daly from Portrush, 1947 Open at Hoylake)

Number of Republic of Ireland winners of Majors: 0

Ratio of US, European and Rest of World winners of the US Open: 78:27:8

Ratio of US, European and Rest of World winners of the US Open since 1911, when John McDermott became the first American winner, in the tournament's 17th running: 78:11:8

Number of European winners of 7 previous US Opens held at Oakmont Country Club: 0 (although 1927 winner Tommy Armour - the first at Oakmont - was a Scot who had become an American citizen only a few years prior)

New Misery for Lansdowne Residents

2007-06-13T12:41:00.000+01:00

The latest update from the Lansdowne Road Stadium Development Company on Monday last attempted to lay to rest the grave concerns of vigilant residents about the most recent sinister threat to their very existence.

1. Poplar Trees: There were a number of phone calls during the week in relation to airborne white fluffy material which was being blown into people’s gardens. A number of people asked whether this might be in any way related to asbestos or polyurethane. This is definitely not the case. What is being blown are in fact seeds from the poplar tree. They are blowing in off the Dodder Walk.

What new hell are these poor wretches being asked to endure?! A blitzkrieg of "white fluffy material" - the inhumanity!

It is often claimed the Nazis discounted the use of white fluffy material as part of the Final Solution, due it being "a bit much, even for us". Now the gentle, peace-loving souls of the Lansdowne Road area must face the ravages of this pestilence.

Seeds, indeed. Seeds of Doom more like!

The Latest Suggested World Cup Squad That Eddie O'Sullivan Will Totally Ignore

2007-06-12T23:12:00.000+01:00

Two whole months till the announcement of Rugby World Cup squads then, but sure, with the dismal round of summer tour internationals over, what else is there to talk about?

There is the distant, mystical wonder of the Tri-nations getting under way this weekend, but we're blinkered, parochial types around here, so we'll just agree that they all look very big and scary down there and get back to speculating if Big Mal will get crocked again.

Ostensibly there is only one game left for Ireland's supporting cast to snare positions on the World Cup bench before the day of reckoning on August 14th. That comes against Scotland on August 11th, although there has been some speculation that the IRB will push the date back to allow the internationals scheduled for later in the month to be included as final auditions.

Ireland's last game before the titanic opening tussle with Namibia on 9th September is on 24th August, but one imagines that, even if the IRB does extend the deadline for squad announcements, Eddie O'Sullivan's mind will be well made up by then, if it isn't already.

Presumably there won't be many takers for the access all areas DVD about the tour to Argentina. However, like a Big Brother race row, it was at least useful in shaving a few contestants out of the running for the big prize.

So binning their French phrasebooks are Tony Buckley, Peter Bracken, Kieran Lewis, Barry Murphy, Tomas O'Leary and Jeremy Staunton. Also praying for an outbreak of some deadly virus or other in the camp are Shane Jennings and Leo Cullen, neither of whom were able to demonstrate enough to leapfrog ahead of those untainted by sinister English club ways. Luke Fitzgerald's lack of game time has not ruled him out in the eyes of some of his advocates, but it's a gamble I can't see O'Sullivan taking.

There's an old joke about sculpture, it goes something like "how do you do a sculpture of an elephant? Take a block and remove all the bits that don't look like an elephant". Not really a joke, as such, more of pithy aphorism. Anyhow, with a few bits removed that don't look like a World Cup squad, we can focus on the fine detail.

Stuff That Will Not Cause Eddie To Drift Off In Contemplation When His Wife Tries To Engage Him In Discussion About The Banjaxed Washing Machine Or Whatever Wives Of International Managers Yammer On About

Namely that the four props will be Horan, Hayes, Best (S), Young; that the three hookers will be Best (R), Flannery and Sheahan; that three of the locks will be O'Connell, O'Callaghan and O'Kelly; that three of the back rowers will be Easterby, Wallace (D) and Leamy; that the scrum-halves will be Stringer, Boss and Reddan; that the outhalves will be O'Gara and Wallace (P); that two of the centres will be O'Driscoll and D'Arcy; that two of the wingers will be Horgan and Hickie; and that the full-backs will be Dempsey and Murphy.

Stuff That Will Cause Eddie To Say "Woman Will You Stop Yammering On About Banjaxed Washing Machines, I'm Trying To Think Here!!"

Wow it looks like an elephant! But not quite. Six places left, and like the hard-hitting internet news organ we aren't, let's start a heated debate.

I contended before that Mick O'Driscoll would go to the World Cup, and while I have wobbled on my stated position like an atheist at the gates of hell, I will stick to it. That's based on nothing more solid than a hunch on O'Sullivan's mindset, mind you, and indeed would consider Trevor Hogan exceedingly unlucky to miss out, given that, aside from O'Kelly, he alone showed well in Argentina of the locks.

