Life goes on for the men in green
There was a decent crowd for the official opening of the new complex, but maybe there were other reasons that drew so many L-reg cars to the north Cork town.
Certainly on the way in, there were knots of people in green and white and snippets of conversation from them — ‘well, if he said that, surely they should have said...’ — which gave a good clue to the subject under discussion.
Donal O’Grady’s departure from the Limerick senior hurling team has been much-debated and analysed in the last week, and we won’t revisit it here in detail. We headed up past Buttevant for the match, after all.
Cork won a decent game by a few points, and everyone on the premises got something out of the game to keep them warm on the way home. Cork boss Jimmy Barry-Murphy got a win. Limerick supporters got to see long-term injury victims Declan Hannon and Seamus Hickey take a competitive part in a game again. Charleville GAA got a good crowd, which they deserved, and a lot of the kids in the crowd — from both counties, you’d suspect — knocked crack out of the best theatre to be found in the GAA, Anthony Nash’s penalty technique, which was employed not once but twice.
Afterwards TJ Ryan wasn’t hiding. In circumstances like those which arose last week, it’s not unusual for a manager to simply say nothing to the press, but in keeping with the Garryspillane man’s character down the years, he fronted up and took questions, even if he wouldn’t be drawn on David Moyes’ future career plans.
He was carrying on, yes; there’d be no new coach appointed, no; and yes, the game had gone well enough in that there were positives...
It’s hardly an insight to say that life carries on after disaster, or, to be precise, that teams carry on when their managers step down. Limerick have known turmoil before and come back strong and with the talent bubbling under in the county, they’re sure to challenge again soon, though for 2014, you’d think that Tipperary probably feel they owe them one for last year.
But the odd thing about leaving Charleville was the sense that the chapter was closed, and that the men in green and white on the field of play had given their supporters something to focus on for the next couple of weeks.
David Moyes, eh? I understand he high-tailed it to Miami last week after the axe fell. Nice break, Dave. Enjoy it.
I feel a bit put out, though, that I seem to be the only journalist in the western hemisphere who wasn’t in on the sacking story before it came out. There seemed to be an unnerving symmetry to the tweets, breaking news headlines and pointed hints that Moyes was being steered towards the exit hatch last Monday, even though the Scot was actually fired early on Tuesday morning.
Where’s my high-level briefing, I wanted to know; where’s my surreptitious phone call, or clandestine meeting in a pub car park? What am I, chopped liver?
You’ll be happy to hear that I got over my self-obsession and have managed to look on this whole farrago without making it all about me. What’s particularly puzzling to me now, from this remove, is the general consensus that this was all handled badly: that this is not how Manchester United behave but is how the famous Glazer family behave.
In fact, there has been such a staggering amount of this nonsense spewed out that it has had a very unusual effect on me: I have come to feel sympathy for these Glazers, with their odd chins and strange facial hair, because they are, after all, simply playing by the rules of the game. Lest anyone forget, United is a business. That’s how it’s run. The romantics now weeping for the old United way of doing things seem to have omitted that from their charge sheet for the Glazers, who have overseen an explosion in the club’s commercial revenues.
Last year almost half of Manchester United’s income came from its commercial partners — £150m (€182m)-plus of its total, £363m (€440,000), according to the well-respected sportswriter, Mihir Bose.
More importantly, Bose pointed out over the weekend that commercial income is 10 times greater now than it was when the Glazers took over in 2005.
The great knock against the Glazers is the vast debt they imposed on Manchester United nine years ago, but — and it seems a little obvious to point this out — that’s how business operates, and Manchester United are a business. Giving out that United must service that debt — around £20m (€24) a year, says Bose — is like giving out that there are white lines around the pitch telling you when the ball is out of play, or that one of the players can use his hands in a certain area of the field.
Them’s the rules, folks. If you don’t like them, find another game to play.
There was an opportune piece on The Atlantic recently about money and wages and all that good stuff — see elsewhere on the page for the obligatory Manchester United piece — which I found a little surprising.
The headline is self-explanatory: The Largest Salaries in Sports Are Paid in These 3 Cities. New York, with the Yankees and the Knicks and the Brooklyn Nets, yes. London, with Arsenal and Chelsea, yes.
But Manchester? The arrival of Sheikh Mansour at Man City was the reason behind that, sending City top of the per-player payment league ($8.1 million [€5.8m] per player per annum): this was the result of an amazing 256% rise in salaries over five years.
The other cities were more or less as expected, with or without the team name: Los Angeles, Barcelona, Madrid, Munich and... Chicago. Yes, the Bulls still pay well, all those years after Michael Jordan.
A pal of mine has been scrambling for a term to describe people who have lately discovered their passion for Liverpool FC: last weekend he listed several offenders, misguided souls who have hidden this secret love so well, that for many years, one would have supposed them joined in allegiance to a completely different group of multinational mercenaries... only to find, amazingly, that the love they once had for Liverpool, (despite yesterday’s result), is now reawakening within their breasts just as a Premier League title is within — what’s the exact cliche — touching distance. Answers on a postcard please, for the mot juste to describe these scoundrels: send to michael.moynihan@examiner.ie
