One killer line that said it all
Sometimes you’ve got to clear the decks first.
A few years ago, long after Grealish had finished playing, he fetched up on Breaking Ball, the GAA show. Grealish played a good deal of hurling and football as a kid before making his way as a professional soccer player, a transition described terrifically by Dave Hannigan in a recent blog post (look it up here: www.davehannigan.com).
Grealish was revisiting those GAA days with his father in the TV segment, which involved both men going to Wembley and reminiscing about their adventures trying to tune into radio coverage of big games back home when Tony was a child.
In the course of the discussion, Grealish Jr referred to the fact that the hunt for good reception was sometimes an excuse for slipping out for an early pint ahead of the game.
His father was sitting beside him on a bench when the quip was made and smiled and said, ‘Shh, you’re letting me down now’, in a gentle, joking way.
It was a brief exchange I saw once, maybe 13 years ago, but I’ve never forgotten it. Grealish Sr’s delivery couldn’t have been bettered by an Oscar-winning actor, while the line itself would have done justice to a great playwright at his very peak.
A pal rang me Friday and mentioned casually that he was going to take in a Tom Murphy play in Dublin over the weekend; there was a truth and a world of feeling in that throwaway Grealish comment that would carry you through hours in a theatre.
Set aside the clashing accents, Grealish’s father speaking in that mild west-of-Ireland cadence compared to his son’s London-oriented tones. That’s the surface detail.
There was more substance to mine in the younger man’s quick, purposeful recollections compared to his father’s less hurried chat: a contrast replicated, no doubt, in a million households in England and America and Australia, where kids took a polite interest in their fathers’ sport before taking up the native games, often with huge success.
Grealish was remembered fondly in many quarters over the last couple of weeks — so many shots from out the field in Lansdowne Road — and we join our voices to those.
But that couple of minutes all those years ago is what has always stayed in the memory. What does it have to do with sport? Nothing. And everything.
It’s not every day that you can get in a snit over a huge European newspaper nicking your idea, but that day has come.
During the week leading Spanish outlet El Pais published a lengthy study of the economic situation in that country and how that is having an understandably adverse impact on La Liga.
Rewind, if you can, to last Monday when none other than yours truly asked – right here, in this space — whether the dreadful state of the Spanish economy could possibly be having an impact on the below-par performances of Barcelona and Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-final first legs.
I’m not sore that I provided the guys in El Pais with a little inspiration. It can be tough coming up with the old feature ideas – the boss still hasn’t bitten on my proposed Basque immersion feature proposal, where I spend a few days grazing happily in San Sebastian.
But that’s the one I give you guys a pass for. If I see an odd echo of the quotes I got from yesterday’s Allianz hurling league decider in your pages this week, I’m afraid I’ll have to act. At least a co-credit for providing the idea.
And it’s okay, you can sign me in as Michel.
Arriba!
You probably read during the week about Jason Collins, the NBA player who came out as gay.
Kudos to Collins for being the first active player in the US professional leagues to do so.
Even though the reception has been overwhelmingly positive, there’s always a stress in being the first person out of the trenches when it comes to this kind of exposure.
What was almost as interesting for this corner of the paper, mind you, was some of the associated information and revelations.
For instance, one US writer made the telling point that while a gay sportsperson may be rare, a player of Collins’ height is extremely unusual.
He stands seven feet tall, and although to most of us normal-sized humans all NBA players appear to be that size, there aren’t that many who are quite that height.
Very few basketball players top out at 84 inches, in fact. A Sports Illustrated piece some years ago suggested that in all of the United States — over 300 million people, remember — there were perhaps 70 men between the ages of 20 and 40 who’d be seven feet tall. It stood to reason, therefore, that any American that tall had a 17% chance of being an NBA player. There’s been some discussion of Collins’ chances of getting a spot on an NBA team next year, as he’s a free agent now but has been a relatively obscure squad player for most of his career.
The consensus seems to be that while speaking out about his private life has made him a good deal more famous, his height represents his best chance of employment next season.
The growing number of TN and TS cars converging on the motorway exit for Johnstown yesterday: does everybody know that short cut to Kilkenny now? The array of tractors with Wexford flags fluttering defiantly on the Freshford Road into Kilkenny for the Hurling League Division 1 final.
A former GAA president acting as a steward on the O’Loughlin Road outside Nowlan Park once Kilkenny was reached: many thanks for the directions, Nickey.
Another inter-county senior hurling manager slipping in the stiles at the other side.
The polite reception the Tipperary team bus got as it went past the strip mall up the road from Nowlan Park: Kilkenny people looking at it with mild curiosity rather than the hostility you might have expected.
A groundswell of support from the home attendees in Nowlan Park for the Wexford camogie players battling Cork in their national league curtain-raiser? Or was that imagined? The lucky man who had his lost wallet handed into the authorities by honest supporters before the ball was even struck between Tipperary and Kilkenny.
The intake of breath audible around the ground when one E Kelly of Mullinahone was announced as a late starter on the Tipperary team.
The keen interest in the likely on-field whereabouts of Michael Rice of Kilkenny before the ball was thrown in; the concomitant speculation about the proximity of Padraic Maher of Tipperary to Rice; the lack of surprise when Michael Fennelly began at centre-forward rather than Rice; the depth of surprise when Fennelly went on to improvise a brace of goals that any natural forward would have been proud of.
The sheer novelty of seeing a player other than Brendan Cummins stand in goal for Tipperary in a big game, as well as the number of changes made in the Tipp defence before throw-in (they started off O’Brien-Curran-O’Mahony-Curran-Maher-Bergin, which was an alignment you’d have had got a good price on before the game).
The fact that it took eight minutes for the first yellow cards to be flashed (to Conor O’Mahony and Eoin Larkin), given the apocalyptic murmuring late last week.
That shoulder by Lester Ryan: old school.
That passage of play running into the 43rd minute, the splintered timber, blockdowns and flying bodies: from the school they tore down to build the old school.
The fall-out from those red cards — more dangerous for Tipp than Kilkenny? That ‘Bonner’ Maher Aussie Rules-type mark.
A last positive for this traveller: avoiding the McDonald’s on the Cashel exit heading south and home. A cracking game and nutritional piety. Result.
