Resisting urge for intergalactic gag

At first I thought it was a joke. Not as good as the one-liners floating around elsewhere on this page, about hurling and so forth, but when I came across it first, I was impressed by the imaginative juxtaposition.

Open casting for Star Wars? In Croke Park? Come on.

It was true, however. You needed only to hear a solemn voice on the radio saying that anyone camping out overnight to get in early wouldn’t be accepted, and you just knew it had to be true. The needless officiousness made the proposition as authentic as a call from the taxman.

Sometimes a game or score or yarn or person pops up and more or less writes your column for you: the scandal, or humour, or aptness of the matter makes writing your piece a formality, like turning on the laptop.

That’s why I’m drawing your attention to the Star Wars casting in Croke Park, because I’m not going to write about it. For your sake.

I’m choosing not to assault your senses with a slew of terrible puns and cringeworthy comparisons. I could do that quite easily and upset your scone and coffee this morning, but I’m not. It’d be the easiest thing in the world to do but I won’t stoop to that.

I’m exercising some restraint, in other words. I just want to get some credit for it.

You’re welcome.

Even Cork don’t have it both ways

Quite the buzz about some comments made at the meeting of the Cork County Board last week, specifically a reference to Carlow hurling that is unlikely to strengthen bonds between the two counties any time soon.

Certainly one wouldn’t expect the gentleman who said: “For somebody from Carlow to be lecturing Cork on hurling is akin to Jedward telling Pavarotti how to sing,” to be invited up to switch on the Christmas lights in that Leinster county any time soon, or ever.

That kind of ecumenism might fly in Listowel, but not in Carlow.

There are any number of interesting side roads leading away from this car crash.

One is that this kind of thing is generally viewed as being beyond the pale: swatting away the concerns of a “weaker” county is not playing the game within the GAA, where a willingness to observe traditional pieties has always been the default position (if you doubt me, count the pro forma tributes paid to the northern counties for “keeping the game alive” every year).

Another couple of interesting results from the subsequent huffing and puffing, though: it’s been interesting to see how some observers choose to interpret this turn of events.

I’m aware of some extrapolating a whole set of attitudes from one throwaway comment. Not just about attitudes in Cork, either.

Attitudes in all “stronger counties”. As in, this is what they all think of you all the time.

Which sits uneasily with the accompanying suggestion they’ don’t give much consideration to the “weaker” counties: surely if you don’t think about something that much, you don’t really have a working set of attitudes about it? A word to the Carlow chap who retaliated with “Cork hurling is very like Pavarotti, they’ve both been dead for years,” by the way. No. Just no.

This isn’t to say that an entire county isn’t being indicted, either.

There’s been the usual scramble in recent days to condemn all of Cork as being guilty of inherent arrogance, with the evidence consisting of something someone once heard on the train, Roy Keane’s general demeanour and the remarks made at last week’s county board meeting.

What’s hilarious about that is the fact that during the Great Unpleasantness of a couple of years ago, the recurring complaint one heard within Cork and without was that delegates at county board meetings were out of touch with GAA opinion within the county.

Now, however, every loose comment is put forward as evidence for a consistency of belief that would do justice to North Korea.

Which is it? Even in Cork you can’t have both.

The man who made a nobody famous

The boss wasn’t happy last week.

“You used the Jimmy Breslin story. Why did you use the Jimmy Breslin story? I wanted to use the Jimmy Breslin story myself at some stage, now everyone knows it (etc, etc, etc, a good deal more in this vein).”

You probably don’t remember, but I was talking about Roy Keane’s investiture – er, arrival — and I pointed out that it’s hard to get a fresh angle on an event or person who’s being covered by hundreds of reporters, such as the appointment of the Republic of Ireland assistant manager.

Jimmy Breslin set the gold standard in lateral thinking about media scrums like that. When he was sent to cover JFK’s funeral in 1963, he spoke to one Clifton Pollard, because Clifton Pollard was the man whose day’s work it would be to dig the grave of JFK.

Thus Breslin found a different way into the story, one which gave the passing of a President’s death a little more context than anyone else’s piece.

(On a less weighty note, Jimmy Breslin is also a big favourite in my house because he plays a marginal role in one of the greatest movies of all time, When Harry Met Sally. Journalists Jess (Bruno Kirby) and Sally (Meg Ryan) are chatting and Sally says, “Let’s just say that I’m not a big fan of Jimmy Breslin,” to which Jess says with perfectly judged passive-aggressiveness, “Well, he’s the reason I became a writer but that’s not important.”)

As luck would have it, a few days ago Breslin was inducted into the Deadline Club Hall of Fame in New York, and chatted to Denis Hamill of the Daily News, himself a formidable writer and outstanding columnist.

When Hamill said in his column covering the event that Breslin found the grave-digger in every story, he summed the old war-horse up perfectly.

“Breslin said what irked him most was that Clifton Pollard was barred from attending the funeral,” Hamill added, in his column.

” ‘That’s what was wrong with the country,’ Breslin says. ‘Still is. The working guy isn’t good enough to stand with the big shots.’”

Say, Jimmy, any chance you’d like to find a few grave-diggers over here?

Forging a path to glory for Cooper

Great to land into Ennis yesterday for Na Piarsaigh and Sixmilebridge in the Munster club hurling championship final. You can read elsewhere about the game, which was a one-sided win for the Limerick side.

Kudos to the man who raised this point with me: if you were managing one of the teams left in the club football championship, how happy would you be with the relentless focus on Colm Cooper, pictured, in the advertising campaign?

Cooper’s Dr Crokes are one of the favourites for the All-Ireland title, having been impressive within their county and in their provincial outings, but is the ‘this-is-the-only-medal-I-don’t-have’ slant to the campaign biasing spectators and officials, however unconsciously, towards a narrative which sees Cooper realise that lifelong dream?

Granted, a clever manager can use anything in his favour, which is probably going to be the case in Crokes’ remaining games. But one for you to ponder yourself.