July 2010

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Get your skates on…

July 30, 2010 in Columns, Sport | View Comments

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Reader, I want you to close your eyes. Go on, shut them tight.

Now, no peeking please, as I bring someone into the room. This week, I want to introduce you to someone I met recently – an exciting new sport that I think you guys might like.

But let’s keep our eyes closed for a moment longer while we describe this stranger.

This sport is full-contact. If the capricious, continental tikka-takka football which is presently fashionable tastes like a saccharine, tiny-parasol-decorated Appletini cocktail, then this unfamiliar new sport is a straight-forward, no-nonsense shot of Micky Finns; explosive and fun.

Hey, I know you like your old friends. So do I! But don’t you think some have left themselves go a little? I mean what are they wearing? Let’s look at the All-Ireland champions in… green and gold? Pfft. Or, what’s this, black and amber stripes? Puhlease!

No, if you like your sports people sketched in glorious Technicolor, with the drawings often straying outside the lines, then you might prefer our cool new friend.

Okay finally, you still insist you’re not gonna rip up that season ticket. Well just think about your favourite sport, whatever it is – now imagine it on wheels. I rest my case.

Ladies and gentlemen, please say hello to… Roller Derby. You didn’t expect that, right?

Played by women, it’s one of the fastest growing games in Europe with over 80 leagues sprouting throughout the continent in the last 10 years. This game’s legend has been etched on the Mount Rushmore of extreme sports along with BMX, skateboarding and inline skating.

After a bloated, 1970s incarnation that was more WWF than Torvill and Dean, some tattooed, disaffected young Texas women re-imagined the sport as rough and brash with a trendy rockabilly swagger. Forget the Barbie-motif roller-skate boots you found under the Christmas tree, girls.

That initial little spark of interest in the Lone Star State sent a wildfire from coast to coast as this new cultural juggernaut inspired books, reality TV shows and the recent Hollywood movie Whip It. Soon the phenomenon spread to Europe. And now, at last, Mná na hEireann have strapped on a set of wheels and joined the rest of the globe in the circle. Showtime.

Just three months ago, Rhona Flynn, an ‘out-of-work seamstress’ resolved, with a handful of other local girls, to start a new league on Leeside to match nascent teams in Dublin and Belfast.

The group tacked a few posters on pub walls, logged a new email account and set up a Facebook page for prospective members. Today, we’re standing in the large gymnasium of Mayfield’s sports centre on the city’s northside.

It’s Sunday lunchtime and two dozen women lap the space as a stopwatch keeps time. The whirr of wheels is punctuated by the odd shriek-and-thud. Just another fall. The Meath-born woman patiently explains the rules to a novice – and people’s reaction to the crazy hobby. “The big questions tend to be: ‘what’s the point of it? How do you score points? Why is there no ball?’ You tend to leave out the words full-contact when describing it to family. But people kind of get it pretty quickly. I’ve heard people describe it as rugby on roller skates if that helps people get a picture.

“But it’s quite an American sport as well – there’s a lot of fun and music and parting around it too. It’s great craic,” she says.

In a game, five girls line up in each team at the beginning of the 60-minute proceedings. Points are scored by one member on each team ‘the jammer’ – the other four help her to get around the track to score and stop the opposition’s jammer from circumnavigating the arena.

A missionary from Ireland’s skating Mecca, Christine Allen is presently undertaking plenty of technical instruction with her new teammates.The Ballybunion native – now a journalist on Leeside – forged her impressive skills in the kitsch hot-house of the town’s famous roller-disco.

“Most of the population of Ballybunion would know the basic skills of skating. A regular summer job could involve skating up the town. So I used to do a lot of skating, which is why I can’t swim – I spent too much time on skates,” she says.

“So the disco closed down and I hadn’t skated in about 10 years but my boyfriend bought me a pair of skates a couple of Christmases ago. And then I heard that this crowd had started up again and I was off.”

Twins Bernadette and Maria Wills free wheeled onto the scene from a skateboarding and snowboarding background. Finishing each other’s sentences, they explain that the Rebel County Rollers are a broad church.

“We’re all coming from different backgrounds – some people have never been on skates before while others are very sporty but not necessarily on wheels,” says Maria. “People just think it’s a load of girls on roller skates bashing the crap out of each other – it’s much more that.”

Adds Bernadette: “But it is tough – and it’s endurance too – after a two-hour session here you’d be sweating buckets. It’s a serious game but there’s probably a stigma attached to it. When you think roller skates you think childhood and you think fun – but it is hard core.”

Tough, fun and confident – I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

* The Rebel County Rollers host their fundraising launch party in Cork’s Crane Lane Theatre from 8pm tonight.

Adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first appeared in the print versio of the Irish Examiner

Why Fergie time is always ahead of the game

July 23, 2010 in Columns, Football, Rugby, Sport, Uncategorized | View Comments

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With the smell of drying paint in my nostrils and freshly-laid grass under my feet, I giddily surveyed the new Lansdowne Road stadium when it swung open its just-hung doors recently.

The elegant structure floats above the capital’s skyline and is as impressive inside as out. There’s room for 50,000 sports fans – and space for 50,000 pairs of legs to stretch out towards the sideline in the wide, comfortable rows of British-racing green seats.

The Aviva – if you’re going to call it that – boasts better media facilities than Montrose, Shane MacGowan will no doubt write stanzas about the length of the bars and the pitch doesn’t look too bad either.

However, like Gaudi’s famous Sagrida Familia cathedral in the heart of Barcelona, it’s beautiful but is unfinished. Or seems (italics) unfinished, at least.

Like a Celtic Tiger imagining of Hill 16, one end offers a mere 3,000 spaces, which are framed by a glass-like wall behind. Many a drop kick or wayward Leon Best shot will bounce back onto the turf after hitting its transparent tiles.

Compelled to fold the new stadium into an existing patch of expensive real estate in Ballsbridge the architects cut their cloth to measure. But though the flow of the undulating structure is broken at one curva by the shallower end, at least the opposition will feel the warm breath of Ireland’s soccer and rugby fans on their necks when they visit Dublin’s southside.

I spoke with two economists this week who explained – very slowly – to me, research that which showed that referees officiating in stadia with running tracks around the pitch are less likely to give hometown decisions and play less added time when the home side is drawing or losing.

Croke Park is magnificent obviously. But when the tenants from D4 lined out in an area too big for their specific purposes, some of the atmosphere was lost. It was only – I’d suggest – the Italy and France games last autumn that saw the football crowd find their full voice at last in Drumcondra.

And as that immeasurable commodity – atmosphere – is leaked into the dark Dublin sky, so too the referee is less affected.

Last month, I wrote of research that Robbie Butler – a lecturer in the economics department of University College Cork – and his brother David, a commerce student in the college had presented to the FAI on the effect a child’s birth day has on participation rates in soccer. The response from readers was impressive.

So when Robbie offered to talk me though their work on so-called Fergie Time, we put on another pot of coffee.

When the Aviva hosts its first soccer game in less than two weeks’ time, Alex Ferguson will be patrolling the touchline. A meaningless friendly against a Damien Richardson-managed Airtricity League XI, the Manchester United boss is unlikely to spring from the bench after 90-odd minutes and point at his famous wrist watch. When he goes – for he must someday – surely the statue outside the Stretford End they’ll erect of him outside the Stretford End will be cast in a wrist-watch-tapping pose.

Nevertheless, it was this habit of constantly querying additional minutes – and United’s perceived talent for scoring late, late goals, in particular Federico Macheda’s vital winner against Aston Villa – that prompted Robbie to examine the economics of added time.

“What we did is collected data from the BBC website for the 2009-2010 Premier League season,” says Robbie, as he leafs through pages of datea he’s thrown on the table in front of us. “It’s all there. So that’s every match in the season, that’s the amount of goals in the game because we thought that was important. It’s all the home teams first — who was winning, drawing, losing on 90.

