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Chocs away as usual suspects get back to business

January 16, 2012 in Columns, Football, Merk, Sport | View Comments

MANY of us this week may have at last broken a self-imposed winter training ban of our own after an extended Christmas period.

I personally spent more of December in a tin of Roses than my running shoes. I broke sweat once around the 27th when I fell asleep in front of the fire during Back to the Future II.

In the busy lead up to Christmas, the couple of games of six-a-side football in which I star fell by the wayside as a calendar full of office nights out and last-minute gift shopping got in the way of my weekly trot out (you should see the Opta Pro Zone stats: on average — three nutmegs conceded, two twisted ankles, one banished ball, lots of intemperate swearing).

Some may have slipped back into the spandex before this first full week back at work. I’m vaguely aware of people who swim outdoors on Christmas morning and others who fill the downtime before New Year’s with runs along the coastline or walks up hillsides.

Eoin Cadogan tweeted a picture on Christmas Day of himself and Cork teammates Sean Óg Ó hAilpín and Donal Óg Cusack at an unnamed hurling alley behind a veil of sweat and satisfied smiles. I threw a few more sausages under the grill and convinced myself it was a JBM photoshop job for Cody’s benefit.

But this week, the cobwebs were blown off throughout Ireland as those of us who pay to play under floodlights after work pulled up outside the cages once again. And as I pulled on damp, unwashed bibs that have sat in the back of a Volkswagen Golf for the break, I thought, it takes all types to make a team.

The Pointer 

Let me introduce this interesting chap. Though his AUL medals are perhaps now slightly tainted by the years, he’s still got it ‘upstairs’. Despite a certain thickening under the retro jersey, he can still strike a ball and head it even further.

His defining characteristic, apart from limited interest in a warm-up routine, however, is ‘the point’. A genius — he reckons — at positioning, he stands in the centre circle and indicates with a flourish of his index finger where exactly he wants the ball (to feet) and if he has the ball (at feet) he points to where he wants those around him to run. Every team needs one.

The Unknown Quantity, # 1 

On nights when both Sullivan twins have work, and the usual lads who can be relied upon to turn up when selected aren’t answering the phone, door or Facebook, you may be faced with an unfamiliar opponent across the halfway line before kick off.

He immediately picks up the ball from the tip-off, puts it through your planted feet and smashes the ball into the jumper in which you stashed your watch in the back of the net.

“Who brought your man?” you ask.

The Unknown Quantity, # 2 

It’s the Tuesday after a long weekend and bodies are thin on the ground. The twins are back on the night shift. We need a new lad. This time you’re joined in the bibs with someone who’s a friend of someone else. From the kick-off you pass to him, he takes a first touch that’s heavier than a black hole and then hops the ball off the bonnet of your car — via your face.

“Jesus, who brought your man?” you ask.

The Zoolander 

We’ve all seen Ben Stiller’s movie Zoolander, right? It’s the tale of a dim-witted but good natured male model. Incidentally, he can’t turn left. Like many of us on the five-a-side pitch.

The Self-Flagellating monk 

It may sound like an exotic cocktail in a men-only nightclub but it is in fact a well known archetype on all-weather pitches. This poor chap takes every sliced shot and mishit clearance like another terrible slip into mortal sin. He’ll shank the ball over the opponents’ defence, the surrounding high wall and into a nearby stream. Then, slapping his forehead and looking to the dark skies he’ll scream loud obscenities which shatter the relative calm in the area.

Flocks of birds clatter out of adjacent trees and bell towers. Sleeping children are later awoken from their sleep when he realises he left the lights on in the car the whole time.

The Skipper 

The man with the plan. He brings the bibs. Rings around every week making sure everyone’s still coming. When, invariably, everyone isn’t coming he chases up replacements. He knows the man who looks after the pitch by name and threatens to buy a respirator out of the kitty one day. Often he is the worst player on the pitch.

The Hacker 

He may not win the game… but you’re going home knowing you played on the same pitch as him tonight. Often wears a Féile 1992 T-shirt paired with O’Neill’s shorts and working shoes an old house-mate left behind when he emigrated to Western Australia.

The Fantasista 

One who can play a bit. And knows it. He calls every nutmeg. Celebrates every goal like he’s Marco Tardelli in the World Cup final. Wears snoods and tights. Claims to have had trials with Cork City but fell out with the manager because he wouldn’t pass to Kevin Doyle.

* adrianjrussell@gmail.com                                      Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first appeared in the Irish Examiner newspaper

Frank’s tale throws legend into new focus

January 11, 2012 in Columns, Football, Sport | View Comments

FOR me Frank O’Farrell was a sad, grey face sketched in 25-year-old newspaper print.

As a young lad brainwashed by an uncle with a season ticket for the Stretford End before Ryanair brought it closer to home, my brother and I were swaddled in United red – despite the unease of a Leeds United supporting father.

We pored over books and books on the Munich Air Disaster, Cup wins, and league titles won. Names and places like Best, Wembley ’68, McGrath, Whiteside and Robson became familiar.

Before the days when you could buy flash replica jerseys and official club merchandise in every sports shop on every high street in the land, I was given an Aberdeen jersey (they were good at the time) and told, in my innocence, it was a Manchester United shirt.

Neighbours still remind me of that one, quarter of a century on.

Once, home for a family funeral, my uncle ducked out of the pub in Blackpool on Cork city’s northside, to get us a parcel of match programmes from Old Trafford as well as a heap of dusty homemade scrap books from the ‘60s 1970s.

The chunky News of the World headlines told tales of names like McIlroy, McQueen, Strachan and Stapleton.  It was great.

At that funeral, we could have walked for three minutes up the road and hit upon the homeplace of one of those featured in those pages of course.

Frank O’Farrell was born and reared on Dublin Hill, on the other side of the railway bridge, many will know from journeys ending in Kent Station. He watched the carriages rattle by daily and dreamed of one day driving the engine.

Instead his talent as a footballer saw his life on a different track altogether. And one which I did not appreciate until RTÉ aired a wonderful, Christmas treat of a documentary about the man last week.

‘The Shadow of Busby’  framed a tall, soft-spoken man now well into his golden years.. who remains the only Irishman to manage the famous club, Manchester United.

It unwrapped a wonderful secret history of Old Trafford’s backrooms and dark corridors – but like the best history lessons, it was weighed down with contemporary relevance.

The short version is this: O’Farrell played with Cork United until 1947 before he was tempted across to the bright lights of East London to play for West Ham. Far from indulging in the city’s excesses, such as they were, the devout Catholic lad joined the Salvation Army and attended mass daily.

In a familiar twist, injury brought the curtain down on a good career. Someone comfortable as leader, he took the reigns as manager at Torquay and after tasting promotion, took a bigger job at Leicester.

He became the first Irishman to lead out a team in the FA Cup final when he took Leicester to within one stride of the 39 steps.  He was denied by Manchester City.

Twelve months previously on the same patch of grass, Matt Busby had realised his quest to win the European Cup as Best, Charlton, Law et al beat Benfica under the Twin Towers. That should have been the final bar of Busby’s song.

Instead he ‘moved upstairs’ –as was the euphemism – and Wilf Mcguinness was installed as the boss. In fact there was no moving anywhere – Busby remained behind his desk in his office. McGuinness was gone less than a year later.

That summer of ‘69, after a spell as caretaker, Busby sat at Farrell’s kitchen table offering him one of the biggest jobs in football.

Tellingly, he told O’Farrell that he would be on a yearly salary of £12,000 – an old man now, Farrell has no problem remembering the figure. This one sticks in the craw.

