If I know anything about advertising after three scotch-soaked seasons of Mad Men, I know that Madison Ave’s finest ad man sold a lifestyle to America – not products.

When he needs to flog cereal, he sells the image of the ideal family. Nylon tights are the modern world. Cigarettes become keys to cool.

From adidas execs producing David Beckham virals to fertilizer producers looking to this country’s GAA stars in the 1980s, sports stars sell too.

In the states, basketball fans remember a 16-foot shot that a young Michael Jordan sank as a college student with the University of Carolina. The kid who would keep sinking them until he become the world’s most recognisable sportsman said afterwards that it was the score that ‘put it him the map’.

His agent meanwhile, perhaps looking at things from a different perspective, remembers the press conference after the game with more fondness.

In an article by Herny Loius Gates Jr in the New Yorker magazine, David Falk (“whom one would be tempted to call the Michael Jordan of agents, if he weren’t Michael Jordan’s agent”) recalls a question that MJ slammed dunked as a mean-collared 22-year-old.

Jordan had chipped his axe on gold, signing for Coca-Cola. He was made to sit before the world’s cameras in Chicago to hold a few chilled cans of soda, throw some hoops in a shirt-and-tie and perhaps hop some soft-ball questions back to reporters.

But the Atlanta soft drinks company was, at the time, enduring its most turbulent period. New Coke had just been released and its bubbles would not last long.

“Hey Mike, which Coke do you like? New Coke or regular Coke?” a journalist shouted at the press conference. The flashes fall dull, the chatter in the room fizzes out.

“Even now,” Gates writes, “Falk wants to make sure I get the full picture: an inexperienced young players, the cameras, the microphones, the blazing lights – and his future as a pitchman in the balance. ‘And Mike responded – hey Coke is Coke, they both taste great’. As the sportscasters say , nothing but net.”

For Rory McIlroy perhaps that moment came not with a soft drink but through a fog of champagne.

Late in the night after his fourth-round procession at Congressional GC last month, the Holywood lad was pictured – by his own entourage and published on Twitter – drinking deeply from the famous old trophy.

But unlike a lot of us perhaps, McIlroy got out of bed mere hours later, travelled north-west to Cape Cod (by private jet, not the Mallow-Cork commuter train admittedly) and fulfilled his role as a pitchman for a well-known watch company.

Those who caught a BBC Northern Ireland documentary on the golfer recently will know how effusive the company’s top brass were when golf’s newly-minted sensation swung through the Massachusetts hotel’s revolving doors with that piece of tin under his oxter for their long-arranged corporate day.

Nothing but net, baby.

Booking McIlroy now might well be above that man’s pay scale. That US Open victory pinned him to Madison Avenue creative room drawing boards. If Don Draper needs short-hand for redemption, success, family values, youth, curls, whatever – he’s got his man.

When he strode off the 18th on Father’s Day, he was of course met first – wonderfully – by his dad. But secondly, it was Andrew ‘Chubby’ Chandler.

To coin a phrase: you’d be tempted to label him the Rory McIlroy of agents if he wasn’t Rory McIlroy’s agent.

He looks like his name sounds. If you met a friend for coffee and he mentioned casually “oh, my friend Chubby Chandler will be joining us, hope you don’t mind – and then this guy walked in? You wouldn’t be surprised.

He’s large and he’s open and if I was McIlroy, I’d like him in my corner.

Here’s what he said this week to Lawrence Donegan in the Guardian.

“Sometimes you just put a number out there and you have no idea why. With Rory, there are no rules any more. I have no idea what he is worth because there is no set value on what he does. You follow some guidelines based on other guys but he has gone, bonk, sky high.

Bonk indeed.

Chubby – who talks, in contrast to the clubhouse types who run the tours, like someone who’d be down The Feathers with Jim Royle, continues: “For instance, I called Rory the other day about a deal he had been offered. It is a very good deal, I told him, but I have no idea if it’s for the right amount of money because I spoke to someone else and they offered more.

“So you are just feeling your way out there. The thing is if we do deals that are sympathetic to Rory then I know we won’t go far wrong. He is 22, the lad, and we have got to make sure he isn’t a basket case by the time he is 25.”

By the 25, Michael Jordan was more famous than the president and sold more shoes than Clarkes. And he won a few ball games too.

This is going to be interesting.

Adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @Adrianrussell

IT’S often I look in bewilderment at an article in the sports pages with an expression similar to those which Usain Bolt’s competitors convey as the Jamaican sprinter glides past like he’s on rails.

