Drama leaves you blue in the face
Bursting with continental pride. Bursting anyway.
Driving Thursday through Templederry and Borrisoleigh and Thurles, you could see how much it meant. Blue and yellow everywhere.
Europe by the grace of God. Yoo Rup.
Online first for the usual flick through Bild. See what our brothers in Berlin are saying. No mention. Quite right, Karl-Heinz. Play it cool.
Sky Sports aren’t playing it cool. “An atmosphere like no other,” they tell us, as the residents of gated Florida communities present themselves in two teams. Like no other, at least, if you’ve never been stuck at Stansted the same time a rugby club stag do is flying out.
Gamely, the Americans run the gauntlet of hate. There can be few things more intimidating than a crowd of financial controllers serenading Justin Rose to the tune of Spandau Ballet’s Gold.
No wonder Rickie Fowler pulls a hat over the ‘USA’ shaved into the side of his head — his “act of thuggish jingoism”, as The Daily Telegraph put it.
Amid this carnage, a beautiful story. A local lad has made a wish and gets to play. Some kind of sop to the Scottish Yes vote probably. It doesn’t really matter. He’s with Poults.
“Boom boom boom, let me hear you say Poulter.” More lyrical gold.
“It’s going to work,” says Poults. “The heart of a lion, to say these things,” says Sky.
“Poults is Poults. Off the icon goes.” Incredible bravery, in the circumstances.
Europe go through the songbook. “The Americans find this ‘Ole Ole’ very annoying…” Maybe some of us are closer to Boston than Berlin.
Bravely, the Europeans take off their oven gloves. Thomas Bjorn tees off, “like a Viking that’s crossed the North Sea”. If the Vikings pillaged in slacks.
Captain McGinley — as Sky will only call him — looks on, captaining inspirationally, fresh from a standout performance at the opening ceremony, where he read out the names of his team and carried out a successful audit of his children without causing embarrassment.
He looks confident, like a man who has put blue and yellow fish in the hotel aquarium should.
A hiccup. The icon misses a tiddler. “Worst possible start”. McGinley is unmoved. He knows those motivational slogans daubed on the Gleneagles walls will soon motivate Poults to hit it nearer the hole.
Ad break. Banks are falling over themselves to lend money. When these two great powers last came together to test continental mettle in the Mosconi Cup, our only hope was payday loans. Or cash for gold.
“From the second shot onwards, it’s a golf match,” Monty assures us, a relief to Webb Simpson, who must have used a baseball bat off the tee.
Most of our brave boys settle down, though Gallacher, fittingly on his big day, seems set to remain reliant on the Englishman.
Poults isn’t much help. In the drink. “Pilot error.”
McGinley looking a little more pensive. Like any great captain, he’ll be wondering if he’s got the gifts right.
He’ll remember The Belfry and that 12-piece dinner set in the oak case that Sam Torrance left in each room. Players’ names engraved on the knives, captains and vice-captains on the forks, caddies not too sure. Perfect.
Has he made these guys feel special enough? Did Poults like his portrait with the heart etched on his sleeve? Should he have put it on the shoulder, like Cyril Farrell told him? The one-percenters.
Miguel Angel Jimenez magically appears in a puff of smoke, playing a vice-captain’s part, walking around.
Still courage on display at every turn. Fowler’s caddy tells him there’s a wind blowing up, so take your time there, boss. “Such brave caddying.” The kind of bravery that insures the bottom group will take more than five hours.
On BBC 5Live, John Inverdale is getting carried away with the impossible glamour of it all and wants more. “It’s about time we brought back televised pro-celebrity golf.” If he’s listening, Alan Shearer has never felt more alive.
From time to time, you get the impression Monty may have done this captaincy job before. Little clues in his sentence structure, the way each one starts with ‘When I…’
Poults still isn’t Poults. When they go six down, Monty tells us he knew all along that pairing wouldn’t work. Yes, he grew up near enough Ray ‘Hindsight’ Houghton.
In truth, there’s a disappointing lack of cut and thrust. No hint yet of a repeat of any of the famous melees and schmozzles that have marred the competition; such as Seve’s sneeze at Kiawah Island and Paul Azinger’s long glare as he stepped away mid-backswing.
The first true allergy attack. Scenes as frightening as any spat over a clubhouse parking space.
USA ahead by one, then, after the morning’s work, after Keegan Bradley and Phil Mickelson do their stuff. “They go together like fish and chips.”
“There’s no need for panic…” says McGinley, resisting temptation to rush back and check the aquarium.
The air not blue yet nor the board either. But a weekend of unparalleled pride, courage and drama ahead.
It is generally accepted, more or less since Paul Merson coined the phrase, in tribute to Arsene Wenger; that when it comes to knowing what you are at and where you are going, the right amount of belief to have is ‘unbelievable belief’.
Indeed, Wenger seemed to confirm as much, at another time, when he stressed that; “in this job there is never enough belief.”
But could it possibly be the case that one might have too much belief? That unbelievable belief might, on occasion, be a hindrance; causing passive reliance on fate rather than energetic leaps of faith? Before the All-Ireland football final, the near consensus, among pundits, held Donegal’s “belief in the system” critical.
Afterwards, during his gracious reflections, Jim McGuinness posed an interesting theory. “Maybe the players were wishing the game away and hoping it would be 6pm and we would have the cup.”
We have often heard that Donegal don’t practice, they rehearse. They focus on controllables. On Sunday, they delivered a controlled effort that might have lacked the dash of individual enterprise required.
It would be a bit simplistic to note that Wenger tends to foster belief in yourself rather than in systems. A coach of McGuinness’s calibre and qualifications hasn’t allowed his players’ self-worth be tied purely to his game plan.
But he sounded regretful — as though he suspected that Donegal’s total confidence in what they are doing and where it would take them had allowed the cardinal sin as far as the sports psychologists are concerned — focus drifting towards the outcome rather than the process.
Mick McCarthy: Strong on the policy of not celebrating goals against your former club: “The biggest load of nonsense ever.”
Joe Brolly: Couple of weeks ago; he was marvelling at the Donegal ‘philharmonic orchestra’ under the baton of Jim McGuinness. Kerry played a similar tune, but Joe’s changed and the game is dead all over again.
FIFA: Publish the findings of an ethics investigation? Why on earth would you do something like that?
