Tough Game, Tough Job

I watched the Rugby World Cup Final this morning (or last night, or maybe tomorrow, depending on where you are reading this) and really enjoyed it, it was a really terrific, hard-fought game.

I had only one disappointment. Throughout the tournament New Zealand out-half after out-half got injured, and today their third choice player had to go off and their fourth choice came on instead.

And fair play to Stephen Donald, he played very well and I’d hate to wish injury upon anybody, but I kept thinking “it’s not a very big country. How many more out-halves have to get injured before they have to bring Laughykate on?”

Anyway, my abiding memory of this tournament will be this guy, who greeted the teams onto the pitch before each game with the Maori version of a vuvuzela:

Whenever you think your job is really tough just remember that someone, sometime had to stare at that guy’s arse for about nineteen hours while he put on that tattoo.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Faces

For this week’s effort I am telling the story of the last half-an-hour of yesterday’s All-Ireland Football Final between Kerry and Dublin. For this I am indebted (as always) to the camera in my mobile phone, and to a guest appearance by the Pause button on my Sky box.

A brief explanation of the game is necessary. Gaelic Football is our national sport, a tough, high-speed game which occasionally features tackles such as this ->

<- or this

or occasionally tackles like the one below:

Our other national sport is hurling, a game with similar rules but in which the players carry sticks. We Irish are tough.

Kerry are to Gaelic Football what Manchester United are to soccer or the Yankees are to baseball. They are the most successful team in the history of the sport, they have won four of the last seven All-Irelands and been beaten in the final of two of the others. Dublin were the star team of the 70s but have since won in just 1983 and 1995. Their rivalry goes back decades, though, and a win over Dublin is still one of Kerry’s greatest pleasures.

The only other thing you need to now is that kicking the ball over the crossbar earns you a point, and into the goal earns you a goal (well, it would, wouldn’t it) which is worth three points, so that a score of 1-06 to 0-08 means the first team is leading by nine points to eight. Oh, and Kerry are the team in green, Dublin are in blue.

To everyone’s surprise Dublin were leading by 8 points to 5 with 30 minutes to go. Their goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton was relaxed,

and their fans were relaxed, though unable to keep their hat on their head:

But Kerry are not Kerry for nothing (an apparently meaningless sentence which actually makes sense). They scored some points

and they scored some more

giving Tinman the opportunity to show pictures of pretty girls, an opportunity he rarely turns down.

With eight minutes to go Kerry led by four points to now it was the the Dubs fans who looked worried:

Very worried:

But suddenly, a Dublin goal!

The Dublin crowd went wild.

Both teams got to one goal and eleven points and with seconds to go (a match lasts 70 minutes and the ref had added two minutes of injury time) Dublin were awarded a free. Their long distance frees are taken by their goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton, who calmly placed the ball. The crowd watched anxiously

He ran up to the ball

And though this is not actually a picture of faces, sometimes a sea of raised hands can be just as expressive:

Seconds later the final whistle blew. Stephen Cluxton, now the hero who won the All-Ireland, celebrated wildly:

Formerly-Worried-Man couldn’t take it all in

and it was just too much for some Dublin fans:

The cup was lifted

The Dubs players celebrated

And Stephen Cluxton continued to celebrate too.

For every winner there has to be a loser. Even as a Dubliner I take no pleasure from the photo on the right. Colm Cooper, the Kerry captain, is the greatest player of this generation and I felt for him at the end.

And finally, as Alan Brogan celebrates on the field with his daughter, well you just can’t beat this:

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Or You Could Go To The Pub

In the English soccer league, Queens Park Rangers have just won the second division, and will spend next season in the Premier League, playing against world famous clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool (ok, Tilly and Speccy, also Manchester City and Spurs. Oh, and Wigan, Jmg).

Their manager, Neil Warnock, was quite laid back about the whole thing. When asked how he celebrated, he said “with a cheese sandwich in my pyjamas”.

Of course I know what he meant, but he has created an image in my head that I just can’t get rid of.

In Absentia

I was all but absent from my blog during the week. Because it was the first week of the month and therefore my busiest time I wrote something each day on the bus, pasted it into my blog when I got home, nicked a few pictures from Google Images and then more or less fell into bed.

To my shame I haven’t had time to read what you’ve all been up to, and I look forward to spending tomorrow catching up.

But not today. Because today I am more absent than ever.

WordPress claim that you can set a post to publish at some selected time in the future, and if they are right then I’m not actually here at all. It’s like one of those Christmas Night versions of popular panel shows that you know were actually recorded in October.

