Tommy Martin: Dope Dreams - it's time for Ireland to sign up for the Enhanced World Cup
An Enhanced World Cup would end the unfair exclusion of countries like Ireland from major tournaments on the arbitrary basis that they are no good at football. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
It’s typical of this Republic of Ireland qualifying campaign that even the victories are gruesome.
You’d think Ireland’s first home win in World Cup qualifying in eight years would get the celebratory Walkinstown roundabout treatment. Instead, fans trudged home on Tuesday night looking forward to November’s Group F conclusion as if it was an appointment for an unpleasant medical procedure involving tubes and the adopting of the prone position.
Head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson once again diagnosed nervousness and a lack of confidence in the players as they struggled to heave Armenia off the premises, despite the side ranked 103rd in the world being both down to ten men and also, generally speaking, not very good.
One of the Ireland boss’s strengths is his razor-sharp ability to identify his team’s shortcomings in post-match interviews – unfortunately his major weakness seems to be doing anything substantial about them.
A year in the job now, when he’s talking about his team Hallgrimsson still often gives off the impression of a passer-by shaking his head sympathetically after coming upon a minor road traffic accident on his way home from work.
Moods were not improved by Hungary’s late equaliser in Lisbon, the long and the short of which means Ireland will probably need to get a result against Portugal in Dublin next month to be in with a shot of qualifying by the time of the final game in Budapest.
Expect the Portugal match to be another tough watch, given that when the sides met last Saturday night the Ireland players found reaching the Portuguese penalty box harder than if Hallgrimsson had asked them to launch a manned mission to Mars.
Of course, there is an alternative to this perpetual doom and gloom, inspired by news elsewhere in the world of sport this week. Things are changing. No longer should we be limited by the resources of debt-ridden soccer federations. It is time to disrupt the old, paternalistic structures of world sport. Let’s reach beyond the hidebound restrictions on nations who aren’t any good at football.
Yes, it’s time to announce Ireland’s retirement from international football and inform the world that we are signing up for the Enhanced World Cup.
There was no mistaking the parallels with the former Irish Olympic swimmer Shane Ryan, who this week went public with his decision to sign up for the Enhanced Games, which will allow athletes to compete while openly doped up to the gills.
To be fair to him, Pennsylvania-born Ryan has eschewed the Graeme McDowell ‘growing the game’ angle and openly admitted he’s doing it for the money, having essentially spent his Olympic career getting the annual equivalent of a student grant. He’ll be paid a minimum six figure sum from the Enhanced Games for swimming while tanked up with chemicals. Critics have accused him of trashing his legacy but given most Irish people didn’t know who he was anyway, he’ll probably reckon that’s a small price to pay.
Justifying his decision, Ryan painted a pretty miserable picture of life as an Olympic swimmer, toiling away on meagre rations for the privilege of finishing in the foamy wake of some flipper footed Australian in the first round of heats.
Financial penury, unpleasant toil and ultimate also ran status? Sound familiar?
Surely Irish football has suffered enough under legacy organisations like Uefa and Fifa who make us conform to their rules and restrictions. Just as the Enhanced Games aims to free athletes from the pettifogging strictures of anti-doping that prevent them reaching their full potential, an Enhanced World Cup would end the unfair exclusion of countries like Ireland from major tournaments on the arbitrary basis that they are no good at football.
Instead, we could reach beyond the limits holding us back, which are mainly decades of underinvestment in youth coaching and facilities, so not our fault clearly. Rather than begging the government for soccer academy funding, we could leverage our thriving pharmaceutical sector to create a master race of centre backs with biceps the size of hams, all the better to launch the projectile throw-ins currently en vogue.
Using gene therapy, we could breed a generation of giant comedy-handed goalkeepers. Our box-to-box midfielders would never tire and our goals would be scored by EPO-fuelled strikers who would launch themselves at opposition defences with no fear for their own safety, largely because they’ll know they’ll die young anyway after, you know, all the drugs and stuff.
The Enhanced Games are the brainchild of Aron D’Souza, an Aussie entrepreneur and tech schemer who has the likes of Donald Trump Jr. and conservative libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel as investors. With these guys on board, naturally there’s lots of high-falutin’ talk about bodily autonomy, the quest for eternal life and the creation of the superhuman. But really it’s all a grift to sell dodgy testosterone pills to middle aged blokes with too much money.
Hey, these guys are in charge now and, because their mummies never told them no, they tend to get their way. The first Enhanced Games is due to take place in May 2026 at a purpose-built venue in Las Vegas, with a four-lane 50-metre pool, a six-lane sprint track, and a weightlifting stage.
But once they’ve done with the runners, swimmers and weightlifters, let’s get them to round up all the other countries who are tired of watching their team being denied a trip to the World Cup because their players can’t string a couple of passes together. Fill up those syringes and let the games begin.
"On a fundamental, philosophical level we have the ability to overcome the weakness of our feeble biological forms and become something more," said D’Souza in a recent interview with the BBC. Imagine the Irish fans singing that to the tune of Olé, Olé, Olé.
