Michael Moynihan: Is it heresy if we abandon the revered list?
The team sheet, like so much of sports coverage, is a list. Is it heresy if we abandon the revered list? asks Michael Moynihan. Picture: Dan Linehan
Many thanks to the man who got in touch during the week to express sympathy with me, a poor wretch with no sport to write about for weeks to come. Yes, I and my ilk are the real victims.
The absence of live action leaves more time to read - I was going to be truly pretentious there and say âreflectâ - and a couple of weeks ago I wrote here that I was revisiting by Umberto Eco, an old favourite.
Eco was a great man for lists, and TNOTR is full of them - fantastic beasts, obscure saints, sins, heretical sects, you name it and itâs listed.
âAt first we think that a list is primitive and typical of very early cultures, which had no exact concept of the universe and were therefore limited to listing the characteristics they could nameâ Eco once told a German magazine.
âBut, in cultural history, the list has prevailed over and over again . . . And the list is certainly prevalent in the postmodern age. It has an irresistible magic.â
As I picked my way through Ecoâs lists (â . . . Adam lemons, Daniel lupins, Pharaoh peppers, Cain cardoons, Eve figs, Rachel apples . . . Aaron olives, Joseph an egg, Noah grapes, Simeon peach pits . . .â ) it occurred to me that he was right, of course. And then it dawned that sport itself is nothing more than list upon list.
A fixture schedule? List. A team sheet? Another list. From match reports - a list of events - to teams and scorers, or lists of participants, what else is involved?
Coverage of sport is governed almost entirely by lists once you think of it. Questions and answers after a game? A list. Five things we learned. Three key factors. Four battles that will decide the game. Runners and riders. Starting 15. Match-day 25. Substitutes in the order they were introduced, match officials ranked by importance, and a timeline of events as they unfolded. Lists one and all.
The golf holes, one to 18 or the lanes on a running track, one to eight; pole position to the rear of the field or classement général in the Tour de France; top of the table or relegation fodder. Lists.
Behind the scenes the list reigns supreme as well. In training physical standards are logged and listed - times, weight, distance. On the day of a game or event statistics of all types are produced for participants and management to be consumed in real time and digested at leisure post-event. Even the officials in charge of the event tally happenings and offences alike, and how they do it?
By virtue of the list.
Long-suffering readers may recall a day the decade before last when I invoked Eco on lists, but that was with a different purpose in mind. Back then I was interested in creating more lists, and lists of lists, when it came to sport, and the great Italian was an obvious place to start.
Now? Iâm not so sure.
Even allowing for Ecoâs wisdom on the matter of lists, should we have fewer lists in sport? Fewer accounts submitted to the tyranny of the linear?
The listâs great virtue is that it allows us to make our way from start to finish along a clear path. A leads to B leads to the final whistle. Thereâs something to be said for that.
Thereâs also something to be said for chaos and randomness, and the swirl of events that occurs in every sports event. Why not abandon the list for a while when sports resume and give ourselves over the anarchy of happenstance?
No more five things we learned, I say. Give up on full teams and name the occasional player instead. Enough of full accounts and instead weâll try the metonymic approach instead.
In fact, Eco has a good essay on just this subject. Maybe next week, eh?
Itâs becoming depressingly regular to say goodbye in this part of the column. Just last week I wrote up part of an old Jerry Kiernan interview for a new series, The Hardest Thing In Irish Sport, and his contribution was typical of the man.
When we spoke the first thing he said was, âIâve been thinking about what you might want to ask me about this,â which is the kind of engagement with a topic that you donât get as often with an interview subject as you might think.
Kiernanâs considered views will be a loss to all. Condolences to his family.
On a personal note, we said goodbye to an uncle of mine last Saturday.
Billy Moynihan was a forceful presence on Gaelic football fields in Cork though the fifties and a keen student of dogs and horses for a lot longer than that. A short but memorable posting on a tug-of-war team provided another yarn that lit up quite a few family gatherings.
Those evenings will not be quite as enchanted without him.
Condolences to Eleanor, Michael, Liam, Monica and Berna.
The latest back-and-forth is about the Olympics, I see. Will it be on, wonât it? Will it be stripped back or the full monty we get to enjoy?
(Sorry about that, I know itâs early.) There seemed to be some bullish commentary out of the IOC about the Games going ahead in Tokyo later in the year, though that bullishness would be more believable if Dick Pound of the IOC hadnât expressed his doubts about the event a couple of weeks ago.
Youâd have to be sympathetic to the IOC organisers because theyâre trying to juggle the challenges involved with athletes arriving into Japan from every corner of the globe - and from every level of the pandemic.
The amount of money involved in hosting the Olympics is another factor to be considered: I note a recent report that the postponement of the event from last year to this has meant an increase in costs of 22%.
In hard cash? That brings the cost from $12.6bn (âŹ10.3bn) to $15.4bn (âŹ12.6bn): ânegotiating contracts and other necessary changesâ have caused the increase, according to .
Some negotiations. Some changes.
My reading for the next while should not be an issue, given there is a biography of Mike Nichols due on the shelves shortly.
Written by Mark Harris, the book chronicles the extraordinary life and achievements of the man who directed great movies from The Graduate to Working Girl. In one way Iâve been waiting for this book since reading Neil Simonâs account of working with Nichols on the original Broadway production of The Odd Couple.
Stuck in a hotel, Simon and Nichols were up late trying to work out an issue in the production when Simon said he wanted to clear his head: he was going for a walk.
âBring me back some ice cream,â said Nichols.
âIce cream? At a time like this?â said Simon.
âWhat, I wonât think of a solution if I have some ice cream?â Hero.
*Waterford minor Mark Dalton was seriously injured in a car accident before Christmas and is now facing into a period of rehabilitation. His friends are fundraising for him here:
