The Deadline
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“As you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary,” as Mr E Hemmingway said.
Leinster rugby star Shane Horgan and one pillar of Kerry’s attacking twin towers Tommy Walsh certainly agree; I had a quick chat with both about their own sporting inspirations. Read the rest of this entry »
Stephen Nolan is a 23-year-old Wexford hurler, chief executive of ‘Kama Lifestyles’ and a self-proclaimed “world-class pick-up artist”.
The GAA star is teaching young men – for a tidy fee – how to approach and succesfully pick up young ladies, essentially.
Check out Eoin Butler’s account of his two days in the young UCD graduate’s dating boot camp here.
Any football fan who ever caught a game on ESPN while travelling throughout the world will know the lilting commentary of Co Louth’s Tommy Smyth.
The American broadcaster’s colour man, famous for his ‘rustle the auld onion bag’ catchphrase, is the subject of internet petitions, websites, death threats, and evidently, plenty of fan mail.
With Setanta Sports effectively going bust and ESPN looking to take up their Premier League contract, Smyth hopes to become a lot more well known in Ireland and Britain.
I spoke to him last week for Saturday’s Irish Examiner.
THE voice of soccer in America — and throughout much of the world — has an Irish accent.
Louth man Tommy Smyth has been ESPN’s colour man since 1994 and his opinion, delivery and catchphrases have provoked a tide of reaction from the world’s football fans ever since.
Now with Setanta folding their tent and Smyth (‘Smyth with a y’ as his sign-off goes) and his renowned employers look set to take up the Premier League contract, the Dundalk man’s unique brogue is likely to become ever more familiar in his homeland.
“It would be like the Prodigal Son returning, wouldn’t it? I’d love it. I can’t go anywhere in the world without being recognised. I got e-mails from Australia, the Middle East, all over North and South America and especially Nigeria but I rarely get one from Dundalk. And I’d love that.” Read the rest of this entry »
ESPN are bigging up this kid’s crazy basketball effort. And it is pretty good. It reminds me of a spectacular throw-in a Mexican (I, think) footballer used to do years ago? I can’t remember his name or find footage at the moment. In summary, the above looks like something I half remember.
Great post on An Fear Rua about the relationship between the GAA and the Dublin public here.
The unfortunate reality of HQ’s scornful attitude towards the Dublin bandwagon, which they are instrumental in propagating, is that they achieve only the alienation of those who are aware of and insulted by their incessantly bitter superiority complex. The inherit flaw in their approach is that they offend those within the Dublin GAA community who espouse the very values which our county is conveniently accused of lacking -the clubman, the volunteer, the dedicated supporter.
I took part in a seminar for coaches in UCD last week, offered by the renowned Ajax of Amsterdam. Yesh.
The intellectualisation of soccer has, they say, always foundered on a one simple problem — football players. Unless, of course, you’re Dutch.
The propagators of Total Football in the 1970s elevated an industrial sport from the spit and sawdust shop floor to an erudite, urbane beautiful game and enlightenment dawned over Europe.
Ajax Amsterdam is, of course, a catchword for home-grown productivity, expert training and, above all, success. In a country that gave the world Van Gogh and Rembrandt its greatest club has delivered innumerable soccer-playing artists in Cruyff, Van Basten and Bergkamp. Read the rest of this entry »
Iran’s footballers took advantage of a World Cup football qualifier in Seoul earlier to denounce their government as a week of unrest following allegations of election rigging at home went on.
As many as eight players, as you can see above, wore green wristbands and the captain, Ali Karimi, wore a green armband, symbolising support for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the opposition challenger.
The high-profile game is being broadcast live on Iranian state television.
Andy Burton: the Sky Sports News deadline day monkey has Big Sam's number in TWO mobile phones
This summer’s football transfer window was smashed into tiny shards by Real Madrid’s googol-dollar smash-and-grab of Kaka last week.
Those little pieces were then danced into the carpet by a tikka-tanned, hot-pants-wearing Ronaldo as he cha-chad all the way to the Spanish capital.
And we’re only getting started.
The expectation is that this will be the most opulaent and vulgar – when one considers the economic hothouse these deals are cultivated in – transfer window in history, surpassing last year, when English Premier League clubs alone spend approximately £500 million.
The Onion Bag dips its toe in the pool during this summer of sun, sand and speculation by “mechanically recovering the bits of innuendo deemed not nutritious enough for Fleet Street and reconstituting them into a repulsive mush. Like a Big Mac. With slightly less donkey intestine.”