Later when the pair –as well as Louis Edwards were sealing the deal – the chairman let slip that the salary he sanctioned was in fact £15k. He should have slapped Busby’s hand away then rather shake it then.

Ultimately, O’Farrell was shafted – you know that. But this testimony put meat on the bones of what is a forgotten Old Trafford tale. For me, reading those books from England all those years ago, Farrell was a failure – a forgotten footnote in the club’s long history. It’s an unfair telling of his tale. And though quietly spoken, he could obviously look after himself on the pitch and off it – and this programme showed him pulling no punches. Even when tilting at United’s idols.

O’Farrell talked of trying to curb the drinking of George Best, he labelled, with some understatement, club legend and English football great Bobby Charlton ‘a bit of a moaner’, and settled scores, calmly and matter-of-factly, with Busby himself.

The Scot had the ear of senior players like Charlton and Law as they went on regular golf outings together. Busby still refused to vacate his manager’s chair and his shadow loomed large.

Now, the shadows are lengthening for the 84-year-old Farrell. He sits in his garden in Torquay, surrounded by family and happy to have been at the top – if not for such a fleeting time.

“I was manager of Manchester United,” he says in a familiar accent. “they can’t take that away from me.”

Alex Ferguson, whomever comes after him, and those ‘upstairs’ in the boardroom at the Theatre of Dreams would do well not to forget the their history.

Still flicking to kick….

January 11, 2012 in Columns, Football, Sport | View Comments

 

First appeared in the Irish Examiner on December 23, 2011

ON Sunday morning, many of us will be woken by electronic bleeps and whirrs as new computer-powered gadgets and toys are plugged in, charged up and used for the first time.

But in a world unmarked by Xboxes, the analogue sounds of Christmases past, soundtracked December 25.

Think Meccano pieces clicking, bike wheels turning or – if you were lucky – plastic footballer figures clacking against a disproportionally large ball.

“So, you’re the man exploring the underbelly of Irish table football,” says national champion Mark Farrell as he picks up the phone in Dublin, having been warned I was to call.

I imagine he’s wearing a crown and sitting on a throne with a branded green felt pitch at his feet after his latest All-Ireland victory.

The 33-year-old is at the centre of a ‘resurgence’ in the game in recent years. He and like-minded individuals gather in parish halls, community centres, each others homes every week.

They roll out the pitch, set up the goals and flick-to-kick as the famous slogan went.

“The majority of the players these days would be guys who remember the game from their youth and they’ve probably grown up with the game. There’s a quantity of junior players still but the vast majority would be in their 20s and 30s.

“These fellas remember the game from their youth – these fellas with XBoxes and Playstations are growing up with those games. They don’t really have an affiliation with table football, you know, and its harder for them to get into it.

“I started playing about 20 years ago when I was about 12 or 13. And it was a big association then. The 90s would have been the heyday then around the game Europe. I played for about five or six years and then I stopped, went  off to college and everything else became more important.

“And then I came back to it when I turned about 30. Like a lot of guys.”

John Moore is one of the reasons the game is on the up again despite the fact that – to paraphrase the late Apple chief Steve Jobs – there’s probably an app for that.

“I started playing when I was about eight years of age, he says. “I encouraged all the friends to play as well, we would have leagues, cups, World Cups and play the old Division One in England with transfers, suspensions, sending offs, injuries.  It was the first version of [computer game] Championship Manager I suppose.

“I had received email a couple of years ago and decided to enter a team in the world cup in Birmingham.  That’s where it all started off again.  Since that tournament , Irish players have travelled to about 10 countries playing in about 40 competitions in the last eight years.”

You might remember punk band Half Man Half Biscuit and their hit song: All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit. It conveyed brilliantly the longing felt by Subbutteo enthusiasts for the extensive collection of paraphernalia that came hand-in-hand with enjoying the game.

“Ah yeah, that used to be a huge thing and that’s what got kids into it years ago,” says Farrell.
“You wanted to have the Liverpool or the Man U side but truthfully nowadays the supplier Waddingtons don’t make it anymore.

“The stuff isn’t available anymore in the high street – you used to be able to buy every little item – from replica World Cups trophies, the goals, advertising hoarding – every nook and cranny. But nowadays it’s mostly Ebay, there’s a lot of sellers out there and you buy teams and start from scratch and build up from there.”

Both table football exponents admit their hobby – (quick fact: Subbutteo comes from the Latin word for hobby) – leaves them open to a ‘slagging’.

“That’s the thing. At time you did get a bit of a slagging and they hear you’re playing table football and they’re like : ah sure that’s a kids’ game, what are you doing still playing that? But I think when people check out the website and they see what’s involved, their eyes are opened.

“When they see you’ve won a national title or whatever, they take you a little bit more seriously and realise there’s a bit of structure to it. We’re just not blokes in our 20s and 30s flicking a ball around a table.”

The straight-shooter

November 23, 2011 in Columns | View Comments

“Be careful, there’s no panic,” Sean Baldwin says as he places the rifle in my arms and I look through the sights at a target the size of a saucer, 10metres down the hall at Morton Stadium last Tuesday morning.

“Keep the finger on the trigger, it’s just the slightest movement, there’s no need to squeeze it. You’re jumping away, you’re doing this,” Baldwin, a Paralympian, jerks his index finger towards the palm of his hand.

“Barely move it when you’re ready. Stop moving your finger. Nice and easy.”  Whoosh – the air rifle arrows a bullet towards – I hope – a bulls-eye, which is worth 10.9 in competition.

“Okay…. 3.2,” says Baldwin.

Baldwin came to be standing here, via many bends in the road. An army man, he’s competed in two Military Games, three Military World Championships, three Military European Championships and an Orientation World Championships.

He has also lost a leg while in the uniform.

Now he shoots in both able-body and Paralympic shooting events and aims to be the country’s first-ever shooter at a Paralympic Games in London next year.  He doesn’t usually miss his targets.

“We were out in Liberia, I was deployed in November 2003,” he recalls before filing the bullets into his rifle. “And we were on patrol after being there for about a week and had a car accident. And the driver was killed.

“I broke every bone in my body. Crushed my skull, shoulders, ribs, broke my pelvis. Broke my legs – I didn’t actually lose it though.

“Unfortunately my injuries were so bad, they had to get me home within a certain period of time. And they said the only way to make me stable was to cut my leg off; that was below the knee.

“So, I lost my leg below the knee, was in a coma then after I got back and my body just collapsed really. My lungs stopped working and unfortunately I got that flesh eating disease and, so, they had cut above the knee then.

“It took about six week before I could come off the ventilator; my lungs wouldn’t work. But once I got them working I got to where I am now. Everything followed then.”

Whoosh! “4.1, you’re getting better.”

It’s my first time feeling the weight and weird power of a gun under my chin. And the sharpshooter to my left under a visor and beneath a special shooting uniform, once lifted one up for the first time too.

“Eight years ago i actually met a guy in the military who was trying to introduce this kind of shooting. He was just trying to get some guys interested in it I suppose.

“So I jumped up off the bleachers one day, had one shot and then I had to leave. But I met him six months later and I got into it.

“Not long after I qualified for European Championships. Then unfortunately then I had to go to Africa and I lost my leg.”

“Are they expensive? That’s about two thousand in your hands there. Hey, hey! 7.4… one more?”

Baldwin is at the top of his game. He has won several nationals, competes against all-comers international over four separate events. So what’s the key to reaching the top of this sport? Try, dealing with nerves.

“Butterflies? Without a doubt. Everyone gets them. It’s how you handle the butterflies.

“Everyone gets the nerves, the bit of shaking, the whole lot. It’s how you relax into it. And whoever relaxes the best is the guy who wins it. That’s just the way it is.

“In the air rifle prone there’s a young lady from Australia. She’s 58-years-of-age. On her 12th Olympics. She shot a world record in Spain and she still has another Olympics in her.

“The beauty about this sport is, you don’t have to be 20, it’s great though if you do start young, because you need about 10 years until you reach the top level.”

“You’re getting worse, zero. come on you can’t finish on that.”

Baldwin admits his new leg makes his passion that bit more difficult especially dragging the gear around on his own a lot of the time. But he was grateful to pull on the fatigues again and return to his day job.

“I’m back to work full time, no worries with the health” he says, “I work in logistics – I had to change tack a little – in the Training Centre in the Curragh.

“I don’t go overseas now, because of the conditions being so difficult in that part of Africa, the prosthetic leg I have wouldn’t work properly. The one I have is computerised and it just wouldnt work, y’know?” he shrugs.

“But now we’re back in the Leb, you never know. I’d go back in the morning for you. My last your in the Leb was ‘92. So it would be good to go back and see what’s changed.

“It’s all about balance not strength at all. you’re using your muscle, that’s the problem… Nice one, seven.”

adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

Brought to book. The hard way

October 19, 2011 in Books, Columns, Hurling | View Comments

 

THEY say everyone has a book in them. Paddy Coyne dragged it out kicking and screaming.

Unemployment arrives at the door with plenty of baggage. Lots of us know it all too well these days. For the 35-year-old, Coyne, opportunity knocked too, however.

The north Tipperary man no longer filled his days on the floor at a factory. Instead he cracked open his laptop and wrote his first novel The Drinker with a Hurling Problem. When no-one would publish it, he did so himself.

The book, on the surface, is about someone who returns to the homeplace for one final lash at the junior title with the local club. It’s about a lot more besides, one suspects.

“I suppose I was trying to have a conversation with myself about why I played hurling and became so obsessive about it over the years,” Coyne — who played junior hurling, but ‘was never any good’ — tells me.

“It worked to an extent in that I got those feelings down on paper in a structured way. The story isn’t completely auto-biographical, but it certainly does reflect how I feel about hurling. An old axiom suggests that writers write about the one thing that bothers them so much they have no choice, but to write about it.

“One day I came across something that Maurice Mitchell had said in 1973 — ‘not enough young men and women arrived in university without ever having shipped a punch in the nose’. That really struck a chord with me and got me thinking about writing a book about the GAA. In Ireland now we have this excruciating problem whereby every man and his family seem to be run like a private company.

“Our sense of community is being diluted. And, I think the GAA matters more now because the old certainties of rural life no longer hold. That, I suppose, is the point I was trying to get across, that the GAA can still help a man to find a sense of himself.”

Having read the opening pages however this is no Fáilte Ireland, soft-focus clip through an idealised rural Ireland. Put it this way, if it’s ever adapted into a movie, Cillian Murphy rather than James Nesbitt will play the lead.

It’s a long way from the silver screen now admittedly. Coyne, the sound of slamming doors ringing still in his ears, took a punt and published it.

“I sent off a draft of the book to several mainstream publishers and was, as I expected to be honest, roundly rejected. I then turned my attention to self-publishing. I wrote the book for myself, as an exercise in self therapy if you like, so I was never banking on making a lot of money off it. But since I had written the damn thing I reckoned that I should try to make people aware of its existence.

“Self-publishing is easy enough and free which is always nice. With Amazon you can quite easily piece together a physical book and an eBook. It’s ridiculously easy to be honest. Once you have that accomplished the idea is to market it. I have not made much progress with that, but am hopeful that a couple of reviews, whether good or bad, might help it to get some traction in the market.”

And though the market may be crowded, Coyne — who devours sports book obsessively — isn’t impressed with those present. That perceived lack of quality in sports writing, on this side of the Atlantic particularly, prompted him to add another spine to a tower of books.

“I suppose I have been frustrated with the sports books I have read over the past few years. None have really come close to capturing what it is like for someone to play with a less than glamorous hurling team or with any hurling team for that matter. I don’t know if I have managed to capture it in the book, but at least I have given it a go. Some GAA books are fairly insulting efforts. A child could do a better job with a crayon.”

So now the cruel world can judge his effort too. Though he may not be in the parish if and when his tale of local rivalry and universal themes finds its audience.

“I’m not sure what I am going to do with myself now,” he answers when I enquire to his situation.

“Emigration is an obvious option. Personally, I don’t think I’m good enough a writer to make a living out of it, but I really enjoyed writing the book and might try something more mainstream next time round.”

* You can buy the eBook (€2.99) or a physical copy (€9.99). Both can be ordered off Amazon.com, search for ‘The Drinker with the Hurling Problem’.

* Email: adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first apepared in the Irish Examiner ion October 14.

Lamenting the days when boxing was the sport of kings

October 19, 2011 in Boxing, Columns | View Comments

THE nights are drawing in on us, you’ll notice, ahead of another winter, like the cinema lights dimming before a movie.

Having shuffled in from under another cloud-scarred sky of an evening, I enjoy kicking closed the door, sending the kettle towards its whistle-stop and snapping open a book like an umbrella.

Bob Dylan explained once that A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall was written during the dark days of the Cuban Missile Crisis and enjoyed a unique journey into existence.

“Every line in it is the start of a whole new song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one,” he shrugged many years after Kennedy and Kruschev steered us away from catastrophe.

I often think the same about all the books that are stacked high beside my bed in a mocking pile of uncreased spines; maybe I should read the first line of each… just in case.

One book, long since purchased on the recommendation of several colleagues on the Irish Examiner sports desk, has been keeping the cold from the threshold — or the storm raging at my door as Dylan would say. Let me pass on the recommendation; Kevin Mitchell’s Jacobs Beach.

Journalism is, we are told early and often, about the who, what, where, why and how.

Well this book is about the Mob, professional boxing, Madison Square Garden and money. But the ‘how’ unfolds happily over a couple of hundred pages in sweat, blood and whisky-stained detail.

Stop someone on the street this afternoon and ask them who the heavyweight champion of the world is today and most would rub their necks before shaking their heads in surrender.

But there was a time when names like Marciano and Clay were filed under household.

When today boxing fights are dressed in the garb of a pantomime, introduced and hyped in the language of the school yard and boasting all the intellectual heft of your average celebrity-filled gossip- magazine, there was actually a time when fights meant more.

The epic duology in the late 30s between the black American Joe Louis and the German Max Schmeling was widely regarded as a crude, intriguing metaphor for the looming struggle between democracy and fascism. Ali v Frazier echoed with racial connotations. There was more on the line than David Haye’s pride.

Dust off the romance of course and it’s clear that boxing’s heart did not beat true. In New York it was in the 50s that the mob really took over, easing out relatively respectable figures like the Irish-Jewish promoter Mike Jacobs, who had run the Garden venue for decades.

More sinister winds blew through the game with the mafia tightening a happy grip on the sports own mechanism, the International Boxing Club.

The sport’s honesty was on the canvas and it ‘haemorrhaged so much credibility’, writes Mitchell, ‘that it almost died of shame’.

Forgive the hyperbole, but you’d feel the same is happening now, watching Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather sometimes. I’ve personally long been a fan but Saturday night was embarrassing.

Mayweather Jr — one of the totems of the modern fight game — knocked out Victor Ortiz in boxing’s new garden, Las Vegas. He did so, you’ll probably know, with a highly controversial one-two that’s been tarred as the most inexpensive of cheap shots. I reckon it was Ortiz’s fault for not having his hands up — but the real showdown was after the bell anyway.

An 80-year-old boxing commentator Larry Merchant climbed through the ropes to ask Mayweather Jr about the fight’s inglorious denouement. With the questions feeling like jabs and the crowd’s boos growing louder, Mayweather lost it for the second time.

When he told the stunned HBO man that he knew ‘shit about boxing’, Merchant replied with a laugh: “I wish I was 50 years younger and I’d kick your ass.”

Mayweather and Ortiz are likely to meet in a re-match. One hopes that Merchant gets his too.

adrianjrussell@gmail.comTwitter: @adrianrussell
This column first appeared in the Examiner on Friday, Sept 23.

July 13, 2011 in Athletics, Columns, Golf, Sport | View Comments

 

“LEGS, arms, eyebrows, chest hair, nipples, inner thigh, everything. And I mean everything. I raised €2,500 that night but they took every bit of hair off me with the waxing,” says Ross Long as he thinks back on that night in the Gaelic Bar.

The Carrigaline local organised a quiz night in the pub and a waxing charity drive so he could get himself on the place to the Special Olympics in Athens.  He also had the Kieran Kramer band entertain the locals, the Corner House in the city’s Coburg St opened their doors and Lifiemi Mafi donated a Munster jersey to raffle. Friends rallied, favours were called in and the €3,750 that every Special Olympics volunteer needs to table was boxed off.

Thousands of miles away, a 14-year-old Chinese athlete was making less painful preparations for his trip to the Greek capital. And Jun Sung, turned out to be quite happy that Long left the Gaelic Bar without a whisper of body hair – and his fund-raising problems sorted.

“I went out and was paired up with a Chinese golfer,” says Long 24 hours after touching down in Dublin with a campaign which say Team Ireland take 107 medals in total behind him.

“It was extremely frustrating at the beginning because of the language barrier.  He was a good golfer – I could see that – but he needed a lot of encouraging and his concentration wasn’t good.”

With the Chinese lad seemingly not too adept with Long’s lilting Leeside accent and the caddy knowing little Cantonese, he didn’t get much encouragement on their first day out together on the greens. He shot a very disappointing 71.

“He just needed someone to talk him through it,” continues Long.  “So we went back in and I was thinking ‘how am I going to help this fella now?’

“So I went up to his coach who spoke a bit of English and said ‘I need Jun Sung – his name was Jun Sung – to be able to understand me’.

“I have one of these phones with a voice recorder in it and I got the coach to say about 10 phrases into the machine.”

There, off the course, the three stood as they muddled through a series of phrases that Long thought would be helpful.

“Please concentrate Jun Sung.”

“The lie of the putt is left.”

 

“The lie of the putt is right.”

“Your choice of club is wrong.”

“You need extra power because of the sand.”

The pair headed out the next day with a small hole punched through the language barrier.

“He shot 59 and picked up 11 shots,” says the Corkman, “then the third day he hit 51 and the last was 60.”“What can I say, I came up with an ingenious plan and helped him out,” the caddy deadpans.

“We definitely bonded. We were high-fiving all the way around the course; that was my way of telling him that he had hit a good shot. So if he made a mistake or whatever and I held back the high five, the head would drop.

“Then on the next hole if he did better he’d give me a thumbs up and we’d have a high-five. He was only 14 and he only had two words in English: ‘water’ and ‘okay’.

“[But] I went out there and was paired with a Chinese golfer who I never met and by the end there was of course an emotional attachment.  On the last day I gave him a Team Ireland T-shirt with Athens 2011 on it and our logo and he gave me a little Chinese doll that someone must have given to him to give to me.  I don’t where he got it from.

The performance earned the youngster a bronze medal.  The Chinese coaches were jumping around behind the rope as they tried to explain to the athlete what he’d achieved, despite a terrible start.

“There was definitely a few hugs at the end,” he adds.

So Leeside can take some credit for a Chinese medal. Did Long go to see its presentation?

“We all went to the awards ceremony to support the Irish athletes but obviously when athletes from other countries got their medals we’d cheer and clap them too. But when Sung got his medal he got an extra cheer from the Irish,” he recalls.

The luggage is unpacked again and the trip for this volunteer is a tan, some wonderful memories and a little Chinese doll. Was the waxing worth it to get there?

“When you wake up the next morning with no hair but you’re fundraising is done it’s worth it. Fellas were coming up saying ‘I’ll give you fifty for half an eye-brow’.

“And I was like: give me it. I’m delighted I got there.”

You get the feeling, he’s not the only one.Adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

Going down in family history

July 5, 2011 in Columns, Cycling, Football, Sport | View Comments

LET’S talk a little cycling and football. But first some family history.

William O’Doherty pulled on his apron as normal one morning in Cork city and walked to work behind the bar of the well-known Woodford Bourne public house on St Patrick’s Street. The year was 1912.

He was in his early 20s and, it seems, liked a game of cards after his shift pouring pints. One night he and a colleague were dealt a fateful hand. The pot? A ticket each for the Titanic’s maiden voyage.

You can, I’m sure, guess the rest; both young men were lost in the cold water on that night to remember, April 15.

It sounds like a Hollywood yarn – and indeed it is, thanks to James Cameron – but O’Doherty was my grandfather’s uncle. And, sadly we thought, he earned even less than those Irish who were resigned to the footnotes in that chapter of history. O’Doherty and his workmate were forgotten completely – the names of the two lads who actually lost the game of cards, and earlier booked the tickets, are instead on records, plaques and in books.

They may well have cursed their luck at the full table in that dark corner of the bar (which is still open), then risen and walked out into rich, full and long lives. Their descendents may be reading this now. But their names are inked in history’s ledger as the two young men who frozen in the Atlantic.

So, prompted by an uncle who compiled our family tree through hours of research and conversation, I stayed back late one night after work in the Irish Examiner offices and sneezed my way through the dusty archives. A colleague in the library allowed me to literally reel in the years on the impressive microfilm print machine. I poured a coffee and slotted the spool marked ‘Cork Examiner, 1912’ into the mechanism.

Eventually I found the front page for which I was looking. Peering back at me through layers of time and several generations was the stoic image of a posing William ‘Achilles’ O’Doherty. With a middle name like that, he was always doomed, it seemed to me.

The journalist Senan Maloney dedicated a section of his book ‘The Irish Aboard the Titanic’, to the pair’s story having one day rapped on my grandmother’s front door, I believe.

Armed with these pieces of evidence, we next contacted the heritage centre in Cobh, to politely pull at their sleeve and explain that their list of lost souls on the wall was missing a couple of chancers. They promised a year ago to commemorate him by producing a piece of the wall of his own.

Tomorrow, meanwhile, the Tour de France gets underway and its stages will, I hope, be once again bookended by the voice of Eurosport’s Gary Imlach. The wry, intelligent presenter has been doing the presenting job for years, prodding studio guests like Stephen Roche for nuggets of information that those of us outside the peloton never learned.

He wintered this year under the lights of Channel 4’s graveyard NFL coverage in which his understated demeanour seemed at odds with the chuckling persona of his America in-studio pundit.

But far from saddles and shoulder pads, it’s from another sporting tradition that Imlach’s family is rooted. When his father died in 2001, the Englishman realised he knew relatively little about him. He wrote a wonderful book – My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes – as a sort of testimonial.

Stewart Imlach – Gary’s father – was a left winger from Lossiemouth in Scotland. A nippy winger, he weaved his way through 14 seasons of professional football, over 400 games, including playing in the 1959 FA Cup Final for Nottingham Forest against Luton Town and the 1958 Scottish World Cup.

He rarely spoke of his past and Gary didn’t delve into his father’s career until he was forced to rely on secondary sources – like newspaper microfilm – for sources.

“The list of his clubs had always had a natural rise and fall to it,” he wrote, “Bury, Derby, Nottingham Forest – pause for a beat – Luton, Coventry, Crystal Palace. Nine syllables up, nine down.”

And the sad end to a proud career becomes more personal as he learns more. “I knew the sequence of steps to and from the high-altitude plateau in the middle of his career, but I didn’t know the tempo. Discovering the abruptness of his decline was like coming across an old spool of cine film in the attic that showed him falling silently and inexplicably downstairs.”
Finding a match programme for the ’58 Wembley showpiece, Imlach reads with a little sadness: “Bob McKinlay, centre-half: training to be a motor mechanic … Stewart Imlach, outside-left: a return to the joinery business.” His father did quickly fade into the shadows again and folded away his medals and caps. But his son’s memorial is a wonderful piece of writing and a better testimonial to his dad.

On Sunday, rather than sit in and watch the second stage of Le Tour with Imlach, after an email from Cobh this week, we hope to travel to the town for the day to view William O’Doherty’s new testimonial for the first time.

Adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

Open for business

June 29, 2011 in Columns | View Comments

THE IMF and EU own the deeds to the shop, our balance sheet isn’t looking too hot and the staff have long since clocked out but Ireland is open for business, our Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, is fond of saying.

When you get a phone call from Flan Marsh in Clare, you realise it actually is. And you’re usually left smiling by the time you hang up.

The Broadford man has featured in these pages before. He lost his once-successful and honest roofing business when the Tiger stopped roaring and new houses no longer needed protecting.

Instead of kicking his heels around the house he set up a hurley-making workshop in his back yard and eventually developed a new technology that stops the ash splitting and spinning dangerously off in all directions, often prompting trips to A and E departments adjacent to hurling strongholds. His shatter-safe hurley was born and it’s kept him out of trouble since, providing as he does now equipment for the Banner senior hurlers and half the county besides.

Major League Baseball – who bleed money every time a spectator is cut by a broken bat – called him up in east Clare and he dispatched a parcel of sticks to New York where they put them under their microscopes; CSI Semple Stadium.

He pushed one into the hand of GAA president Christy Cooney who visited a local pitch. In short, he’s open for business.

But, despite his busy year, Marsh is not now leaning on his hurley like a lazy corner back.

He rings me this week from outside a sign-makers while, inside, they work on his new van. Or as he calls it ‘the world’s first mobile hurley making unit’. The plan is to pull up at pitches throughout the country and make hurleys for players, young and old, while they train.

He’ll ake the measurements, specification details, preferences from the players as well as a template of the old hurley, and by the time the few laps are run and the drills are drilled, there’s a new hurley waiting in the car park.

Where did you go this one from, I ask into the hands-free?

“I’m an entrepreneur – these things come naturally to me.” [Loud laughter from east Clare]

“I got a van off my bother Thomas,” he says, “We put two sanders in it, an extractor fan for the dust, a blower for the dust and I can plug the whole thing into any power point. And if there’s none I have my own generator.

“It’s the right job altogether. I needed to think of something to be honest with you. What’s the point of me sitting in my workshop waiting for people to come to me with work? I’m bringing the mountain to Mohammad rather than waiting for Mohammad to come to the mountain.

“I can make a house call now to a gang of lads sharing a house, or go to a pitch or go to a kids’ party and they can watch me making the hurleys, cos they’re mystified by the whole process. They’re looking at me going ‘Jayze, what’s your man doing now’.”

I know what they mean. Marsh insists the service will be invaluable.

“I wanted to give something back to the GAA. It saves the mothers and fathers having to drive to hurley-makers around the place and dragging rakes of kids around the place to get a hurley.

“You’re paying €28 for a hurley plus the cost of diesel to go out to a workshop whereas you give me €25 and it’s into your hand, made while you wait.”

What if Ireland trades its way back to the good days and more houses sprout up throughout Clare and beyond? Will Marsh rip the sanders out of the back, strap a ladder to the roof-rack and back it into a building site again as a roofer?

“I’ll keep my head down and my heart up now. This is the way forward now I reckon,” he says, looking instead, like his county’s hurlers, no further than Sunday’s match. He’ll park the newly-pimped-out van outside the stadium before the Tipperary game.

And what did he tell the sign-maker to paint on his gifted van? “Marsh Shatter Safe Hurleys, my goal is to see you score your goal.” He pauses and continues: “Get your ash… in a flash”. And there’s laughter and a smile again.

Visit Shattersafehurleys for more details.

Be careful what you tweet for

June 14, 2011 in Columns, Sport | View Comments

THEY say you shouldn’t write anything online you wouldn’t like to see on the front page of the New York Times the next morning.

MJ Tierney has a media degree and though he didn’t see his one-word tweet emblazoned across the famous broad sheets of the ‘Gray Old Lady’ on Monday morning, he will certainly have learned a few more lessons about how this industry works in the past seven days.

The talented Laois senior footballer was dropped from the county’s starting XV as the side prepared to face Dublin in Croke Park on Sunday afternoon.

The summer was hard underfoot, the Hill was blue and the television on-air studio light was red. This is the reason why a talented young lad like Tierney went to bed early, ate what he was told, lifted what was put at his feet in the gym throughout the fog of winter training. When he was dropped – late in the day it seems – he had every right to feel disillusioned.

When he sent a tweet and updated his Facebook page with that very word however, he broke new ground.

The bullet that killed Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 was the shot that launched the world into World War I and ultimately modernity.   Will this seemingly innocuous tweet, fired out absent-mindedly by an upset footballer, do the same for the GAA? As Pat Shortt once said, “One bullet; Bang, bang.”

The Association is, if not rocked, at least a little rattled by the imposition of this technology it seems.  Column inches were devoted to the issue, the Sunday Game discussed it after Des Cahill read out the succinct message and Tierney was compelled to defend himself off-line.

Tony Davis and Kevin McStay ran the usual route of a lot of those in the media – in Ireland and beyond – of playing the I-don’t-get-it card. They’d want to start trying to and not revel in any perceived Old School superiority. Maybe things were better back in the day, in many respects, but those times are not coming back.  I have a hunch: this internet thing isn’t going away.

“There are ways of taking bad news or tough medicine on the chin,” said the former Mayo star McStay on the Montrose couch.

“I would suggest that tweeting to the GAA public is not one of them. It doesn’t show a lot in the sense of teamwork or what you’re about,” he added.

John Fogarty of this parish reported that Tierney was unhappy with the spotlight afforded by RTE’s flagship GAA programme: “Why bother bringing it up?” Tierney argued, “They were making something out of nothing. It says more about the quality of The Sunday Game that they have to talk about a tweet by me. That’s the stupidest part of it. Obviously, they haven’t much to be talking about and that’s the truth of it.”

Like cash-strapped fans picking their battles this year though – Tierney should’ve realised he was fighting a losing one there. He wrote something publicly – you can’t complain when people comment on it.

GAA chiefs met to discuss Twitter this week we’re told – though theyve already furnished players with guidelines. On Wednesday night, Tierney, admirably fought his corner against similar opposition on RTE’s Committee Room (which is really good by the way). He sounded pretty sensible to me.

Marty Morrissey and Vincent Hogan however made reference to a more sinister thread of online discourse: anonymous chat rooms. Earlier in the day, Down’s John Clarke threw his hat at his intercounty career, citing pressure and criticism. Let there be no mistake that those in the shadows who belch anonymous vitriol onto the internet every Monday morning and beyond add considerably to that which is upon an intercounty player.