I slowly lay the newspaper onto a cafe table, shake my head and say it again: wow. Martin Samuel is someone who I’ve often watched, with bald admiration, do the same job as I — but on a different level. He’s interrupted my mid-morning coffee many times.

This week his piece had me shaking my head for a new reason however. At the fag end of a 2,500-word column, which revolved around the risible soap operas of John Terry’s armband and Gerard Houllier’s ‘lucky scarf’, Britain’s Sportswriter of the Year spat a few hateful insults over his shoulder as he walked away from the remains of England’s Grand Slam dream.

“It came as something of a surprise to pick up the newspapers on Monday and discover what really inspired Ireland’s Six Nations victory over England at the Aviva Stadium: hatred,” he wrote.

“Andrew Trimble, the Ireland wing, let this slip, describing a rallying call from lock and most recent Lions captain Paul O’Connell prior to the game. ‘I always love listening to him during England week,’ Trimble said.

‘We wanted to get everything right technically, but we also wanted to use our physicality, our intensity, just a real hatred. We never get sick of beating England; that is why we enjoyed the win so much. There’s a lot of history there.’ “Indeed there is. Like the European Union’s £73.7billion bailout for the failing Irish economy last November, that could end up costing British taxpayers in the region of £6.07bn.

“Not many songs about that on Saturday, though, just the usual one about prison ships, prison walls and a terrible famine that took place 160 years ago yet is still thrown in the face of every visitor in an England shirt.

“Maybe next time Martin Johnson visits he could give a rousing and equally relevant speech before the game based on vengeance for all the little kiddies abused by Ireland’s paedophile priests. Or is it only the English who have entries in the history books of which their modern descendants might be ashamed?”

This is a different level of sportswriting — but I’m not craning my neck to view great work here. And Samuel is capable of great work. He can paint a scene, leave you laughing, build a convincing argument, break stories. Grit and the oyster, the complete package.

Yes Martin Samuel is an honourable man, Romans. This, however, leaves you confused by his rage. It’s like we’ve provoked a bar-stool bore into a venom-filled rant of non-sequitors.

Much like the Skibbereen Eagle warned the Kaiser in the early 20th century that the little newspaper would keep an eye on his activities from West Cork — I asked the Daily Mail this week if Samuels would discuss this piece with me. If I’m to write a column about one of the behemoths in the press room front row, a right of reply is a given. No reply was forthcoming — maybe he’s paid by the word.

So we’re forced to pick over the stinking carcass of this diatribe alone. Firstly, Andrew Trimble was speaking — clearly — about the history between the two sets of players and rugby-playing nations. To think he was alluding to the burning of Cork or Cromwell’s genocidal road-trip is, frankly, either idiotic or disingenuous. I’m sure Trimble is less interested in labels than I, but it’s clear that of all those in the Irish camp, the Ulster man is not one most prone to a Fenian outlook.

Secondly — the segue into the middle England whinge about the bailout… where does one start? A European-wide loan to Britain’s most important trading partner is no real shame to the ordinary people sitting in Lansdowne Road.

Who knew Samuels was so sensitive about the Fields of Athenry — a popular folk song? If its lyrics cause him such offence, he should know that none was intended. The song — and this is despite whether you like it or not — is sung at almost all major sporting events here, be it a Munster game, a soccer match, whatever.

It is certainly not a critique of the English people — and those welcomed to Dublin last weekend — as he seems to believe. Frankly, it never occurred to me that it might be a bit gauche of us to sing it in their presence. I’m surprised however, that someone who sits in the soccer grounds of England every weekend, tap-tap-taping on his laptop while supporters sing lustily of plane crashes, stadium disasters and serial killers would be so offended by a song about famine.

He must really hate that song though. For someone to be so moved to urge his national team manager to make a speech about paedophiles — or pin the Ferns Report on the Aviva Stadium dressing room wall — is, well, extreme.

No matter where I go in this game, if I ever wrap up a column with a sentence which is trite as it is vile, I’ll know it’s time to hand in the notepad and League of Ireland press pass. What a shame he wasted such ink and talent on this myopic, ungenerous rant. I thought he was better than that.

- Contact: adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

With the smell of drying paint in my nostrils and freshly-laid grass under my feet, I giddily surveyed the new Lansdowne Road stadium when it swung open its just-hung doors recently.

