- NEWS
Martin wades into abortion debateAs the Dáil committee hearings continue on the abortion bill, Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has waded into the debate saying it is important that Christian believers "be, and seen to be, on the side of life, especially when life is most vulnerable".
Payment cuts see families pay rent shortfallLimits on rent supplement payments set by the Government are forcing thousands of families to make undeclared top-up payments to landlords to secure places to live.
- WORLD
Anger as North Korea launches another missileNorth Korea fired a short-range missile from its east coast, a day after launching three more of these missiles, a South Korean news agency said.
How Star Trek predicted the futureWHEN Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry first dreamed up the concept of a television show based in the unexplored universe of Outer Space in 1964, the world was a very different place.
- BUSINESS
Warnings over future of eurozoneThe eurozone is heading towards a break up unless there are moves towards much closer political and fiscal union, according to chief economist with State Street Global Advisers, Chris Probyn.
Bruton defends corporate tax rateIreland will be able to maintain its current corporation tax code in the face of international pressure to prevent multinational corporations avoid paying their fare share of tax, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton said yesterday.
- SPORT
Mayo’s statement of intentGalway 0-11 Mayo 4-16 Five minutes to go in Salthill yesterday and James Horan was still cajoling his men to sew it into Galway.
Wilkinson inspires Toulon to gloryASM Clermont Auvergne 15 Toulon 16 Not for the first time this season, a matchday performance and the result have made a mockery of the statistics.
- LIFESTYLE
What Lenny did nextLENNY Abrahamson has directed three feature films: Adam & Paul, Garage and What Richard Did.
Clothes maketh you madTrying on clothes, said Ewart, produced "sensations which bring deep peace and perfect contentment" to the female mind.
15-18C
Breaking stories
A word of warning that silence is golden
By Liam Mackey
We got the full monty here in Montecatini this week, from earth tremors to a minor eruption by Mt Trap.
The humour and novelty and inflated hysteria associated with feeling the earth moving beneath our feet quickly gave way to guilty embarrassment that an event whose most dramatic effect here in Montecatini was one colleague’s shaving cream falling off his bathroom shelf, had actually caused death and destruction and wreaked havoc with the lives of people elsewhere in northern Italy.Not a moment too soon, we in the travelling hack pack were back on our more familiar terra firma and dealing with rather more mundane matters, if that is a word which can properly be described to Kevin Foley’s dropping from Ireland’s Euro 2012 panel. Yes, we all know that the disappointments of sport are put into an altogether different perspective by something like Italy ’s lethal ‘terremoto’, yet it would do a serious disservice to Foley to underplay the considerable emotional impact on his personal and professional life of the sudden termination of his Euro dreams
It ought to be recorded that Giovanni Trapattoni too was visibly sad on Tuesday talking about the decision to leave Foley behind but, as the manager was at also at pains to point out, it was a call he felt duty-bound to make “disregarding personal feeling.”
To the extent that he was finally forced into making an entirely professional but, for Foley, deeply painful decision, Trapattoni was only being true to his own footballing principles. And he deserves no criticism for that.
From what, admittedly with hindsight, was the premature announcement of the Euro 2012 squad, to the ambiguous references to “knocks” and “recovery” in the quotes attributed to Trapattoni about Foley in an FAI statement released just after Tuesday’s midday deadline, two conditions were in place which helped ensure that, when it finally came, the shock and upset for the unfortunate player — and, indeed, for his team mates — could hardly be more destabilising or more acute.
Even had it been a bumpy ride thus far in terms of Ireland’s Euro preparations, the Foley story would still have been big news at home. But in the context of an otherwise controversy-free build-up, it played across all media outlets almost as a mini — well, okay, miniscule — ‘Saipan 2’.
And it also resulted in exchanges between the media and Trapattoni beside the training pitch here on Thursday which were probably as heated as any which have broken out between us since he took the job four years ago. And, even in saying that, I’m conscious things were still a long way short of reaching boiling point, with Trapattoni’s growing animation in response to the media’s persistent interrogation as much a consequence of those old communication blues, mama, as anything else.
In any event, one can never quite shake off the feeling in our dealings with the veteran manager that, really, he’s seen it all before and, if he’s going to lose sleep over anything at all to do with his job, it will concern what is done on the pitch.
Yesterday, back on the same training ground, we were reminded things can get much worse, with Marco Tardelli recalling when Italy won the World Cup in Spain in 1982, the players went through the competition holding a media boycott, with only skipper Dino Zoff deputised to talk to the press. “We had many problems with the papers,” Tardelli said yesterday. “Not now, no, no (laughing). But because in 1982 the newspapers, the journalists, they wrote very bad things.”
A lot of the negative comment before the tournament had to do with coach Enzo Bearzot’s decision to bring Paolo Rossi just one season after the player completed a two-year suspension for his alleged involvement in a betting scandal. Considering that it was a clinical hat-trick by the prodigal son which saw the Azzurri eliminate brilliant Brazil in one of the greatest World Cup games of all time, I think it’s safe to say that Bearzot and Rossi won that particular battle. Incidentally, Tardelli once told me his own selection had also been heavily criticised at the time. Again, one only has to recall Tardelli’s celebrated goal in the final and his even more celebrated celebration, to appreciate that the hacks came off worst in that one too.
Still, we wondered if Marco had finally broken his vow of omerta to the press after that wonderful 3-1 defeat of Germany had made Italy champions of the world. “I don’t remember,” he told us with a big grin yesterday, “because after the final I was in the hotel to drink.”
Hah! Spoken like a true reporter.