Bubble bursts on sporting untouchables

Why does the outside chatter get under people’s skin? asks Michael Moynihan

February 12: Ireland rugby coach Joe Schmidt cancels daily print journalists’ briefing.

February 17: headline in daily print outlet: Joe Schmidt’s ‘down’ week, 12-hour days in the bunker.

What a time to be alive, eh? The media bans and event cancellations, the prissy pedantry and simmering dislike. A relationship of humid sullenness. A golden age of something or other. What exactly, we just don’t know what yet.

Admission: I’m one of those working steadily against Joe Schmidt, beavering away like a Russian election-bot propagandising against Hillary Clinton.

All the hours God sends me I’m at it, trying to dream up quare goings-on involving the Irish rugby team that would burst the bubble and forget the learnings or whatever blue-sky spoofery is the mot juste this year.

Well, not quite all the hours. Some of the time I devote to undermining Martin O’Neill, doing everything in my power to damage his reputation more than he could himself in any imitation of a Christian-Brothers-principal c. 1971 he can manage. That’s another focus of mine, trying desperately to work out some way to derail O’Neill’s Ireland as they bid to reach anonymity.

At least it is when I can pry myself away from a long-standing bid to bring down Jim Gavin and Dublin, all part of my commitment to help all other sports hacks — aka the Irish Illuminati — bring an end to Dublin’s Gaelic football supremacy.

Our sleeper agent in RTÉ is currently the toast of our hooded and masked get-togethers for getting under Gavin’s skin with this game footage non-controversy, or nontroversy, as we call it in the trade.

When you spell it out like that, the ridiculousness is pretty obvious.

For those currently at odds with the fourth estate, a question: if the party line is — has always been, really — some variation of we just control what we can/we don’t pay attention to what goes on outside the group/we know what’s really going on and no-one else does, then why does the outside chatter get under people’s skin? Can it be that the squad bubble is not quite as impermeable as we’re led to believe? Surely not.

Another observation, one which may come as a surprise to some people involved in sport: your average hack may be odorous, always hungry, and easily distracted, but one thing he or she isn’t is a games promotion officer.

Every sports organisation seems to struggle to understand that their responsibility is to the participant, but a journalist’s isn’t. The latter owes allegiance to the person who expects value for their money when they buy a paper, not witless cheerleading. A couple of years ago a sports organisation thanked journalists for doing such a good job of promoting its particular sport: when I asked when said journalists would be paid for doing that job as well, it didn’t go down well, but the point stands.

Every sport would prefer obsequious fawning to actual coverage. Fair enough: we all have our dreams. What most sports bodies need to realise is that by and large obsequious fawning is what they get. Grown men droning on about processes and outcomes, smothering their listeners with a cloud of chloroforming cliches, piously spouting contradictions... how often are they pulled on these crimes against common sense and the available evidence? Almost never.

It’s our own fault for facilitating this, the corrosive infantilising of the sportsperson. At least we have our conspiracies to keep us warm.

A sporting peek at 2040

So: Project Ireland 2040. What does it mean for you?

I had to admire the Waterford Whispers take on the big development plan announced last week: Here’s Some Dolled Up Shit We Were Meant To Do Anyway, which probably sums up how most of the population feels about these proposals, when ‘proposals’ stands for ‘aspirational guff signalling the next general election cycle’.

“Here’s Some Dolled Up Shit We Were Meant To Do Anyway” https://t.co/Xulxe1dyIf

— WWNews (@WhispersNewsLTD) February 17, 2018

Nothing kills the party more than someone sermonising doomily about the need for integrated spatial development, the 21st-century version of someone saying ‘I did bring my guitar and yes, I DO love singing Bob Dylan songs’.

You’re probably aware of the €42m earmarked for the National Sports Campus, while a new sports infrastructure fund will hopefully not be used the way lottery funding has in the past. There’ll be other, less tangible effects. Improved access and transport links affect training attendance for sports organisations everywhere and better employment prospects are a rising tide for participation and membership.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll start off with Tangled Up In Blue. Join in if you like.

Here’s to players picking All-Stars

I stumbled across something the other day that would revolutionise All-Star/team of the year selections as we know it, if that’s something you pay any attention to.

US basketball fans were able to work out who NBA players picked for their All-Star teams recently, which seems vaguely interesting, until I noted that an riveting aside: there had been some suggestion the players’ selection process should be televised.

Back up the truck a minute. Televising players as they mull over who they feel are the best in their sport? How could you miss with that?

Apparently some of the NBA players were in favour of doing so, but influential stars like Stephen Curry balked - one of Curry’s reasons was that the last players picked could get ridiculed (“or what-not”) on social media.

That’s a pity, because a professional sport has done something like this already. The NHL apparently got its players to pick their All-Star teams on television back in 2015 (how did I miss this?), with the debate aided immensely by an open bar for the players.

It worked out exactly as you might expect, by which I mean the evening proved hugely entertaining. When Eric Staal didn’t pick his brother early on, the reaction was strong. “We’re blood,” said Mark Staal. “I’m disappointed right now. I thought I was going to be the first pick. Classless.” (They made up later).

Unfortunately this format was dropped because those players weren’t entirely comfortable with it, but I see no reason to deprive Irish audiences of this kind of entertainment. Surely the GAA/GPA All-Stars, the PFAI Team of the Year and the Rugby Players Ireland players of the year could be selected in the same way, and add to the gaiety of the nation?

Enjoying a catch-up with Slow Horses

The bookshelf at home is groaning with a couple of items on the long finger for a while, including I Wear The Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman and The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead, but they’ve been overtaken on the inside by a newcomer, Mick Herron and his Slow Horses, ironically enough.

Herron writes spy books a good deal livelier than John le Carre’s; as a reviewer noted, le Carre’s main man George Smiley’s biggest vice is reading German poetry. Herron’s central character opens one of the books spitting the Haribos he doesn’t like back into an open packet.

More of the same, please.