At the time this publishes I will be on a boat to the UK, and depending on what time you read it at I might be in a car heading from Wales to Manchester, might be in a bar in Manchester, might be at Manchester United v Fulham, might be in a bar in Manchester, might be in a car heading from Manchester to Wales, or might be on a boat from the UK.

There is a very small chance that you will read it at a time when I am eating something, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

A group of people I know undertake this trip regularly, travelling for about fourteen hours to watch 90 minutes of football that is on TV in our local. Every now and then one of them will drop out, possibly to have their liver replaced, and they will look for a volunteer to fill the vacancy.

I volunteered once, about 17 months ago, and I think that I wrote at the time that I would never do it again, since it took me about a week to recover.

I am doing it again, I think on the same basis that women go through childbirth for a second time, in that it can’t possibly have been as gruelling as we remember it being.

Women generally find out that in fact it is, if not more so.

I will, as I said, be here tomorrow. I might just be typing very quietly.

Pantomime Horse

Somewhere I saw England’s World Cup campaign described as “a pantomime”. While fully mindful of the fact that we weren’t there at all and therefore have no right to mock, what is a blog for if not to mock things you have no right to, so I would venture to suggest that it was in fact a series of pantomimes, as the scenes below will illustrate…

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Cinderella

Cinders (Wayne Rooney): Why can’t I get to the ball?

Buttons (David Beckham, in that suit): Because the coach is a pumpkin.

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Mother Goose

Mother Goose (one of the WAGs, don’t ask me which one, they all look the same): We’re rich! Our goose has laid a golden egg! Show the boys and girls, Jack!

Jack (Rob Green); Er, sorry Mum, I’ve dropped it.

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Little Red Riding Hood

Red Riding Hood (Alan Hansen): oh Granny, what big ears you have!

The Wolf (Gary Lineker): Fuck off.

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Whatever Panto Widow Twankey is in

Widow Twankey (John Terry): I’m going to tell Baron Hardup what I think of him.

Rest of Team: We’re behind you!

Widow Twankey: Right, Baron, I’m not happy with the way you’re running things, and the lads here said they agree with me.

Rest of Team: Oh no we didn’t!

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Aladdin

The Wizard (Fabio Capello): New Lamps for old!

Aladdin (England’s fans): We bloody wish.

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Carry On Pant(o)ing

Bored Housewife (Barbara Windsor): Can you fix my washing machine? It’s a 4-5-1.

Washing Machine Repairman (Ashley Cole, played by Sid James): A 4-5-1, eh? Can I play in the hole?

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The Frog Prince

The Prince (Thierry Henry): quick, kiss me, or I will turn into a frog!

Young Girl (Gabby Roslin): er, too late.

(I know, nothing to do with England, and very naughty, but the handball still hurts)

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Cinderella, Act 2

Prince (Sepp Blatter, entering to a fanfare of horns, trumpets and bloody vuvuzelas): I have here the Golden Boot. It will fit only the highest scorer in the World Cup.

Ugly Sister (Emile Heskey): Can I try it on?

Prince: Don’t be ridiculous.

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Three Blind Mice

The Farmer’s wife (Frank Lampard): That was a goal, wasn’t it?

The Mice (the ref, the linesman & Sepp Blatter): Listen mate, we’re not called the Three Blind Mice for nothing.

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The Final Scene (of all of the above)

A. Reporter (a reporter): So, Dame, now that it’s all over, what are your plans?

The Dame: (Fabio Capello, again): Well, either I will stay on as England manager, and get pots and pots of gold, or they will sack me, and I will get pots and pots of gold. Either way (all together, boys and girls) I will live HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

Sporting Heroes

The post I was almost finished will have to wait until tomorrow.

I flicked on to the tennis while I was waiting for Germany v Ghana to start, and while I was just writing the last few sentences. It’s now 9.20, the sentences are unwritten and the football is over, without me having seen a single second.

Nicolas Mahut from France and John Isner from the US have just stopped their final set, because of darkness, at 59 games all. Tomorrow one of them will win, but if ever the meaningless cliché “they are both winners” did mean anything, then this is the time. They are both part of history now. 

And while they were both magnificent, my heart warmed especially to Mahut. In a week when the French football team exited the World Cup as a laughing stock this young man, over the course of an incredible ten hours, will have restored France’s pride as a sporting nation. I hope many, many French people saw it, they deserve a lift after what the footballers have put them through.

Imagine the pressure on him when he served at 4-5 down in the fifth set, needing to hold his serve to stay in the match. Then imagine the pressure each of the 55 times he had to do it again after that.

I won’t ever forget Isner either, a man who kept producing astonishing shots while looking as if he could barely stand. 