“What the score was at 90, the margin, the actual outcome, the amount of subs, the amount of added time.

“It took me a few weeks — I should’ve been doing my PHD maybe but I enjoy doing it,” he laughs.

The new Aviva Stadium at Lansdowne Road

And, after hours of slogging over a hot keyboard and collating data neatly and carefully, the results were instructive.

“What was very interesting was what we found if you look at the tale when the home team is winning; on average, there was four minutes, 22 seconds added. When they were losing there was four minutes, 27 seconds and when they were drawing there was four minutes, 30 seconds. And that’s what you’d hope to find — that suggests there’s no bias. They’re playing roughly the same amount of time whether you’re winning or drawing or losing. So we were really happy when we found that. The next step was asking do the big teams get a bias?”

Robbie and Spurs fan David’s ‘hunch’ is backed up by the stats. “You want to get more time when you’re drawing obviously and look at who we have,” he says pointing at one end of a bar graph, “Arsenal, Man City, United, Chelsea, Tottenham. They get over five minutes when they’re drawing.

“And then look at the graph for when they’re losing — Arsenal, Hull (they had Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink knocked unconscious for 10 minutes and Jimmy Bullard broke his leg – skewing the figures, interestingly), Spurs, Chelsea, Man City, and Liverpool. Again the bigger teams get more time when they’re losing.”

So the myth is true. Fergie time exists.

“Ferguson and (Arsene) Wenger are the ones unhappy with the situation regarding added time, amazingly, and the exact opposite should be true,” says Robbie. “Ferguson is beyond rules. He’s untouchable and to be fair to him, he’s created that himself. He once said ‘we don’t lose a game we just run out of time’.”

But it takes the sands in United’s hourglass that bit longer to run out, we now know for sure.

adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first appeared in the print version of the Irish Examiner newpaper

‘Kelly’s gonna get it… Kelly gets it…’

July 23, 2010 in Cycling, Sport | View Comments

The beloved Eurosport cycling commentary team tried to prod some memories of this particular race – the famous Milan-San Remo – from the very modest Sean Kelly during the Tour coverage yesterday. He was pretty circumspect about his last real win in a classic, as you’d expect.

It’s worth a watch. What a complete hero.

Really cool update: German Eurosport posted up a video today of Kelly climbing the Tournalet on a 100-year-old bike with wooden wheels and old skool cycling gear.

With co-commentator David Harmon hanging out the window of a comfortable car, laughing, it’s not the Carrick man’s ideal way to spend the rest day, I’m sure.

Out in the cold but Reid still oozes class

July 16, 2010 in Columns, Football, Sport | View Comments

They say on the Semple Stadium turf you’re never a boy. Always a giant. So too perhaps in Thomond Park. On that particular piece of acreage in that particular corner of the province, it’s never a friendly. Always a battle.

But maybe not on Tuesday night. If the Munster crowd are famed for putting in as much as a shift as their famous front row, on this occasion they were off the clock.

The Shane Geoghegan Trust had brought the Premier League glitz of Sunderland to take on a selection from the region. The china was laid out. The best wine served first. Limerick was impressive.

Reds flanker David Wallace patrolled one corner of the pitch that was coned off for a mini rugby game between kids before the kick off. Nearby a little, thunder-and-lightning hurling tie was engrossing another section of the west stand. Black Cats striker Kenwyne Jones threw an O’Neill’s football back to a school kid after it rolled from their designated corner in amongst the Sunderland squad who were happy to warm up behind the goals.

When the players were sufficiently warm, I sat in the west stand of Thomond Park, watching Andy Reid feel his way into the first 45 minutes of his season – after a long interruption to his career with injury – I was reminded of that Billy Crystal film Mr Saturday Night, which I watched recently. The movie depicts a New York stand-up comedian’s rise to giddy fame – from working the clubs to TV stardom – until he shrugs on the cloak of comedy royalty.

Early in the film a lovely montage shows Crystal and his brother stand in front of the fireplace cracking wise, sharing gags and performing little histrionic sketches while the extended family on the couch roar their approval. Salty tears of laughter stain the living room carpet and peals of laughter fill the street outside.

