Michael Moynihan: The search for fresh material

Is there a minute in the day when golf isn’t going on somewhere in the world, wonders Michael Moynihan

It's not easy, lads. The absence of material is beginning to take a toll.

This week I was reduced to false starts and postponed take-offs. Because I am sometimes asked where the ideas come from, though, I thought everyone would appreciate a trip behind the curtain to see the process. How the sausage gets made, to quote Lin-Manuel Miranda.

(This week’s sausage, anyway. I reserve the right to recycle furiously the longer the lockdown goes on.)

1. The 10 Most Significant Milestones of Sport in the Pandemic (Number Six Will Amaze You!)

Pros: There’s no shortage of these once you start looking. Last week we had the few young lads kicking around together — er, the most successful inter-county team in the entire history of the GAA training. By the time this is published there’ll probably be another milestone.

Cons: Isn’t everyone sick of this by now? I know I am. This is one of the challenges facing the columnist at the moment, gauging people’s appetite for Covid-related content, given we are still in the middle of the storm, as opposed to seeking distraction.

On a related note...

2. Comparisons Between Sport This Year and Last Year

Pros: There’s the recognition factor, not to mention the reminding factor. People like to recall the similarities, the resonance of past events. Don’t they?

Cons: Last year — 12 months ago — the situation was exactly the same. People’s patience with being reminded of what life was like in the before times is running out, or at least that’s my impression.

In any event, going back two years as opposed to one makes this a non-runner as a column. It’s not the same, saying, ‘this day two years ago’: Just try it.

Although there’s always...

3. The Absurdity of Life And Sport As Summed Up By One Event

Pros: There’s always something. Take the cancellation of the Leinster-Toulon game last weekend, and the fantastically detailed back and forth about the time and date of various Covid tests and results. Why, this proves that even in a pandemic...

Cons: There’s little enough live sport going on without depressing the country by drilling into the small print of another cancellation and pontificating on how it applies to everybody’s life, given our now intimate familiarity with events being cancelled/postponed/deferred indefinitely. The alternative to that would be...

4. The Hopeful Note Struck By A Forgotten Sporting By-way

Pros: Somewhere there’s an obscure pursuit which can stand in for everything, right? Shin-kicking or cheese rolling, something is defying the odds, and the pandemic, to sound a note of hope for all of us. Right?

Cons: Cue a headline from Gloucestershire Live: Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling Cancelled due to Coronavirus Outbreak. This means the Hopeful Note doesn’t survive a cursory search, which doesn’t augur well for the lesson it’s intended to teach. Instead, then, how about...

5. Reluctant Immersion In An Unfamiliar Sport

Pros: Flicking around online I stumbled across the Valero Texas Open, and I couldn’t help but put the columnising part of the brain into gear. Is there a minute in the day when golf isn’t going on somewhere in the world... See? Now we’re cooking!

Cons: Flicking around on TV I stumbled across Golf’s Funniest Moments somewhere or other. When you’re reduced to watching Vernon Kay analyse the hilarity in someone’s putting, then you know it’s a long, dark night of the soul.

I feel better, though, knowing all of you are here with me.

Gender versus sports science

I’ve mentioned the great Caroline Criado Perez here in the past, author of Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men — one of those books which genuinely changes the way you see the world.

She popped up during the week pointing out a snippet which would have definitely made it into her book if it had happened a few years ago.

There were reports last week about the new saliva test for concussion, with a BBC story stating that a trial on rugby players suggested testing had a 94% success rate.

Good news, right?

The story added: “ . . . the test cannot yet be used on women because of a lack of data”, with a medic involved in the study admitting “to say this test would work in women would be wrong”.

To be fair, the rugby authorities hope to gather data from the women’s game soon — the postponement of the Rugby World Cup this year due to Covid has deprived them of the chance to get samples from a large group, for instance.

Criado Perez herself acknowledged progress even in the reporting of the story.

On social media she criticised sport science (“which has consistently the worst rates of research including women”) but added: “A few years ago that BBC report wouldn’t have mentioned that the test didn’t work for women & would have presented the test as gender neutral.” A positive there at least.

Betting pays. Up to half a billion if you’re lucky

A pal asked me last week why I’d begun dropping items about gambling into the column in recent weeks.

Easy: there’s so much information in circulation about the gambling industry that every week seems to provide yet another staggering reminder of how much money is sucked into it. I leave it to readers to decide their own views on that industry.

This week, for instance, we learned that Bet365 reported an 8% fall in revenue last year and a 74% fall in operating profits as a result of sports events being cancelled because of the pandemic.

Don’t worry too much, though. Chief executive Denise Coates still earned £421m (or approximately €495m) last year, bringing her total pay since 2016 to £1.3bn (or approximately €1.52bn).

Coates has built Bet365 from a small building in a car park in Stoke into a multinational business. She’s entitled to whatever wage she or the company deems fit.

But as a glimpse into the kind of money generated by this business - an oblique indication of the sheer amounts that are being gambled online - it’s astounding.

Just think: Here’s an operation that’s still vastly profitable even after paying out almost half a billion euro in wages to just one individual.

One to read over a coffee

I’m not sure how I missed this one when it came out last year, but now it’s available in paperback, I think there’s no excuse for picking it up and enjoying a cuppa while reading it.

Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire And The Making Of Our Favorite Drug by Augustine Sedgewick tells a couple of stories.

One is that of the Manchester native who managed to make coffee the main crop in El Salvador, with disastrous long-term consequences for the country’s citizens.

The other story pieces together coffee’s rise to superstardom, aided in no small part by being included as part of US soldiers’ rations; the ease of stacking coffee cans in supermarkets; and the introduction of a new element to the workday: the paid coffee break, recognised by the American courts in 1956 because they “promote more efficiency and result in a greater output”.

Milk and one sugar, please.

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