Ok, last week you might have seen Sky Sports’ Jessica Kastrop getting pinged in the back of the head while reporting with Scholl at a Bundesliga game.

This week during Germany’s Euro 2012 qualifier it became apparent that Scholl has developed some post traumatic stress issues as he sees footballs whizzing towards him as soon as the cameras go live.

Incidentally, last night I read Malcolm Gladwell’s piece The Art of Failure in The Only Game in Town: sportswriting from the New Yorker – which I really recommend sportswriting nerds – in which he explains the nuanced difference between ‘choking’ and ‘panicking’.

It’s safe to say, Scholl is panicking.

HT Hot Clicks

When the thin red line of Shelbourne players file out of the Dalymount Park tunnel before they face neighbours Bohemians in an FAI Cup tie this evening, it will evoke a time when cash slushed around domestic football.

Bohs’ future was tied up, like a lot of things here during the boom, in property.

The bottom ultimately fell out of their dreams and the club faces seasons of austerity ahead.

Across the Tolka, Shelbourne speculated on shooting for the stars too. The then-chairman Ollie Byrne felt the warm breath of Champions League football on his neck but Europe’s big league ultimately remained tantalisingly outside the club’s grasp.

Sadly, the charismatic Byrne died. The famous club almost imploded. But it lives on, still.

Now Shelbourne enjoys a vital role in the community. Its youth teams are performing well and the senior side plays honest football which will no doubt see them retake a seat at the top table sooner rather than later.

And if the days characterised by long, liquid lunches in silver-service Stephen’s Green eateries, queues for €500,000 house purchases in Navan and day trips to New York’s shopping malls are now alien to the club, so too Oscar Sibanda knows a very different Ireland.

Recent Shels signing Sibanda will sit on the bench tonight, if he doesn’t actually make his senior debut, on the famous piece of football real estate in Phibsboro.

On each occasion that the 22-year-old winger tugs on a Shels jersey he knows that it could be his last outing for the famous Airtricity League First Division side.

The Zimbabwean is facing deportation at any time after a three-year battle to seek asylum.

Sibanda fled Zimbabwe to join his mother and siblings in Ireland. They had left Zimbabwe because their mother was a member of the opposition party and feared persecution at the hands of Robert Mugabe’s regime.

Despite working as hard as his team-mates in red, Sibanda cannot be paid by the club. Like all asylum seekers here, he is only entitled to €19.10 a week.

A number of former players and managers including former Ireland boss Brian Kerr have signed a petition urging the Irish authorities to grant Sibanda asylum. So far their pleas have failed.

While he can visit his mother, two sisters and one brother who all live legally in Drogheda, Sibanda is living his life in time added on.

Ken McCue, founder of Sport Against Racism, insists Sabinda’s cause is pockmarked with injustices.

“He’s living in Hatch Hall hostel now in Earlsfort Terrace and he’s playing away with Shels now. He lived in Mosney for some time but he was removed recently with about 100 others and put in Hatch Hall. The next stop is deportation,” says McCue.

“There’s a good chance he’ll be deported in the next few weeks. There’s a whole series of mistakes in the asylum process he went through. The final one is the refugee appeals in which they determined he was from South Africa.

“He speaks in Ndebele, which is the same across the border in parts of South Africa but it’s like the Donegal gaeltacht version of Irish compared to someone from Waterford or something.

“And they made up their mind based on that but if they had looked at his mother’s file, they’d know. We are using the channel of the Minister for Equality – Mary White – to put pressure on the justice ministry but she hasn’t responded at all,” he adds.

While in Mosney, Sibanda organised and trained the kids in the asylym seekers’ centre into a football team named after the South African Albert Johanneson who once played for Leeds United.

The side took their place amongst local sides. Now however, they face having to withdraw as Sibanda can’t afford the transport costs to Co Meath from Dublin city centre and so the teams have lost a trainer.

“They had entered into the Drogheda and District League and it was great for the kids. The arts and sport have been proven and internationally recognised that it’s the best way to integrate. And now that a lot of workplaces are gone and people have more time for recreation, sport is even more important. He can’t get down – especially on €19 a week – so the team are struggling.”

If he does get on the pitch tonight, Sibanda will hug the touchline and hope to show Dublin’s soccer fans a frightening turn of pace that he first showcased with SARI’s own side.

“He’s a winger, he’s very fast and is a great attacking midfielder really,” says McCue who helps organise the organisations football sides.

“He was in our academy and he played some great stuff.

“We call our football African-flavoured, we play on a Saturday morning in Ongar in a place where we’re squatting really, I don’t know how long we’ll be there.”

Neither does Sibanda. But Shels fans will hopefully see him play on regardless.

adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, August 27, 2010

She reads the editorial in the morning newspaper (possibly the Irish Examiner), while on her train commute to work.

Later, on the way home from the office she picks up the evening paper.

* I realise referencing the Swedish four-piece may be percieved as uncool – but this particular song came to my attention when included on the Pitchfork 500. I was also living (temporarily) in a loft in New York’s Chinatown at the time. So I’m still MOST CERTAINLY COOL OK? **

**I’m borrowing this asteriks and italics thing from Joe Posnanski’s excellent blog

Anyway, the point is that now they might also sing about the latest iPhone app as Agnetha fiddles with her smartphone on the Metro journey to the office every morning.

The top-flight English soccer season got underway on Saturday and as I was out and about I had to rely on my soccer Saturday app for info on how badly my Fantasy Football team were doing.

And, to paraphrase Carrie Bradshaw’s clunky sex-column writing: that got me thinking… what other sports apps are worth a download. Here’s the few I have installed and if you’ve any suggestions, do let me know.

For any Dublin fans *spit* looking for news on their doomed build-up to the All-Ireland semi-final this weekend or canny Cork fans *high-five* who want to view the Blue hype for themselves than the excellent new Hill16 app is a must.

I like a bit of baseball and the MLB at bat app, left, is pretty class – especially when the Yankees and Red Sox games are stretching to almost four hours these days.

When the GAA aren’t busy constructing an eight-foot tall fence in their underground lab, they’re creating a nifty little app. How can one organisation take so many backward steps and live in the past so often, and at the same time be the most progressive and forward-working organisations – preofessional or not – in the country? Anyway, it’s a good app.

I also use Livescore, RTÉ GAA news, ESPN and Sports Illustrated. Any other recommendations?

NOTE: I’d hoped to include screen grabs of all these but Flickr is absolutely wrecking my head. All of a sudden it won’t let me link an image through the URL onto WordPress. Embedding is still fine but then everything is centred. The one I did include is uploaded straight from the PC here. But Gavin Sheridan told me, when helping me set this blog up, to firstly not feed the Gremlins after midnight and secondly, use FLickr to upload pics or else a server in southern California will suddenly explode and kill many, many Apple fanboys. Is this correct?

I realise I’ve now pulled back the curtain, reader, and spoiled any mystique which surrounded the magical process of operating this little corner of the internet.

Also could’ve headlined with:

1. What are you gonna do today, Napoleon?
2. You wanna play me?
3. Hey, Napoleon. What did you do last summer again?
4. Heck yes I did!

Whipped from this week’s Guardian gallery. Take a bow, son.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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