People will say (indeed they’ve already started on the BBC) that enough’s enough, that Wimbledon should follow the rest of tennis in having a fifth-set tie-break. They will point out that the winner has very little chance of winning their second-round tie now (especially since their opponent won at what now seems like a canter, at a mere 16-14 in the final set).

But neither of them were ever going to win the whole event. Had the game ended at 7-6 whoever won would have gone out in a round or two, beaten out of sight of the camera on some far-flung court. Instead they’ve taken part in something truly remarkable, something that will never be forgotten by either of them, by the crowd lucky enough to be there, by those like me lucky enough to see it.

They’re part of history now, sporting legends. Would either of them swap it?

Tumbling Down

I’m watching a lot of the Winter Olympics at the moment. I love it, because the sports are so varied, and raise so many questions. Such as “what do the middle two guys in the four-man bob actually do?”,  or “has there ever been an ice-hockey game without a punch-up?”, or “how does anyone get to be good at ski-jumping?”. This last one is especially intriguing, since surely the landing after your very first effort, when you haven’t a clue what you’re doing and leave the ramp with your left ski pointing up your right nostril and the other one pointing over your left ear, must hurt, jar and stretch bits of you badly enough to ensure that you never try it again.

I love the snowboarding, which is strange because I’m not young, am not a computer games designer and have never called anyone “dude”. Nonetheless, I think it’s great, a sort of antidote to the dullness of some of the other sports,  like that one where they ski for miles and stop every now and then to shoot at something, like a Dalek on a winter holiday.

The inclusion of snowboarding is the Winter Olympics showing that it’s moving with the times and doesn’t take itself totally seriously. The Summer Games equivalent would be to include, say, frisbee throwing, or perhaps some made-up sport where girls wore bikinis and hurled themselves about on sand.

Anyway, Rose commented on yesterday’s post here about how words mean different things in different parts of the world, and this is certainly true here. Eurosport use a Canadian commentator for the snowboarding, and whenever a lady competitor flies off in the opposite direction to her board in an explosion of snow, bobble-hat and massively expensive sunglasses the commentator will exclaim “and Lyndsey/Juliette/Stephanie (none of them are ever called Mary, or Ann) has fallen flat on her fanny”.

The Winter Olympics are also on the BBC. I’m betting they don’t say that.

A Tiger By the Tail

There follows a short series of observations about the woes currently being suffered by Tiger Woods, containing the normal quota of bad puns and lame jokes. Typically I have had more difficulty, and have spent much longer, at this than any other blogger. It pretty well sums up the way I used to play golf. 

• The man cheated on his wife, and has had to give up playing golf. Oddly, if he’d cheated playing golf he’d still be playing now.
• I have decided that the collective name for his ever-increasing harem of mistresses will be the Tiger-Lilies.
• The tree into which he crashed his car has been nominated for “Person of the Year” by the Alabama Chapter of the Ku-Klux-Klan.
• While much of his sponsorship and advertising is drifting away, I have an idea for a campaign. A few years ago an ad on the sports channels used to feature a number of golfers standing on the first tee, each whispering to themselves  the mantra “I am Tiger Woods” before driving off. I see a similar campaign with a spotty teenager at a disco staring over at a lovely young girl, then taking a deep breath, muttering “I am Tiger Woods”, and then marching purposefully over to talk to her.
• The sheer number and variety of the Tiger-Lilies is worrying. I hope Tiger took plenty of precautions, as it would be terrible if he, well, caught anything. This is because such afflictions can (I believe) cause a burning sensation, and in his case this would be burning bright, in the forests of the night.
• And if he did catch any such STDs, could he cure them with Tiger-balm?
•  I’ve just had a thought concerning his, er, nether hair, but you all know by now that I don’t do those type of jokes. Therefore the words “Tiger-skin rug” will not be appearing in this post.

And finally, the whole affair (literally) may give rise to a new cliché. When someone asks a blindingly obvious question, such as “do you think the Government has made a balls of things?”, it will now be acceptable to reply with “does a Woods go in the bare?”

Slower, Lower, Frailer

Changes are being made to the Olympic Stadium in London ahead of the 2012 games.

A ninth lane is being added to the running track, so that any Irish athletes who do not qualify for the final will be allowed to run anyway.

Panic-stricken Olympic Council members, fearful of Irish protests whenever things don’t go our way, have tried to pre-empt the situation by giving us every possible chance of success.

