When you are out of ideas, turn to honest John
It was a week that brought the curtain down on ideas. By way of official acknowledgement that the cupboard is now bare, Hollywood started work on a remake of I Know What You Did Last Summer.
While in the domestic advertising trade; seven years after a mobile phone network got Liam Brady to take a call and act the eejit while — for the purposes of a punchline — children played football; a confectionery company got John Giles and Eamon Dunphy to receive a call from Brady and act the eejit while children played football.
And yet, we had never seen anything like it. It will go down, in the annals, with Sally O’Brien, and ‘Who’s taking the horse to France?’ and all the others.
An unnecessary reminder, to anyone who saw him play, that when you are running out of ideas, there’s always Gilesy.
But there is another important aspect to this advertising triumph, which might easily be overlooked in the sheer exhilaration we experience watching John Giles shimmy those hips one more time.
In his autobiography, A Football Man, Gilesy told us that he doesn’t have a sweet tooth; that he maintained his ‘fighting weight’ of 10 stone two pounds through staying away from the kind of stuff he is exposed to here.
So it is crucial to note that, in this marketing message, it is Dunphy who tucks into the chocolate. Whatever Gilesy is prepared to do for a few quid, he is not ready to mislead us.
As the lads returned to our screens for Champions League duty, I think this is something we need to remember.
When people tire — as I sense they are doing — of Gilesy finding fault with the world’s best footballers; indeed when he reasons that there might be no great footballers at all; we must remember that these are the kind of standards he is trying to uphold.
Honesty of effort; even when you are flogging chocolate 30 years after you hang up your boots.
When Gilesy shares his misgivings about Yaya Toure, as he did this week, he might have to watch Yaya win many more titles and awards and he might, in a superficial sense, have to be wrong, many more times, before he is eventually right. But he will get there, just as he eventually got there with Rio Ferdinand.
Gilesy often shared his misgivings about Rio, even while Rio was winning titles. This time last year, Gilesy was adamant Rio should have been the first man shown the door by David Moyes.
This week Rio probably proved Gilesy right as he lifted the lid — via the serialisation of his third autobiography — on his Old Trafford hell.
Quickly running out of ideas, as much as any of us, Rio had to wheel out the old chestnut to shaft his gaffer — canteen upheaval. “Moyes comes in and, after his first week, he says we can’t have chips any more.”
Of course, the story of Rio and Moyesey isn’t a new one either. It is a remake, in some ways, of the story of Gilesy and Cloughie, from 40 years ago.
A new manager on a hiding to nothing, wary of the senior players, and making changes; such as telling them the new place for their medals was the bin, because they were cheats.
But there are some small differences too. Chip-deprived Rio kept up his hangdog form all the way to Old Trafford last Sunday. Gilesy gave his best and played well for Leeds, before and after Clough left, and helped them to a European Cup final. On one level, he appreciated Clough’s honesty, even if he didn’t agree with him.
Though the pair never spoke again; Clough, who died 10 years ago today, was eventually wistful about Gilesy. “I never did get to know John Giles, still don’t. Who knows what might have happened if we’d got together.” A team with all the ideas and all the honesty? Maybe we’ll never see anything like it.
It’s hard to know, at this stage, whether Kerry are on the double-bluff or the triple bluff.
They were hamming it up, big style, at the press day. The gates edged open, cautiously, on the dot of half-twelve. No sooner.
Your correspondent, innocently meandering away from the flock, up the steps of Fitzgerald Park, was halted, by a flurry of stewards, as though he was bolting across the border from Mexico.
They were so anxious to be secretive about what was going on out on that field, that you couldn’t help suspect they had come up with nothing yet at all, for Donegal.
A suspicion that deepened when word spread yesterday that they are supposedly pulling spies out of trees.
But when the lads came out of the showers that afternoon, they did something even more suspicious. Hoards of them emerged and they talked and talked. And dallied and dallied. In the end, they were nearly looking around for lads to talk to. And every one of them saying much the same thing, in detailed and charming and interesting ways granted, but ultimately the same thing; tactics, ah no, we’ll be playing our own game.
So, of course, you took that to mean they’d be doing anything but; that they have dreamed up an elaborate defensive snare that forsakes their traditions so gravely that they won’t be welcome home without the cup.
And we haven’t even considered the Gooch yet. You couldn’t be up to them.
Will Jim?
Not too long ago, if you bought a football shirt or a running shoe, you might be able to picture the cuts and bruises on a four-year-old who stitched them.
Things have improved, in that regard, we hear. In fact, we might be at a stage now where the poachers have had to turn gamekeeper. On Monday of this week, as word continued to emerge of the beatings NFL running back Adrian Peterson inflicted on his four-year-old son, the Minnesota Vikings stood by their man, insisting he was simply “disciplining a child”.
By Tuesday, sponsors were jumping ship and shirts were coming off shelves. On Wednesday, the Vikings ‘deactivated’ Peterson. Could it be that America’s children are being protected from the switch by the swoosh?
South African Olympic committee: Rather eager in their confirmation Pistorius will be able to compete for them again, if he avoids jail. No doubt another big call that will ultimately be left to the sponsors.
Jeff Stelling: Whatever the political rights or wrongs, it was unfair to wade in; to skew things so dramatically. Once Jeff wondered, last Saturday, if they’d ever again bring updates from north of the border should a Yes vote came through; you knew the Scots just couldn’t take the chance.
The 270 or so brave men: Nobody is giving them a voice, but 15% of R&A voters shouted stop at this modern madness about women members. Maybe they figured the Ryder Cup slacks were already sewn.