Perhaps it's just the suspicion that the boss would like a man who knows the workings of his Munster mates in the event of a need for action, or maybe those couple of lineouts stolen in Argentina, I don't know. As I said it's flimsy stuff.

The back row, though, sheeeesh! This is Ireland's strongest area, has been for a while. As I expect O'Sullivan to go with 17 forwards (leveraging his backs' versatility a little - ooh don't I sound all Wall Street?) it follows that back-up will be like-for-like in the back row.

Neil Best will definitely get to deploy his brand of mayhem at no.6 in France. His physicality over a long tournament and potential impact off the bench make him a cert for the match-day 22. I'll plump for Keith Gleeson to make the cut as David Wallace's understudy, delighting purists of the open-side role. And with the Wise Head department well covered, Jamie Heaslip should get the reward his outstanding season deserves at number 8.

Just two official blazers going in the backs then. Andrew Trimble has been ensconced in the scene for long enough, and has done enough in an Ireland shirt, to make it as centre and wing cover. Then comes the question: Gavin Duffy's decent tour and adaptability in a number of positions? Or Brian Carney's explosive potential and element of mystery?

In the normal run of things, Eddie would smile at Duffy and say "You had me at 'decent' and 'adaptable'". But maybe the excitement will get to him, maybe the anticipation will be too much, or maybe the washing machine will finally pack up and he'll just say "Feck it!" and decide to throw one Carney-shaped curveball at the plate.

Let's see shall we.

Messi and the Son of the Hand of God

2007-06-11T20:19:00.000+01:00

Lionel Messi's second act of homage of the season. Now all he needs is the cocaine habit, the spiralling descent into obesity and self-destruction, the renaissance, the glitzy TV show etc. And a World Cup too maybe.

Lionel Messi - Goles a Espanyol
Uploaded by lionelmessiorg

Limerick's Survival A Victory

2007-06-11T14:45:00.000+01:00

Possibly the only thing that generates as much sweat and effort on a Munster hurling championship day as the action on the field is the construction of teetering towers of lofty prose about it in the press box.

Vincent Hogan, in this morning's Irish Independent, topped and tailed his piece like so: "It was a game from the old liturgy of Munster hurling, a bullfight in parts, a rolling symphony in others...it spoke of an unbreakable truth about Munster and the old game. In the business of epoch and fury, all else is imitation." Crikey!

Tom Humphries was more circumspect in the Irish Times, but did feel that the replay would be an occsion for those "with an interest in hurling and romance". I think I need to lie down!

In fairness to the palpitating scribes, it's easy to see why a certain type of Munster hurling afternoon will send quills a-quiver. For all that, in advance, yesterday's meeting of Limerick and Tipperary looked the plain, bespectacled sister semi-final of next week's ravishing beauty between Cork and Waterford, God bless her, she went like the clappers nonetheless.

A sunny day, the Gaelic Grounds looking well for the big crowd and the weather, and two teams skelping the arses off each other. Hand me my thesaurus!

Despite the heroism of their performance yesterday, for Limerick the six year wait for a Munster Championship victory goes on, an extraordinary fact considering that in 2001, the occasion of their last victory (over Waterford in the provincial semi-final), the county was also in the midst of its three-in-a-row of All-Ireland Under-21 titles. Waiting forlornly for that group to fulfil their potential is par for the disappointing course for Limerick hurling.

The 1990s are now viewed as a golden age for the game in general, a time of revolution and egalitarianism. It might also be looked, less romantically, as a hiatus, in which normal service was halted, and all the decent hurling folk in Ireland got at least one close up fling with the Liam McCarthy Cup, before the clouds rolled back and it was snatched away towards the Nore and the Lee.

All the decent hurling folk except Limerick, of course, whose losses to Offaly (heartbreakingly) in 1994 and to Wexford in 1996 mark them down as the game's Miss Havishams, left at the altar, seemingly doomed to a lifetime of trophyless spinsterhood.

Indeed, the thought of an All-Ireland now is laughable, and after those six grim years the annual traipse out to the various Championship venues must have been getting all the more despairing. Yesterday's match seemed to be going the way of so many of their previous losses: they toiled bravely and manfully but looked like being those handful of points shy once again.

Only in 2002, when Tipp beat them by seven, did they lose by more than four points on any of those previous occasions. Coming down the home stretch, when their opponents held off each of their advances with a couple of businesslike of points of their own, a familiar sinking feeling might have gathered in Limerick hearts, that they were destined to always be that bit short.

The celebrations on the final whistle were those of a victory, which is a little worrying given that they are still no closer to that first win since 2001 than they were yesterday morning. But the delight was relief as much as anything, that, by pulling out a goal at the death, they had deservedly cheated their seemingly preordained fate for another week.

That's a victory in itself; for the the counties with no chance of winning the All-Ireland, each week that you are still in the running, each week that the flags still fly outside houses and pubs and local radio stations buzz with big match chatter, each of those is as good as a win.

L Stands for Loser

2007-06-07T20:09:00.000+01:00

TSA has been preoccupied over the last few days by the business of preparing, taking and failing a driving test. Second time as well. I rationalised it to myself somewhat by using what I have termed the Fine Gael Analogy: to wit, that my first failure was so heinous as to be comparable to the Blueshirt 'meltdown' of 2002, and yesterday's performance, while fundamentally still a balls-up, was at least a restoration of self-respect.

The Enda Kenny of the highways, that's me.

I actually thought I'd done fine, though. Obviously the tester disagreed, given that he failed me. I'm not saying he thought I was a dangerous driver, but I'm sure I heard the rattle of rosary beads at one point. I'm not saying he feared for his safety, but I think I saw him tearily looking at a photo of his kids as I careened off one particular roundabout. I'm not saying he thought I shouldn't be let near a car again, but he handed me a brochure entitled "Walking Holidays in Ireland" on my way out of the test centre.

Of course, the glorious anomaly of the Irish driving testing system is familiar to all. Namely, that the state hands the empirically-proven failed driver a certificate which is actually entitled "Statement of Failure to Pass a Test of Competency to Drive", and then, like Pontius Pilates with clipboards, send them back to their car to drive, incompetently, homeward.

But it wasn't this fact that I mused on as I motored away, clattering bus-stops and mounting kerbstones as I went. Instead, I couldn't help but think of Jimmy White, Monty, Mayo footballers, the Buffalo Bills, Greg Norman, Gareth Southgate, Stuart Pearce and the rest. The bottlers. The people who, on the big day, when the hand of destiny was extended in their direction, rather than grasp it confidently, chose to thumb their nose instead.

Was I like Jimmy White, destined to fall foul of the Stephen Hendrys of the world, doomed to falter in the face of opportunity, running out of position on the black balls of modern living? Was I like the footballers of Mayo, hepped-up for the big day, talking confidently of (forty quid a pop) lessons learned and how it would be different this time, then going and cocking it up royally anyway?

It's one of these little insights that those of us unblessed with athleticism or skill get every now and again into what it might be like to be a proper sportsman. Not that there were 20,000 spectators lining the road as I performed a three-point turn, rather in the sense of being required to perform under duress, to produce a result when the pressure was on. I, alas, blazed the crucial penalty high over the bar and into the Turin night sky.

Of course, sport often offers the chance of redemption. Someone like Phil Mickelson has demonstrated how the L-plates of sport can finally be disposed of just when it seemed that taking public transport might be the better option. And two of baseball's three great loser clubs (Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox) have in recent years earned American sport's equivalent of the HGV licence, the World Series.

But I can't help but come back to dear old Jimmy White again, whose wait for a World title Samuel Beckett might have written a play about. Am I destined to turn up at the test centre every year, claiming to be in the form of my life and that I have been practising harder than ever, and that I even went to a psychologist to get me 'ead right? And then, much like Jimmy exiting in the first round at the hands of Marco Fu, will I run the first stop sign to dash all my fans' hopes again?

Perhaps I will learn to be philosophical about it, and will become much-admired for my good humour in the face of constant failure. They might come to call me 'the People's Learner Driver', and I will become a living emblem of the motto that it is not the winning that counts, but the taking part.

Or I could just learn the Rules of the Road, I suppose.

Lou Piniella and the Art of Expressing Your Displeasure

2007-06-05T23:11:00.000+01:00

Graham Poll revealed that one of his last encounters with Jose Mourinho as a referee resulted in the Chelsea manager "an unrepeatable and disgraceful personal comment" about him and Sir Alex Ferguson. One wonders if Ferguson's famously squeaky bum was referred to in this particular remark.

In support of Poll, TSA feels that, rather than unleashing torrents of abuse, football managers should take the example of their baseball counterparts, in particular Chicago Cubs notoriously short-tempered manager Lou Piniella, in expressing their discontent. There can be no insult quite as effective as the simple act of kicking dirt on the third base umpire's shoes.

(Caught on video by a sharp Cubs fan after MLB took the original ESPN footage off YouTube - bah, spoilsport rights-holders!)

Also, the kicking of the cap: is this a deeply symbolic way of saying "you suck!"? Yank types please advise.

Get That Man a Dub-ble

2007-06-05T14:48:00.000+01:00

Alcoholic narcolepsy, that's my diagnosis.

Classic case, judging by the symptoms of Dublin's football team on Sunday. You know the type: the fellow slumped unconscious at the bar, the drool on his chin dangling perilously over the dregs in his glass, who suddenly, as if someone had inserted a coin into a slot in his back, wakes up and begins a tour de force of bar-room bonhomie.

Barmaids are reluctantly waltzed around the premises, outrageous stories involving stowing away in a merchant ship bound for the Barbary Coast are breathlessly told, a stirring rebel ballad is crooned, then........slump, back to boozy slumber. And the barkeep doesn't mind so much because, "sure he's nowhere else to go".