The elegant structure floats above the capital’s skyline and is as impressive inside as out. There’s room for 50,000 sports fans – and space for 50,000 pairs of legs to stretch out towards the sideline in the wide, comfortable rows of British-racing green seats.

The Aviva – if you’re going to call it that – boasts better media facilities than Montrose, Shane MacGowan will no doubt write stanzas about the length of the bars and the pitch doesn’t look too bad either.

However, like Gaudi’s famous Sagrida Familia cathedral in the heart of Barcelona, it’s beautiful but is unfinished. Or seems (italics) unfinished, at least.

Like a Celtic Tiger imagining of Hill 16, one end offers a mere 3,000 spaces, which are framed by a glass-like wall behind. Many a drop kick or wayward Leon Best shot will bounce back onto the turf after hitting its transparent tiles.

Compelled to fold the new stadium into an existing patch of expensive real estate in Ballsbridge the architects cut their cloth to measure. But though the flow of the undulating structure is broken at one curva by the shallower end, at least the opposition will feel the warm breath of Ireland’s soccer and rugby fans on their necks when they visit Dublin’s southside.

I spoke with two economists this week who explained – very slowly – to me, research that which showed that referees officiating in stadia with running tracks around the pitch are less likely to give hometown decisions and play less added time when the home side is drawing or losing.

Croke Park is magnificent obviously. But when the tenants from D4 lined out in an area too big for their specific purposes, some of the atmosphere was lost. It was only – I’d suggest – the Italy and France games last autumn that saw the football crowd find their full voice at last in Drumcondra.

And as that immeasurable commodity – atmosphere – is leaked into the dark Dublin sky, so too the referee is less affected.

Last month, I wrote of research that Robbie Butler – a lecturer in the economics department of University College Cork – and his brother David, a commerce student in the college had presented to the FAI on the effect a child’s birth day has on participation rates in soccer. The response from readers was impressive.

So when Robbie offered to talk me though their work on so-called Fergie Time, we put on another pot of coffee.

When the Aviva hosts its first soccer game in less than two weeks’ time, Alex Ferguson will be patrolling the touchline. A meaningless friendly against a Damien Richardson-managed Airtricity League XI, the Manchester United boss is unlikely to spring from the bench after 90-odd minutes and point at his famous wrist watch. When he goes – for he must someday – surely the statue outside the Stretford End they’ll erect of him outside the Stretford End will be cast in a wrist-watch-tapping pose.

Nevertheless, it was this habit of constantly querying additional minutes – and United’s perceived talent for scoring late, late goals, in particular Federico Macheda’s vital winner against Aston Villa – that prompted Robbie to examine the economics of added time.

“What we did is collected data from the BBC website for the 2009-2010 Premier League season,” says Robbie, as he leafs through pages of datea he’s thrown on the table in front of us. “It’s all there. So that’s every match in the season, that’s the amount of goals in the game because we thought that was important. It’s all the home teams first — who was winning, drawing, losing on 90.

“What the score was at 90, the margin, the actual outcome, the amount of subs, the amount of added time.

“It took me a few weeks — I should’ve been doing my PHD maybe but I enjoy doing it,” he laughs.

The new Aviva Stadium at Lansdowne Road

And, after hours of slogging over a hot keyboard and collating data neatly and carefully, the results were instructive.

“What was very interesting was what we found if you look at the tale when the home team is winning; on average, there was four minutes, 22 seconds added. When they were losing there was four minutes, 27 seconds and when they were drawing there was four minutes, 30 seconds. And that’s what you’d hope to find — that suggests there’s no bias. They’re playing roughly the same amount of time whether you’re winning or drawing or losing. So we were really happy when we found that. The next step was asking do the big teams get a bias?”

Robbie and Spurs fan David’s ‘hunch’ is backed up by the stats. “You want to get more time when you’re drawing obviously and look at who we have,” he says pointing at one end of a bar graph, “Arsenal, Man City, United, Chelsea, Tottenham. They get over five minutes when they’re drawing.

“And then look at the graph for when they’re losing — Arsenal, Hull (they had Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink knocked unconscious for 10 minutes and Jimmy Bullard broke his leg – skewing the figures, interestingly), Spurs, Chelsea, Man City, and Liverpool. Again the bigger teams get more time when they’re losing.”

So the myth is true. Fergie time exists.

