Michael Moynihan: Six-word sports horror stories

Gaelic football, hurling, rugby, and soccer are full of sentences could cause panic within seconds

Blame Ernest Hemingway. Everybody does, though the evidence for doing so is pretty slim.

The story isn’t bad, though. Supposedly at some stage in 1920s Paris, a challenge was issued in a cafe to a few writers present: who could write the most complete story with the fewest words?

In the legend, Hemingway stops arm-wrestling Picasso for a few seconds, swigs some absinthe, and says: “For sale, baby’s shoes. Never worn.”

And the others retire, defeated.

It’s unlikely that Hemingway actually took a break from the bull-fighting, etc, long enough to actually compose the story. There’s evidence it existed in some form long beforehand.

Still, the narrative compressed into, or suggested by, the six words is a powerful one, and a friend pointed out that nowadays people often challenge each other online to do something similar with horror stories.

Examples?

“They weren’t barking at thunder.”

“Spiders love your warm bed.”

It was Halloween when I was writing this, a couple of days ago, and I have to say that the spider yarn is proving hard to shake. But those are generic horror stories in six words or so, applicable in most contexts and recognisable no matter what your particular interest is.

What would be a sports horror story in six words or less?

(Note: I have tried to flush out the pedants with ‘less’ instead of ‘fewer’ above. Success on that score already.)

In sports terms it would be a half-dozen words that would encapsulate the ultimate nightmare for the sports fan: the sneaking fear that pushes its way up from the unconscious in the darkest reaches of the night, the announcement or declaration which would instantly cut down any chance of success.

Are there such stories lurking unwritten in the sports world?

Of course there are. In Gaelic football alone there are counties and supporters which would be shaken to the core by some of the following stories.

“David here. Aussie Rules sounds great.”

“Stephen decided against planned kick-outs.”

“Red card missing, the referee realised.”

“Mayo fans take up hobbies.”

“Here are new rules for marks.”

“Double sweepers? Why not quadruple?”

In hurling there’s also ample room for nightmares. Plenty of throwaway sentences could cause panic within seconds.

“We’re happy introducing a black card.”

“We’re happy to accept it.”

“Stripes? Black and amber hoops instead.”

“Meanwhile, new Tipp boss Davy Fitzgerald ... ”

In rugby?

“Lose the deer. A mole instead.”

“Concussion’s overblown, said the former player.”

“‘Fronting up’ banished from rugby discussions.”

“Soccer ‘more rugby-like’ than first thought.”

As for soccer itself, the game has more potential for terror than you might have thought.

“United, Liverpool, what’s the difference?”

“President Higgins, French Ambassador M’sieur Henry.”

In general, sport is open to this kind of thing because of the accepted modes of discussion, by which I mean cliches.

If some of those were inverted and spoken aloud then fans across many sports would behave like a 10-year-old sneaking a look at A Nightmare on Elm Street: we’re so used to the studied downplaying of chances that forthright beliefs spoken aloud would be have the effect of the collected works of Stephen King.

“We welcome the mantle of favourites.”

“An easy place to get a result.”

“We’re thinking three, four games ahead.”

None of which approaches my favourite in this genre, the six-word story that would guarantee a visceral reaction from sports fans of all stripes.

“We welcome the reappointment as CEO... ”

Terrifying Halloween match journeys

Before setting off to Cork and Waterford game last Saturday — Halloween eve, if you’ve forgotten — I was getting my equipment together when two far more ardent Halloween fans in my house asked me to get more into the spirit of things.

“Why don’t you wear a scary mask while you’re driving up the motorway? That’d be great fun.”

For a second I toyed with the idea of wearing a killer clown mask and staring at some poor soul as I overtook their car somewhere near Skeheenarinky, but I thought the national air of edginess and uncertainty didn’t need me to generate any more terror.

It did remind me of the old yarn about The Silence of the Lambs, when the production staff had to ask Anthony Hopkins to stop wearing his Hannibal Lecter face mask driving home after work: the people who pulled up next to him at traffic lights were getting so frightened there was a danger of car crashes. Who knew he was 30 years ahead of his time?

The importance of sliotar consistency

I note that yet another sliotar debate awakened during the week like... like the kraken, rearing its head through the ocean deeps.

Because of all of that, it was interesting to get an update from an expert in the field.

Kevin Cummins was in these pages during the week, giving a potted history of the development of the sliotar in recent decades, and given the amount of nonsense generated about sliotars over the years, there was a bracing exactitude to his contribution, in particular on the importance of a consistent sliotar when it comes to hurling.

Speaking from experience, I confess that a lack of such consistency was no help to me in my hurling efforts.

Whenever you got a new sliotar it probably lasted about a week before blasting it off walls, tarmac, and various other surfaces combined to flatten the rims completely, creating a dead brown egg-shape with a slight difference in texture where those rims used to be.

Come a championship game — and a new ball, a fresh white sliotar with actual rims sticking out of it — it often felt to me like playing with a half-completed Rubik’s cube, unyielding and spiked everywhere with angles.

This is not by way of saying that if only I had had a new sliotar every time I pucked around then nothing could have held me back.

It’s more an expression of my admiration for all the other kids who were practising every day for a week with what felt like a misshapen lump of turf, roughly the size of a tennis ball, and yet were able to control a brand-new sliotar instantly come a big game.

You had to take your hat off to them. Even if I felt in my heart of hearts that I would have dominated any game played with elderly, half-burst sliotars.

Dickens, king of names

Is Charles Dickens that popular any more?

There was a time when he was a perennial staple on the bookshelves, but apart from the TV adaptations which come along as regularly as buses, he doesn’t seem to figure as much in the popular imagination nowadays.

John Mullan’s new book might add to the momentum generated by a great David Copperfield adaptation last year and in The Artful Dickens, Mullan gives some intriguing glimpses of the imagination at work. For instance, how did that hero’s name evolve? Mullan tells us the sequence was “Trotfield, Trotbury, Spankle, Wellbury, Copperboy, Flowerbury, Topflower, Magbury, Copperstone, Copperfield, Copperfield”.

Takes a little time to get it right, even for the greats.

Contact: michael.moynihan @examiner.ie