Grace in victory and gallantry in defeat: It’s an alien concept of sport

THIS Monday morning, trying to explain Ireland to a visiting Martian would be quite a challenge. Any alien from another planet would ask you to start with sport, since he wouldn’t have been able to get away from it this weekend.

Of course, you’d start by helping your Martian tourist to understand that sport is the pastime everybody should care about, because it’s so good for health and fitness.

Never mind the fact that the guys who limp, who get to their old age only through luck and prosthetic intervention, are the ones who engaged in serious sport all their lives, whereas the unscarred ones with the fluid movement are the lazy sods that never played anything but poker.