But seriously folks… the great man appeared on that weird Italian TV show in which they compell guests endure a lap dance from a gang of young women.
The pics, if you’re so inclined, are here.
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Scene 1
EXTERIOR – ESTABLISHING – EVENING
A small village somewhere in the county of Kildare, a typically Irish landscape on a bright September day.
A young woman skips over an un-swinging gate into a neighbour’s field. Wary of a bullock that lurks in one corner, Maureen pulls her hem above her boots and cuts across the far end and onto the familiar boreen.
She glances at her mobile. The phone screen displays a text from one of the Dublin lads she met in Malaga earlier in the summer. She slips the Nokia back into her pocket.
Spying the local curate clip down the street from the churchyard, hunched over his nine-gear racer, she waves and continues on up the main street and into her father’s little pub.
LONG SHOT – QUIET VILLAGE STREET.
Scene 2
INTERIOR – ESTABLISHING
Some miles away, cosseted in the swooshified luxury that superstars enjoy behind golf’s velvet rope, the world’s most famous athlete is growing bored in a huge hotel room as another Ryder Cup lies mere days away.
ESPN’s SportsCenter rattles out of a bling 80” television. Imported bottled water litters the foreground and Blackberrys, piled in a heap the size of a lambing ewe on a coffee table, make it almost impossible to spot a team of lawyers in identical pinstripe suits. They sit silently on an allotted sofa.
Tiger Woods leans over a putting machine as an agent barks into two smart phones simultaneously. One lawyer, crippled with hunger, sneaks a Petit Filous from his briefcase. As his startled colleagues mouth silent warnings, his eyes dart from his boss to the illicit snack and back again. He attempts to open it furtively.
Woods, quietly and without looking around: “Who the heck is eating yoghurt, guys?
The lawyer, with a baby spoonful of strawberry and blackcurrant to his lips, glances to his friends. Tiger, turning around quickly to face his team of yes-men: “Can’t you see I’m putting here, Eli?”
Addressing his agent: “Can he not see me putting here, Garry? I must be crazy because I thought I was putting here. But obviously not if people are gorging on desserts like it’s the gee gosh last days of the Roman Empire here, for heck sake.”
The agent looks to the sofa of lawyers.
EXTERIOR
Cut to wide shot of lawyer running from plush hotel, zig zagging wildly into an adjacent driving range as if to avoid fire form a window above.
INTERIOR – HOTEL
Agent, in a soothing voice, as he rubs Woods’s back: “Okay Tiger, how about we go for a pint. Real Irish. Mickelson will be so pissed off. You’d like that, right?
Scene 3
INTERIOR – PUB
Camera cuts to a bar as three middle-aged men, in working clothes, sit with their backs to the counter, mouths agape.
Tiger Woods sits in the corner in his full ‘Sunday red’ outfit. His bags were earlier lost in Shannon.
He sits, frantically texting and giggling like a schoolboy on a new Gameboy. His agent stares at the three locals, mystified.
Local 1: “Is it yourself, Eldrick?”
Long pause, as Tigers fires off another text, with his tongue poking out of his mouth.
Local 2: “It’s himself, alright. Concentrating.”
When another man burst through the door, having heard the news of the visitor, a panicking publican – having never had so many customers of a Monday – calls his daughter to help, from the flat above.
SLOW MOTION – SOFT LIGHTING – MUSIC: ANY SNOW PATROL SONG
Tiger’s smart phone falls slowly and dramatically into his untouched pint of Guinness. His and Maureen’s eyes meet. Linger.
Scene 4
INTERIOR – PUB – 5 YEARS LATER
The same three gentlemen sit watching a five-year-old child swing a golf club in a beautiful elliptical arc. They cheer as he shows them an audacious chip from the snug. His grandfather shouts at him, exasperated.
Publican: “Young lad, mind those glasses, they’re the Woods one. I mean, good ones.