Years later, when Crystal’s character is standing side-stage before another mega-watt weekend performance in front of a loyal and large audience, his now bitter brother – after backing out of a comedy club gig with his sibling years earlier due to nerves – grabs the star by the lapels and spits: this could’ve been me.

His brother’s response is cool: “You were funny, but you were sitting-room funny.”

Maybe Andy Reid is like that. He oozes class in the centre of the Limerick city turf. He drops back in front of Anton Ferdinand, demanding the ball, turns balletically after he receives it and toes it a foot in front of him before spraying a truly-struck pass 40 yards into the path of his winger. The kid is good. But is he big-time good?

He’s always been one of my favourites. When he was younger you could’ve taken his future to the bank. As a Nottingham Forest lad, settled in after a move from Cherry Orchard, he was a City Ground favourite.

I was at a live Last Word preview night of the Munster final in The Groves of Blackpool, in Cork last Friday night. It descended very quickly into arch parochialism; like when one attendee addressed the panel of Donal O’Grady, John Allen, Joe Deane and Dave Bennett thus: ‘Matt, can I ask you why you have two southsiders on your panel and no one from the northside?’

But before Leeside’s hurling fraternity cannibalised itself live on national radio in a haze of Glen Rovers/Na Piarsiagh needling, the room was almost united in criticism of some perceived slight a Kilkenny legend had inflicted on Cork’s players last season. One man took the mic with purpose and said: “Matt, will you tell Eddie Keher that, when he comes down here, he better check his change at the bar – because he might get an All-Ireland medal instead of a euro by mistake, there’s so many around.”

So too in Nottingham, a medium-sized provincial town — where they were used to walking into Brian Clough’s brother’s suburban newsagents and seeing Ol Big Head behind the till selling the local paper and the European Cup trophy on the counter. This town knows its footballers; and Reid was voted a Forest legend.

From there he went to Spurs, a sophisticated London club with a penchant for Hoddles and Gazzas. But as the writer Cyril Connolly said: whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.

After a detour to Charlton, he’s now well-established in the north-east. He pulled back the curtain this time last year and re-introduced himself after a concerted fitness programme. Now after coming back from a long lay-off he looks more Weight Watchers than weighted pass, again. But he still has it.

During RTÉ’s World Cup coverage he appeared on one Aprés Match sketch, as ‘Brian Kerr’ tried to recruit the exiled Irish star for the Faroe Islands. “Would you be interested in coming to play up in the Fairies? You’re guaranteed your place, we’ve only got eight full-time players and three fish,” Kerr says.

After the game in the press conference room under the east stand, a 2-1 win in the bag, Steve Bruce sat back and blew his cheeks out when asked for the umpteenth time about Reid’s continued exclusion from the Ireland set-up.

“I don’t think it’s going to happen, do you?” he sighed.

No, probably not. But he deserves the chance to prove he’s Mr Wednesday night for Ireland, one more time.

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

Adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

The alternative World Cup awards

July 12, 2010 in Features, Football, Sport | View Comments

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The Golden Boots
What has eight legs and pretends to know about football before each big World Cup game? No, not the Match of the Day pundits – Paul the Oracle Octopus, of course. In every World Cup we witness a star emerge from the shadows; think Schillachi in 1990. This year the German mollusc has picked the correct winner in each of the Mannshaft’s games. When Jogi Low’s boys crashed out in the semi-finals – as his tentacles had earlier indicated – he received death threats and aquarium staff said he was exhausted. If you’d followed his betting advice you’d be squids in however.

R Keane award for dressing room pep talk
Step forward Nicholas Anelka, whose clinical offering to inept Le Bleus coach Raymond Domenech sparked a French revolution: “Go screw yourself you dirty son of a whore.” Quelle catastrophe – but, silver lining, it’s the most Nico has said in many, many years.

Best Headline
“See you on Sunday”. What’s the German for shadenfreude – German sub editors taunt their Dutch archrivals after the Oranje clinched their final spot, and hours before Spain eliminate Klose et al.