Yes alcoholic narcolepsy, clearly. The ball is thrown in at Croke Park and Dublin are all tall tales and ripping yarns, devastating wit and blustery banter. Five points up and the craic is ninety. Shane Ryan punches the air as if to give us a blast of Sean South from Garryowen, then.....slump...zzzzzzzzz...

Meanwhile, with Dublin dreaming of the time they and Brendan Behan robbed barrels of porter from Guinness's yard, Meath quietly went about the business of cleaning up the mess - righting upturned barstools, placating the irate barmaid ("I'm telling ya, I've had enough of him"), wiping down the counter. Then the Dubs are up again, full of the joys, lucid and engaging; the goal comes, a few more points...slump....snorrrrrre...

And so on and so forth.

It often happens in Gaelic football that - even in the most well-matched contests - matches are broken into chapters of domination, rather than having a simple, metronomic or 'end-to-end' flow. It is difficult to pin-point why this happens. Is it because, having gotten a score, the attacking side have an advantage with the ensuing kickout, due to their ball-winners being able to 'run onto' the arriving clearance, whereas the defending team must change direction in order to launch a retaliatory attack?

Or is it purely a psychological domino effect? Does the effect of getting a score release endorphins in the attacking side that inspire them to outperform their opponents over the next several sequences of play, until the momentum eventually dwindles and the initiative swings the other way?

Perhaps it is just the nature of the sport: that a game which demands such wholehearted collective commitment requires a breather every now and then.

Whatever causes it, there is no team that exemplify this phenomenon quite like Dublin. When they're good, they're very, very good, and when they're bad, they're horrid. The psychological explanation is quite persuasive in the case of the Dubs in Croke Park, given that, when they are on top, the force of positivity from the majority of the massive crowd is like a massive shot of adrenalin.

Conversely, when that force is inverted, and the team are struggling, it must seem an oppressive burden.

We could go on about the lack of leadership, the problems at full-back and with free-taking, the flaws that remain stubbornly with this Dublin team like ill-advised tattoos, and mean that they seem destined for another year of frustration. That still doesn't explain the explosions of virtuosity they can produce, then follow up with the flattest bum notes.

Alcoholic narcolepsy, it has to be.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I won the All-Ireland.....a nayshun onnnnnce again!.....Hic!....zzzzzzzzzzzzz"

A Rivalry That Transcends Patio Decking

2007-06-01T14:50:00.000+01:00

Surely the rivalry between Dublin and Meath ain't what it used to be? I mean, don't most Dubs now actually live in Meath, and most Meath folk work in Dublin? And with Leinster's current status as a second rate football province, surely the meetings of the two counties aren't the do-or-die affairs of old?

Not likely!! (CUE BLUR'S "SONG 2" ACCOMPANIED BY EXPLOSIVE FOOTAGE OF DUBLIN AND MEATH MATCHES FEATURING PLAYERS KICKING THE BEJESUS OUT OF EACH OTHER)

Woo-hoo indeed. Okay, maybe the classic lines have been blurred a little of late, the Urban v Rural conflict being diluted by commuter belt sprawl into a rather less timeless Suburban v Suburban duel. And yes, where once the winners of Leinster wiped the blood from their fists, spat out a loosened tooth or two and headed forth toward a likely All-Ireland final, this era hasn't seen a national finalist from the province since Meath's dismal appearance in the 2001 decider.

Still, it's Dublin v Meath isn't it? It is a Classic Sporting Rivalry. It remains compelling, despite the devaluation of mediocrity and cultural homogenisation, for the following reasons:

1. 1991 and all that
The four game Leinster Championship series between the counties was of such seismic importance that it caused the final collapse of the Soviet Union. Not really, but, according to those who like to throw a bit of historical revisionism into their match-reports, it did save the GAA.

Apparently, so the story goes, back in the summer of 1991 the whole lot of us had cast away all that was good and proper about our sporting heritage and taken up with this new "soccer" craze. The pubs and clubs resounded to the strains of "Olé Olé" and dyed-in-the-wool Gah-men liked nothing better than to sport a pair of Gazza-style fake boobs. All over the country juvenile Gaelic football coaches were driven demented urging kids to "pick it up".

Then came that Dublin-Meath series and suddenly the nation turned back toward the path of righteousness, remembering that epic tales of tumultuous struggle were not solely the preserve of foreign fields, and we all lived happily ever after.

But if that lot's a bit rich for your blood, suffice it to say that as far as the Dublin-Meath rivalry goes, those matches will resonate for as long as the two counties play the game.

2. Here Comes the Summer
Like the last meeting of the sides two years ago, this year's version comes early in the summer - and on the June bank holiday weekend at that. For all that the opening weeks of the Championship have seen some intriguing encounters, a few surprises and much to talk about, there really is nothing like the earth-shaking energy of a full Croke Park to signal the proper commencement of hostilities.

