Why you can’t show people they’re wrong
The great left-wing playwright of the American Depression — Waiting for Lefty, Awake and Sing! — Odets also wrote Golden Boy, which tells the story of a violinist who considers becoming a boxer — you may remember it from the movie version with William Holden — but that is not the particular sports-related matter we are thinking of here.
No, one of Odets’ lines, from Rocket To The Moon, has been ringing around our head since we heard it: you never show anyone they’re wrong by showing them you’re right.
It’s one of those throwaway remarks that you envisage fitting many a social encounter — vague enough to be applicable to almost any interaction between two people, it’s specific enough to fit any context where one person feels he or she is right . . . and the other person disagrees.
Given the events of last week we wondered if it might serve as a full stop on discussions of Declan Kidney’s Ireland in the Six Nations. There was a fair amount of gnashing of teeth over some of Kidney’s selection decisions during the tournament, and the murmurings of the Fourth Estate, in particular, could be detected in the relatively muted reaction to the crushing defeat of England.
Accordingly, Kidney’s impassive press conferences, which were lauded as models of restraint proper to the new age of austerity etc, when the Grand Slam was being won, are now interpreted as indecision incarnate.
Yet the Irish coach could claim to have been proved right in the end, shuffling his chess pieces to arrive at a team good enough to destroy England in one tournament while facing into another, the World Cup, from a high.
The prosecution case will not rest, however, and much of its force revolves around Mike Ross at prop, with observers preferring to agonise over Ross’ omission for the autumn internationals last year rather than crediting Kidney with what seemed impossible up to six weeks ago: replacing John Hayes with a durable scrummager who should be fresh for the World Cup.
Kidney may as well cut his losses now, though. If Odets was right, he’ll show nobody they’re wrong by showing he was right.
However, there was a clear winner in the last week for the Odets treatment when the GAA confirmed it would be using Hawk-Eye score detection technology for an upcoming double-header in the Allianz League (Dublin-Kilkenny in hurling, Dublin-Down in football) at Croke Park.
In January John Fogarty of this parish broke the story of Hawk-Eye being used in Croke Park; within 24 hours the GAA denied the story, saying it did not envisage the system coming into play for games in the 2011 season.
The following month GAA President Christy Cooney said the GAA would be testing the system in the near future — the 2011 season, by any other name — and then we had the particular games specified during the week.
You can practically smell the rubber on the tarmacadam from the screeching U-turn, but that need not concern us here.
What is most notable from the farrago is the GAA’s unparalleled ability to shoot itself in the foot — or, to shoehorn Hawk-Eye into the metaphor, to see a ball going over the line for a certain goal suddenly whisked out again without an umpire being any the wiser. If the GAA had confirmed the story in January it would have been another publicity boost to a sports body which had already been doing pretty well in the reputation stakes.
Instead the organisation seemed more concerned with issuing a statement pouring cold water on the story — a statement flatly contradicted by the head of the organisation five weeks later.
On a parallel track, during the week this column was at home on a specific domestic duty and heard the news of Hawk-Eye’s arrival on the radio.
The breathless reporter on one station was telling listeners that he’d soon ‘reveal’ what was involved. So was the presenter on a different station who introduced the sports news by saying the GAA was about to embrace technology.
The mere fact that the hackles started to rise ever so slightly indicate just the kind of hold the GAA exerts over most of its members. You despair of the attitudes of its hierarchy, and yet you bristle at those who patronise the organisation. Simultaneously. Finally, the death occurred last week of one of the great screen icons — an actress whose breakthrough performance came in one of the great sports movies.
Not Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy, but National Velvet, in which Elizabeth Taylor performed many of her own stunts. Space considerations rule out a detailed discussion of her impact on the career of the great cyclist Sean Kelly, but we may return to that at a later date.
* Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