The golden vuvuzela for worst commentary
ITV’s Clive Tylesley can take a bow son, after his over enthusiastic comments on the English referee Howard Webb and his two linesmen. Clive peppered his thoughts on the actual football with praise for Webb’s whistling and the ‘great flags’ from the assistants. He then let his followers know htat he is more passionate about the trio in black than the three lions.

The Milla – In recognition of iconic goal celebration
After years of performing the Thomas Brolin-copyrighted twirl-and-punch combo after a one-foot tap-in, it’s time to mix it up I think. Landon Donovan signed a million endorsement cheques with his goal against Algeria but his enthusiastic slide into the corner had Jurgen Klinsmann spinning in his Cape Town hotel room. So, for originality it has to be David Villa’s matador-like flourish of the right arm. Good for tourism too.

The Silver Earplugs
Whatever you think, the drone of plastic has been the baseline to this World Cup’s beat. But don’t expect them to sweep the sports world. Bray Wanderers – as you’d expect – led the way and banned the horns from the Carlisle Grounds. Then Wimbledon, the rugby World Cup, the Ultimate Fighting Championship followed suit before the United Arab Emirates’ General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments issued a fatwa against vuvuzelas if they exceed 100 decibels, which they usually do. Which reminds me of a Salman Rushdie joke… never mind.

The we told you so moment – to be presented by Paul McShane
Sepp Blatter mocked our desperate and eventually pathetic pleading after our Parisian trauma. So to see him have to sit, red-faced, as Frank Lampard was denied a perfectly good goal on the biggest stage had the Boys in Greens high-fiving on the couch. Afterwards the FIFA chief seemed to accept it’s time to stick in a few cameras.

The corner-flag award for mis-firing striker
Messi scored no goals but he was the driving force behind Argentina getting as far as they did. So for me it’s between old pals Ronaldo and Rooney. Ronaldo however has just revealed he’s a daddy – to Cristiano Jr – so we can’t accuse him of firing blanks. And he did score against North Korea (who didn’t). So step forward Sir Wayne – as you were depicted in hose Nike adverts – you’re the biggest flop.

The Uninvited Guest
More than 30 attractive young ladies turned up at the Netherlands’ opening match wearing orange mini-dresses emblazoned with the name of Dutch brewery Bavaria NV, which has made a habit of ambush marketing at the World Cup. Two were arrested, but they were sprung after Bavaria agreed to keep its clever marketing minds otherwise occupied until 2022 — unless, of course, Bavaria happens to shell out big bucks to be an official sponsor.
But surely the gong has to go to Pavlos Joseph, a disgruntled England fan who ended up in the team dressingroom after the Algeria game after he went in search of a toilet. He gave David Beckham a piece of his mind before confusing a naked Joe Cole with his presence. Football eh? Blood hell.

Gone, baby, gone

July 11, 2010 in Basketball, Sport | View Comments

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Here’s an understatement; by now, LeBron James’ DECISION has been well raked over.

I don’t need to add to the white noise. But I thought the above front page from the Cleveland Plain Dealer (great newspaper title) was worth a post. Print media still does some things right.

For those who can’t read the small print linked to his right hand – it says “Seven years in Cleveland, no rings”.

For some great analysis of his move to Miami, the way it was handled and the Cavs owner’s public meltdown check out this piece by Joe Posnanski, where I also first saw the above image.

And there’s some fan reaction here. and here

As well as some class Twitter reactions here.

When destiny is an accident of birth

July 9, 2010 in Columns, GAA, Sport | View Comments

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As our little country feels the bony fingers of the IMF on our shoulder and the cold winds of financial oblivion against our grubby face, we are often lectured — throughout the media — by so-called ‘self-made men’.

These millionaire business people, known to us all, proclaim to have pulled themselves from nothing, leaning on no-one in the journey and boasting no early advantage. This, of course, is nonsense.