“Ferguson and (Arsene) Wenger are the ones unhappy with the situation regarding added time, amazingly, and the exact opposite should be true,” says Robbie. “Ferguson is beyond rules. He’s untouchable and to be fair to him, he’s created that himself. He once said ‘we don’t lose a game we just run out of time’.”

But it takes the sands in United’s hourglass that bit longer to run out, we now know for sure.

adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

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

Like boxing, America’s Game is one that lends itself to great sports-writing. And it entices some of the best to huddle here with us in the damp, shadowy corners of the back pages.

When John Updike – one of the bold-face names of 20th century literature – gambolled into Fenway Park one sunny afternoon, he unknowingly sat into the bleachers of the famous old chocolate box of a stadium on the last day of the legendary Ted Williams’ career at bat.

The smiling writer watched curiously for the duration and was ultimately so exercised by the theatre that played out in his lap that he submitted a now-celebrated piece to the renowned New Yorker magazine.

Updike sketches wonderfully Williams’ curmudgeonly farewell speech to Boston, before he typically spits a final rebuke to those in the press-box or “the maestros of the keyboard up there”.

Ultimately, Updike explains how Williams dotted a full stop in his cartoon-strip career with a final, predictable home run.

“Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs – hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted ‘We want Ted’ for minutes after, he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.”

Gods do not answer letters. Home run, John.

(Incidentally, Ted Williams – the greatest they ever saw in Boston – died in 2002 . Sparking a very messy legal mud fight, two of his children froze his head cryogenically. Some insisted that the signature they insisted franked his approval of this unusual request was merely an autograph. Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly visited the icy head once, starting his subsequent column: “Hung out with Ted Williams the other day. Pretty cool. He’s spending his time in a one-storey cement building in a warehouse district next to the Scottsdale, Ariz., airport, frozen, upside down, waiting for science to bring him back from the dead.”)

Some time ago, I wrote here of Clare man Flan Marsh. A roofer by trade, he filled the now yawning days in his workshop at the end of the garden where he developed – slowly but surely – a hurley, that like himself, does not break.

His patent-pending technology involves lacing the hurley – still an authentic piece of ash – with a filament that holds it together safely as it cracks in the white heat of battle. This grit in the oyster prevents the familiar sight of half a hurley spinning dangerously into the summer sky.

I drove up to Broadford and stood in the centre of the club’s field before witnessing a full-blooded demonstration. It works.

So… here come the fast-talking Americans in ten-gallon hats and smelling of crisp dollar bills. A friend of Marsh’s in the States read the article online, opened up the Gmail account and fired off an email to baseball’s biggest of wigs.

Ten minutes later, a reply dropped in from ‘the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball’ on Park Avenue in New York. Now we’re in business.

This morning in Broadford in east Clare, the out-of-work roofer is waiting on 60 bats to arrive from the MLB.

It’s estimated – in the big leagues alone – that players go through approximately one bat every 50 at-bats. Where these sharp, fast-travelling missiles land, nobody knows. A firm of New York lawyers are kept busy with law suits caused by broken bats spiking into the cheap seats. With his new technology, Marsh will send the suits to the Hamptons early.

He plans to pump the bats with his silver lining and bounce them back to the new world where they await inspection in a lab by MLB’s experts. In the meantime, he’s kept going with the hurleys in his shed.

On Tuesday he bumped into former Banner manager Ger Loughnane and pressed one of the sticks into his hand. The Sunday Game pundit swung it around, examined the unusual spine with the intelligence that won two All-Irelands and offered Marsh his congratulations.

When Christy Cooney, GAA president, was in the county for the Feile na Gael last week, so too he was treated to a new hurley.

“I’m delirious. It’s very exciting,” he said this week. “The bats are made from ash – same as the hurleys – and we can fix them no problem at all.

“I’m run off my feet with the hurleys too – more than ever – and that’s great. But the baseball bats could be massive; they have a problem – and I can solve it.”

God may not answer letters. But he replies to his emails pretty quickly.

adrianrussell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

Right, just read Ian Curtis is 30 years dead today. Can’t think of a sport angle – apart from Love Will Tear Us Apart being the tune for a Ryan Giggs chant and also soundtracked a Heineken football ad – so here’s Transmission.

Watching Kerry’s Kieran Donaghy pluck the ball out of the sky over Thurles today like he was under a backboard, Cork fans might have thought the Rebels could do with LeBron James in and around the small parallelogram this summer.

Luckily, it looks like The King is to leave Cleveland this summer for either New York (the Knickerbockers) or Chicago (Bulls).

