A bright start key to enjoying big match day
That was the number of Cork cars heading north, or more specifically, the cars bearing red and white flags fluttering as they surged up the road towards Dublin.
It’s fair to presume that many of those cars were heading up for yesterday’s game, particularly as many of them appeared north of Mitchelstown, and their earliness was unsurprising given the warnings all last week about a new road layout at Newland’s Cross.
Those warnings cast this new road layout in the role of the first snows of winter as Napoleon retreated from Moscow: a natural phenomenon whose appearance heralds pain, loathing and fatal tardiness.
Thus it was that at around 7.15am yesterday your columnist set sail — metaphorically — for Dublin. Not only is there a professional obligation to be on time for a game if you’re reporting on it — yes, physical presence at an event probably sounds very 20th-century — but being early helps to settle one, I find.
I don’t enjoy being in heavy motorway traffic anyway, thanks not only to crackpots like the lady driving the BMW jeep, cited earlier, but because of Cohen & Tate, one of Roy Scheider’s lesser-known movies, but a gripping account of a little boy who survives a hit on his family only to be bundled into the getaway car by two hitmen. The boy plays one against the other, and in one sequence, escapes into another car on one of America’s interminable freeways — only for the assassins to track him down...
It’s not a comedy.
Anyway, that was part of my motivation for not wanting to get caught up in the crush of, oh, 30,000 vehicles all heading in the one direction yesterday.
The only downside is that I found Dublin a barren wasteland when it came to getting a breakfast at just before 10am.
The Irish women’s rugby team took on France in their third-fourth place play-off yesterday at the Women’s Rugby World Cup. It’s been a good tournament for them, and there’s been a good deal of discussion about how women’s rugby, and women’s sport in general, can surf the goodwill generated by their performances, particularly the defeat of New Zealand, to improve the standing of women’s sport in the country, and the discussion seems to generate about-equal parts optimism and pessimism.
I think one advantage the women’s rugby team may have, though, is accessibility. A few months back I spoke to Dr Katie Liston of the University of Ulster, an expert in the area of social sciences of sport, about female role models in sport. This was before the women’s rugby team’s heroics of recent weeks, but the lesson looks a valid one to me.
“One point worth making is that in theory a role model is supposed to have very little distance between him or herself and the people looking at him or her,” said Liston. “That’s how it works best, according to the cognitive psychologists who work on this subject.
“That way people see the small, day to day things that the role model does, which has more of an effect than a once-off engagement — David Beckham flying in to play for a day with kids before flying off again, for instance.
“Social media is going to be very important in maximising the potential of women in sport, I think. Katie does a little on social media but she does a lot quietly. Key figures help, but the issue for someone like Katie Taylor and others is that when they’re immersed in their careers, they have to focus on that.
“There’s only so much they can do when they’re in the midst of competing; it’s not feasible for them to think, ‘what can I do for the boxing club down the road’ when they’re trying to get themselves right for an Olympics.”
That’s an interesting point about social media, which trumpeted support for the Irish women in the WRWC, and was equally loud in condemning a newspaper article which reinforced rather than removed some lazy stereotypes about women in sport.
Liston had some valid points to make about coverage also — whether media attention follows public interest or vice versa.
“It’s a circular argument, isn’t it? I’m trying to get some research started on that, and I have a student here analysing coverage of women’s sport.
“Whether it’s the early 1900s or now, there are always groups which get unequal levels of coverage. We could fall into the trap of saying ‘those are only women’s sports’, and I’m coming around to the view that we can improve what we do as female sportspeople. Having the right people in the right positions — people with more experience in marketing and advertising, say — would change the coverage, but it’s going to be a slow process.
“People point fingers and say, ‘if the Examiner did more it’d solve the problem’. It wouldn’t, though.
“Everyone’s looking for a silver bullet here, but I think what’s required is a coordinated approach from several different sectors if — and it’s a big if — we’re serious about profiling women’s involvement in sport because as a nation I don’t know if we’re that serious about it.
“We’re happy to celebrate Katie Taylor or whoever, but I don’t think we’re as serious about profiling women’s sport here as they are in other countries. That has to change before anything else changes.”
Do you remember the great Gary Larson The Far Side cartoon about the dog and his master? Describing cartoons is, I know, one stage removed from describing intricate stagings of scenes from Mad Men or Game of Thrones, but this set-up was pretty simple.
The cartoon consisted of two identical panels, each showing a dog and his owner. In one panel the owner was saying: “Sit, Fido, sit! Sit, dog! Blast it Fido, why don’t you sit? Sit! Come on Fido, sit!” and the dog was looking at him.
In other panel — same image — the owner was saying: “Arf Fido arf bla bla gla arf Fido, ng gob bla arf? Arf dak nn Fido arf, etc etc.” The caption? What humans say, what dogs hear.
That’s how I feel when people talk to me about the Premier League: I’m sure they’re making words, but it just comes across to me as arf bla gob gob Suarez gob us-and-them, arf dak dak Wenger gob arf arf Dutch master arf gob gob, etc etc.
Apologies in advance if you see my face looking blankly back at you as you tell me about “your” new signing; you might as well be howling at the moon.
One small point: it was sunny yesterday when the teams took the field in Croke Park, but last Sunday week was a pretty terrible day: given the number of games being played in the stadium in recent weeks, respect to the ground staff. The surface looked impeccable yesterday.