Every one of us has enjoyed a certain leg-up (education, interested parents, opportunity, privilege, whatever). None have arrived at this current destination in an empty carriage. Like a good, innocuous referee — sometimes we don’t notice the advantages.

Even if you don’t scan the star signs at the back of the daily paper, it is true that in sport, your birthday is one hidden factor in success — or indeed failure. Here’s a random passage from a match report this paper carried after the Ireland U19 team’s recent 1-0 defeat to their English counterparts. However, for our purposes, using a tactic the writer Malcolm Gladwell used once, I’ve substituted the players’ names for the months of their births.

“Ireland started the second half positively again looking to make their dominance count on the scoreboard. The Irish back four of March, July, March and January comfortably dealt with England’s attacking threat.

“January was again involved and he came agonisingly close in the 48th minute, when August played a quick corner to January but his first-time shot whizzed to the right of the post.”
Notice anything? Don’t worry if you didn’t, no-one did for a long time.

I met two UCC researchers this week over a cup of coffee in the college’s Student Centre who say that footballers born in the early part of the year are more likely to be selected to play at an elite level.

Robbie Butler of UCC’s Department of Economics and his younger brother, David, a final-year Commerce student in the college pushed pie charts and bar graphs which depict a dramatic bias towards those born earlier in the year, across the table.

“Where it originally came from is schooling,” Robbie, who plays with Waterford Crystal in his hometown, says, “Guys started to look at when kids went to school. Obviously school starts in September — so kids born in June are probably older than kids born in November that just turned four or five. So they found that kids that were older, just by a few months, were better at school.

“But the strange thing is that over time it lessens and levels off — and the reason they think that is because school is compulsory. And because you’re not allowed to leave what you see is a convergence — people actually start to catch up with each other.

“But the problem with sport is that it’s very, very easy to leave. Something that you find initially difficult because a guy on the opposing team is so much bigger, is easy to walk away from.”

So how does this affect the country’s kids on a Saturday morning?

Most athletes begin playing their sports when they are quite young. Naturally enough, since youth sports are organised by age, the leagues impose a cut-off date. The soccer leagues of here and across Europe use December 31 as the fateful day.

Now, imagine that you coach a team of kids and are assessing two players for the centre-forward position. One was born on January 1, the other on December 31. Both technically, the same age — let’s say nine — but actually one year apart. And at that age, an extra 12 months growth confers a huge advantage.

So though you’re seeing maturity rather than real ability, it doesn’t matter much if you’re aiming to win the district league or avoid relegation. It’s not in the club’s or coach’s interest to pick the skinny kid who might just be a star given some extra time and coaching.

Thus the cycle begins. The younger kids on the sideline in the rain drop out eventually and pick up a hurley or guitar, and the slightly older lads — or those naturally big anyway — keep on kicking and rushing.
The brothers presented their findings to interested members of the FAI last week.

“We spoke to High Performance Director Wim Koevermans and John Morley (U16 manger) and we admit no matter when the cut-off is you’re going to have bias towards another period in the year. But the trick is to try to reduce it,” explains David, who coaches underage teams himself.

“Now the biggest problem in soccer in this country,” adds Robbie “is that we expect kids to play on the same size pitch as the World Cup final this weekend. And it’s ludicrous.

“Therefore if you’re big and strong there’s a reward. You can kick the ball far and you’re facing a 4ft keeper in a goal that’s 8ft-high. And these big kids start to think — hey, I’m a good player; it’s called the Pygmalion effect. So we said you have to change the environment; make the pitches smaller and the goals smaller.

“If you do that — there’s still going to be a bias, it’s still better to be bigger, of course — but the advantage is considerably reduced.

“And the FAI are great at coaching camps and lovely little drills but then you get out onto a pitch and you might as well be playing golf — it’s a completely different sport. It’s a coordination problem — the coach wants to win — we all do. The U11 league decider against the old enemy, with parents on the line or whatever.
“But this needs to be about development.”

The pair are full of theories and ideas about this fascinating problem, which they have identified so expertly. But we break up the chat as I’m off to play a five-a-side game.

