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Ice, ice baby

January 9, 2010 in Athletics, Features, Football, GAA, Golf, Hurling, Rugby, Sport, Swimming | Comments

unlucky

The news broadcasts are creaking under the weight of cliches like ‘blankets of snow’, ‘big freezes’ while footpaths are engaging in treachery.

As the country has slowed ground to a halt, the sporting world has been the same.

Meanwhile, in today’s Irish Examiner, despite the present icy inertia, about two dozen of our staff writers and columnists have looked ahead to the events that will define the Irish sporting year. I can’t link to the website as it’s a graphic but check it out in the hard copy if you’re in Ireland. There’s some surprising calls.

In the meantime, here’s my effort: Read the rest of this entry »

Decade in Review: 2007

December 31, 2009 in Football, GAA, Golf, Rugby, Sport | Comments

Harrington makes Major breakthrough
Anywhere else, Pádraig Harrington might have walked off the 18th green knowing his two shots that found the bottom of Barry Burn for double bogey had cost him the British Open.

The label of choker would rattle louder and he would not go on to win the USPGA and the Open again in the space of 13 months.

He wouldn’t be the Harrington we know today.

But at Carnoustie, calamity can — and probably will — strike at any time, and did, during the 2007 final round.

In a nail-bitting Sunday evening finish, Harrington delivered the fitting climax to a day that kept everyone guessing.

He took a two-shot lead to the final hole of a play-off, and still had to sweat out a three-foot bogey putt to beat Sergio Garcia.

He became the first Irishman in 60 years with his name on the famous claret jug and elevated himself to the elite status.

We don’t like cricket, we love it
Sometimes the sporting scriptwriters phone it in. Take a rag-tag bunch of amateur Irish cricket players, cast as the underdogs against the game’s elite at the World Cup in Jamaica.

It’s not Cool Runnings in whites, but Ireland’s breakthough performance in the game.

And in a delicious twist, the Blarney Army enjoyed their most famous win on St Patrick’s Day as the talismanic Trent Johnston hit to clinch victory over Pakistan.

Amazingly, the Irish went on to reach the Super Eights, and the sport in this country has taken long strides since.
Read the rest of this entry »

Decade in review: 2006

December 30, 2009 in Features, Football, GAA, Golf, Rugby, Sport | Comments

Zidane loses his head
This was like a pitch for an old Clint Eastwood movie: a maverick cop is about to retire after a working life married to the badge. Here’s the rub: his last day at the office isn’t going to be uneventful.

Zidane — the brightest talent of his generation — already had a World Cup medal on the sideboard, a European Championship win, European Cups, Ballon d’Oors — enough baubles to decorate your Christmas tree essentially. But Zizou will forever now be remembered for his rash reaction to a Marco Matterazzi jibe as the world watched on in shock.

By scoring a seventh-minute penalty he had become only the fourth player in World Cup history to score in two different finals. However, in extra time in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium he headbutted the Italian defender in the chest. The flash of the referee’s red card sent the curtain falling on a glitterring career.

Italy, of course went on to win the penalty shoot-out 5–3. Aptly, he kept the Golden Ball award for best player at the tournament.

War of Attrition strikes gold at Cheltenham
Michael O’Leary heralds his airline’s obsession with arriving on time. His horse War Of Attrition clocked in early after little turbulence — stopping the stopwatch at 6min 31.7sec.

In the past 50 years only two Gold Cup winners have gone faster, Looks Like Trouble (6:30.3) six years previously and Norton’s Coin (6:30.9) in 1990.

In 2004 War Of Attrition left Cheltenham as a courageous loser, beaten a neck by Brave Inca in the Supreme Novice Hurdle. In 2006 however, he went one better than his old rival with victory in the Gold Cup, as Ireland’s dominance at the Cheltenham Festival reached unprecedented heights.

This success was the ninth at the meeting for an Irish-trained horse, and the 10th, Whyso Mayo, came in the next race, setting a new record. It was all very easy for jockey Conor O’Dwyer who settled his horse behind the early pace and moved towards the front of the race with about a mile left to run. The Celtic Tiger purred and Cheltenham’s Irish partied on.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tiger Woods, a crash and the Chinese media reaction

December 1, 2009 in Golf | Comments

I’m fascinated by the ongoing Tiger Woods story and the epic PR disaster that grows more damaging by the hour.

Thank god, however, for this piece of journalism which aired in China, apparently. The Irish Examiner will use the same technology for the next Cork strike.

