Stepping back but hoping for a brighter future
On Friday night in Queens, the Bronx-based Lansdowne soccer club secured their second Cosmopolitan Soccer League title in a row, confirming their status as the dominant amateur club in this neck of the woods.
It’s some achievement, essentially the fifth tier of the game in the US and the top amateur league in New York - even though describing those teams at the upper end of the table as “amateur” is a little inaccurate.
Playing in Celtic style hoops and boasting a strong Irish representation in their first XI, the Lansdowne club has been going from strength to strength over the last decade.
Coached by former Dungannon Swift and Finn Harps player Austin Friel, they play an attractive brand of football which is almost always channelled through the serene midfielding nous of former Derry City player Gareth McGlynn.
The Donegal man was worth the Friday evening rush hour trip down the Long Island Expressway alone, pulling the strings, finding space and setting up the first of the two goals that won it for Lansdowne.
Their second team added a cup final victory on Sunday around the same time as my New York Shamrocks were finishing off our own season with a trophy that was paraded through Sunnyside and Woodside with the usual over-exuberance.
Nothing like success to give you hope.
The cold light of day on Monday took some of that away. A story by the Roscommon Herald sports editor Ian Cooney about the struggles of the St Ronan’s GAA club in the north of the county made for depressing reading.
A Manhattan Gaels club mate is a St Ronan’s stalwart from afar and he sent me the story. It could be any club, of course, and there’s nothing unique about their plight.
Late Monday night, after Gaels training, I was driving a couple of players home to Queens when the subject of sledging came up.
One of the players recounted a senior club championship game in Ulster a couple of years ago before which his marker came up to him with his mother’s number scrawled on his arm.
At half-time, he happened to be the third man in to break up a tussle which broke out on the way into the dressing rooms. He took a badly broken jaw home with him and wondered why there had to be so much drama.
No sport is immune from all this noise and nonsense and as the world of journalism has opened out technologically, opinions and aggression are increasingly available and commodified, driving down their value and leaving most observers clueless as to which latest bust-up matters most.
I have been wanting to step away from the noise for a while, and a new adventure will mean I’ll be vacating this column after more than four years of contributing to the racket.
I might not sound it but I am more hopeful for journalism than I have been since the decline and fall of media empires began to take a grip six years ago.
But the many good voices have to be allowed to shine through and the rest of us must be willing to fund that effort.
And some of us with a platform need to know when to step away when we have nothing more to say.
I know the clicks matter now and I understand that many of the sport sections bring in the most traffic when Analyst A slams Analyst B.
Rational fence sitters offer less in the way of entertainment because they deploy reason and look at all sides of the debate. The real stars brandish extremes and absolutes for us to consume as watered down video on smartphones.
But still I have hope. And gratitude too for all the amazing colleagues I have met along the way. They’re the ones who will save this great industry because they’re the workhorses keeping the games honest.
From Fifa corruption all the way down to the demise of GAA clubs in rural Ireland, these vital stories won’t exist in a world where blogs and bloviators dominate.
There’s hope simply because there are enough good journalists hungry enough to deliver - all they need are consumers hungry enough to know more.
It’s just over five years since I told our sports editor that I’d be following a girl to New York.
His support and that of the desk has been immense ever since.
Someone with a fresher voice will move in here next week and I’ll move on full of gratitude and good memories.
And full of hope and optimism too that readers will continue to appreciate what the great people at the Irish Examiner’s sports desk produce every day.
Contact: john.w. riordan@gmail.com
Twitter: @JohnWRiordan
