The Deadline
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From the front page of today’s Irish Examiner: Bertie Ahern watches the Arsenal-Man U game in 3D in Fagan’s. Insert your own joke.
Emmet Ryan of Action81 was there for us – you can check out his report there, including the former Toiseach’s opinion.
I saw this in the latest episode last night and thought of you guys.
And here’s some good dancing from my favourite character in the show.
Seinfeld, they said, was a show about nothing. However, it covered everything – the minutae of life, from bakery line etiquette to favourite t-shirts to soup. But one thread that ran right through its nine seasons was sport.
Jerry Seinfeld himself is a sports fan, of course, a New Yorker whose allegiance is firmly with the Mets while co-creator and executive producer Larry David is a Yankees man. So is George Costanza, of course, who is more or less based on the Curb Your Enthusiasm star.
They say there’s a Superman reference in every episode – either verbal or visual – but there’s twice as many sports allusions.
Joe Sports Guy has vowed to chronicle every sporting reference in the show, starting with baseball. And because I like making lists as much as the next man, here’s my top three. Read the rest of this entry »
The country explodes in celebration, the recession is cancelled, the world applauds. Meanwhile, back in Montrose…
“Ireland did not win the World Cup! No football team won this tournament, Bill.
[Raising voice to talk over three other pundits now wearing comedy green hats with clapping hands on the peak] This so-called football tournament was dragged into the Stygian darkness of Satan’s anti-football by our representitives.
“I’m not saying Trapattoni has done a bad job but we should be ashamed of ourselves for celebrating this – the final nail in the coffin of this beautifaul sport.
“Real football people will bloody well know how I feel. Real fooball people. [while he jabs a pen at Kenny Cunningham]
“The faceless corporate war mongerers who ran this bloody circus are laughing all the way to the bank. Bread and fucking circuses, eh Gilesey?
[throws the pen at Ronnie Whelan’s head] “How dare they serve up a binary, industrial, mechanical, art-less scoreline. 1-0? 1-0?! Football is art, music, theatre on, this, our biggest stage. Argentina played football wrapped in silk. Trap sent our poor lads out to play in dirty cotton.
This performance [aggressively punching quotation marks in the air] is an Orwellian nightmare from which I am yet to wake. Big Brother is watching. Big bollixing Brother. Big pricking, bollixing Brother.
“Well no. No! Two and two – Gilesy will tell ye too, he went to Synge St – two and two is four. This World Cup has disgraced the nation.
“Hyperbole? Ah Bill, jaysus. We’re a fucking laughing stock, Bill.”
I had a had a chat with Ireland legend Damien Duff during the last international break about Subbutteo, Florence and the Machine and, I’m not ashamed to say, one of my favourite TV shows, Entourage.
The HBO sitcom – which revolves around a young film actor and his friends in Hollywood – is peppered every year with plenty of celebrity cameos and the world of sport (look out for LeBron in the season finale later this year) is always well represented.
So here, in case the Duffer is browsing his favourite blog in a Dublin hotel today ahead of the Italy game on Saturday, is my top five sports star walk-ons on Entourage. Read the rest of this entry »
The latest in the series of late-night talk show hosts and global sports stars facing off.
The sun never set on the British Empire they said, and the same can now be said of TV’s sporting world. A particularly dedicated coach potato can view a bottom-of-the-table clash in the Brazilian league, and then take in an interprovincial camogie game before lazily flicking to horse racing in the north of England. But is it now possible to watch – for 24 straight hours – live sport on the television? I tuned in and turned on to find out on Saturday.
With American broadcast heavyweights ESPN taking on the muscular Sky, the BBC seemingly beefing up their coverage of major sports events this year and RTE continuing to punch above their weight, one can now sit in your front room on any given day and watch as-it-happens action bounce into your sitting room via a series of spinning satellites.
For some assignments in journalism you wear a flak jacket, a look of authority and a St Christopher’s medal. And if you’re expected to turn your back on a war zone to deliver a crisp 120-second piece-to-camera, maybe you don’t hit Beirut’s disco-bars ‘til the sun come up over Lebanon.
For other reporting jobs, the preparation can be less Woodward and Bernstein and more Doheny’s and Nesbitt’s. How many of us have set the alarm to rise early on a weekend morning to watch a match half the world away, under the familiar fog of a hangover? It was with a very real sense of journalistic integrity then, reader, that I too undertook my task, shackled to a very sick head.
Therefore, I cannot vouch for the authenticity of everything I am about to relay to you. My notes were hastily scribbled on the back of an eircom phone bill. The line has since been disconnected.
However, I will faithfully and earnestly attempt to retrace the steps of my journey through the cathode ray tube, to a full day of sporting entertainment. This is post watershed stuff. As they used to say on Dragnet, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Read the rest of this entry »
This guy is my hero. ‘Freshman sports reporter’ Brian Collins agreed to fill in for the regular sportscaster on a Texas university’s campus newscast.
The teleprompter operator fast-forwarded through the script, leaving Collins with only an occasional few words to use. One was dynamite.
