Close encounters: Fine line between victory and defeat
It’s a great line but there’s a better variation of it out there in the sporting annals and it is especially applicable to the men from the west this week. It was uttered a few decades ago by the Kansas City Royals’ third baseman, George Brett, whose exploits landed him in baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1999: “If a tie is like kissing your sister,” Brett reckoned, “losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out.”
Losing clearly sucks for a whole host of self-explanatory reasons and among them must be the knowledge that decisions and actions taken in good faith by the people best-placed to make them get second-guessed and ultimately holed by hindsight.
Last Sunday demonstrated just that.
In Croke Park that afternoon, James Skehill’s discomfort was plain to see from the earliest minutes when he kicked the sliotar to touch rather than bend down and risk his recently dislocated shoulder by picking it up. He later revealed his injury also led to Richie Power’s opening goal for Kilkenny.
Skehill’s interview in the lobby of the Burlington Hotel last Monday morning when he spoke in considerable detail about the pain he had been in and the impact he felt it had on his and Galway’s performance was, in many respects, the most astonishing of the entire GAA season.
At this remove, it is impossible not to ask ‘what were they thinking?’ Goalkeepers in Gaelic games have taken on a greater remit and importance in these more tactical times where possession equals power and Skehill’s inability to pick up or puck out a ball properly surely should have trumped the mental boost his sheer presence was supposed to have on his colleagues.
Didn’t it? And yet, one can’t help but think: who are we to doubt a man like Anthony Cunningham? The same Anthony Cunningham who masterminded a path through to two All-Ireland finals — one in club football and the other in inter-county hurling — in the space of just seven months? The same Anthony Cunningham who sent a team out to play hurling’s greatest ever team three times this summer and lost to them only once?
Cunningham’s and Galway’s crime is not the decisions they did or did not make on and off the field of play but the fact that they lost. It’s that simple. “History is written by the victors,” said none other than Winston Churchill, a man who made extra sure of a fond remembrance by penning numerous tomes on battles and world events in which he was an actor.
Whether Jose Maria Olazabal does the same and takes pen to paper remains to be seen but the Spaniard may not feel the need, given the volumes of praise he has received in the days since his European team produced the mother of all comebacks in the Ryder Cup. And yet how different it all was on Saturday evening after the tournament’s first two days.
The following morning, with Davis Love III’s USA team 10-6 to the good and in a seemingly impregnable position of strength, The Sunday Times ran an article on page three of their sports section which bore the sub-heading: “An inspired US captain has got everything right, while his rival looks lost.”
Practically every other publication ran a similar piece. Europe were tight and flat, hindered by their captain’s tactical mistakes in his choice of foursomes and fourball pairings and placings. The Yanks were loose, pumped and enabled by an alchemist of a captain who had mined gold from a team all too often so leaden at the biannual event.
What a difference a day makes.
By Monday, Love III was being blamed for everything from resting Phil Mickelson and Bradley Keegan on the Saturday afternoon to his wild-card picks four weeks earlier. Even worse was that he even found himself accused of disrespecting Tiger Woods for playing him in the last of the 12 singles spots so soon after being lauded for being the first ever captain to bench the former world number one for a session earlier in the weekend.
The worst part of it all, for men like Cunningham and Love III is the fact that no-one will question their actions in more detail and at greater length than themselves and the knowledge that they were close, agonisingly close, will only add to the torment. As Frank Robinson, another legend of America’s ball parks, put it: “Close don’t count. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.”
