MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: Crowding the touchlines
You’re aware of this new GAA rule which is trying to limit the number of people on the sideline at games.
Of course you are.
The idea is good in principle. We’ve all been in games where the hot pursuit of a ball near the sideline resulted in a sudden impact with an angry mother, and invariably the angry mother had an umbrella which was used for immediate retaliation.
That’s without getting into the apocalyptic scenarios such as those witnessed at Derrytresk-Dromid Pearses last year, a barney so memorable The Guardian sports section awarded it a ‘brawl of the year’ gong in its annual YouTube review.
However, it may be time for another sport altogether to give serious consideration to a similar rule, but one targeting not doctors and physios, which seems to be the aim of the new GAA legislation.
No: I refer to the vast crowds of pitchside commentators at big rugby games, almost all of whom appear to be former players themselves.
You can see them just outside the whitewash at international games in particular, milling in and out of TV shot, trying not to appear in front of another broadcaster’s camera, all of them nodding seriously when tasked with another question — yet another — about the breakdown and the physicality and the need to take them on up front... Basil Fawlty’s old classic — ‘Hordes of wildebeest sweeping majestically’ — springs to mind.
At times it seems that this is the only career path open to former rugby professionals: that on their way out of the dressing room for the final time they get a pair of stretch-waisted track suit pants, a gold-plated clock and a microphone for future media engagements.
With that in mind, it was interesting to see Bernard Jackman speaking during the week about rugby players’ post-sport options, though clearly this wasn’t always an issue.
The website balls.ie — always worth a visit — fished out a 1977 Ireland rugby match programme a few days ago and broke down the player occupations: four teachers, one management consultant, one quantity surveyor, one doctor, one Department of Agriculture inspector, one electrical contractor, one veterinary surgeon, one ophthalmic optician, one solicitor, one accountant, one finance official, and one student. Actual jobs.
(Mind you, this columnist was torn between the socio-economic importance of such a revelation and memories of the Dermot Morgan song of similar vintage, ‘Don’t Pick Wardie’, which indicted one of the 1977 players because he ‘doesn’t even have a sheepskin’.) Very entertaining in a digressive way, you say.
Back to Bernard Jackman’s point on life beyond the dressing room. What was even more interesting was the nod he got from another former player on Twitter about that subject.
Trevor Hogan was the man who complimented Jackman on his views. The former Munster and Leinster player is strongly engaged with the Palestinian cause since retiring, a commitment which immediately marks him as different to 99% of retired players in all sports.
It would be a fair challenge for former sportspeople to find a political cause they could commit to with the same passion that Hogan shows for the Palestinians, but not only does it not happen, we’re not that surprised they don’t. That’s something the professional player misses out on; getting those reps in at the gym is obviously necessary, but broadening the horizons is as beneficial in the long run, and not just as an attractive trait sought by future employers.
Whatever career former players settle on as they exit the playing field, a more rounded personality would serve them well, sheepskin or not.
But whatever happens, can we get the wildebeest away from the touchline?
A STRAND THAT TIME FORGOT
I’m not going to pretend to you that I was in the Aviva yesterday.
I spent the period from around 3pm onwards in the immediate vicinity of Garrettstown strand, the waves gently breaking on the shore as I pondered one of the great mysteries in the movie Jaws (if Hooper clearly gets a lift to Amity Island, then where’s he hiding his vast sonar-equipped yacht, the one he brings Chief Brody out in at night? Answers below).
But I did have the radio on. Frankly there was something a bit eerie about one of the updates, an announcement that Ronan O’Gara had just kicked a penalty, followed immediately by a snippet from Manchester United v Everton: Ryan Giggs had just scored.
The juxtaposition of the two — the background hiss of crowd approval for the kick in rugby, the matter-of-factness of the Giggs news — was like being in a little time machine that had just whirred a decade or so back.
Yesterday’s scoreline in Dublin was more reminiscent of three decades ago, but that’s another matter. If you’d offered a scenario last week where Ireland would concede a paltry 12 points against England most people would have taken your hand off.
Now the situation is reminiscent of Chief Brody’s most famous line: we’re gonna need a bigger boat.
SLEVIN REAPS BENEFITS OF PRACTICE
Ciaran Slevin: “I was up during the week here, practising,”
On Saturday in O’Moore Park in Portlaoise you had all the constituent elements of the biggest victory in the history of a club: the man doing ill-advised cartwheels, as mentioned in our match report, the kids re-enacting Daniel Currams’ goal, the families posing for pictures in green and gold splendour out on the halfway line.
Kilcormac-Killoughey is a small place in Offaly. And their manager Danny Owens told me last week that it’d be the biggest day in the history of the parish by some distance if they made the All-Ireland club final.
But don’t be under the misconception that small means unprofessional.
I bumped into their captain, Ciaran Slevin, on the way out and congratulated him on his outstanding 11 points, including nine from placed balls.
“I was up during the week here, practicing,” he said. “Just getting the eye in.”
What odds he’ll manage to slip into Croke Park at some stage in the next month for a little practice?
GETTING INTO A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND
When the boss suggests you do something, to what extent is that a suggestion? To what extent an order? Just one of the philosophical distractions yours truly mulled over while ringing Manhattan during the week.
No, not ordering books from The Strand. Not booking a table in the Great Jones Cafe.
At the boss’s suggestion I was ringing Joe Sexton, outgoing The New York Times sports editor, the man credited with an “innovative, profane” reign, according to a recent profile.
Profane? The profile certainly contained plenty of industrial language — as well as an aside about Sexton’s penchant for buying hot chocolate for Times staff — so as the phone rang, I was expecting a cross between Jonah Jameson of the Spiderman comics and Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.
The man who answered, though, spoke in polite, measured tones. When I asked if people had less of an appetite now for lengthy sports features, for instance, his answer didn’t have to be rinsed with disinfectant. “Judging from my last two years in the sports dept, the opposite,” said Sexton.
“I think there’s an opportunity to recommit to those kinds of pieces, they’re what makes sportswriting distinctive and memorable, and the more of it you can give people, the better.
“The sports marketplace is difficult to compete in when it comes to timeliness of scores or range of statistics or whatever, but what can distinguish you is the quality of your reporting and of your writing. I think there’s an audience and a market for that.”
Sexton expanded on the occasional tension between the news-gathering imperative and the more ‘writerly’ impulses.
“The notion of creative tension doesn’t scare me, but I think it’s overrated. It’s not hard to achieve both and it’s not complicated to do both.
“John Branch’s work is memorable but you must also acknowledge that Juliet Macur’s work on the Lance Armstrong case has been exclusive, breaking, urgent — one example among many of stories covered that way.
“I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. And if there is any tension — bring it on.” (Readers of this newspaper may remember Branch’s thoughtful dissection of the ‘goon’ culture in ice hockey last year.)
We chatted for another while about Sexton’s Irish links, which are more concrete than a devotion to The Quiet Man. His family had a share in Ballyportry Castle in Clare (mark of the pro: he spelled Ballyportry aloud for me), and as a young man he spent six months at the School of Irish Studies in Dublin. “Spring of 1980. In Ballsbridge. I don’t know if it’s still there.”
Is that where the sportswriting bug bit? “No, maybe the horse-racing and gambling bug, though.”
And that hot chocolate habit? The sports editor in this building regarded that as “a worrying precedent”.
“He did?” said Sexton. “Tell him to loosen up.”
