April 2010

“‘Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion… no, make that: he — he romanticised it all out of proportion. Yes. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.’ No, no, corny, too corny for a man of my taste. Can we… can we try and make it more profound?” — Woody Allen, Manhattan.

I remember growing up — and this wasn’t long ago — listening to football matches on the radio. Close your eyes momentarily and remember a greener land
unscarred by throbbing neon-fronted head shops; where Lady Gaga was what happened when we had an apparition in Ballinspittle, where a Grand Slam was like Poll Tax — something we knew they had across the water.

In this simpler, narrowband world young football fans like me had to sit atop the kitchen counter and — using a fork as an aerial, don’t ask — try to tune in BBC’s Five 5Live. It wasn’t quite School Through the Fields but it probably sounds as quaint to the present generation of computer literate soccer nuts.
I recall listening during the hours after Ireland famously beat Italy in Giants Stadium in 1994. We obviously got to watch that one. The TV set seemed to wobble on its legs when Ray Houghton’s lob dropped in to Pagliuca’s net like a cuckoo’s egg, sparking an ear-drum-bursting response from 80,000 Catholics in New Jersey.

That night, Danny Kelly — broadcasting from Broadway — kicked off his excellent show, I recall, with Rhapsody in Blue, before segueing gracefully into Subterranean Homesick Blues.

I knew nothing, at the time, as I happily slurped down another bowl of soggy Coco Pops, of Messrs Gershwin and Dylan. But I understood the shorthand: welcome to New York.

That day 40,000-ish Irish fans filled busses on 42nd Street and train carriages and rattled out to Meadowlands on a day when the heat melted the green onto Irish backs and dehydration was served up for three bucks in plastic containers. Another leg in the adventure but this one played on Manhattan’s real-life sound stage.

Those of us not there that day will not now get the chance to do the same in the old stadium.

This week Giants and Jets fans took the first look at their new address for Sunday afternoons — the new $1.6 billion, 82,500-seat Giants Stadium in New Jersey. The site of one of Irish football’s greatest victories is buried, like an old battleground — beneath the rubble of a half-demolished stadium across the street. If there’s a neat allegory there, I don’t want to fish it out.

It was only a few months ago that the demolition of the old stadium began when a metal claw bit chunks from the cement helix. Dust clouds poured into the Meadowlands air as concrete and metal spokes poked through the shredded facade.

The stadium was just merely 34 years old and was perfectly fit for purpose. But in that most American way, it was decided to tear it down and start again.
Renewal, renewal, renewal. It’s surprising they haven’t replaced the Statue of Liberty with something with bigger conference space.

Just like the renowned and idiosyncratically beautiful Yankee Stadium which went the same way recently and the Mets’ Shea Stadium, New York slipped Giants Stadium off its shoulders like an out-of-fashion overcoat from Fifth Avenue, before a new ‘facility’ was tacked together right across the street.

The Citifield is now home to the Mets — who are on an impressive winning streak this season — while the Yankees won a World Series last year; their first season on the other side of the road in Queens, like a growing hermit crab leaving its ill-fitting shell behind.

For me as a stadium nerd, there are, few pleasures in life more exciting than a great sports ground in the pregnant hour or two before a much-anticipated event; Croke Park last November, Semple Stadium in June, the Bernebeu whenever you want. A friend’s father — who visited the Camp Nou, jokes whenever Barca games are on TV: “I wonder who’s sitting in my seat?” I know what he means.

Conversely too, when you bounce onto a bench in a grand old stadium, you can trace back all the goals and tackles and wins and defeats that have played out in that precious parcel of real estate in front of you, before you got there. It’s why Beatlemaniacs converge in the Cavern in Liverpool — though experts will tell you that that was essentially moved down the street too.

A colleague — the kind who always has an Ireland match ticket to buy or sell — sent me a link to the full Panini 1990 sticker album online this week. It’s like a family album. All your old friends are there. — Hagi, Scifo, a young Maldini, McGrath.

We’ll make some more this summer of course — but we’ll be watching on telly or listening to the radio. But then we can invite them back to our new place. It’s almost time to get settled into our new seats.

Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

You climb out of bed in the morning to survey the trail of destruction already zig-zagging to the half-open front door. You summon the courage to slowly peel open another credit card bill. You remember that favour you promised to do for a friend today. Pulling at your pyjama leg, you suspect the universe may be hinting heavily at a return to bed.

Then you take a call and afterwards you’re just glad you still have a full team.

Like any teenager, sometimes Toyosi Shittabey just plugged into his music as his coach pointed the car homewards after another tiring training session. But Majiek Tarnogrodzki still missed the quiet presence in the passenger seat of his car last Sunday week, as he headed to his side’s first game without his little number six.

The 15-year-old was stabbed to death while walking home from the National Aquatic Centre on Good Friday.

“I used to pick up Toy – we called him Toy – at the Tyrellstown roundabout, and take him to training on Tuesdays and Thursdays and back again afterwards,” the coach says.

“He wasn’t a very talkative boy. He was a quiet boy. To be honest, it was difficult at the beginning. I actually thought he was a little cheeky at the start. But after a while – and I’m not saying this because he’s dead – seriously, he was a person with a good heart, he was very tough and strong.”

The little Nigerian boy buzzing around the Tolka Park centre circle was certainly tough. Invited to Drumcondra after impressing with the African diaspora’s team Insaka-Ireland FC, he quickly marked himself out as a star in the making.

Friends remember him as one who was always brave in the tackle – but both more importantly, also possessing what John Giles would call ‘moral courage’.

Tarnogrodzki – a 35-year-old Polish man – remembers one early incident in Toy’s time in the famous red of Shels, which would perhaps foreshadow the young Nigerian’s life.

“When we started the season, there was an incident; there was a fight on the pitch – which Toy didn’t start,” he says. “But he came in and was helping the person. Typical. He always looked out for the weaker person. And it’s maybe the same that happened in the end.”

And with another young life, so too a bootbag of dreams is lost. Friends say he hoped to one day represent his country: Ireland. “As a footballer – Toy had a lot of potential. He was still small because he was 15 – slim but very strong and with very good endurance,” says Tarnogrodzki. “See, people don’t know that he was one of the best at cross country too – he could run all the time, he’d just keep going.

“But just before his death I put him on the wing because I wanted to play someone who’d pass in the centre. And he had this drive to go and beat the players and I thought it might suit him. He made lot of progress.”

But how many talented flames have been dimmed by adolescence’s haze. Maybe that would’ve happened here, but Toyosi certainly wanted it enough. And in his personal chauffeur – on the nights he didn’t slip on headphones and furtively text friends – he, also, had a private tutor.

“I spoke with him all the time. Of all my boys, I knew he took it seriously. I knew he went to bed on a Saturday night at 11. Sometimes I see the boys go out with their friends and come back at one or two. But I knew he was very committed. He wanted to make it.

“In the car, he didn’t speak much. I’d talk to him about mistakes on pitch, what to work on. And we were speaking about life sometimes too. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes he listened to his music on his mobile and I’d listen to the radio. Normal, I suppose.”

After his young teammates saw Toy’s coffin – draped in the Shels jersey – buried the Thursday after Easter, they turned towards a weekend of football once again. Admirably, they insisted on togging out – they had their reasons. But without an engine, the team stuttered.

“Toy’s funeral was really, really tough. The boys wanted to play the game on the Sunday for their friend. But we lost the first game after a six-game run – five wins and a draw.

“They are doing okay, I would say. But even on a sports level, we miss him. He was our fighter. But it’s my job to motivate the team isn’t it?”

The violent death of such a young and popular member of the community sparked a thunderous outcry. At a rally in Dublin city centre, Abisoye Shittabey explained that her cousin had earned the ultimate call-up.

“God wanted a football player for his team in heaven. He looked down and said Toyosi Shittabey,” she said, “So God took him by the hand. You are safe where you are… in God’s care.”

But as Tarnogrodzki could explain to God – it’s the other players he should be worried about. The new signing is a fighter.

Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

Tis column first appeared in the print version of the Irish Examiner.

Isn’t it funny how often, a seemingly innocuous trigger like the distinctive scent of drying paint will, without warning, jerk you back to a certain time and place.