For all the light that modern communications bring to our lives – think Google Earth, texting a loved one, a picture message when you meet a hero – there’s darkness too. The internet seems to add a layer of distance to conversation, seemingly giving licence for bad manners or worse.

It often reminds me of those shouting obscenities through a windscreen at fellow drivers in traffic. Put those commuters on a crowded footpath and they  don’t as easily swear abuse however.

Honestly, at this stage of my life if someone offered me a magical capsule which would transform me into an intercounty player instantly, I think I’d refuse. Why would I want to sacrifice freedom, privacy, time and energy for what the modern player expects in return?

The prospect of a hip replacement, a strained personal life and servers full of online abuse.

Tierney, tellingly, alluded casually to the amateur status that is the foundation of the association. Or as he put it when asked if he hadn’t learned the lessons of English soccer stars like Giggs and Rooney: “They get paid for it, that’s the difference”.

It certainly is. Though as Daily Mirror reporter Oli Holt learned when he opened his twitter account this week, Rio Ferdinand – a man who is paid handsomely – should also realise what you write online, will end up in the public domain.

“You fat prick. U got something to say about me missing a drugs test say it when u see me,” the Manchester United man  had written to Holt in a private Twitter message.  The Mirror put it on their front page.

 

Adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

 

Camán everybody: Bringing hurling to the Oval Office

June 8, 2011 in Columns, GAA | View Comments

WHEN Barack Obama stood on the front lawn of Áras an hUachtarán on Monday morning, holding a hurley in his golfer’s grip and swinging it from the elbows like he was warming up in a batting cage, we all knew how he had come to be there.

We’ve all read the stories of his young life in Hawaii and Indonesia. We learned of his nascent political career on the spit-and-sawdust Chicago political shop floor.

We saw him win an election and take an oath and duck through the door of Marine One onto the Phoenix Park grass.

On Monday morning, he smiled as he took the unfamiliar stick in his hands, stepped towards the already-charmed press pack and half-joked of ‘paddling’ members of the United States Congress with this Irish ash if they ever stepped out of line again. We knew how he’d reached that point.

But how did the hurley get there? Phil Archibold put it there.

Let’s rewind a little. The Dubliner was working in the post and print room of stockbroking firm in the capital. But he – bravely- jacked it in and set himself an another road, one leading towards dual passions: sport and history.

“I’m a tour guide at Croke Park now and when they rang there looking for something to give the president on his visit, I think someone out them on to us.

Archbold is someone who bookends phone messages with a ‘dia duit’ and a ‘slán’. After two years leading tours through ghosts in Kilmainham Jail, you suspect he knows why its important still to do so.

When he moved across the river to Croker he fell in love with the small ball code.

“I only found hurling in the past few years. I grew up in the Coolock -Darndale area, we would’ve been lads in the late 1970s and 80s. You know, it was a working class area of Dublin, and generally there wasn’t too much hurling around.

“I was always a football or soccer fan and followed it for years but I’m all about the hurling now. I came in one day and said it to the lads – I can’t go on following everything so it’s just hurling now,” he adds. Case closed, Heffo.

Archbold and his wife noticed a gap in the market sometime later and Heritage Hurleys was born.

“We have a small gift shop and there was no real hurling gift out there, we realised. It’s such a unique thing – hurling – it’s our own 2,000 year-old sport and people love learning about it when they’re here let me tell you.

“Myself and the wife whenever we get the chance are off in the car and we’re down the country and we saw there too that none of the gift shops have anything really to do with hurling.  So i looked around the web myself and there was a a few guys customising hurleys but we wanted to move it on a bit.  We put in our own money and made up a couple of samples and got things going ourselves.”

The hurleys are souvenirs – he pitches them to me as perfect for weddings, club awards, tourists, whatever – with customised images or crest. It seems like one of those Post-It notes ideas; why didn’t anyone else think of that?

“It’s going slow at the moment – it’s tough trying to do everything and hold down a job. I could do so much more but who can afford to jack in the job?

Some weekends, I might get in the car and use up a load of petrol some days and get them out there a bit more – and no one has not taken one when they see them – but there’s a lot of work in it. But we have the website up and running now and hopefully this will make a difference.

“We couldn’t get any investment, the bank wouldn’t even give us an overdraft.  But hopefully it’ll move on a bit now.”

All the hurleys are those with bad grain and this was one of John Torpeys from Clare. Archibold imprinted the Celtic symbols of “circles of eternity” from the Newgrange stone on the shaft.

An inscription reads: “Presented to Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, on the occasion of his first visit to Ireland, May 2011 by An Taoiseach Enda Kenny T.D.”

And if one of you products is kept under the Roosevelt desk in the Oval Office – your marketing budget isn’t so much of a worry any more.

How’d you manage that one?

“The taoiseach’s office was looking for something for a nice gift for the president. And there was a lack of gifts out there really that relates to hurling – same as we found – so i think someone suggested they contact us.

“I watched it on Monday morning. It was a very proud moment really. I don’t think I realised beforehand how much of a big deal it would be.

“It was like any other customer – I wanted to get it right .  But that hurley is part of history now. It was a very proud moment.”

Adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

  • Visit HeritageHurleys for more

 

Fleet street hell raiser lived a life as dramatic as the stories he wrote

May 30, 2011 in Columns, Sport, Writing | View Comments

IF Fleet Street was still filled with the sound of clacking typewriter keys and the industrial whirr of print-rooms, they would have fell silent this week for a moment.

That ink-smudged world is long gone of course and this week another wonderful anachronism was lost to the newspaper world.

Peter Batt was an East End boy of Irish extraction who laid down a shovel in a 1970s building site for the last time, blagged his way onto a newsroom floor and made a name for himself: Peter the Poet.

In the most vivid of colourful lives he would develop a famous alcohol problem that would ultimately scar his life, go through jobs quicker than ring notebooks and write the first episodes of a TV a series that became Eastenders – before losing that job too.

When his former colleagues, friends and family fill the pews of the church in Molton on Monday week for Batt’s funeral, a former workmate will offer the eulogy.

I interrupt Norman Giller, who is working on his 89th book when I ring him this week. A London journalism legend in his own right, ‘Uncle Norman’ – as he signs an email to me – reported an countless top-flight English football games, proudly compiled the celebrated annual Times Sports Jumbo Crossword for ‘27 consecutive years’ and wrote the scripts on This is Your Life for over a decade.

If anyone’s going to deliver an oration at your graveside, it might as well be the man who filled Michael Aspel’s famous red book.

“Peter won’t mind me telling you about all this,” he says generously, “he loved being known as a character.”And he was.

“Everybody has a Peter Batt story,” Giller continues. “the difference being that I was there as a disbelieving eyewitness. I first came across him when I was a copyboy on the [now defunct] London Evening News in the mid-1950s. One of the copytakers used to berate the reporters with: ‘Is there much more of this f****** crap …?” Meet ‘Batty’.

Giller says his friend literally couldn’t utter a sentence without a ribbon of obscenities. ‘But he got away with it’.

“His reputation arrived ahead of him, and Peter did not disappoint us with his behaviour,” he remembers, “Once around then Peter was late for the umpteenth time, he was called into an editor’s office for a final yellow card warning. He proceeded to explain that he had been to hospital because ‘I cut me old John Thomas while with a bird last night’.”

The editor and those watching through the glass panes from the floor outside were agog when Batt dropped his trousers as evidence. End of argument.

The pair’s paths crossed again in London’s swinging sixties.