Local 1: “Freudian slip, Donal.”
Local 2: “What’s a Freudian slip?”
Local 3: “That’s when you say one thing but you’re actually thinking about a mother.”
Scene 5
15 YEARS LATER – EXTERIOR – ADARE MANOR
The young lad becomes the first amateur to win the Irish Open since Shane Lowry some years earlier. He does so wearing a red polo shirt and a pair of borrowed Nike spikes. The pub locals salute him from the rope, holding pints of porter casually.
In his acceptance speech he says he dedicates the win to his beloved mother in Kildare and the father, whoever he may be.
INTERIOR –LOCKER ROOM
The captain of the European Ryder Cup team seeks out the young lad for chat in the showers, smoking a cigar, which is soon extinguished.
Old pro: “Kid, I’ve got two things to tell you. First of all, your father is Tiger Woods.
PAUSE
“Secondly, you’re on the Ryder Cup team. We leave in 15 minutes. Woosie has the chopper on the roof.”
Scene 6
MONTAGE -– HIGH FIVES – THE SCOREBOARD CLICKS ALONG
The tournament comes down to Tiger versus the young Irish amateur. Woods is once again the home town hero after a long road back from the sex scandals of 2010.
Just as he lines up the putt…
“Mr Woods, I’m your son. Let’s half the hole and go have a beer. Dad.”
Tiger: “Yeah sure kid, get out of the way. This one’s for ‘Merica.”
He hits the putt. It fizzes past the hole.
Suddenly someone in a 1995 Dublin jersey bursts through the crowd. “Jaysis, son, he’s not you’re Da; I am! You’re mudder never text me back after Malaga in ‘06. Hit the putt. For Brussels, wha?
CLOSE UP
The ball circles the hole. Emotion on everyone’s face. It circles some more. And slowly… drops in.
Tiger breaks a four iron across Zach Johnson’s back and storms off.
The End.
Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: adrian.russell@examiner.ie
This column first appeared in the print edition of this morning’s Irish Examiner.
SI.com have a retrospective on Wayne Gretzky at the moment, here.
As the last Democratic primary in 2008 was wrapping up and it became clear Hillary Clinton would not be the party’s presidential nominee, Barack Obama ignored the political analysis of CNN in favour of ESPN on the campaign bus TV.
When he eventually emerged, after watching a documentary on the platinum-plated Lakers-Celtics rivalry of the 1980s, he was inspired to quote the words of the great Magic Johnson: “We don’t cut down the nets for the conference championship,” he shrugged, as all around him celebrated victory.
Well yesterday, letting the relative success of St Patrick’s Day with the bookies go straight to my head, I clipped down the nets, turned off the lights and locked up the gymnasium.
Where before, like Obama in the White House, I surrounded myself with the great minds and expertise — for Warren Buffet and Jimmy Carter read Ruby Walsh and Pat Keane — yesterday I decided to trust my instincts. Because obviously making 46.50 from the turf accountants on Wednesday meant I now had equine instincts.
As you can imagine, reader, it did not start well.
In the Triumph Hurdle at 1.30pm I stuck with Ruby on Advisor with a cheeky 2.50 each way. Confused, I watched as my old friend failure returned to my threshold.
The impressive Soldatino came in on top, with Barry Geraghty. Not the best start. But as Brendan Behan observed “every cripple has his own way of walking” and mine was to limp on unaided, blinkers on, and filtering out the white noise of expert opinion.
Rock Noir (picked for the Cork sporting connotations — The Rockies if mentor Roman Polanski worwearing the bainisteoir bib on the sideline maybe?) went the way of city hurling on Leeside. Maybe I should’ve backed Newtownshandrum Noir…
The less said about Tell Masini in the 2.40pm — a tip I was texted by a colleague who was in the pub wearing a Denman t-shirt, admittedly — the better. But then at last, to our own Larry Bird and Magic Johnson pay-per-view fare. And God knows how my work-mate sat through the Gold Cup next — Denman versus Kauto Star — bedecked in his No 5 paraphernalia in a pub in Waterford. I like to think someone was wearing a Kauto pullover and another an Imperial Commander cowboy hat.
