Have mercy on Pinocchi-Joe
It was open season on Joe Effing Kinnear and there was scarcely a murmur of protest from his home place.
Even allowing for their grand tradition of hatchet jobs and the colourful scorn they have poured on some of their own great servants over the years; the English media have rarely turned so unanimously and viciously on one man over so little.
This week Joe was called a joke, a relic, a caveman. His mental health was openly questioned. Despite a new job, only his laughing stock rose. His return âsickenedâ the strong stomach of Geordie legend Alan Shearer.
One Newcastle blog wished him another heart attack.
As Joe might have it; he was done up a facking treat.
The rapsheet? A thick Lahndan tongue for foreign names. A tendency to namedrop a few old pals like Fergie, born surely of a desperation to claw back a little of the credibility they have stripped him of.
And a tendency to exaggerate, embellish, make up.
With a rigour they could profitably devote to most broadcasts on the station, they hungrily picked apart, for inaccuracies and hyperbole, an interview Joe gave Talksport. Alright, Joe won four cup finals, not five. So, he played around 200 times for Spurs, not 400. Okay, it slipped his mind that he has been sacked and relegated. There may have been a dozen other indications that specifics arenât Joeâs thing.
And that was enough for them to tuck into a few stale pork pies from Joeâs last spell on Tyneside. Such as his account of management in Nepal before his boss, the Crown Prince, massacred the royal family to get out of an arranged marriage. Or, as Joe supposedly put it; âhe had to marry some other bird, the usual crap.â
Joeâs tale of doing a runner for his own safety seemed like the kind of harrowing life experience that would serve as a buttress of fortitude when dealing with ruthless men like Mike Ashley â at least until people realised that Joe was in Kathmandu in the mid-80s, well over a decade before the murders took place.
Shamefully, we joined in the howls of laughter, rather than strongly defend Joeâs birthright to observe the traditions of the great seanchaithe, borrowing and embellishing stories from their travels to pass through the generations.
Itâs in his blood, as the great Hunter Davies realised when he interviewed Joeâs mother for his biography.
âLike Joe, she has a gift for narrative, and can get carried away with a tale, sometimes losing or improving the odd detail or precise sequence of events, but always entertaining, warm and good-hearted.â
Greta Kinnear recalled meeting Davies 20 years earlier, when he spent a season with Spurs to write The Glory Game, recounting the story of his embarrassed retreat to a garage to buy a new battery for his dead tape recorder. Davies had to tell her he had never used a tape recorder in his life. But the Kinnears were bigger than details.
In Joeâs fantastic book, we learn he knew Elton John as a teaboy, we find out Star Trekâs Deanna Troi was in unrequited love with him, we hear he found the white rhino â âit had a massive hooterâ â at the foot of Everest.
And surely nobody reading it cared how much is true?
So we must speak up and protect Joeâs right to bullshit. There is only so much we can afford to lose of ourselves.
We might remember too that the seanchaithe had scant regard for conventional speech patterns. To a born seanchaĂ, turning Yohan Cabaye into âKebabâ would be the most natural thing in the world.
But thatâs not good enough for the likes of Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph, who sniffed that the âunlovable Kinnearâ is easily imagined âas the type of oaf who, if he ever wandered into a boulangerie to be asked âPain, monsieur?â, would shoot back, âNah, bread!â
Undoubtedly, the severity of this backlash is partly down to Joe liberally spraying scribes from his potty mouth last time out.
But when contrasted with the indulgence afforded Harry Redknapp, another cockney storyteller as comfortable with four letters as a bank of four, but with a mixed record in multilingual pronunciation; it is tempting to detect a hint of Paddy-bashing in the character assassination. But I donât think we need to look too far down that road. Joe may have been born here but he was made in England.
But is it an England they know anymore? Or want to know? At times they seem desperately ashamed of their old football men. Decades of disappointment at international level has turned a superiority complex on its head.
This self-loathing seems to have soured their view of men like Wilkinson, Taylor, Royle, Kendall, even young âuns like Peter Reid and Bryan Robson; they seem faintly embarrassed by these guys now. These unsophisticates. England is no country for old football men, seemingly because its young men can no longer measure up.
There is nothing fashionable, or seemingly relevant, about Joe Kinnear. He made his managerial name polishing gems hidden in the lower divisions â places nobody gives an eff about any more.
But all Newcastle are asking him to do is judge footballers, something he has done all his life.
Franco Baldini, who has done nothing in football management, will be asked to do the same at Tottenham. There has been little or no scrutiny of his storytelling.
Joeâs pal Arsene Wenger often tells us he never looks at a personâs passport. Some scribes should use his French loaf and heed that advice.
Miami Heat got it done yesterday, but it was won on Wednesday in what will surely endure as the most hypnotic sporting spectacle of the year.
NBA Finals Game 6 had everything you need, even watching it on a phone over a toddlerâs shoulder at five in the morning. That nobody demanded Peppa may stand as validation enough.
Several of the sportâs greatest ever players tearing up the same hall. LeBron James doing a Babs Keating â shedding not the boots, but the Steve Foster headband, to take over a game.
And that delicious side-effect of a big-swing comeback; fuming punters demanding to be let back in after traipsing dejectedly out of the arena seconds earlier.
After all that, Game 7 was just a coronation. The King lives on.
Never, since those early-morning games in pre-money Carrick-on-Suir under the resourceful watch of Br Costello, when two young lads standing on tables with laundry baskets on their heads provided the hoops (the brother-in-law swears), have targets shifted as regularly as they have for LeBron.
For perhaps the most begrudged athlete outside of this country, last year was meant to be vindication, proof he could do clutch.
But then it was decided he needed to repeat.
Yesterday morning, James clutched, grabbed and squeezed in a performance that could not be defied. Yet it almost was. The big shame was the colossal Tim Duncan missed a sitter late doors that might have changed everything.
But Duncan has long passed the point where he had something to prove. To others anyway.
Afterwards, the King hoped he had got to that place too. âIâm LeBron James⊠from Akron, Ohio, thatâs enough.â Itâs probably wishful thinking. Next up, what must he do to match Jordan?
Never spared anyone in his pomp and didnât duck the issue when confronted by some wild Wexford pulling last weekend.
The Palermo president revealed the flawless logic behind the signing of Kyle Lafferty. âIn Switzerland he hasnât scored many goals, so we hope he can get them here.â
Raised those famous eyebrows at smiling Tahitians collecting Spanish shirts after their drubbing. Give the boys a break, Ken; some of these fellas â conservationist Teheivarii Ludivion anyway â literally do have a mountain to climb every day.