Dublin v Meath is one of the few fixtures that can provide the Big Event this early in the summer, and as such, fuelled by the boozy bank holiday buzz, Croker will be ablaze come Sunday.

3. It Just Is!
Sometimes, the look of a match gives it extra appeal. A huge baying crowd, for example. Burly, aggressive protagonists. Or the colours of the jerseys. It's a brilliant contrast, the sky-blue and navy against the green and gold. It just works.

We're simple enough creatures at the end of it all, for all our compooters and personal stereo machines. We're susceptible to suggestion. Subconsciously, when we watch Dublin-Meath (or Dublin-Kerry, or Celtic-Rangers, or Barcelona-Real), the little kid inside goes "oooh, they must really not like each other, they're dressed TOTALLY differently!"

It helps to keep a good rivalry bubbling when differences are underlined. Thankfully, despite the flow from tenement grime on one hand, and cattle husbandry on the other, towards a patio-decked middle ground, the Sky-blue and Navy and the Green and Gold will always provide a healthy reminder of that county border.

Down With That Sort Of Thing

2007-05-31T11:51:00.000+01:00

Along with hailstones and matchmaking festivals, no Irish summer is complete without a good old GAA brawl. Usually the shocking scenes take place amongst the brawny bullies of football, but Cork and Clare's hurlers showed on Sunday that even the graceful swans of the small ball game can get stuck in.

The purist will always prefer a football "schemozzles" (why do we use a Yiddish sounding word to describe GAA fights? Must the Jews get the blame for everything?), the players having both hands free to pulverise, throttle and gouge.

Here's the definitive one, from the 1996 All-Ireland final between Meath and Mayo. Apologies for the "hold a camcorder up in front of the telly" school of youtubing, although in some ways it adds to the chaos...

The Summer Diary of a Football Fan

2007-05-30T17:09:00.000+01:00

Monday
5pm: Turn off television after Championship play-off final. Stare at screen, forlornly. Contemplate emptiness. Blink several times and begin to notice surroundings for first time in months: furniture, carpet, wife.

6pm: Resolve to do something positive with close season this year. Decide to bring old, unwanted clothes to charity shop. Realise all clothes are "old, unwanted". Decide against charity shop idea due to conventional attitude to public nudity. ISPCA? Hate dogs. ISPCC? Hate children. Local Tidy Towns committee? Hay fever. Run marathon for charity? Athlete's foot.

7pm: Decide to rearrange CD collection in order of 'Genre'. Spend 30 minutes deciding whether Pink Floyd's Meddle belongs in 'Prog' or 'Psychedelia'. Conduct imaginary heated Late Review-style discussion on subject, which results in agreement with Tony Parsons on formation of new 'Progedelia' genre.

8pm: Having found no worthwhile other 'side' to personality, resort to League of Ireland action to fill football void. Feel pleased with self, rejoicing in old-fashioned values of domestic football, stripped of vacuous overinflated egos of Premiership.

8.15pm: Another misplaced pass clears Dalymount stand; yearn for vacuous overinflated egos of Premiership.

8.30pm: Check Sky Sports for Masters Football.

Tuesday
9am: Meet boss in office lift. Brain reaches instinctively for safe ground of Premiership issues, in effort to intercept conversation about overdue report. Brain discovers only scraps of Joey Barton transfer gossip and stale leftovers of Jose Mourinho dog story. Hesitate. Boss: "About that report..."

11am: Take coffee break with colleagues. Uncomfortable silence broken by half-hearted observation about General Election. Agree that Bertie is "some man". Uncomfortable silence resumes, until a colleague recalls email received containing joke about Liverpool losing Champions League final. Relieved, even Liverpool fans laugh.

1pm: Make up alibi concerning visit to bank in order to avoid uncomfortable lunchtime silence.

6pm: On train home. Read sports pages in newspaper - article on French Open ladies draw. In response to preponderance of Russians, observe to self that "it's like reading bloody Dr.Zhivago". Snigger at own wit. Imaginary Tony Parsons not impressed. Move on to pompous denouncement of GAA brawl on previous Sunday. Soberly nod at "what about the children?" sentiment. Doze off while reading about Formula One controversy concerning team orders. Dream of being sent to gulag by McLaren boss Ron Dennis along with scared primary school children with hurls. Wake up when drunk falls asleep in lap.

9pm: Resume rearrangement of CD collection. Abandon when heated debate with imaginary Tony Parsons about whether The Clash's London Calling is 'Punk' or 'New Wave' becomes too personal.

9.30pm: Catch final seconds of Sky News sports bulletin item about Robbie Keane signing new contract. Find self missing the little scamp. Heart sinks when next item concerns that new English cricketer with the awful haircut.

10pm: Draft email to Sky Sports: "Dear Sir, I wish to ascertain when broadcasting of this year's 'Masters Football' will commence....."

