Colin Sheridan: Remembering sacrifice of the few for the many

ALL SMILES: Former Ireland coach Eddie O’Sullivan joins fans for a selfie at the end of the Autumn International against New Zealand at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday. Picture: Ken Sutton/Inpho

“You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you’ll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.”

- Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems

Here’s one for you; if the All Blacks and the Dublin senior football team had a dressing-room sweeping competition, who would win?

Who cares!! Bank-sponsored humility gets you nowhere, suckers!! Yes folks, the boom is back. The Irish rugby football boom, to be exact. This is a bandwagon with no memory and I am fully on board. A farewell to smarm. It is true, I have previously written columns lamenting, parodying even, the preciousness — not so much of the Irish rugby player — but of the Irish rugby fan, and for that, I am wholly repentant.

There was drink taken, your honour! The gargle dimmed my brain!! I admit, it was me who spoke over the kicker from the snug, some 650 miles away. I was blinded by the egalitarian elan of the other, seemingly more worthier sports, like the GAA and association football, and that blindness immunised me — to use that now fertile phrase — to the infinite possibilities of the Team of Us.

I was stymied by my non-private education (which would usually be public, right? But, in this case — only in this case — public and private mean the same thing, which bizarrely renders obsolete the entire conceit of Philadelphia, Here I Come!). What an unhealthy chip on my shoulder that same education burdened me with. Anyone who knows me will tell you I don’t really have shoulders anyway. Another reason to have a chip on them. If I actually had them.

Point is, the time for cynicism is gone. It is with the box-kick in the grave! Along with scepticism. And pessimism. And sarcasm. All the isms and the asms. Except maybe escapism. For that is what following this Irish rugby team affords the subservient soul; it is a sporting version of Total Recall. It is the church of second chances. It is the eternal sunshine of spotless freakin mind! Think of all the great scenes of redemption, both fact and fiction; Shawshank. The road to Damascus. Selma to Montgomery. Robyn Island. The Aviva (a sporting theatre named after an insurance company). No matter. There is no love without forgiveness.

To be clear, for some time now, I have viewed rugby much like one might view the recently demised 20-year occupation of Afghanistan. My problem was never with the boys in the trenches — the foot soldiers who opened markets for trading, who got young girls to school, who kept the vulnerable safe. Those foot soldiers and their line officers were the players and the coaches of the game of rugby, drawn — in many cases — to a vocation they loved without fear of consequence. A vocation they were willing to sacrifice their bodies for. Who are those men and women to question the motives of their overlords? The faceless blazers who send them over the top like canon fodder? Who ever heard an actual rugby player speak of soft hands? Of dancing feet? Of throwing darts?

Even if I did, it is them, not I, who do it in the face of unrelenting physical punishment. They don’t make millions of dollars for it. Even if they did, no matter. Sitting behind a keyboard is nothing compared to getting hit in the face by an All Black with an axe to grind.

Who could doubt — genuinely — the passion of James Lowe or Bundee Aki last Saturday? Regardless of personal motive? I ask this question now, because I have in the past. Then I came to realise, it was not me putting my literal neck on the line, all in the name of sport. Or honour. Or family. It was them. For that, they deserve my gratitude and respect.

Stephen Kenny continues to divide opinion

It seems there is no pleasing some people.

Stephen Kenny’s reign as Irish football manager continues to polarise in spite of unequivocal evidence of progress against Portugal on Thursday.

There was a time not so long ago a game tape of Republic of Ireland matches was was being used in black sites for the purposes of rendiion and torture, now the stadium is full and buzzing with excitement at the thoughts of young Irish footballers showing the confidence, desire and ability to actually want to play football.

Crucially, they are being encouraged and coached to do so.

It beggars belief that anybody, whatever their status in the game, could somehow think this is not better than the nihilism that preceded it?

Football’s daliance with celebrity fame

The untold legacy of actor and normal person Paul Mescal’s dalliance with Gaelic football took another turn last weekend as he appeared on the red carpet at LACMA Art + Film Gala last Saturday night in Los Angeles.

He did so with singer Phoebe Bridgers. Their star turn in front of the cameras set tongues a waggin and hearts a fluttering, appearing to confirm a budding romance that was born on Twitter, of all places.

Mescal, remember, is the guy who made GAA shorts cool, a feat so remarkable he surely deserves an entry into the association’s Hall of Fame?

At the very least, he would undoubtedly captain a celebrity XV of famous people with tenuous connections to our beloved sports.

I’m thinking a half back line of Xavi Alonso, Mescal, and Beauden Barrett. Socrates would have to be there too, after his extremely dubious Sigerson Cup run in the 70s. Soccer player Joe Cole was reared on Gaelic football in London apparently, so he’d get a run.

Kevin Kilbane and Darren Fletcher practically revived the sport in Belmullet during the halcyon summer of their youth. Sarah Jessica Parker won a Donegal county championship with Glenties some time ago, while Alf Stewart from Summer Bay definitely put in a summer with Eire Óg Ennis at some point.

No team would be complete without the dozen or so European golfers who biannually pledge their love of the Mayo football team, under no duress whatsoever.

I, for one, look forward to hearing Bridgers sing ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ in Newbridge at next year’s Kildare county final.

El Pato in prison

Whoever gets the film rights to the Angel Cabrera story can thank me later, but surely the movie will have to begin in the Argentinian jail in which the two-time major winner currently resides. El Pato is serving time after being convicted of charges he assaulted, threatened, and harassed his former partner. There are further charges pending.

Nothing worthy of glorifying in any of it, which is a terrible shame for a rags-to-riches story that, had things turned out better, was one of most remarkable in any sport.