“What month were you born again?” jokes Robbie. December, I answer. “Well you have your excuse now.”

adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This collumn first appeared in the print version of the Irish Examiner newspaper

Reducing the cost of paying the penalty

July 8, 2010 in Football, Sport | View Comments

For the price of a cup of coffee one morning this week, I bought a glimpse into football’s future.

I met up with Robbie Butler, a lecturer in economics in University College Cork, and his brother David a final year Commerce student.

They’ve done some extremely interesting research on footballers’ birthdays which I’ve written a column about and will appear in tomorrow’s newspaper.

Over the course of the hour-long chat however we free-wheeled from related books (Superfreakanomics, Why England Lose and Outliers are three recommendations) to work Robbie had done on ‘Fergie Time’ – or the phenomenon of a top six side’s extra added time at home. It’s fascinating.

On the eve of another World Cup final however – and remembering how the last one ended in Berlin – I thought I’d share one proposal which they explained, slowly, to me on the format of penalty shoot-outs that I haven’t stopped thinking about since.

“We went to this conference in London – the International Conference of Football and Psychology,” says David. “We were in a debate on penalties before and after time; I don’t know if you’ve heard that argument?

Robbie picks up the story: “These Australian economists argued that after 90 minutes, you have the shoot-out, THEN, you play extra time and if its still level after 30 minutes, whoever wins the shoot-out wins the game. So essentially it gives the team that loses the shoot-out an incentive to go and attack and win the game in extra time.”

Wow. Now for FIFA – a conservative organisation that doesn’t seem to a DVD player – turning a game upside down does seem unlikely. But it’s worth thinking about right?

“You take John Terry, his career is defined by one kick almost,” Robbie explains, “Now imagine if he was able to dust himself off and went out and played the 30 minutes to try to win it.”

It’d be fairer, I suppose – but maybe arch-villain Terry is a poor example.

“Now there are some arguments against it, one being the warm-down issue. If you stop for 10 minutes and then try to go again there’s the potential for injury. But shoot-outs are so lax these days – timewise – they’d have to just blow the whistle and say ‘right, let’s go’. Straight turn over, let’s go,” says Robbie.

“We had one of the main criticisms of it which is if you had the shoot-out and then went to extra-time, what way do the away goals go?

“So imagine Ireland and France had been 0-0 in Croker last November. And it was then nil-all in Paris as well and France win the shoot-out. So then we go to extra time and it’s 1-1. Who wins, the shoot-out or the away goal?

“We argued it should be an away goal. But we would.”

Apres Match – George Hook

July 6, 2010 in comedy, Football, Rugby, Sport, TV | View Comments

Quite interesting…

July 6, 2010 in Sport | View Comments

STEPHEN FRY: WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN WHEN I WAS 18 from Peter Samuelson on Vimeo.

I came across (here) this quite interesting chat with Stephen Fry, which is worth a watch if you’re eating your cream crackers at the desk this lunchbreak.

There’s absolutely nothing sports-related in it, if you’re wondering, but myself and my friend Jack did meet (said hello to) the big man himself on New York’s Sixth Avenue a couple of Christmas-es ago.

AND… this happened after we chose to knob around an Apple Store rather than go see the Knicks play an early Sunday afternoon game with our two buddies Kevin and Murf. So that’s a sport-related connection, right?

Fry is also a massive Norwich City, darts and cricket fan. He also did this.

Married with Messi

July 5, 2010 in Football, Sport | View Comments

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H/T Small Mammal House

So EL Diez is likely going to exit the top job in Argentina after that capitulation ot Germany.

My piece on chasing Diego around Glasgow ahead of his very first game in the position is here

And the same with Leo Messi around Kinsale. There’s a pattern here.

The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You

July 2, 2010 in Music | View Comments

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

July 2, 2010 in Columns, Football, Sport | View Comments

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George Costanza: What about being a sports commentator? You know how I always make those witty comments during a game?
Jerry Seinfeld: You do make good comments.
George Costanza: So?
Jerry: Well, they generally give those jobs to ex-ballplayers and people, you know, in broadcasting.
George Costanza: [pause] Well that’s really not fair.
Jerry: I know.

So this morning, after two days spent idly filling in wall charts and reviewing online betting accounts in the absence of any real action we’re back in business.

Like this column – an operation of such weighty intelligence which needs seasonal fallowness to allow genius to bloom once more – so too the World Cup requires to lay down by its bedside the spittle-specked vuvuzela for one or two days.

The tournament rest period is two days deaf to the sweet symphony of top-class international football – but so too, 48 hours rest from the blackboard-scraping racket of the inevitable punditry and commentary.

I spent the last World Cup rest period (I may have mentioned I was in Germany in 06, before) tucked in a sleeping bag on my rented palette, in a large wigwam in Dortmund. You realise the tournament is run by cowboys, now you know there’s wigwams for the injuns too.

There was plenty of other fans exhausted by two weeks of inter-railing from host city to wrong city and back again. We could buy plastic cups of beer for a euro or two in another communal ‘teepee’ and they re-played Germany’s games on a big screen during which the staff were happy to translate exactly what Gunter Netzer was saying. I missed Gilesy even then.

But never before in our natural history have so many men talked so much shite and in so many different revolving studios than this tournament. If England fans are searching their souls for the sin that brought upon their heads that inexplicable Lampard non-goal, let’s not look further then the jug-eared, pun-loving gurner, Gary Lineker.

Clarence Seedorf has been drafted in to represent the Dutch perspective on the BBC. He talks eloquently about interesting technical considerations – with an unashamed passion for the details – in stark contrast to the Bash Street Kids mentality of the MOTD sofa. Shearer almost sniggers from the back when one of the ‘show-offs’ actually knows the name of a player who doesn’t play in the Premier League.

Without sounding like the ever-parochial Lineker, on the other hand, RTE’s cast have excelled – in entertainment at least. They say satire died the day Henry Kissinger won a Nobel Peace Prize. So too parody – and the excellent Après Match – was surely rendered redundant when Billo, Giles, Dunphy and Brady chuckled (well, Chippy almost smiled) over a reference to being ‘a Brazilian outside the box’.

This superannuated lot are in the best form of their lives. Having that trio bicker, settle scores and lob in the odd hand grenade while trying to remain relatively polite and civilised in front of the foreign guests – Ossie and Didi – is TV gold.

So too of course, is Roy Keane – friend of the panel. This week we watched in giddy horror as yet another Sky Sports News reporter was eviscerated by the Corkman.

Keane scolded the journalist for presuming to know what went on inside the England camp, refused to draw any parallels with that mess and Ireland’s in 2002. After the trigger word ‘Saipan’ was alluded to, he quickly and clinically rattled through the shortcomings of half of Capello’s squad.

New York’s king of comedy Jerry Seinfeld got his chance to do better than TV experts this week too when he sat into the Citifield gantry for a 4 1/2 inning guest appearance with his hero Keith Hernandez during the Mets’ 5-0 win over the Tigers.

Seinfeld – or Seinfield if you’re Pat Kenny and the world’s richest funny man is standing behind you – included a Superman reference in every episode of his record-breaking sitcom in the 90s. But he also laced the scripts with allusions to his beloved baseball side.

He’s a regular caller to a popular fans phone call-in show on a small radio station in the city’s boroughs where he talks at length about the starting pitcher’s weak arm or the hot dogs in the new stadium – the new stadium, in which he bought a private box.

I happened to be watching Seinfeld’s debut in the gantry with the game’s greats. I waited for him to revert to his 80s comedy routine: hey, what’s up with crackerjack? There’s no cracker… and there’s no jack! But he was actually good.

Amongst other things, he joked about a recent run-in with a drunk Lady Gaga – after she gestured obscenely at the crowd while wearing little but a Yankees jersey and was then moved to Seinfeld’s vacant private area.

A mere quarrel over spilt prawn sandwiches, as Lineker would no doubt say.

But back to the action again. And now, let’s join your match commentators…

Adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell