Michael Moynihan: A Christmas wish for everyone

That’s my advice this morning. Don’t dwell on the last year. It’ll be gone soon, thank God
Michael Moynihan: A Christmas wish for everyone

WELL DONE BRO: Darragh McElhinney celebrates with his brother Iarla after finishing second in the Men’s U23 8,000m at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships. Picture: Inpho/Bryan Keane

This is the time of year I start to hide. The mask is a godsend, because out on the street I can just pretend to be someone else if anyone asks (“Nah, I’m his brother, I haven’t seen him in months”).

At games I just don’t make eye contact with anybody; in the service station or the supermarket I keep the earphones on and look off into the middle distance, as though Right Back Where We Started From by Maxine Nightingale was the secret of life. And who among us can say it isn’t?

The reason for my concern is this is the exact time of year when the dreaded request arrives. The one looking for a highlight of the year.

In my time I’ve tried a few knacks to escape this cruel fate.

They range from the philosophical (“What is a highlight? What is high? What is a light?”) to the obscure (“I have a highlight for 1975, when I got a Raleigh Chopper, if that helps”).

Some colleagues probably put this reticence down to a slight inclination to misanthropy but that’s not quite true.

It’s fair to say that your columnist has a slightly jaundiced view of his fellow man - for evidence circumspice te, as they said of Christopher Wren - but the curdling of the true cynic comes from disappointment. It’s not inherent.

For that reason this is a time of year to look ahead, not to dwell on the past. Take your own favourite sport, or favourite team - with few exceptions you’ll be hoping that 2022 will be better than this year.

After all, practically every sport will be hoping the pages on that desk calendar fly past as though appearing in a bad movie montage. Covid is the top-line irritant but a quick glance at the sports headlines shows plenty to irritate: bullying, sexism, racism, funding, greed . . .

And that’s just among the winners (joking).

That’s my advice this morning. Don’t dwell on the last year. It’ll be gone soon, thank God. If your sport is mid-season, as so many of them are, relish the ongoing: events are coming thick and fast for you to feast on. Enjoy them.

If your sport is on hiatus until the new year, relish the forthcoming. Your crowd start with a blank slate, a spotless conscience, a clear run. Every outing is a fresh excursion.

Yes, the rain must fall. The disappointment comes soon enough, and the realisation dawns eventually.

This year will be no different to the others. No title, no awards, no success. Just another year with its own dazzling ordinariness.

It’s funny to me that poets have a good grip on the richness of the ordinary, because few observers see more of the quotidian than sports fans of all stripes. It’s hardly a surprise that a Monaghan footballer was able to pick out the glow of the everyday.

The newness that was in every stale thing

When we looked at it as children . . .

O after Christmas we’ll have no need to go searching for the difference that sets an old phrase burning.

Kavanagh’s timestamp for the search is a neat coincidence for our purposes, but think of it as an injunction for the holidays. Enjoy yourselves and knock plenty of crack out of it. Then look ahead of the resumption/beginning of the games all over again.

Bless us, every one.

The big selection issue everyone is talking about

Can’t hide away from the big one for the last few days - the one issue that seems to have a lot of people very excited.

But before we get started, a word of common sense. Any time you get a bunch of people together to hammer out a best-of, or top players of the year, or whatever you’re having yourself, then mistakes are going to happen.

(Deliberate use of the active voice above, not ‘mistakes were made.’)

Call it wood-for-the-trees syndrome. You’re so close to the issues that you can’t step back and see the bigger picture. There’s a reason people use that dreary ‘a horse designed by a committee’ line.

That’s certainly better than the alternative explanations, which can range from simple incompetence to inbuilt bias, but none of those explanations survive long without evidence. You have to know for certain what the motivation is behind certain choices, and if you don’t then you’re reduced to whistling in the dark.

There’s also an element beloved of politicians - collective cabinet responsibility, in which a decision has to be agreed by all and, more importantly, defended by all when it comes into the public domain. Sharp observers of the political scene will of course point out that this responsibility is often honoured more in the breach, etc., etc., but even in a battered form it does tend to be maintained.

As a result, inconsistencies, errors, compromises, makeshift accommodations, gaffes, head-scratchers - none of them tend to be accounted for. This leaves something like the Gil Hodges decision all the more puzzling—

Question from readers: Er, what is it exactly you’re talking about?

My answer: Obviously, the decision by the Baseball Hall of Fame to revisit the cases of Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva, Gil Hodges, Minnie Miñoso, Bud Fowler and Buck O’Neil and to elect them to the Hall of Fame now instead of when they were first considered. What did you think I was talking about?

Player welfare, if it actually exists

The endless GAA season rolls on and on, with the provincial club championships now being played at all levels, and the shadow of the pre-season inter county competitions down for January now falling across us. Though whether ‘pre-season’ is even a term fit for purpose is something for another day.

An observation: With younger and younger team profiles at inter county level how does it make sense for these preseason competitions to be played when most of these players are looking at third level competition as well?

Student players who are on the radar of inter county managers will be understandably keen to make an impression in Fitzgibbon and Sigerson Cup games in 2022, but what if the intercounty manager wants to see how those players slot into his team in (insert name of preseason competition here) games?

Is two or three games in a week really the way to treat players? Or is player welfare something just for Christmas and not year-round? I see Cork opting out of the Munster Senior Hurling League because of a team holiday booked for the same time: a few more counties might take a leaf from their book.

A hint for the Santa list

An odd recommendation this morning. Rather than one book, check out this link.

It details some outstanding books by some outstanding writers - David Grann, Anne Applebaum, Lawrence Wright, Jill Leovy - as well as some lesser-known works. If, like me, you find yourself a little lighter in the wallet this week as a result, don’t worry. I’m available to swap what I got with what you bought, and we can rationalise our spending together.

Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie

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