Blackburn are set to unveil their new signing, Judean bad boy Judas Iscariot. Manager Sam Allardyce has defended the reputation of Iscariot, who was transfer-listed by The Disciples XII, because of unspecified “disciplinary issues”. “He has all the disloyalty and chronic disregard for decency and morals a player needs to succeed at this level,” barked Allardyce.
Meanwhile, Hull are negotiating a £15 million transfer fee for Tony the Tiger, despite recent allegations Mr. the Tiger mauled American six year-old Jimmy Samburg over an unfinished bowl of breakfast cereal. Even if the deal goes through Mr. the Tiger doesn’t seem keen on the move, explaining to a reporter last week that Hull’s chances of staying up this year “…aren’t grrreeeaat!”
For the Bloomsday that’s in it: Short film by Bórd Scannán na hEireann in which Beckett and Joyce hack around a golf course while waiting for someone. The language is a bit colourful…
I stayed up ‘til 4-ish last night to watch the Lakers seal the NBA championship with a Game 5 win over the Magic in Florida.
I would’ve posted up a YouTube clip of the defining moment – another spectacular three from D-Fish, a well-worked alley-oop or a Junior Sky Hook from Kobe. But there was no eye-catching moves; no shrug, and no shot.
Winning in Orlando, there was no Jack Nicholson to rush the floor at the buzzer, no Di Caprio, Spike Lee, cast of Entourage or hip-hop stars to celebrate in Hollywood. English golfer Ian Poulter was courtside however.
Perhaps that’s why watching Kobe complete a personal quest to lead a Shaq-less LA to a Finals win, witnessing one of the great statistical performances in their history, was dimmed by the anti-climactic denoument.
Bryant failed to provide a sound-byte of ostentatious skill to add to American basketball’s sporting folklore which is written in a hyperbolic vernacular and bold font.
But he took care of business – hitting 30 points to claim his fourth NBA title and the MVP award. Job done.
Wouldn’t the haka be even more intimidating if Joe Rokocoko et al did it in the nip?
At the weekend in Dunedin, New Zealand a grup of students held their annual nude egg-chasing event to celebrate the start of the Test rugby season.
The game was disrupted when a ‘streaker’ , above, was chased and wrestled to the ground by the players.
Like many, my youth was scarred was by a dependency on the crystal meth of soccer manager computer games, Championship Manager, on the old Amiga.
My family and a team of priests (is that the collective noun?), thankfully, staged a violent intervention and after a difficult de-programming I’ve lapsed only once in a decade; bringing Reading to an unlikely Championship victory with the mercurial George O’Callaghan rewarding my faith in him with a season to remember, since you ask.
I know of a guy who wore a full three-piece suit for a UEFA Cup Final during a stint hooked on Football Manager 2008. Another played the distinctive Champions League music on a tape recorder before every European Cup game.
However, I’ve just read something that trumps it all. Behold Run of Play liveblog a Football Manager Champions League Final. Superb.
I spent a bit of one-on-one time with Stephen Hunt this week in Dublin. He’s just as you imagine him and a reporter’s dream as has been noted.
As well as making clear his opinion on the depressing and soporific Stephen Ireland saga and freaking out a bit when told Sky Sports News may have suggested he handed in a Reading transfer request Hunt admitted, though Roy Keane is his hero, he won’t play for him while he’s in charge of Ipswich Town. this year at least. Read the rest of this entry »
Robert Kennedy is 31 years dead this week.
Here the Senator – campaigning in New York – meets Cork hurling legend Christy Ring in the famous Gaelic Park.
There was many a home on Cork city’s northside, where I’m from, with a picture of Ring and a Kennedy – more likely Bobby’s brother, of course – above the mantlepiece. A portrait of the Pope may have made up a familiar triumvirate.
RFK, was shot dead on June 4, 1968, just hours after he won a huge step towards the White House with victory in the Democratic primary in California.
He addressed some supporters and media in the early morning of the next day at LA’s Ambassador Hotel.
Leaving the large ballroom, through the busy kitchen, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, opened fire and shot the candidate. Kennedy died soon after.
Ring lived just under a decade after this point; he passed in March 1979. Ring’s graveside oration in Cloyne was delivered by a former Rebel and Glen Rovers teammate and the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch – who had met Bobby’s brother John in Cork City Hall in 1963, incidentally.
Many have guessed, through the years, what Mackey said to Ring in that famous GAA photograph depicting two old enemies captured in conversation on the sideline. I’d like to know what Bobby said to his new friend on the Gaelic Park turf.
