Still asking the little questions in my head
Among them: 1 Why are you so freaking grumpy? It was before a rugby international a few years ago. The man made available to the press produced a dazzling array of monosyllables and shrugs while grinning sarcastically. I’m still sorry I didn’t ask what his problem was, particularly as I see the ray of sunshine he became later when advertising something.
2. Did you really not see that? It was an inter-county game and one of the manager’s players had committed a foul that was so... I want to use the word ‘egregious’ with a straight face, having heard it used so often in The Good Wife... so glaring and obvious that it was almost funny.
The manager stood in the middle of the field and looked baffled when we raised it, shaking his head slowly like a child when you ask who dumped the ice cream on the couch. We moved on.
3 Dude, are you even listening? Another GAA one — we were sitting around waiting to talk to a player and one of the hacks present attempted a light joke to warm things up when said player pulled up a chair to join us.
We should have known by his expression (pained), because the substance of his answer was a by-the-numbers statement of the challenges he and his teammates faced, the quality of the opposition they were up against, the huge effort it had taken to even reach this position...
I suppose it was all just a reflex: the question mark simply provoked a response that was pre-programmed, one which was going to be used no matter what the query was.
4. Can I have a word with the horse so instead? It was a phone chat arranged by a PR company with a man in the equestrian field; foreign territory to this soldier, but as nothing human is alien to me, I said I’d give it a shot and dialled at the appointed time.
It didn’t go well. The three-word answers to my admittedly feeble questions punctuated by his horse snorting in the background.
After less than three minutes I said, ‘Well, I think we’ll leave it there, will we?’ and he agreed instantly.
When I rang the PR to give the bad news her response was priceless: ‘I know, he’s terrible, isn’t he?’
I see Jerry Kiernan is in the news again with his views on GAA players.
If you missed it, the former Olympic runner was quoted as saying: “The GAA is largely a local organisation... the standards required to play in it, there’s not an awful lot required.”
The cause of Kiernan’s anger was a €600,000 grant the Irish government has pledged towards the redevelopment of Ruislip GAA grounds in London as part of the Emigrant Support Programme, and he cited international athletes as being more deserving of financial support: “It’s very difficult to be a top international sports person without help along the way...”
In one way you’d almost be grateful for Kiernan coming out and saying he doesn’t like a sport, because there’s so much tiptoeing around and back-slapping and ‘we have so much respect for you, our direct competitors’ that it’s close to refreshing to hear someone say that they don’t like a different sport, let alone come out and criticise it.
Almost.
I’m not getting into a drawn-out defence of the GAA here; the organisation employs people to do that.
Neither am I getting into one of those classic 80s debates about how physically fit Gaelic footballers and hurlers are compared to professional sportspeople. (If you’re not old enough to remember those, they centred typically on a GAA player being sent to rehab an injury in England, where pro soccer players, usually, were left aghast, or maybe it was just amazed, by his physical conditioning. Ah, happy days.) Nor am I about to point out to Jerry that in the planet most of us occupy, legal tender is used for everything from balls to singlets.
In any event, he may be right about the financing of athletes. Maybe he read Derval O’Rourke’s superb column in this newspaper a few weeks ago on the €968,000 allocated to Irish athletes.
“In 2014, €168,000 goes directly to 11 athletes, last year four of whom produced medals at a senior championship, Rob Heffernan as world champion, Fionnuala Britton, Ciarán Ó Lionáird and myself,” wrote O’Rourke.
“Meaning the cost of three support staff (High Performance Director, Team Coordinator and Athlete Services Coordinator) far outweighs the 11 athletes’ direct funding, and unlike the athletes’ incomes, this information is much more difficult to access and certainly salaries and names are not listed. It’s unclear how much is spent on expenses.”
Maybe that’s what he plans on talking about next time.
A mate of mine, Dave Hannigan, has a new book out — Behan In The USA, about Brendan Behan’s adventures in the land of the free. I’m not yet finished but what I’ve read so far leads me to recommend it wholeheartedly, though you run the risk — the author had me warned — of pining for the life of a journalist in 60s Manhattan.
I’d go so far as to say that the author and I have moved past the initial chill caused by an exchange of emails (DH: There’s no sport in it for you to use in your column, sorry. MM: You’re dead to me.) I haven’t yet encountered in the book my favourite Behan story: on a trip to the far reaches of the west of Ireland, he was in a pub one evening when the barman nodded towards a whiskery gent at the end of the counter: “Sean is over 70 but he’s never been to Dublin, would you believe that?”
Behan took it upon himself to regale Sean with stories of Dublin: the vast crowds. The huge traffic. The teeming life of the many-footed city. At the end of the evening Sean nodded in wonder and headed home.
“I’d say Sean learned a bit,” said Behan.
“I’d say so,” said the barman. “Then again, he did drive a taxi in Chicago for 20 years.”
Many thanks to all who came along to the Twisted Pepper over the weekend for The Back Page, a festival of talking about sport.
Highlights included the story of a water bottle being thrown at a reporter outside a dressing room, and another hack’s account of going to Harlem to cover a Mike Tyson press conference.
Another highlight was one man’s informed suggestion that contrary to general belief, Sky may broadcast an All-Ireland senior final.
More on that as we investigate.