I boast a long record of underdogism. When Kelly and Roche posters wallpapered kids’ bedrooms in the 80s, I was on the lookout for unglamorous water carrier Martin Earley.
I was the kid who watched Wrestlemania III in a kilt and sporran combo and shouted for bad boy Rowdy Roddy Piper, as Hulk Hogan and Andre ‘The Giant’ took top billing. I voted for Lisbon the first time around. And yesterday the unfancied outsider took the plaudits, edging the brave Denman while Kauto Star endured a rough day at the office.
So we’re up to €30 and back in the game.
In the 4.00, I had a feeling about Dun Doire with Nina Carberry but it was just indigestion. The next was a simple pick: Meath All Star. If this horse was to perform like the rough magic of Sean Boylan’s All Star teams of the 80s and early 90s, then we’d have to come back for four or five re-runs — but he’d win in the end. Unfortunately, this time the Royal-sounding horse failed to take the throne.
And so like Larry Bird, we get out a little battered and with a bad back, but still on top. The sports editor’s cobwebby wallet is now one 20 note lighter, and unlike most punters this week, the Irish Examiner’s mugs came out on top in our joust with the layers.
Mugs 3 Bookies 1
Pete Sampras. Andre Agassi. Andre Agassi. Pete Sampras. The two boys. They just don’t really like each other, do they?
What was supposed to be a little bit of fun in the picturesque, laidback Palm Springs this week – a charity doubles game with Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer – quickly turned sour as the mask slipped and the pair’s real feelings for each other were embarrassingly exposed.
Tennis, of course, has often thrown up entertaining duopolies pervaded by a personal rivalry down through the years – I’m thinking McEnroe-Borg, McEnroe-Connors, Chris Evert and Martina, and even now the aforementioned Federer and Nadal – but never have two men’s style and outlook been so different and yet their careers so linked.
It’s like Mozart and Salieri. If that is, Salieri, rather than allow his rival’s success to drive him to the asylum, instead rocked up at to Roland Garros in a tie-die bandana with a punkish entourage, stole the crowd’s heart with swashbuckling tennis and swanned off with not a care – even if he was rarely the No 1 in the 90s.
So what happened a few days ago in a balmy holiday resort, during a fundraiser for Haiti? Well, the end result is that Sampras still hasn’t replied to Agassi’s apologetic text message, even though it was Mr Graf who shipped a serve to the head from Sampras – and he wasn’t even in the one in the serve box.
On the other hand, Agassi, wearing a headset microphone like he’s working in a call-centre, had just accused Sampras of being a lousy tipper, as he pulled out his pockets in the universally understood ‘elephant ears’ style while he shrugged open palmed, saying, not so subtly: “I’m Pete, I have no money”. Sampras visibly seethed as he asked, bouncing the ball aggressively: “Oh the tipping. Really?”
The charge of being tight is also one Agassi serves up in his recent and controversial book Open – but this time, an obviously hurt Perfect Pete was just across the court and in front of thousands. It was certainly the ‘dude violation’ that ESPN memorably described it as, but Agassi was, in fairness, reacting to Sampras’s imitation of his own distinctive pigeon-toed gait.
As the faux air of bonhomie that only exists on episodes of Question of Sport and these charity tennis games was shattered, words were exchanged about ‘getting personal’ while dirty looks were tossed from either side of the net like a Lendl serve and volley.
Neither player attended the post match news conference.
All the while, the other pair in the four-ball were left to stand embarrassed. Federer – the best player ever let’s remember – and Rafa Nadal, Andre’s natural successor, were like a pair of kids strapped into the back seat on the way to the beach, watching bemused as their parents bicker loudly. The argument may have started ostensibly about the best route to Banna Strand, but this is an old wound they’re reopening.
The Federer-Nadal plotline emerged organically and has endured naturally, but Agassi-Sampras was more likely concocted in a meeting room on a spreadsheet than between any chalky tramlines, as tennis gasped for a new rivalry in the drought of 1994.
This, remember, was the year when a Sports Illustrated cover story screamed: “Is Tennis Dying?”
It was a fair question; McEnroe and Connors – headline-generating rivals on a par with Blur and Oasis – had retired a couple of years earlier. Martina Navratilova quit in ’94, while her adversary Chris Evert was long gone. The female stars of the day Monica Seles (stab injury) and Jennifer Capriati (burnout) were off court. Boris Becker was spilling more ink in restaurant cupboards than in newsrooms. And Steffi Graf – now Mrs Agassi of course – endured one of her worst seasons, surrendering her No. 1 ranking to the forgettable Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario.
So tennis needed Sampras-Agassi. And they were to become the two best players of the decade, between them winning 17 Grand Slam titles. But while Pete took the majority (12), Agassi was the one who won hearts and minds.
As he ducked a 100mph Dunlop this week in a knock-about charity game, he must’ve sensed there’s still one he’s failed to capture.
Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell
In Papillon, the epic 1973 film about a pair of criminals sent to French Guiana for a life of hard labour, one of the many mistakes Steve McQueen’s captors make is to give him a butterfly net. When Dustin Hoffman’s near-sighted Dega catches a rare and beautiful blue butterfly, McQueen bargains with a visiting insect dealer for a passage off their tropical island prison.
Yesterday, the sports editor took the pickaxe from my hand, pressed a net into my sweaty, leathery palm, and told me to go catch butterflies at Cheltenham.
Ha! Little did he know that I was to turn his miserly €20 budget into a route off this inky hell.
So to the off. Crowd-sourcing is the newest trend in new journalism – the theory is that (lazy) journalists outsource tasks to a group of people through an “open call” asking for contributions. Sounds good to me.
I text everyone in my phone book from ‘Alan mechanic’ to ‘Zico’s Pizza’ looking for a tip as well as roaring into the echo chamber that is Twitter.
And after spreading yesterday’s newspaper across the kitchen table and circling any potential winners in red biro, like JR Hartley looking for his out-of-print fly-fishing books in that classic Yellow Pages TV advert of yesteryear, I went for Peddlars Cross.
In these straitened times, our budget, like everything else has been reeled in from last year’s €50 to 20. So a modest €2 flutter on the Jason Maguire jockeyed horse in the Neptune Investment Novices Hurdle was enough to wet my beak. Amazingly, he came in and the off-the-shelf misery-dripping intro I usually use was thrown over my shoulder, with a loud guffaw, into the waste paper basket.
My brother’s namesake Davy Russell was next up for me on Weapons Amnesty at 2.40. If I’d known he was owned by budget airline boss Michael O’Leary, I might have checked my slip for extra charges and brought my own bottled water with me. But nevertheless he romped (as they only seem to say in tabloids and horse racing) to victory. Another Ryanair arrival on time, despite a bumpy enough ride. That’s €21 in winnings to add to the €16 earlier. Not quite enough in the kitty yet to perform a well-rehearsed resignation speech on the sports desk, but we’re going in the right direction.
These race meetings are a time when peasant is cheek by jowl with royalty in the queue for the portaloos behind the champagne tent. So then to the regal sounding Kalahari King. A €1.50 each way stake brought in the princely sum of €3.19. Why bother? But then came the redemption for every reader and our own Ruby on Sanctuaire. A still conservative €2.50 each way topped up a good day’s work as I grabbed the chips off the table, tipping my head back and laughing.
However, if you know your 1970s film history, you’ll know Papillon and his accomplice are double crossed by the butterfly dealer. Papillon’s only reward for hard work and ingenuity is betrayal and disappointment.
So I too expected the final fence of the day – the Weatherbys Champion Bumper at 5.15 – to see my final pick failing to place. But as Henri ‘Papillon’ Charriere showed: try, try again. We tried again with Ruby on Al Ferof. He was beaten to second, but another €9 saw us top out the day on €46.51.
Okay, let me make a confession.
I nurse a clandestine habit that has driven me to the coldest and darkest corners of society.
When the house is finally still at night-time, I surreptitiously boot up the computer and, after checking over both shoulders, click into online forums to communicate with like-minded enthusiasts.
I visit specialist shops in the worst parts of town where the attendant nods discreetly as I slip into a familiar back room which holds the more unusual publications.
Yes, I can admit it now – I play the ukulele.
My quaint enthusiasm to what you might think of as a mere toy more than a musical instrument, a comical four-stringed ‘miniature guitar’ drives men like me to huddle together in cyber communities, exchanging the chords for the latest Vampire Weekend single or showing off a blue-grass strumming technique.
It’s a lonely life.
As Billy Connolly once said of the banjo, you never overhear a lusty-eyed woman in a bar lean into a friend and whisper: “See that guy with the banjo? He’s coming home with me tonight.” Rarely too, when someone asks, “Wow, whose car is that!?” is the answer: “Oh the Bugatti? That’s the banjo player’s.”
It’s not a dissimilar tale for the uke.
“Gwat has dish to glooo wick sporth!? I hear you splutter impatiently, dear reader, as bits of milky cornflakes speckle the breakfast bar.
Well, like a rare wild truffle or senior All-Ireland medals in the county of Mayo, us ukuleleists are thin on the ground. Therefore, I’m compelled to, and I’m choosing my words carefully here, jam online – using the free video-call software, Skype – with a greying middle-aged man who lives in a charming wood cabin on the Pacific coast of Oregon.
I thought of my pal (who’ll remain nameless because a. I don’t know if his wife knows he plays ukulele with a red-raw Irish fella on the internet while she’s out at work and b. If he Googles himself he’ll get an awful shock to be in the Examiner) earlier this week when Irish rugby’s two maestros Paul O’Connell and Brian O’Driscoll – presumably Paulie has forgiven his skipper for tripping him with his head in Twickenham – both tweeted about a special treat they enjoyed in camp.
Legendary baladeer Christy Moore offered the squad a private performance in their Dublin hotel on Monday night. Drico even revealed that he was allowed ‘to murder’ City of Chicago. There’s better men crashed on the rocks of that that tricky second verse, BOD.
Anyway the reason I bring it up is because the only Irish artist my friend in Portland ever name checked during our scratchy video calls was Christy. A man who, he appreciated, has built a career on great tunes, an unapologetic political awareness and sweat – plenty of sweat.
You get the feeling actually, given his earthy and creative credentials that Christy would ordinarily, like a lot of us, have a lot of sympathy for the body-swerving, coke-smudged face of Welsh rugby. But probably not tomorrow.
Michael Moynihan of this parish conducted a great interview with Jamie Heaslip last week that was more Smash Hits than Sports Illustrated with the flanker revealing a gra for the likes of Mumford and Sons, Florence and the Machine and my main dude Dizzee Rascal. All right up my street I must say.
But what Heaslip did not mention is that he ‘put his hand up’ and ‘backed himself’ as the oval ball fraternity insist they do and asked the bould Christy to give us a few bars of Dizzee’s modern classic ‘Bonkers’ after he finished up the Lakes Of Ponchartrain.
We can now reveal here that rather than singing that or indeed Dizzee’s breakthrough track ‘Dance Wiv Me’, Christy penned a special song for the rugby lads. Below it is reproduced, in part.
[Heart stopping guitar intro that goes on a bit as he, introduces the song with a story about a wild horse on the Curragh, the 1993 Rose of Tralee and David Campese]
Verse 1
“Oh, Jedward are on the Sky box pulling out the stops,
Joe Duffy’s on a mission, closing down the head shops
there’s a fella from Offaly in charge in Washington,
but Deccie can’t decide between O’Gara and Sexton”
Verse 2
“Now, the Celtic Tiger’s been and gone, it must have been a dream,
Bertie’s on a book tour, he was last seen down in Sneem,
Joxer packed the van for Jo’Burg, he fancied a safari
But Henry stuck the hand out in Paris, and called him a taxi
Yeooow! [Tommy Bowe can’t help but grab the mic]
Chorus
Singing, oooh Lansdowne Rd, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne Rd
Oooh Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne Rd
Don’t forget your shovel if you want to built the Aviva,
Croker’s closed again, so you better get your 10-year corproate ticket, I’m tellin’ ya
Oooh Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne Rd… ”
It probably needs a bit more uke, Christy. But it’s as good as Ireland’s Call already.
Contact adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell
This column first appeared in this morning’s printed Irish Examiner edition.
Heineken İtaly Activation from Kreatif360 on Vimeo.
I don’t usually post advertising, but this is an unbelievable effort from Heineken in Italy.
(Thanks to Stephen O’Leary of O’Leary Analytics)
Weeshie Fogarty is a Radio Kerry DJ and Kingdom legend. Recently, despite the obvious links between Rockafella, Jay-Z and Austin Stacks, Weeshie had some difficulty pronouncing Mrs Jigga’s name after he discovered his sound engineer had gone to Dublin for a gig.
DJ Mek, a man who once stood idly by as I was man-handled by erstwhile hero Ian Brown, has offered us a superb mix of Weeshie’s confused on-air inquiries and a Beyonce track here.
UPDATE: Apparently, as usual, I’m late to the party; my old pal Ciaran Murphy and the Off the Ball Lads were the first to bring this to the country’s attention.
The Sports Illustrated writer Joe Posnanski recently recounted a favourite quote he prodded like loose change from an interview subject.
Louis ‘Red’ Klotz, has the most unenviable jobs in sport; coaching the team that faces the famous Harlem Globetrotters every week.
The Washington Generals (also often known as the New York Nationals) are the journeymen stooges who, game after game, season after season, decade after decade are duped by the same flashy crossover and follow the ball-on-the-string trick like a loyal but obtuse dog teased with a biscuit treat.
In the 58 years since he’s taken charge, Klotz’s teams have beaten the Globetrotters just twice. Amazingly, they’ve lost — wait for it — over 13,000 times.
But Red yet still shelters an un-dimming flicker of hope. This past winter the Globetrotters, a well-oiled organisation more adept at slick marketing and cheap publicity stunts than the ad men of Madison Avenue, announced they’d face the Generals again. But this time on ice.
If Klotz was perplexed at this curious arrangement or fearful for the safety of his boys, he didn’t let on. In fact, he made a foolhardy statement that encapsulates his entire outlook: “We excel on ice”.
Yes, that’s right. After decades playing the pantomime villains and losing every game bar a couple, he thinks ice (ice!) will suit the Generals’ playing style.
With unflinching optimism like that, he must support Sligo Rovers. Or Shels. Or be a season ticket holder at Dalyer. Or any League of Ireland club.
Tonight the Airtricity League kicks off after a 12-round close-season that left even Roddy ‘Queensbury Rules’ Collins punch-drunk. While its players went, scandalously, unpaid, Cork City endured a court-room drama so protracted and convoluted I thought I’d put the Boston Legal DVD back in the Lost box-set. The once great Derry City also dropped a division in a winter of discontent.
But tonight, after all the off-field attrition — though the battle scars are admittedly yet to heal — a football match will break out. And then another. And a few more. It’s perhaps an apposite time to reaffirm some of the many reasons why we love domestic football.
1. The quaint stadia, like the Carlisle Grounds. Bray Wanderers’ home is the only stadium that needed a Hollywood budget to bring it up to 1920s standards with Neil Jordan casting the charming, seaside ground as Croke Park in Michael Collins. The Dart spin is nicer than a Tube journey too.
2. We’re on the way, meet you in… Kennedy’s of Drumcondra; The Black Lion, Inchicore; The Horseshoe on the corner flag in Turner’s Cross Tavern; the Yellow House in Waterford. Wherever.
3. The Aviva Stadium. It looks like Optimus Prime’s foot spa but it’s ours now too. The Palindrome will likely host Bohs and Rovers’ Dublin derby in August. The RDS and elsewhere was grand in the interim but it’ll be good to be knocking about Lansdowne Road again for the big days.
4. Ryanair. You don’t have to pay Michael O’Leary to use the toilet on the way to Flancare Park. Though Longford is like a foreign country sometimes.
5. Jonny Logan. The Eurovision titan’s Hold Me Now was appropriated by Bohs fans after a particularly successful sing-song in a
Stockholm bar. You don’t hear that on English terraces.
6. Terraces! What am I saying? There aren’t any terraces in the EPL. If I wanted to sit in a comfortable seat with affluent middle aged men for an hour and a half I’d queue for a prostate exam in the GP’s waiting room.
7. Gary Lineker’s MOTD puns have ruined more of my Saturday nights than nightclub doormen.
8. Ball was there ref, the ball was there!
9. Neale Fenn’s first touch.
10. Walk away, player!
11. Gary Twigg. The Scottish striker has a haircut that’s heard around the world, but he’s the most natural scorer this side of Ashley Cole.
12. Ashley Cole
13. Friday night football. A pay-slip, a hair-cut and a pint before kick-off is, scientifically, the best start to any weekend, right?
14. Fans’ jokes when UCD visit: ‘Come on lads, these have bleedin’ school in the morning!’
15. Watching a midfielder steaming into a tackle before emerging from puddles of blood and gnawed bone with the ball, then turning to your pal and saying: “I used to have him in my pocket at U15s, ‘member?”
16. Mick Wallace’s Italian renaissance in Wexford. And his Youths side wear pink. Forza.
17. The asterisk; we usually boast more than any other league in the world.
18. Summer football — the sun shines but we excel on ice too.
Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell
“He Marvin Gayed his own nephew. The boss of the family.”
- Vito, (referring to Uncle Junior shooting Tony)
Melfi: “How’d that make you feel?”
Tony: “I wished it was me in there.”
Melfi: “Giving the beating or taking it?”
“There’s an old Italian saying: you fuck up once, you lose two teeth.”
- Tony
“You’re not gonna believe this. The guy killed 16 Czechoslovakians. He was an interior decorator.”
- Paulie
“All due respect, you got no fuckin’ idea what it’s like to be Number One. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other fuckin’ thing. It’s too much to deal with almost. And in the end you’re completely alone with it all.”
- Tony Soprano
Tony: I called you here, ’cause I got something to tell you. From now on, I’m gonna rely on you more and more, ’cause you’re the only one I can fully trust. Sil and Paulie… they’re old friends, but you’re one thing they’re not.
Christopher: What’s that, T?
Tony: Blood. You’re gonna lead this family into the 21st Century.
Christopher: Well, Tony, technically we’re already in the 21st Century…
[Tony looks at him, confused]
Christopher Moltisanti: Forget about it. You won’t regret this, T.
What fucking kind of human being am I, if my own mother wants me dead?
- Tony
There are no scraps in my scrapbook.
- Phil Leotardo
I went to see comedy’s own David O’Doherty in the Pavilion, here in Cork, on Saturday night.
Despite the former Perrier winner not remembering meeting my friends and I in 2004 in a field in Laois, it was a ridiculously enjoyable evening of laughter/muzak. Here’s his ode to the world’s greatest golfer/love-maker.