Wednesday
9am-5pm: Take stairs to avoid boss, bring flask of coffee to avoid uncomfortable break silence and invent visit of mother to town for lunchtime diversion.

6pm: Avoid newspaper, instead listen to London Calling very loud to stay awake. Mutter to self "definitely new wave". Imaginary Tony Parsons glowers.

7.30pm: On scanning Sky Sports channels, observe 'International Football' as scheduled. Heady feeling of euphoria gathers, imagine to be similar to news of Lotto win. Click 'ok'. Ascertain that 'International Football' in question Scotland v Austria friendly.

7.32pm: Flick back to Coronation Street.

8pm: Make up with imaginary Tony Parsons. Acknowledge that Man and Boy very good book. Maintain discretion re opinion on Man and Wife.

8.55pm: Randomly flick through channels in hope of catching Terry Christian or similar rehashing spoonfed thoughts on Eric Cantona in the Premiership Years.

9pm: Tune into Channel 4 for start of new Big Brother series. Feel strange sensation of emptiness being filled. Like heroin addict accepting methadone.

They Might Be Giants

2007-05-29T16:28:00.000+01:00

I can't decide whether last night's Reaching for Glory: Inside Irish Rugby (RTE 2) demystified the mighty men of Ireland's first XV, or merely added to their growing legend.

On the one hand we were allowed to see them as they presumably are: larking about and cracking jokes, or suffering inconsolably the pain of defeat. And then there was the fact that phrases like "let's get stuck into them from the start" survive in the highest echelons of international sport, and are not just the preserve of bumbling amateurs.

But on the other hand there was the monstrous physical and emotional expenditure that was a constant theme throughout. For all the hotel room high-jinks and training ground banter, it's hard not to think of these guys as supermen when you get such a close-up view of their exploits. The weights, the muscles, the hits, the blood - made me think twice about another Tesco Finest Triple Choc-Chip Cookie (will you eat EVERY LAST OUNCE of this biscuit?!!).

And while we've all done a bit of pre-match roaring during our own miserable pursuit of sporting glory, if I delivered Paul O'Connell's already-legendary "DID YOU SCARE ANYBODY, DID YOU PUT THE FEAR OF GOD INTO ANYBODY??!!" speech before one of my 6-a-side astro league games, it would be quietly suggested that I might have a bit of a lie down.

O'Connell perfectly encapsulates this dilemma, even down to the cute little spectacles he wears when not crushing Saxon skulls. Seeing him squeezed into the seat of the plane returning from the Cardiff victory with his dainty designer glasses, you could almost imagine him whimpering "I'm not all that I seem to be, Lois". Then next thing he's pummelling a punchbag like it was Lex Luthor himself.

Of course, it's the swearing that brings them closest to us mortals. Oh my goodness Father, the swearing! While not quite at the level of the documentary about Sunderland made during Peter Reid's time at the club (if you think Reid is less than articulate on television, that's because he's not allowed to use 50% of his vocubulary before the watershed) the Irish dressing room was as rich in expletives as any another.

It sounded natural coming from O'Connell, when in full Maximus Decimus Meridias mode, and Eddie O'Sullivan has enough of a scowl about him that you'd expect a bit of effin' and blindin'. But Brian?! Oh Brian darling, what were you thinking? It's not big and it's not clever you know!
Then again, O'Driscoll does his talking so persuasively on the field that he could have a speaking voice like Julian Clary and it would not detract from his aura.

We feel like we know them, these boys. It's hardly surprising, given the success that they have enjoyed in recent years, but there's no doubting the degree to which this team have been taken to the hearts of the Irish people. Apart from seemingly being perfectly decent skins altogether, and demonstrating exceptional prowess on the sporting field, they have also been agents of reconciliation, uniting Ireland's opposing cultures: I refer, of course, to Culchies and Dubs (well, the posh ones anyway).

Time was that if a country fella walked into his local pub and introduced the gathered throng to his new friend 'Girvan', he would have been met with the gravest inquest into what kind of "quareness" he was getting up to above in Dublin. Now we have the likes of Marcus Horan, Banner-man to the core, on the couch beside the not-quare-in-the-slightest Girvan Dempsey, talking over the year that was in it, and no-one bats an eyelid.

The inference is clear: any friend of yours, Marcus, is a friend of mine - I don't care if he talks like Prince Philip himself!

The mixture of awe and affection this Irish rugby team generate in equal measure is one of the finest sporting tales of our time on this isle. There's much to aspire to in the way that they have achieved such excellence, yet seem distinctly human also. As Reaching for Glory demonstrated, these men are giants, but they are walking among us.

Same Old Story Has Happy Ending For Donegal

2007-05-28T12:32:00.000+01:00

These alternative endings are the way of the future. What with interactive digital technology and all, soon you'll be able to choose whether you want to see Matt Damon or Tobey Maguire or whoever outwit the evil mastermind and ride off with the expensively upholstered lady into the sunset, or whether you'd prefer him to plummet off a cliff to a gruesome death on some spikes.