“I was sitting subbing on the Daily Herald sports desk when, waving to me with a huge grin, was none other than Batty.” When a plane crashed in the Pysenees the new reporter was dispatched.

“He got to the foothills in an inebriated condition, and when the taxi-driver dropped him as close as possible to the scene of the crash, he managed to fall over in the snow while attempting to walk up the mountain.

“Rescuers coming down from the wrecked plane found him, picked him up and carried him to a nearby convent where he was put into bed and nursed by nuns, who did not help his condition by giving him copious shots of brandy to warm him up. Word got back to other reporters covering the story that a survivor had been found. They dashed to the convent to discover a pissed-as-a-pudding Batty sitting up in bed toasting their arrival, saying: “Thought I’d died and woken up in ‘eaven.”

By now crippled by drink (though Giller says Batty couldn’t get going without one) he made a name for himself as a wonderful sports writer. Colleagues said his balletic turn of phrase was testament to his Irish blood.

He needed the poetic licence when filing expenses claims as well as columns.

While working at The Sun, Batt charged for a hospitality meal with racing trainer Vincent O’Brien. An accountant noticed that the receipt that was pinned to his expenses sheet was for four people, including two children’s meals. When the sports editor queried him, Batt ad-libbed: ’Well, boss, Vincent turned up with two jockeys and they were both making weight, so I ordered from the kids menu’.”

Giller says his old friend was estranged from his long-suffering, German-born wife Heidi of 30 years when she at last grew weary of his alcohol-sparked mood swings. He eventually, thankfully, clambered aboard the wagon and was reunited with his family – including now some grandkids – before his death aged 77 in recent days.

His old sportsdesk colleague said that friends from the old beat tried to help him with his drink problem but failed everytime. They eventually decided to stop socialising with him as ‘socialising meant drinking’ to Batt. They’ll have one in his absence one more time however.

Giller recalled this week many episodes of a career riding shotgun with Batt which could fill a best-seller.
But Uncle Norman laughs quietly down the phone at the recollection of one night out many years ago: World cup hero Geoff Hurst’s testimonial dinner.

“Peter was a Dean Martin soundalike who and the memory is clear in my head of him falling blind drunk off the stage at at the London Hilton while singing “My Way”.

“He got as far as ‘And now the end is near…”

“He bashed his head on landing and had no recollection of it happening.” The police were called and the night ended in a brawl.

Yes, he did it his way.

Adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

Putting the Dan plan into practice

May 4, 2011 in Columns, Golf | View Comments

SOMETIMES you wake up with a bright idea and just go with it.

Usually however, a half-baked notion doesn’t require you to quit your job, empty your bank account and play golf for 30 hours a week, for the next six years.

Meet Dan McLaughlin. The 30-year-old is currently 12 months into a programme he calls The Dan Plan. You’re gonna like this guy.

On April 5, 2010, he packed away his camera, quit his job as commercial photographer and walked out of the dark room into the light.

So began what they might call in his trendy, left-leaning hometown of Portland: ‘a journey’.

McLaughlin (he says he’s a mix of Irish and Scottish but possibly some Welsh too) bought a set of clubs, headed for the nearest public course and clocked hour one in a what he hopes will be a 10,000 hour trek to the pros. The complete novice has set himself the goal of winning a PGA Tour card by the end of the 30-hour per week process.

The 10k hour mark is not one he plucked from his golf bag. The writer Malcolm Gladwell — we’ve spoken about him here before — has made the theory somewhat famous. The New Yorker magazine journalist quotes the young Beatles honing their craft in Hamburg, Beethoven writing middling symphonies as a kid, young Europeans landing in downtown Manhattan with years of practical business experience tucked in their back pocket and ultimately retiring to a penthouse in midtown years later.

But Gladwell is merely the prism with which many of us first viewed the theory that applies to sport so powerfully. The man who first shone a light on it was the impressively-titled Dr K Anders Ericsson. He’s the professor of Psychology at Florida State University.

“Elite performers engage in ‘deliberate practice’ — an effort-ful activity designed to improve target performance,” he wrote with an academic’s love of jargon. But strip it away and he could have been thinking about Joe Canning volleying a sliotar off a gable-end wall, David Beckham curling football after football over a cardboard silhouette wall or Tiger Woods pitching buckets of Titleists as the sun dipped on another day.

When Dan explained the laughably ambitious goal he’d set himself — to become a PGA pro, having never held a putter — Ericsson said with a smile: “I think you’re the right astronaut for this mission.”

He sure sounds it when he picks up the phone to me this week, having just come in from his morning session.

“It’s an experiment to test how far you can go purely with hard work,” he says in explanation. “It’s a way to tell whether the idea of talent exists. For me I really wanted to see how much potential was in one average person. And I do see myself as an average person.”

For the record, he says he has no previous experience as a competitive athlete, nor is he in “particularly good physical condition”.

McLaughlin comes in under average height and weight, had never played a full 18 holes of golf before this idea occurred to him, and had only been to a driving range a handful of times. Lefty or righty? He didn’t know that either.

“What I wanted to do was put all my energies into the 10,000 hours into one field and see how far we can go,” he continues. “And I wanted to do it in my 30s because most of the research is in people who train from 10 to 20 or whatever. So it’s during the teenage years and the brain, we know, is developing and it’s somewhat easier to learn and absorb.”

But why pick golf? Isn’t there easier ways to make a point?

“For a number of reasons. One was pretty basic: being outdoors is very appealing to me. I spent plenty of time working inside and wanted something outside. I also wanted to do something that was basically nearly impossible. There’s a chance of success but it’s minute. There’s only a couple of hundred PGA tour cards in the world.

“If I had chosen to be a doctor or an architect it would still be a real challenge and a feat but there’s thousands of them. Its not quite as compelling as something where there’s a really really slim chance of it working out.”

Logging in 30-plus hours a week, he will hit the 10,000 hour milestone by November 2015 he reckons. At that stage the Dan Plan stipulates he will win amateur events and obtain his PGA Tour card.

“Judging by the progress of the time I put in over the past year, its gonna take six years but at the same time I only putted in the first five months. So I think the time will be a greater from here on.”

Time flies when you’re having fun: McLaughlin says he’s falling ‘more and more in love with the game every week”. We agree to meet up at the Ryder Cup in a half a dozen years or so; though he’s working harder than I to get into the press room. I put down the phone and promise myself I’ll swing a club myself this weekend.

* Keep track on his progress at

- Contact: adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, April 22, 2011

Things to do before I’m 30

April 15, 2011 in Columns | View Comments

BELIEVE it or not, ladies, I’m turning 30 soon.*

I need to make a bucket list – things to do and see in sport before Death’s bony index finger gestures me towards that great, chalky sideline in the sky. Time running out. Must type quickly.

1. I reckon I have one World Cup left in me. I’ll be 32-ish around the time of the tournament in Brazil but I’ve never been fitter. The yoga is working wonders and I’ve cut down on the Wham bars.

2. Attend the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the World Cup Final. If none of these events take place over the next few months, watch some clips on YouTube.

3. Take on Billie Jeane King at the Houston Astro Dome in a repeat of the Battle of the Sexes match. Win.

4. Be that guy who stands behind a TV sports reporter and mouth obscenities at he watching audience.

5. In the same vein, do a ‘wacky’ dance when you’re shown on the big screen at Croke Park.

6. Corner Jonny Sexton upstairs in Coppers and tell him where he’s going wrong with his kicking.

7. Corner Tommy Bowe upstairs in Coppers and warn him never to talk to /dance with my girlfriend again.

8. Sit on the beach at Lahinch until Paulie shows up with his surf board, having landed up after Munster training.
Wait ‘til he’s togged out in the wet suit and he’s looking forward to a quiet afternoon on the waves, as is his wont. Follow him past the wash, paddling quietly behind and then proceed to ‘drop in’ – as is the lingo – on every wave he chases. Observe how he reacts.

