Play it again, Babs

ROSE MARY WOODS died three months ago.

Her name resounds with a certain age group both as a result of her years as Richard Nixon’s secretary and, more pertinently, as a consequence of erasing audio tapes which recorded Nixon’s secret discussions of the Watergate burglary.

Her name certainly resounded in this parish last Monday, when Tipperary manager Michael ‘Babs’ Keating took issue with comments ascribed to him after his side lost their NHL game against Galway last Sunday week.

“I thought it was very unfair by some reporters who accused me of saying something I didn’t,” said Babs after Tipperary beat Laois last Sunday.

“I was accused of saying that these players were great at looking for other things. I never said that. Nobody had a record of it and I thought that was unfortunate ... a good friend of mine who was present during the post match interview didn’t hear me say it and I’m saying now I didn’t say it.”

Oh dear. As the Tánaiste and Minister for Health might say, the treatment of hearing problems among the doughty folk of Knocknagow is a matter in the first instance for the relevant health board, but we felt we might be able shed a little light on the other matter, the unfortunate lack of a record of those comments. If we hadn’t taped over our recording of the interview.

Therefore, saying a prayer to Rose Mary Woods, the patron saint of unerased recordings, this reporter checked his trusty C90 tape, which produced the following comments from Babs in the wake of the Galway defeat:

“We can only play - Michael, they’re not applying anything near what they’re putting in in training on the field. Nothing near the effort that’s put in in training have we seen out there. I can’t understand it.

“They tell me ‘tis lack of confidence. They show no lack of confidence when they’re looking for this, that and the other thing. They’ve plenty of confidence, you know what I mean? Oozing with it.”

The above is a verbatim transcript of Babs’ comments after the Galway game (the Michael referred to isn’t this reporter, by the way). The only alteration is the removal of a single adjective between ‘They’ and ‘show’, which isn’t ducking the issue, and the word ducking isn’t chosen accidentally. Coincidentally, the term ‘expletive deleted’ in relation to transcripts became current at the time of the Watergate hearings, so perhaps the ghostly hand of Rose Mary Woods can be seen here too.

Enough of the history lesson. The facts are that Tipperary were disappointing against Galway last Sunday week, their manager expressed his unhappiness after the game in vivid terms, and those comments were widely publicised and presumably read, in part or whole, by their intended target: the Tipperary panel.

Last Sunday the Premier were far better, beating Laois with a score of 4-17 and qualifying for the NHL play-offs.

One could assume that Babs’ comments therefore had the desired effect, galvanising his players to replicate on the field of play what they were evidently producing in training. Some of his previous outbursts weren’t timed as well: the fatal donkeys-don’t-win-derbies comment came in the run-up to the finely balanced Munster final of 1990, while the sheep-in-a-heap description of the Offaly hurlers came hard on the heels of the 1998 Leinster final defeat.

This particular address to the nation came in late March, on the back of a relatively insignificant league defeat while missing two-thirds of his first choice full-forward line. Given the resultant improved performance against Laois, one might have thought Babs a little happier than he was in 1990 and 1998.

Last Sunday, however, Babs thought differently, saying those reporters the previous week had been “trying to put a rift between me and the players. I think that was grossly unfair.”

It’s true that, that was unfair, because nobody in the press box was trying to create a rift between Babs and his side. No journalist said the Tipp players were strolling up to take frees ‘the same as if they had until 12 o’clock tonight’, as Babs did, and none of the reporters said the Tipperary players were ‘dead only to wash them’.

Frankly, if any of us came up with a line that good we’d be writing episodes of The Sopranos.

But what’s really unfair is being accused of making something up. Babs told the reporters who were present in O’Moore Park last Sunday that he’d be less than mannerly to walk away from them, but that he deserved to walk away from some reporters based on what he saw the previous Monday.

“I’m very reluctant to forgive those reporters,” he said.

Who said he’s the one to do the forgiving?