Features

“I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children.” Tiger Woods after engaging with a fire hydrant, a tree and half of the world’s female bar staff.

“After much soul searching, I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf.” I’ve paid for a few expensive rounds in my time, but Woods rues one of the most expensive cocktails of all time.

“I have not been true to my values and the behaviour my family deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behaviour and personal failings behind closed doors with my family.” Woods — again — faces up to the reality of getting caught with his pants down.

“I would probably need to apologise to her and hope she uses a driver next time instead of a three iron.” Jesper Parnevik, who introduced Woods to his wife, offers some professional advice to his former au pair.

“If I could, I would take this f****** ball and shove it down your f****** throat.” Do you kiss your dad with that mouth Serena? One of the Williams sisters rants at a US Open line judge

“Slim dumps a small pile of powder on the coffee table. He cuts it, snorts it. He cuts it again. I snort some. I sit back on the couch and consider the Rubicon I’ve crossed.” Andre Agassi on fine-tuning his pre-match warm-up — taking crystal meth in the 90s. Didn’t we all?

“There was a typo in the book. I did math, not meth.” Agassi, joking about the sensation caused by his drug admission. It would have been more surprising to discover he was doing lines of algebra, to be honest. Read the rest of this entry »

1 The Paul McGrath Award for best disappearing act: Kenny Egan
More used to jumping rope, Egan skipped off to New York at the end of February. The Olympic silver medal wining boxer caused quite a stir as Twitter lost one of it’s biggest proponents and the social diarists were missing a once-reliable cast member. The Dubliner eventually returned after missing an Irish team tournament with the USA, apologised and has since kept the head down.

2 The Waldorf and Stadler Award for bickering media pundits: Pat Spillane and Joe Brolly
We may have to give RTE’s GAA analysts an award each to avoid an argument. It was a summer of late tackles and dirty hits on the sofa as co-panellist Colm O’Rourke and his Meath team of the late 80s would have applauded. Like two old fellas on high stools, the debate was fairly incoherent and trivial: who is the team of the decade, Tyrone or Kerry? It started early in the season and was concluded, with Spillane grinning, when the Kingdom regained the upper hand in September.

3 The Podge and Rodge Prize in Recognition of Tact: Clare Balding
I’m not going to stick the boot in here. But… the words ’stones’ and ‘greenhouses’ sprang to mind after the Grand National when the BBC’s racing presenter poked fun at winning jockey Liam Treadwell appearance. Sticking a mic in the poor guy’s face (at precisely the highest moment in his professional life) she demanded: “Give us a big grin to the camera. No, let’s see your teeth! He hasn’t got the best teeth in the world, but you can afford to go and get them done now if you like.” Stay classy, middle England.

4 Most Innocuous Question of the Year: Marty Morrissey
The beloved Banner broadcaster was left mopping the spittle from his impressive pate when he casually queried Brian Cody (after the Kilkenny manager saw his side seal a four-in-a-row, let’s remember) about that final-defining penalty call.
“I have no idea Marty. Did you check all the other frees to see if they were dodgy also?” Cody spat before continuing in that poisoned vein.
“Well Marty wont be buying the book after that,” Lyster chuckled afterwards from the comfort of behind the studio sofa.

5 Least Innocuous Question: Paul Kimmage
The contrarian journalist anmd former pro rider Paul Kimmage, who already has plenty of history with Lance Armstrong (“He is the cancer”) when he asked him a question about his disgraced former colleagues. “What is it about these dopers that you seem to admire so much?” said Kimmage. Armstrong responded at length and with chilling calmness.

6 Contingency Plan of the Year: Plan B
The national emergency plan saw half the country suffer for a fortnight under floods, sticking Leon Best up front for quarter of an hour didn’t reap rewards for Ireland against France in Dublin and going back into the jungle didn’t get Jordan back on track.
However, as Croker chiefs pressed the panic button and flashed a ‘GO TO PLAN B’ message which flashed across the big screen at HQ, the phrase entered our sporting lexicon.

7 The Bill Murray Award for Losing It In Translation: Tadhg Kennelly
To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, Ireland and Australia are two countries divided by a common language. When Kennelly shoulder Cork’s Nicholas Murphy into the face in the All-Ireland Final in September he recounted the incident in his rushed-to-shops book.
“Cop that, it’s different this time boys”. It did not go down well.

8 The Frontline Heckler Award for Late Late Show performance: Donal Óg Cusack
The Cork hurling star got stuck in on his Late Late Show appearance to promote his ‘controversial’ new book. Ryan Tubridy, who looks like he’d blow away if he stood outside the dressing-room door as a Junior B team ran out, tried his luck at talking about hurling. Cusack thought him to stick to the lounge music and book clubs.