Yes, the modern world, sheesh. There I was, watching an old re-run yesterday afternoon - you know, the one where a snarling Armagh grab Donegal by the throat and put them up against a wall, so that their little legs are dangling helplessly and they flail impotently - when, quite unexpectedly (I must have pressed a button on my Super-Digi-BluRay remote control by accident while reaching for another Tesco Finest triple choc-chip cookie) the alternative ending came on.

Suddenly one of Donegal's little thrashing legs connected plum with Armagh's voluminous goolies, and the beast went crashing to the ground, allowing Donegal to ride off with the expensively upholstered lady into the sunset.

Vorsprung durch Technik indeed!

Imagine if we had this technology before now? Gordon Hamilton scores for Ireland in the 1991 World Cup quarter-final, Michael Lynagh has the chance to win it for Australia...oooh knock-on, scrum Ireland, peep-peep-peep, Ireland into semis.

Wim Kieft's header spins toward the bottom corner to send Ireland out of Euro 88....oooh Bonner saves, McGrath clears, peep-peep-peep, Ireland into semis.

Geoff Hurst with the shot....off the crossbar....is it in?....oooh Russian linesman waves away English appeals, goal-kick, up the other end, Beckenbauer, on the Kopf, 3-2, peep-peep-peep, they think it's all over, it is now.

Technology can't assuage feelings of guilt of course, as consumers of internet pornography will testify in the moments after download, and yesterday's surprising turn of events might have induced a small amount of embarassment in Donegal folk at the purloining of the win from a deserving Armagh.

I say might, but not likely. The oppressed tend to feel little sympathy for the expelled subjugator. I'm sure as the Germans withdrew from Paris in 1944, the locals weren't wondering if they hadn't, perhaps, been a little hard on them.

The trajectory of yesterday's Ulster Championship match - up until the alternative ending - was so familiar as to seem almost choreographed. The two teams duke it out physically for a bit; Armagh frustrate Donegal's easily frustrated forwards; Armagh snatch a goal, topped off with a few points; Armagh dig in, catenaccio-style, allowing Donegal's response to founder on the thick, reinforced walls of their defence; Donegal are driven demented by the futility of it all and fall on their own sword, usually resulting in a couple of red cards.

So many times over the last decade have these two played out these roles that yesterday was almost reassuring in its inevitability. Some things don't change, eh? In this Super-Digi-BluRay world, some things are enduring.

Hey, even though Brendan Devenney's hopeful balloon slipped through Paul Hearty's grasp, as Kevin Cassidy lurked like a malevolent spirit in the corner of his eye, thereby providing Donegal with the win, does that mean that something new happened yesterday? Have Armagh not proven that they remain forceful competitors and sage match-players? Did Donegal not re-arouse the belief that they can be got at, broken up and scattered away?

Or was yesterday's shock denouement the sign that - as they demonstrated throughout the League - an indefatigable spirit is suddenly alive in Donegal when it counts, in the Championship.
Just because you change the ending, does the story remain the same?

The Championship Weekend - A Family Story

2007-05-25T14:47:00.000+01:00

I wonder if the players of Armagh and Donegal were watching Bobby Baccala give Tony Soprano a beating in last night's new episode of the last series from everyone's favourite psychotic New Jersey folk. Surely the omens wouldn't have passed them by if they were; Tony, the ageing, battle-scarred boss, brought to his knees by a sucker-punch from one of his inferiors, the good-natured but flabby and soft-hearted underling.

Time and tide wait for no man, not even Tony Soprano and Armagh footballers. Go back to the early part of the decade - the peak years for New Jersey's answer to Kieran McGeeney - and there would have been no contest. Just watch the brutal demise of Ralphie Cifaretto back in series 4 for evidence of that.

Similarly, until now, seeing Donegal square up to Armagh in the Ulster Championship, you generally expected the north-westerners to endure the fate of Big Pussy Bonpensiero, or worse, the Bevilaqua kid, whose attempts to throw mobster shapes winded up with him being tied to a chair and filled full of lead by Tony and his own Paul McGrane, Silvio Dante.

But, in the dangerous meanstreets of Ulster football, anyone's grip on power is tenuous. Armagh, with 6 out of the last 8 provincial championships laundered through legitimate businesses and stuffed in bags of duck feed, are the undoubted capos of Ulster football - although they only managed to become Capo di Tutti Capi once, in the bloodbath of 2002. Their domination has been challenged by Tyrone, but like our friends in New York when Johnny Sac got locked up, the O'Neill county have lacked leadership since Peter Canavan's been out of the picture.

