Stinging defeat, but let’s not panic

IT’S an integral part of sporting-analysis to go over the top. Take any sport, any sporting event, and in offices, kitchens, canteens, building-sites, coffee-houses, pubs, clubs, trains, planes and automobiles, we have our own post-mortems, where every single one of us is a qualified state pathologist.

In our dissecting dissertations, we'll use words like dismembered, slaughtered, massacred; talk of birth, death, resurrection, of ecstasy and agony, of ultimate triumph and tragedy. It's when things go wrong, however, that we really reach for the extremes. Disaster, heartbreak, catastrophic proportions, gutted, devastated; they're all in there, many more besides, all used with gusto by players, fans, commentators.

Sometimes we tell ourselves to get real. At times like the recent death of Cormac McAnallen, brilliant footballer, Tyrone captain; or that of John McCall, outstanding schools rugby-player, brilliant Ireland prospect; times like the death of someone close to us.