9 Oliver Reed for Drunken TV Appearance: Brendan Fevola
Readers here, and pub workers in Galway especially, may remember Brendan Fevola as the Aussie Rules player who was sent home from the 2006 International Rules Series after brawling with a barman.
This year Fevola made a holy show of himself at the Brownlow Medal ceremony — stumbling from guest to guest with a microphone and all-too-willing cameraman as he quizzed the game’s great and good.
The Carlton player has been fined $10,000 and told to “wake up to himself”. ‘Fev’ admitted he had no recollection of the events which also led him to being axed from the Footy Show on Channel Nine

10 The Boy George Question Award: Caster Semenya
In August Semenya won gold in the 800 meters at the world championships in Berlin. Immediately afterwards questions were raised about the South African’s gender. The row rumbles on; Semenya will be allowed to keep her medal and prize money no matter what. if not her privacy.

11 The Golden License Fee Award : RTÉ
The national broadcaster managed to miss one of the nation’s greatest sporting achievements this year. Olive Loughnane romped home, as they say, to take a silver medal in Berlin but we had to watch Brendan Foster interview the Galway girl for us as RTÉ didn’t have the rights to the world championships

12 The Stephen Ireland Award for Silly Vehicle Choice: Cliff Lee
Phillies pitcher Cliff Lee almost missed the first game of the World Series against the Yankees when he decided to take a cab uptown to the Bronx. Lee was stuck in a taxi at 5:45pm en route from his team’s Manhattan when the driver told him they were hopelessly stuck in traffic and it might take two more hours to get to the ballpark. Lee instructed the driver to find the nearest subway stop and negotiated two trains to make it to the mound on time.

13 The Milli Vanilli Special Mention (in recognition of claiming other’s work as your own): Noel Hunt
The Reading striker sparked a mini-controversy when he insisted he and not captain Robbie Keane — scored the equaliser for Ireland against Italy in Bari in April.

14 Best Outfit: Serena Williams
The younger Williams sister shook the cosy world of lawn tennis with a tight-fitting and cheeky “Are you looking at my titles?” t-shirt at a Wimbledon press-conference. New balls please.

15 Jedward Award for Attempted Singing: Tommy Bowe
The Ospreys man was hung out to dry by his Ireland teammates on Dame Street at their Grand Slam homecoming. Thinking he’d enjoy a chorus lines of championship-winning colleagues, instead they stood back and left him suffer through an in front of 17,000 fans on Dame Street.

This article first appeared in the Irish Examiner sports review supplement.

When Michael Jonzon, above, closed out the Castello Masters in Spain last month with an 18-foot birdie, the title secured his European Tour card. But he also won a more tangible trophy. The pictures in the newspapers on Monday morning showed the Swede kissing an oak-coloured sculpture of a man with a ball on his head and smile on his face. And this, these days, is not the weirdest prize in sports today.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ghostwriters: like teenagers stealing drink from unsuspecting couples.

The always-readable Pitch Invasion takes a fairly extensive look at footballers’ autobiographies.

I talked to some of the men who pen them, ghostwriters, for the Irish Examiner.

“I went to the World Cup, I was shite, here’s my book” was how Joey Barton succinctly and accurately summed up the raft of autobiographies spawned by England’s 2006 tournament failure.

But for every tome revealing whether Wayne Rooney likes to ring for a pizza before or after he watches Countdown, there’s a Liam Dunne, Dessie Farrell or Tony Cascarino laying bare his soul for all to peruse. Read the rest of this entry »

Micheal Phelps’s three-month suspension, which was doled out by USA Swimming after a picture surfaced in a British red-top newspaper showing him inhaling from a marijuana pipe, ended today.

And the freak is back in the circus.

He admits however that he drew up and pros and cons list for both swimming and quitting.

Here he is racing CNN news hound Anderson Cooper not long after the Olympics…

Imagine how fast he’ll go now he’s not sponsored by Cheech and Chong. I wrote about one of the American’s races in Beijing as part of a ’sporting highlights’ series at the turn of the year.

BEFORE the bells toll on 2008 next week, an extra second will be added to the last minute of the year. Our warming and expanding planet is an unreliable timekeeper and the subsequent discrepancy with our atomic clock causes a world of practical difficulties — like large financial transactions, reliant on precise Wall Street time stamps vanishing.

And for every millisecond the atomic clock is out, global positioning systems are approximately 1,000m inaccurate; that’s a fairly important one thousandth of a second if you’re recuperating in an Iraqi hospital, one kilometre up the road from a US army missile target.

So on December 31, the Director of Time (yes he exists), — a man who measures delicate factors like the wind on mountains slowing the rotation of the Earth — will add that extra second to our year. Only one other man operated in such minute fractions of time this year — and he didn’t need a Sat-Nav to find his way into the history books. Read the rest of this entry »