Saturday, July 31, 2010 Previous editions
READER, I want you to close your eyes. Go on, shut them tight.
WITH the smell of drying paint in my nostrils and freshly-laid grass under my feet, I giddily surveyed the new Lansdowne Road stadium when it swung open its just-hung doors recently.
They say on the Semple Stadium turf you’re never a boy. Always a giant. So too perhaps in Thomond Park.
AS our little country feels the bony fingers of the IMF on our shoulder and the cold winds of financial oblivion against our grubby face, we are often lectured – throughout the media – by so-called ‘self-made men’.
After the trigger word ‘Saipan’ was alluded to, Keane quickly and clinically rattled through the shortcomings of half of Capello’s squad.
THIS is going to be about a hurling man – but let’s start with some baseball.
HUMAN slingshot Rory Delap strides into the room, a new World Cup football loaded in his oxter.
AN Irishman, an Englishman and a master brewer from a Dutch-owned beer company walk into a bar. And as Con Houlihan used to say: now read on.
THANK you students, please sit down. It’s an honour to address the class of 2010. I know you guys are busy cramming ahead of the Leaving Cert’s commencement in a few short days.
PLEASE mind your toes, reader; there’s quite a big name about to be dropped in a second or two.
IF YOU were shaken from your slumber early last Friday morning by the walls rattling and the sound of a distant crash, it was probably just a giant falling to earth in a land far, far away.
The hurley snaps. (It reminds me of tent poles I’ve seen halved by falling fat guys, late at night, after the music has long ended at a festival). But the special spine holds it together safely.
WAYNE GRETZKY, I’m sure, could well swing a hurley if you pressed one into his hand. But I don’t know if ice hockey’s Ringy has any interest in Gaelic Games.
“‘CHAPTER ONE. He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion... no, make that: he – he romanticised it all out of proportion. Yes. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.’ No, no, corny, too corny for a man of my taste. Can we... can we try and make it more profound?” – Woody Allen, Manhattan.
YOU climb out of bed in the morning to survey the trail of destruction already zig-zagging to the half-open front door. You summon the courage to slowly peel open another credit card bill.
GO TO your local bookstore. Beat the familiar path past the graphic novels, travel guides and cooking manuals to the sports section. Trace your finger along the shelf’s edge until you alight at the Js. There, with a bit of luck, you’ll find BS Johnson’s The Unfortunates.
ISN’T it funny how often, a seemingly innocuous trigger like the distinctive scent of drying paint will, without warning, jerk you back to a certain time and place.
IN my three weeks travelling throughout Germany for this newspaper during the World Cup almost four years ago, I met a kaleidoscope of interesting characters.
I nurse a clandestine habit that has driven me to the coldest and darkest corners of society.
Tonight the Airtricity League kicks off after a 12-round close-season that left even Roddy ‘Queensbury Rules’ Collins punch-drunk. After all the off-field attrition – though the battle scars are yet to heal – a football match will break out.
God knows our little-stitious rugby stars may need every bit of luck we can rub together, deep behind enemy lines
WHAT do you ask the man who has won everything? Phil Taylor, a middle-aged darts player from the middle of England might not look it — and he doesn’t — but after 13 world titles, he walks with sporting giants.
THE great American novelist John Updike, though not a sportswriter, did at times indulge his nation’s favourite pasttime. And when he did, he hit a home run.
IT’S not quite Lock, Stock but a new crime movie set in Limerick certainly has two Smoking Barrels.
THE same way you know it’s a general election night when Brian Farrell wears a carnation in his lapel, so too the rich sound of the Artane Band heralds a landmark day in Croke Park for many of us.
DAMIEN DUFF will this morning unpack a suitcase in his London pad after leaving the Ireland camp, on the back of a 10-day stint away from home, to rejoin his new team-mates at Fulham.
AT THIS time of year, American football teams are tasting the white heat of intense pre-season training. Gridiron giants take part in a violent annual ballet as a hulking, heaving mass of athletic hardware crashes into each other in a frantic bid to forge a team ready for the NFL season.
It was with a very real sense of journalistic integrity then, reader, that I too undertook my task, shackled to a very sick head
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