As far as many observers are concerned, the old man has lost it. Are Donegal about to make their move? Or will they end up like Richie Aprile, whose designs on power foundered on Tony's sister's kitchen floor? Certainly the job has been okayed by the other captains; any one of the All-Ireland contenders would love to see Armagh buried under snow in the Pine Barrens.

Elsewhere Clare hurlers are looking for a bigger piece of the Munster action. Like Philly Leotardo, they've paid their dues and have suffered a few heartbreaking knocks along the way. Remember that 2005 All-Ireland semi-final when they were six points clear, only once Cork took their cut they were left empty handed? Those sorta debts, they gotta get repaid. Just like Phil, Clare won't stop till they've got their vengeance.

Meanwhile, Mick O'Dwyer will remember the fate of Old Man Baccalieri. Some felt he was too old to do that hit for Gigi Cestone, but like the old pro he was he got the job done. Unfortunately the exertion caused him to crash his car on his getaway. Let's hope Micko doesn't meet the same fate against Louth at Parnell Park tomorrow.

When We Were Kings

2007-05-24T08:24:00.001+01:00

These days it's often hard to get too worked up about the outcomes of major football matches. They generally involve two teams playing a single striker each, with the intention of giving nothing away in the hope that the opposition makes a mistake. Failing that, you play the odds at penalties. It's Russian Roulette football, without the excitement: eventually somebody will blow their heads off, and it might be the other guy.

One afternoon exactly 40 years ago tomorrow, football's biggest match had a more compelling narrative. On one side, even then, were a team successfully playing the football of fear and percentages: Inter Milan. On the other, however, were Celtic, a team that channeled all the game's most glorious characteristics, and for whom attack was not a tactic, but a compulsion. And sometimes the good guys do win.

Where have you gone Jock Stein? Our game turns its lonely eyes to you.

This One Could Go All The Way

2007-05-23T11:27:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago we brought up the fact that Milan's drive to avenge the horror of their Istanbul experience could prove the deciding factor in this evening's Champions League Final rematch against Liverpool (and it is that, a rematch, Steven Gerrard's autobiographical musings have got sufficiently up Rino Gattuso's nose to guarantee that much).

The only thing that could save Liverpool, we felt, would be a pronouncement of sublime arrogance from Silvio Berlusconi. There's a good megalomaniacal media mogul! Didn't he oblige? "Milan will win in Athens, we will succeed because we have a superior class than our opponents," said the man with the thickest weave this side of Magee's of Donegal.

"Since Milan have already beaten Manchester during the season and Manchester having beaten Liverpool, the football rule wants that now Milan beats the same Liverpool," added Berlusconi, adapting the rules of conkers to those of association football.

Moving from the deep tan of Berlusconi to the deep purple of Alex Ferguson, and we find more fuelling words for the Liverpool fire. "I told Carlo [Ancelotti] at the end of our semi-final that there is no way he can now not win this competition," said Ferguson.

"Carlo gave me a magnificent bottle of wine. But I immediately told him there is no point in giving such a wonderful gift if he then fails in the final. In fact, I told him I would only drink his wine once I see him lifting the Champions Cup." Looks like Fergie still enjoys seeing Liverpool being knocked off their f#cking perch.

Of course, these two mild-mannered gents are not the only ones who see no other outcome than a seventh European title for the Rossoneri. Football teams are, it seems, only as good as their last game, and many seem happy to accept that the wonderful Milan performance in their semi-final second leg victory is the definitive proof of their superiority. Few care to remember, it seems, the toiling outfit of most of this season. Most have easily forgotten the side that only eked past Celtic by a solitary Kaka intervention after 210 minutes of football.

Plenty have transformed their workmanlike disposal of Bayern Munich (the fourth best team in the dowdy old Bundesliga, remember) into a masterclass it was not. And far too many have discounted the role of a jaded, strangely lacklustre and tactically inept Manchester United in providing Milan the stage in which to dazzle at the San Siro three weeks ago.

Surprising are the number of those who neglect to consider Rafael Benitez organisational abilities, and his absolute aversion to allowing his teams to be open to the lacerating thrusts of fluid attacking teams. Indeed probably the only time one of Benitez's Liverpool sides have been pierced at will was on that very evening in Istanbul that made him an Anfield legend.

In swooning at the combination of guile and grime that the Milan midfield possess, a substantial amount of observers are unwilling to consider that it is in this very area in which Liverpool's own greatest strength resides; that, in Javier Mascherano, they have the man for the job of plugging that hole from which Kaka springs so dangerously.

What I'm trying to say is that, despite what Berlusconi and Ferguson feel, it is simply not true that Milan are a fundamentally better side. In fact, in reality, there is little to separate these two teams.

And I'll go further: there's much to suggest that they will cancel each other out. And you know what that means. "That’s why we lost, you know," Berlusconi also said recently ahead of this evening's match. "The goalkeeper was trying to disturb our players’ concentration. This time we’ll be practising penalties against moving goalkeepers."

You better had, Silvio, you better had.