Other measures which they are taking include:

• since we have never really adapted to the metric system in any case (we still drink pints, and drive in miles per hour), we will be allowed to run yards while other athletes run in metres giving us a 10% advantage;
• John and Edward will compete for us in the Synchronised Swimming. Those who saw their attempts at dancing in the X-Factor will know they have no idea what the word synchronised means, but apparently they’ll be guaranteed at least a bronze as long as they don’t actually drown;
• our golfers will be allowed two Mulligans;
• the Rose of Tralee competition and the Ballybunion Bachelor of the Year contest are both being recognised as Olympic sports;
• as we have no 50-metre swimming pools, the races will take place in the kind of conditions our swimmers train in - in a pool twenty-feet long, full of kids and smelling disturbingly of wee.

Meanwhile, following our horrified discovery that there is an entire Olympic sport called “handball”, we have demanded that this be removed from the games.

Please don’t laugh at any of the above (don’t worry, Tinman, we weren’t planning to). FIFA president Sepp Blatter laughed openly at our suggestion that we be admitted to the World Cup as a 33rd team and was forced to apologise by enraged Irish officials.

Now I happen to think that Sepp Blatter is an unctuous git who looks like the love-child of George Graham and Silvio Berlusconi, but that doesn’t mean he was wrong to laugh.

Play It Again, Samson

As the furore and demands for a replay continue following our handball-driven elimination from the World Cup on Wednesday (there were protesters outside the French embassy in Dublin yesterday, for God’ s sake), a number of past sporting injustices have been revisited with a view to seeking replays in those cases as well. 

1. The 2007 Irish General Election

Let’s start with the easy one. The current Government won this one by telling the people that it knew what it was doing. In hindsight it is obvious that this was blatantly untrue,  and therefore a clear breach of any principle of Fair Play. There should therefore be a replay, preferably as soon as possible.

Pundits predict the replay will be close, and might even go to penalties. These will be levied against the rogue bankers who destroyed our economy, and could be as high as fifty euro each.

2. The Trojan War

The Greek strikers emerged unnoticed from the horse, which even the Greeks themselves will admit was behind the Trojan defensive wall. As an example of blatant offside, this one is hard to top.

Should victory go the other way in the replay, we may have to start referring to Trojan Salad, and the movie Grease may have to be renamed.

3. Indiana Jones v the Karate Bloke in the First Movie

I’m sure you all remember this one, since it was actually captured on film. Indy was confronted by the Karate Bloke, who threw a few threatening and limb-dislocating shapes, whereupon Indy took out a gun and shot him. While this was admittedly funny, it broke the Fair Play principle that the hero should always take the high moral ground.

A replay may be difficult in this case, since the Karate Bloke didn’t survive the first match. A compromise may be found where Indy is banned for three films, and many who saw the last one feel that this may indeed be the best solution all round.

4.    Adam & Eve v God

Adam & Eve were quite happy until one day God said “whatever you do, don’t touch that apple”. Since God was the one who had actually invented human nature he must have known what would happen next. Clearly therefore this was entrapment, a fore-runner of the trick where the cops sell you drugs and then arrest you for buying them.

If Adam and Eve triumph in the replay (and this is by no means certain, human nature means they may still be dumb enough to eat the apple again) then we all get to move back into the Garden of Eden. While this will be a bit small and has quite tacky garden ornaments (cherubims with flaming swords, for feck’s sake, we might as well get gnomes with fishing rods), on the bright side it has lovely weather, full-frontal nudity and an abundance of food, so long as you like apples.

5. Moses v the Egyptians

Much of the ire about last Wednesday’s defeat stems from the conspiracy theory that the powers above, in this case FIFA, wanted France to qualify instead of a small country like us, and so fixed the game in some way. Those who say such things simply don’t happen should examine the Moses file very carefully.

The race between Moses, his people and the Egyptians was going to be a close-run thing until God (who remember has form in this type of behaviour, see #4 above) suddenly intervened by parting and then unparting (thank you Facebook, for the idea for that word) the Red Sea. Perhaps he had Moses backed in the bookies.

While there is no way of preventing God from interfering again in the replay (would you like to be the one to tell him not to?) the game is going to be slightly evened up by issuing the Egyptians with wet-suits and surfboards.

6. Jennifer v Angelina

The contest between Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie for the Brad Pitt Trophy (or, in fact, the trophy Brad Pitt) was never a fair one. Angelina used heavy weaponry such as beautiful eyes, long legs and a mouth that could swallow you whole, while poor Jen was armed with nothing more than girl-next-door good looks and a hairstyle named after herself.

Angie then dealt the final undercover (in every sense) blow by putting out while she and Brad were working together on Mr and Mrs Smith. In essence this was just a standard sordid office affair, though with larger than normal weekly paycheques.

I’m not sure what form this replay is going to take. My first thought was that Jennifer and Angelina should mud-wrestle, and, well, I’m afraid that this has driven all other thoughts out of my head.