If the Nike franchise guy does exit for one of the bigger markets, his last outing as a Cavalier will be a humbling defeat to the Boston Celtics. He has not yet won a championship.

Check out this cool ESPN retrospective on his career to date.

When the Dallas Cowboys blew up their old stadium recently, they placed inside a high-tech, 360-degree camera.

Turn up the sound.

Noel Gallagher looks back in anger (phnar!) at his World Cup memories.

I suspect if they asked Liam, it would’ve been more focused on the neat blue piping on the 1982 Brazil shirts. Or the trendy Admiral zip ups the England team sported in the Mexican heat in ’86, rather than Gazza’s histrionics .

Oasis, of course, refused to pen and sing the Euro 96 anthem for England as they insisted ‘we’re Irish’. It should be noted Noelie didn’t pick any memories from Ireland’s time at World Cups. But his knowledge is fairly impressive. Shine on you crazy diamond…

(H/T Balls.ie)

With my collar pulled above the nape of my neck to shield myself from a sheet of the wettest Kerry rain, as I shuffled along the road between Killarney and Tralee before 8am on Saturday morning, I realised getting to Croke Park was a journey not dissimilar. But it’s more a case of thumb, thumb, thumb.

It started out as a journalistic experiment to gauge – as ‘The Recession’ casts a long shadow over our depressing summer – how cheaply one could get to Croke Park and take in one of the ever-present highlights of the season – the championship action.

And in doing so I was to cross the border from Cork, under cover of darkness, and join the Kerry fans’ winding their way to Dublin, and perhaps unravel one of the Association’s great mysteries – if it is a mystery – why Kerry supporters don’t travel before September. Like St Patrick crossing the Irish Sea to convert the masses, a Corkman, perhaps, needed to show his neighbours the way to Croker. Letters to the editor at sport@examiner.ie.

I was to do this by reeling in the years, to a day when the Celtic Tiger was but a cub and people stopped along the road to offer much-needed lifts to those thumbing on the highways and byways of our little country.

I was to achieve this though, deep behind enemy lines in the Kingdom, on the day their footballers played a much-anticipated All-Ireland quarter final against Galway in HQ, while wearing a Cork jersey.

I quickly realised a day I thought might resemble a particularly interesting episode of O’Gorman’s People mixed with Up for the Match, was about to descend into what No Frontiers might look like, if Kathryn Thomas developed a crippling crystal meth addiction amid the Indian sub-continent’s most violent monsoon. It was to be the longest day, and I’m certain no one coming out of Kerry – not Gooch, Donaghy, no one – worked harder than me to get to Croke Park on Saturday.

A national radio station last week heralded the death of the hitch hiker in Ireland, insisting the practice is extinct – partly, perhaps, thanks to our new-found wealth and busy lives etc. Certainly, my teenage sister, when told what I was undertaking, was confused as to what exactly we were talking about. “Hitch? Hiking?” Thumbing a lift is not on her radar.

Presumably she thought the ribbon of scruffy looking youngsters, she may or may not have noticed down the years, who dot the nation’s road network with their thumbs cocked, were just congratulating my father on his impressive driving.

The radio station’s argument became all too real to me on Saturday morning. Walking from Killarney, out the road towards the county’s biggest town, I was passed by car after flash car. Some drivers offered half-apologetic shrugs, one a heart-felt two-finger salute, more still just ignored the idiot in the Rebels’ 1984 jersey. Money spent: cup of tea and breakfast bap: €6.50

Like a child on the night before a school test he hasn’t prepared for, promising to study if it just snows during the night; I vowed I’d pick up any old vagrant waving a sign for Rosslare in the future, if I just managed to get in next to someone’s car heater for a while.

Eventually – and after, in fairness, just am hour of feeling like the ignored wallflower at the parish disco – the glorious flash of an indicator signalled acceptance at last and I skipped giddily after the stopping van.

The driver was a Romanian man, living in Killarney for the past few years, who seemed more preoccupied with the weather than even your average Irish native. He was going about his business delivering refrigerated goods around the county though he wished he was back at home, he admitted, on the ivory beaches. He knew the English for ‘topless’, but not, for instance, ‘war’. A lover; not a fighter, clearly.

He didn’t know anything about Kerry’s trip to Croker, but explained he hasn’t watched any Gaelic games since his arrival. He brought a TV receiver from home and watches Romanian channels only.

