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

This is the cat’s miaow. “Why, this is the daffiest word-slinger this side of Tuscaloosa. He’s a grade-A quack, we tell’s ya.”

This week is comedy gold (my emphasis):

I received one e-mail after the programme from an irate viewer who thought it was a disgrace that I would take the liberty of advertising my clothes shop in Cork and its sale at the moment. So just to be completely transparent, I don’t have any connection with Con Murphy’s shop in Cork and I merely mentioned it in jest. Hopefully the knickers of the man who took the time to e-mail his annoyance will become untwisted with that clarification.

Someone, somewhere, has set up a facebook group to rally the Irish sporting public against the renaming of Lansdowne Road as the Aviva Stadium. They suggest we call it, and you’ll like this, the Palindrome…

Landsdowne Road has been rebuilt and the cowardly FAI & IRFU have renamed it ‘The AVIVA Stadium’ in exchange for filthy money.
We propose that instead of referring to it as such, everyone should call it ‘The Palindrome’ instead (seeing as aviva is the same backwards as forwards) and thus ensure that the name never catches on!

Tell your friends, save Irish football!

There’s a piece in today’s Irish Examiner about three 5th-year lads (two from Rathgar, one from Wicklow) who told their parents they were having a sleepover in one of their places.

But unlike everyone else who used that trick and went bushing/cow-tipping/ happy-slapping, these legends went to Italy for the Ireland game last week.

There’s some quailty quotes from the so-called ‘ringleader’.

We texted to say we were all having a good time and they never suspected anything. That’s the beauty of text messages. If they had rung us during the match they would have heard the crowd singing The Fields of Athenry.

They sound like they were more organized than me to be fair.

Piece from today’s Examiner below.

YESTERDAY’s alcohol ban in central Bari, only lifted after last night’s match in the San Nicola Stadium, was about as futile and comical an exercise as one high-profile but uncapped League of Ireland player’s announcement of his retirement from international football a couple of seasons ago.

The estimated 6,000 plus Irish fans who clogged the arteries of the city on Tuesday night awoke yesterday with an Adriatic-sized hangover, hoarse throats and the realisation that a cure was not on the menu from our Italian hosts. But, as Groucho Marx famously stated, I don’t want to be a member of any club that will let me in anyway. Or, similarly, as one flag hanging in the Piazza yesterday explained: F**k the Recession, We’re on a Session. Indeed.

But there was plenty of beer to be bought from enterprising Italians on street corners, waiters were persuaded to wrap bottles of wine in tea towels while more hid cans behind upturned menus. And more still went to the beach.

Nell McCafferty once wrote about sleeping in the catacombs of Rome during Italia 90 where pasty, freckly Irish lads in O’Neill’s nicks and Saw Doctors t-shirts were bunking up, amazingly, with Scandinavian and Italian goddesses. Yesterday at the beach, the next tide of Celtic cubs were perched on white rocks like giant, green tortoises who are hard wired biologically to return to the same spot once in a lifetime to mate. There was certainly none of that. I, however, won an Italy jersey with a scratch card I procured for buying a bottle of beer. Result.

Speaking of results, it seemed to us last night’s was cast in stone. On Tuesday night a gypsy woman approached a group of al fresco imbibers outside a city centre cafe begging for cash. When she failed to extract any money she immediately gesticulated wildly and seemingly spat a few swears at us. Two Italian speakers in our company, however, explained that she had put a curse on Trap’s team and promised we’d lose 1-0.

The more superstitious amongst us jumped to their feet, rattled a few cents out of their pockets and offered it in exchange for a scoreless draw. It said a lot about the mood amongst the travelling support when no one even dared think mysticism would get us more than a point last night.

I’ve been here since Monday. I wake, stroke my now thick facial hair and just like Martin Sheen holed up in Saigon in the first scene of Apocalypse Now, think: Bari, I’m still in Bari. But many, many more arrived right up to yesterday afternoon using planes, trains and automobiles.

One group stumbled into the square at midnight on Tuesday when the party was in full swing. Entering, a civic space that was like the Cork hurlers’ homecoming in ‘66 with a generous dash of grappa, after a delayed flight from Rome one of their group told us of his travels around the south of Italy 19 years ago. He reminded me of the story of an old, sickly GAA club man who calls his son to his death bed and says: “Son I want you to know that I forgive those Rovers boys for the hiding they gave us in 1963 in the Junior B final… but don’t you ever forgive them.” He enjoyed his time but God, he was dying for a result last night.

The weather yesterday wasn’t conducive to a bucket and spades job on the beach and many of the bodies on show wouldn’t catch a wave in Youghal but needs must. This is where the action was — especially when the police confiscated the football that was kicked around in the main square when it was Garryowen-ed unceremoniously and hilariously onto the bonnet of their parked Paddywagon.

That was my cue to exit and was walking along the coastline looking for this famed Eldorado where — they whispered — you could still get Peroni, when in pulled a pimped-out SUV with two suave Italian lads with a Bryl Cream problem. In the back, hanging out the window was a lanky, bearded, middle-aged Dubliner in a flowing green, white and gold frock. He introduced himself as St Patrick, obviously. Forgetting everything I was ever taught about strange men in dresses offering lifts, we hopped in and to the famed beach. “Miracles happen when you believe in saints, lads,” he mumbled as he looked out, through his Ray Bans at the sudsy seascape, before taking a hearty pull of a Marlboro light. “Strange things happen,” he repeated.

Amen.

The touring congregation certainly needed religion and mysticism going into the San Nicola Stadium last night.

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And in other news Liverpool fans, Human League are once again a-top the hit parade, Bobby Ewing was in the shower the whole time and the Berlin Wall is definitely still standing.

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