The ‘Collins incident’ is now taught in college media courses. With hilarious consequences.
Any football fan who ever caught a game on ESPN while travelling throughout the world will know the lilting commentary of Co Louth’s Tommy Smyth.
The American broadcaster’s colour man, famous for his ‘rustle the auld onion bag’ catchphrase, is the subject of internet petitions, websites, death threats, and evidently, plenty of fan mail.
With Setanta Sports effectively going bust and ESPN looking to take up their Premier League contract, Smyth hopes to become a lot more well known in Ireland and Britain.
I spoke to him last week for Saturday’s Irish Examiner.
THE voice of soccer in America — and throughout much of the world — has an Irish accent.
Louth man Tommy Smyth has been ESPN’s colour man since 1994 and his opinion, delivery and catchphrases have provoked a tide of reaction from the world’s football fans ever since.
Now with Setanta folding their tent and Smyth (‘Smyth with a y’ as his sign-off goes) and his renowned employers look set to take up the Premier League contract, the Dundalk man’s unique brogue is likely to become ever more familiar in his homeland.
“It would be like the Prodigal Son returning, wouldn’t it? I’d love it. I can’t go anywhere in the world without being recognised. I got e-mails from Australia, the Middle East, all over North and South America and especially Nigeria but I rarely get one from Dundalk. And I’d love that.” Read the rest of this entry »
Pep Guardiola’s first season in management has seen him lead Barca to the Cop del Rey, La Liga and last night the Champions League.
He could play a bit too of course and becomes the fifth man to win the European Cup as player and manager.
(Name the other four, I reckon I have them).
He taught the master Fergie a lesson, has done it playing some crazily good football AND he’s the best tailored boss since Jose.
Check out Liam Mackey’s take on last night’s action here.
“The halls in Syracuse University’s public communications school are a little quieter,” writes the Wall Street Journal “as Shaq leaves the college after two days and 22 hours of broadcasting boot camp.”
The Phoenix Suns centre – taking avantage of some down time without the distraction of the playoffs – finished the school’s Sportscaster U programme, specifically designed for pro ballers hoping to hone their ‘analyst skills’.
He could have attended Mark Lawrenson’s Alma Mater of course – The Garth from Wayne’s World School of Sport Analysis. Most graduates state an unlikely opinion before subsequently shouting ‘NOT!’, like it’s 1993, immediately afterward. Repeat for a decade and a half on Match of the Day.
Full Shaq story at NY Times.
Con Murphy’s weekly behind-the-scenes MNS blog is the wackiest stuff RTÉ has produced since The Big Bow Wow.
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.
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 »
Martin Kelner – in his weekly Screen Break column has gone in studs up on John Inverdale – particularly regarding the BBC presenter’s fast-and-loose use of the word ‘literally’.
The “Irish players know the eyes of the nation are literally upon them,” he said on Saturday, allegedly. Jamie Redknapp regularly transports footballers to the magnetic north pole on a weekly basis of course as he often suggests they’re, ‘literally, on top of the world’. Top, top punditry, Richard.
Kelner goes on to pick apart the BBC’s coverage of the championships – Austin Healy in the stand, the unintentionally hilarious Sonya on the line, Eddie Butler in the gantry with either Brian Moore or the excellent Philip Matthews.
And then we have RTE. When Ireland beat Romania on penos in 1990, famously the country was snapped back to the Montrose Studio to find Dunphy and Billo in funny hats.
On Saturday, an RTE runner was dispatched to the bowels of Montrose as the full-time whistle went in Cardiff. There, in the corner of a dusty archive stacked neatly between Bibi Baskin and a rotting picture of Gerry Ryan is a worn box marked ‘comedy headgear; use in case of emergency’. It is returned in haste through the corridors to the studio. We, the viewers, return to Donnybrook after the dramatic finale to find, lo and behold, our panel of experts wearing an imaginative melange of millinery, happily gazing back at us – like cows who caught their reflection in a puddle. Absolute gold. (Pic of Mr G Hook from Vic)
Their punditry in general has been pretty run of the mill; Hook draws wild comparisons all day – most things are like Obama, it seems – Popey needles him a bit, offers some sensible opinions and Conor O’Shea fills the John Waters archetype on the Late Late vying for talk time between the Dunph and Eoin Harris. It does what it says on the tin.
My own inclination in general, when I have a choice between the national broadcaster and a British channel in covering any sporting occasion is usually to buy Irish. The difference between the two rugby-wise is really the segments between matches where the BBC treat us to some quality VTs like Keith Wood interviewing Declan Kidney, Woodie close to tears waffling about what we need to do to win and atone for all those past misses, Woodie and O’Driscoll etc. Jonathan Davies often brings a lot of insight to the party too.
Some Irish reader left this remark on the Guardian blog:
Jesus H Macy. Ryle Nugent is definitely not bad enough to drive you into the arms of Fred Cogley surely? Into the arms of the BBC however? Maybe, some – not I – would say.
But then a man’s relationship with his television sports commentator is like that between and man and a woman. And, God knows, there’s not many Eddie Butlers on the dancefloor of life. Quite literally.