As we careered wildly towards the next leg of my journey, which I had suddenly found new enthusiasm for, he revealed an almost Tourettes-like habit of offering a little, sexist beep of his horn anytime we passed a perceived-attractive woman, accompanied by a sharp yelp – as if he was in pain.

When I enquired gently about this custom, and how it has gone down here, he admitted that he honked and hollered unconsciously on the way to bringing his pregnant wife for the scan in hospital recently; which provoked a loud and sustained attack.

My new friend kindly dropped me at the bus station – I didn’t have the heart to explain my complicated modus operandi – and continued with his working day.

After a 30-minute-or-so spell walking around the town, and then out towards Limerick – which seemed like the way I came, to be honest – I was happily picked up by a young lad on his way to look at a car for a friend in Limerick. An apprentice mechanic, he was full of chat, curious to know too why I didn’t get the bus.

Though grateful for the spin and glad he wasn’t an axe murderer, I would’ve almost taken my chances on the road again, after a few miles listening to the ridiculous dance music he obviously felt was ambient. When given the option to jump in Newcastle West, I bailed with thanks.

From the picturesque town, I happily scored a lift with a girl called Aine, who was happy to take me a lot of the way to Dublin. It was before noon still and I was confident of striding, like Phileas Fogg, entering Leicester Square, into a packed Croke Park to a standing ovation.

But as we edged through the throbbing traffic, I realised this would be tight. Outside Portlaoise we came to a complete and sudden standstill. After hours on the road – and having a good run at it – I was to be undone it seemed by an inconsiderable accident.

Cars emptied, as Kerry jerseys filled the road, while more still pulled U-ies and rushed elsewhere. At last at 1.50pm we were ushered through the bottleneck.

The 2.06 train to Dublin from Portlaoise was now the target as no lift would get me to Drumcondra in two hours realistically, and that’s even if I got one at that stage. We made the train. Aine said she felt like Anneka Rice. I could’ve done with a helicopter. Money spent: 6.50 + 10 for train ticket = 16.50.

From here I thought it was easy: I folded myself into a seat and promptly fell asleep only to be awoken by my own snoring, to be greeted by the faces of two visibly upset children. But we had arrived. I shared a cab with a father and son from outside Tralee all the way to Croker.
Money spent: €16.50 + €5 for taxi = €21.50

Picking up a match ticket wasn’t as easy as envisaged. A wave of Armagh fans were washing out of the stadium, while their championship hopes were shattered. With them came a crest of tickets that looked fine but had already been scanned. So I bought one from the box office and took my seat. Money spent: €21.50 = €35 for ticket = €56.50

And what a game we were treated to. It made the slog worth it but, as we know, reaching the summit can be the easier part compared to the unglamorous descent. And so it proved, as every cloud that chased me all day, opened up directly above Hill 16, I think you’ll find, and unleashed hell. Jones’ Road flooded, taxis disappeared, buses were full. How was I to get home? €56.50 + €9 for hot dog and beer = €65.50

I waded through the city to Busáras to find there was no room at the inn; I made it to Connolly station to find the Luas stop is closed for the summer. Who knew? And when I ultimately made it to Hueston, I had no qualms about handing over the money for a train ticket.

Now I truly was behind enemy lines. I peeled off my soaked Blood and Bandages – everyone was stripping down – to the loudest cheer of the day. From there to Killarney again, it was banter all the way. But I’ve been invited back for the semi-final, where it’ll be same seats again apparently. Money spent: €65.60 + €33 = €98.60.

And so I made it back to Base Camp Killarney, having spent less than €100, feeling like Jack Kerouc’s Sal Paradise character in On the Road as he sees the bright lights of San Francisco after bumming his way across the great American continent – all the way from the shadow of Carnegie Hall in Manhattan – to the rhythm of the beat generation. My Saturday has been more green and gold, than star spangled banner but a day on Ireland’s highways proves the Road to Croker is invariably full of incident and character.

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

I watched the first episode of new RTÉ comedy Val Falvey TD starring Ardal O’Hanlon tonight. And promising enough it was too.

The former Father Ted star presented a really good series of programmes, some years ago, on football rivalries called Leagues Apart. They seem to be on YouTube for anyone interested.

The clip above, however, is the highlight. Here, Father Dougal (essentially) chats to the always-stylish Gazzetta Football Italia legend James ‘AC Jimbo’ Richardson about the Rome derby. Crikey.