9. Watch this Spanish football, Eamon Dunphy’s always talking about – over a cerveza with the great man himself.

10. Learn how to make a hurley. Break it off a dressing-room table-top.

11. Apply for a video analysis job in any number of sports. I need to get more use out of the Sky subscription.

12. This one might take some planning. Follow the dancing priest to his local supermarket. Then when the man, who disrupted Grands Prix and Grade One horse races with his jigs, pushes his trolley down the biscuit aisle, jump out in a kilt and hamper his progress with some high-kicking moves.

13. Be a ball boy at Wimbledon. I sent a letter off to Jimmy Saville a few decades ago on that score but have yet to receive correspondence on same. Unprofessional.

14. Play a round of golf with Barack Obama. You may not believe me but I did actually write several letters and tap out a number of emails to the White House. And knowing how the West Wing works from seven series of Aaron Sorkin’s drama, I also wrote to his press secretary, the chief of staff and his personal secretary. Months ago I read the basketball-mad POTUS had invested in a set of clubs and had a new found interest in the game – as do I. There was also plenty of speculation that the President would visit these shores during his first term . So I chanced it. He hasn’t replied as yet – but I get daily emails from the West Wing on health spending and other minutiae; what’s the craic Barack?

15. Require medical attention because of a sports injury.

16. Make it onto the MNS couch between Roddy and Dave Barry.

17. Check down the back of the Sunday Game couch for a few of Spillane’s All-Ireland medals.

18. Rick Reilly once asked the renowned American sportswriter Jim Murray if he kept a few extra columns in the bank
for days when he had ‘the flu or a tee time or an incurably blank computer screen’. “Of course not!” he replied, “What if I die one ahead?” Get one in the can anyway, for the days when Obama won’t answer your calls.

19. Interview Tiger Woods in monosyllables and see how he likes it.

20. Get into the All-Ireland final parade. I spent the day with the Artane Band on match day once but they wouldn’t leave me tog out because a) I only play the ukulele and b) I’m a galoot.

21. Ask Trap a single question in fluent, accented Italian – which I’ve learned phonetically from cue cards – and then watch what happens when he responds.

22. Remember that Jim Carey movie in which he says yes to everything that’s asked of him? Or ever hear about those people who try to live without spending a bob for a year or eat only bodice? Well I’m going to follow Paul Galvin’s fashion advice. To. The. Letter.

23. Pamplona. Chase the bulls. (see No 15)

24. Fishing with Big Jack.

25. Write the book my mother warns me never to write.

26. When the stewards are urged to go to their end-of-match position with that dramatic shout-out at Croker, run
down the steps in a Batman outfit.

27. Get Jose Mourinho’s help picking my Fantasy Football team. I don’t understand where I’ve one wrong.

28. Find the perfect conker.

29. Reclaim Cyril’s sombrero for those who died at the Alamo.

30. Party like it’s 1999 and watch every frame of the Snooker World Championships instead of studying for my mocks.

*Send luxury food hampers, boutique store vouchers and assorted – but expensive – gifts c/o the Examiner sportsdesk.
adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

London calling for Trinners’ queen of Tara

April 15, 2011 in Columns | View Comments

TONIGHT, in Dean Swift’s shadow and behind the famous college green arch, thousands of Trinity students and graduates will fill the many squares and greens that make up the Dublin city centre university campus.

The Trinity Ball is an annual end-of-term, pre-exams blow-out for those who fill the name-scrawled wooden benches in the old lecture theatres of Dublin 2. The tickets are procured in advance, parties are planned on Facebook and in canteens over hot coffee. The dress code remains as it always has been: black tie. Some of the cooler students twin the tux with pair of worn Converse trainers I’m told however.

The music is invariably good – I’ve never been, but have heard some of the best bands’ sounds waft over the walls in the past. Tonight, one of my personal favourites from my college days, The Streets will headline. If that name means little to you, rest assured, it’s a big deal to have Mike Skinner visit your school. Though, unlike the Lord Mayor, he can’t grant a half day.

Despite the calibre of the acts, tonight is circled in red ink on every Trinity student’s social calendar. So what will Natalya Coyle, a pupil of Business, Economics and Social Studies be doing when BellX1 and Jessie J take the stage?

“I’ll probably be training until seven or eight at the NAC (National Aquatic Centre) in Blanchardstown and then I’ll go home straight afterwards,” she told me.

“I do live in student accommodation but I have an early start in the morning for a fencing national. I’ll have to give the ball a miss because next week I’m going to Sardinia for a world cup. So I better be on my best behaviour.”

Coyle, at just 20, is one of our brightest young athletes. But in about five different sports.

The Meath native hopes to represent Ireland next year in London in the modern pentathlon. While her cohorts practice the student equivalent – cramming, dossing, texting, sleeping, chugging – Coyle has taken it upon herself to reach the heights of international standard in pistol shooting, fencing, swimming, horse riding and running.

Sure why not?

When I ring her initially, the mobile buzzes silently during her final lecture of the day. When she returns the call little over an hour later she’s already crossed the capital at rush hour and I can hear the lapping of the swimming pool in the background. Later she’ll slip into the water and continue her relentless stroke-by-stroke journey towards Stratford.

“I probably do about 25 hours a week of training and I think I have about 14-16 hours of college a week. So I kind of have to balance it all out. Our coach tailors our schedules to us so it works around our timetables in college so we can get all the training in.

“On a normal day I have three sessions. On a Tuesday I start at seven with my first training – a gym – and run from nine for an hour. I go straight into shooting then from 10 ‘til 11. I don’t end ‘til nine which is swimming. And I’d have five trainings throughout the day.

“Obviously there’s a college day in there as well,” she concluded.

Obviously. I’m afraid to ask where she squeezes in the three-hour tea breaks and the wheelie-bin races but I don’t have the heart.

“It is mad,” she agreed, laughing, as if realising it for the first time when she’s asked to recount it all aloud.

“I don’t think I’d do it if I didn’t enjoy it,” she continued, “luckily I have friends on the team too. I don’t think I’d be able to do it without them as they’re a great support system.”

So what the hell is it? Do people know what it is when you tell them at parties? And is it for everyone?

“Anyone can actually get into this sport,” Colye insisted brightly.

“You don’t need to have your own horse which everyone thinks you do. And you can come from any sporting background.

“Some of my friends that picked it up were in the Trinity fencing club and some swimmers start off or runners – and I came from an equestrian background.

“My weakest would be the fencing because that’s my newest one. I’ve been part of the fencing club since I started in Trinity and it’s really come on from there but you need time to mature because it’s such a technical sport.”

The Tara Athletic Club starlet is too modest to reveal, until prompted, that she’s one of the best fencers in the country now and a member of the team which dominates those who’ve been behind marks for a lot longer.

So, I know a guy can get a ticket for tonight. The Streets are breaking up – this is their last tour — the forecast is good, everyone’s going. Any interest at all?

“It doesn’t really matter, all the things I miss, like going out a lot. It won’t really matter if I qualify for the Olympics. That’s all I’m focused on,” Coyle said without a cloud of doubt.

As The Streets’ Mike Skinner will utter tonight in front of thousands of Natalya Coyle’s classmates: Let’s Push Things Forward.

- Contact: Adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, April 08, 2011

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