The first well-worn bars of an old, familiar song half heard above the bustle in a busy high-street shop sends memories tumbling uninvited into your head. A stranger’s turn of phrase brings to mind an old friend. Whatever.

For me it’s Neil Delamere’s voice. I once sat in a college canteen (in fact, I sat in a few, and for longer than I should have, kids) watching a lunch-time performance by the midlands comedian and voice of the Lotto ads.

Predictably, he tried to engage with an obviously drunk female student who was swaying over her £3 dinner special. It went like this:
Neil Delamere: what’s your name?
Girl: music.
Delamere: how long before you graduate?
Girl: music teaching.

Now every time I hear a commercial for a Euromillions rollover jackpot, I can feel the mushy peas snorting out my nose once again as I laugh.

Sitting in front of the telly, like everyone else on Tuesday night, watching Arsenal defender after Arsenal defender chase Barcelona’s little number 10, as if the end credits were rolling on the Benny Hill Show, I was transported back to another place and time: the postcard perfect fishing town of Kinsale in the county of Cork. The time? Less than six months or so ago.

While the gorgeous hamlet is renowned for its sophisticated epicurean sensibility and watercolour scenery, for two or three days last winter, and without its knowledge, a little bit of the Buenos Aires street met the salty air. Believe it or not, Leo Messi was in town – and I chased him for two days as unsuccessfully as Arsene Wenger’s boys.

We here in the Irish Examiner learned, later in the week, that after Barcelona were shocked (2-1) by Russian minnows Rubin Karzan in the Champions League group stage on a Tuesday night, the Catalan club chiefs shipped their most valuable asset off on a late flight to this island.

He was then, surreptitiously, we were told, brought to Kinsale by private car. Imagine all those kids tucked up in bed dreaming of Messi’s footwork, and he’s wrapped in the backseat of a cab gazing out at the lights from their quiet homesteads. Santa’s on the roof; and it’s only October.

Due, we understood, to some personal issue (a family bereavement, I think) the Nou Camp bosses decided that the Argentina no 10 could well afford to skip training for the rest of the week. With the help of an Irish sports psychologist – who has oiled the cogs in the minds of many of our own sports stars – he was to get his head right and chill out in Kinsale. Well, if was good enough for Keith Floyd, right?

I was promised 10 minutes with the little dude. Be in Kinsale and have your phone on, I was told. So sipping coffee in the bar of Acton’s hotel with staff photographer Denis Minihane we sat like double agents behind the iron curtain waiting for the code. Instead we waited. (And had another cup of scald and possibly a scone. In fact, I can’t remember what I claimed expenses for, so let’s say I ate lunch as well).

After his four-goal, one-man show against the Gunners, the Catalan daily Sport labelled him “football’s Picasso”. He certainly knows how to draw something out. We sat there for the morning and ultimately our middleman was informed by text that today was not, in fact, to be the day Leo met the De Paper, but come back tomorrow.

But like the Skibbereen Eagle, whose ink has not stained any fingertips for many a year but which once famously warned the Kaiser that it was keeping ‘a beady eye on him’ before the outbreak of World War I, so too the Irish Examiner returned the following morning, to watch over the young king.

It was a Friday morning and I sat with my feet dangling above the water waiting for the call before deciding to stake out his hotel. After chatting to staff and wandering around a bit, still staring at my phone like a teenager at Mass, I was ready to throw in the towel and head to the airport to intercept the flight we suspected he’d be on.

When I saw someone in adidas gear drive an impressive car from the gym in the direction of the separate chalets, I thought I might have found my quarry. He didn’t emerge however and I repaired for the airport. He never showed there either.

Like the final scene in The Commitments, when elusive soul legend Wilson Pickett pulls up in a limo, rolls down the window and asks a passer-by for band manager Jimmy Rabbitte, I like to think that just as I spun off he ran outside, football under his arm, looked up and down the road for me – as promised – and shrugged in disappointment when he saw me scream away.

Never mind; perhaps he thinks of me every time he smells the sea air.

Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This columns first appeared in the print version of the Irish Examiner