All the President’s men

August 6, 2009 in Golf, Politics, Sport | Comments

Former US President Bill Clinton has been clicking through the gears on the global news cycle for the past 24 hours. He showed up, as you’ll know, in North Korea in a surprise mission and left on his private jet with two American journalists, freed after being sentenced to 12 years hard labour by the rogue state.

In what smacked of a Hollywood action movie sequel, Clinton got the old gang together – in his entourage were his former White House chief of staff, John Podesta, and Clinton’s personal physician, Roger Band, while former Vice President Al Gore welcomed them home.

Clinton had a meeting with Kim Jong Il for an hour and 15 minutes and a dinner with the Dear Leader that lasted about two hours. They may have talked about golf.

Certainly, I had my only meeting with POTUS on the fairways. Yes, my friends, if I was detained in Pyongyang for five months, facing a lifetime of misery in a country existing in a shadowy Orwellian reality, and William Jefferson Clinton parachuted though the ceiling of the Great Hall, knocking Kim unconscious before carrying me up the steps of Air Force One like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman, then frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’d expect it.

I was lucky enough to walk inside the ropes on the Sunday of the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club in Kildare, following the emotional final round from Darren Clarke. So too was the 42nd President of the United States.

On a day when I managed to piss off childhood hero Boris Becker and screamed like a bobbysockser at Michael Jordan, I contrived not to embarrass myself with Clinton. He was however walking the course with Rick Reilly – then of Sports Illustrated, now ESPN.

Check out what happened when Clinton and Reilly first shared a gold course in the award-winning feature here.

Golf stars always in fashion

July 18, 2009 in Golf, Sport | Comments

Sports apparel giants carefully planning what elite golf stars wear at the Open this week is par for the course as Turnberry acts as catwalk for a €6 billion business. I went all Gok Wan on golf’s ass for today’s Irish Examiner.

IN Goldfinger, Sean Connery’s James Bond insists that the only fashion faux pas one can make in golf is to dress too well.
This week at the Open, few would have been guilty of breaking 007’s rule; but then most don’t have much say.

Tomorrow’s winner in Turnberry will be on television throughout the globe, more than likely, for five consecutive hours. His face and clothes will appear online and in newspapers, and his winning outfit could surface again a month or a year later on magazine covers. A single shirt worn by a big-name golfer on a Sunday afternoon winning a tournament can raise sales 10%, companies say.

The scripting process begins for most companies with a design meeting about a year and a half before an event. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitch’n'Putt with Joyce and Beckett

June 16, 2009 in Golf, Sport, Writing | Comments

For the Bloomsday that’s in it: Short film by Bórd Scannán na hEireann in which Beckett and Joyce hack around a golf course while waiting for someone. The language is a bit colourful…

Weird Science

May 17, 2009 in Golf | Comments

Pádraig Harrington tries the Happy Gilmore swing ie taking a crazy run-up at the tee. Via Matt; action starts at about three minutes in.

The 3 Irish Open – a good walk spoiled?

May 5, 2009 in Columns, Features, Golf | Comments

The confirmations keep coming for the Irsh open in Baltray this month. I packed a flask of milky tea and hit Adare Manor for last year’s competition.

WITH an impressive tented village at the heart of the picture-postcard Adare Manor hawking expensive jewellery, Audis and gourmet sandwiches, it seemed the Irish Open was like the Electric Picnic for the middle aged.

And walking the rope with about 20 or so other die-hards to follow the early action between our own Peter Lawrie and Australian Scott Strange, one had the quiet satisfaction similar to enjoying a favourite cult band that no one else is interested in.

The Castelknock man bantered sporadically with the faithful few who shunned the brighter lights of the Harrington roadshow, or even the draw of Clarke, McGinley and McIlroy for this off Broadway production as he and his playing partner battled well on a pleasant Saturday morning.

On a day that grew warmer, it occurred to me what a nice way this must be to make a good living. In the same way Mary McAleese must think Ireland smells of drying paint and fresh flowers because of the effort Muinter na hEireann put in before her visits; so too, this golfing elite must think the world, or perhaps this country at least, is a picturesque, affluent resort with bottles of chilled Ballygowan water every 700 yards or so. Read the rest of this entry »

Party time: The Masters

April 9, 2009 in Beer, Features, Golf, Sport, TV | Comments

partypic

The Masters, one of the great spectator events in the sporting calendar – begins today. It’s made for those armchair quarterbacks among us – with hours of trans-Atlantic showdowns unfolding over four days – and in prime time. I’ve a piece in today’s Examiner on how to host a party, see below. Read the rest of this entry »


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