- Lifestyle & Sports
- 24 Jul 14
World Cup Cold Turkey Has Been Eased a Little By The Inspiring Efforts of Ireland’s Clubs in Europe...
ALL HAIL our new German overlords! They conquered the globe in some style, after being dismissed pre-tournament by Foul Play as a poor-value proposition with too many question marks in defence, and up front, to capture the prize.
How wrong can you be? If Die Mannschaft’s triumph proves anything, it is that even football’s greatest thinkers can occasionally get it wrong. Thankfully, I opted for Germany to do the business against Messi & friends on the big day, having seen enough during their blood-curdling 7-1 demolition of Brazil to know that going against them would be completely insane.
In addition, Thomas Muller did the decent thing by failing to score in the Final, ensuring that my investment on James Rodriguez for the Golden Boot paid handsome dividends. The mighty Rodriguez will now join Los Galacticos at Real Madrid, whose marketing-driven approach to player recruitment has led them to favour him over Luis Suarez: after all, he is four years younger, better-looking, clean-cut and doesn’t display a chronic compulsion to sink a pair of colossal fangs into his opponents on a regular basis.
The end of the World Cup does not actually mean the End Of The World, though it might have felt like it the morning after. Normal service resumed with Ireland’s clubs, for the most part, performing brilliantly in Europe. St Pat’s display in Warsaw, which by rights ought to have been rewarded with a two-goal winning margin, was easily the finest performance by any Irish club in Europe for a decade: a masterclass of composed, cultured, fluent passing which couldn’t have been further removed from the frantic hoofball the previous evening in a KR Rejkjavik v Celtic tie so scrappy it bordered on the unwatchable.
Sligo Rovers kept the side up the following night with a wondrous 2-1 win in Rosenborg, offering further evidence that Irish football is on an upward curve.
It is not exactly news that Irish clubs’ relatively puny standing on the European stage is a product of financial disadvantage, which in turn can be partially attributed to shamefully low attendances. In this regard, I and countless other Irish soccer addicts are probably to blame: I haven’t attended a domestic League match in donkeys’ years, and though I keep promising to, the truth is that lazy wankers like me are part of the problem, opting to stay at home and feast on English or Spanish produce. However, it works both ways: the cultish holier-than-thou attitude of a minority of Airtricity devotees does little to make newbies feel welcome.
I recall Roddy Doyle being quizzed on Baddiel & Skinner a couple of decades ago about how a native Dubliner ends up following Chelsea, to which he responded ‘because Irish football is crap’. It was a blunt assessment, but one shared by a significant number of native football fans.
Berating thousands of these people as unpatriotic traitors is no way to change the situation, nor will it make them feel more inclined to attend the games. But stroking the ball around with the precision, intelligence and ambition displayed by Pat’s last week is exactly what the doctor ordered. It was quite magnificent.
By the time you read this, you will know whether they have sealed the deal on not-quite-home soil in Tallaght against Henning Berg’s crack Polish troops. If they’ve made it, there’s really no excuse for not getting along to roar them on in the next round. The same applies to Sligo (and, if they’ve managed to turn it round, Dundalk and Derry).
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On the GAA front, the All-Ireland series is about halfway through. Thus far, shock results and memorable games have few and far between. The highlight has been the overdue rebirth of Wexford’s hurlers, who dismissed All-Ireland champions Clare after an epic replay that prompted Banner manager Davy Fitzgerald (hurling’s Alex Ferguson in terms of pure chip-on-both-shoulders paranoia) to fulminate furiously against the media, the County Board, dual players wasting their time on the football, and the outside world in general.
Over in ‘the big-ball code’, it appears as if no force on Earth (or certainly in Ireland) can stop Dublin, who have the look of a team whose second-choice starting XV would win the All-Ireland with their eyes closed. This state of affairs has caused much gnashing of teeth among non-Dub observers, who are already despairing at the prospect of a thousand-year reign of terror, having witnessed the champions’ effortless 16-point demolition of Meath in a Leinster final which had ended as a contest before the half-time mark.
There are dark mutterings of splitting the county in two to give everyone else some semblance of a chance. This sort of talk overlooks the reality that, prior to 2011, Dublin had won precisely one All-Ireland in 28 years, not exactly the sort of record which would suggest that they enjoy any especial in-built advantages. It might be pointed out that if anyone is unfairly favoured by the Championship structure at present, it is Kerry and Cork, who monopolise the Munster championship against pgymy opposition, with the winner of their inevitable annual joust effectively enjoying a free pass to the quarter-finals. It isn’t that long since the Kingdom rattled off seven All-Ireland titles in nine years, while more recently, Kilkenny’s hurlers have appeared to be on a different planet to their rivals, as borne out by nine All-Irelands in thirteen years between 2000 and 2012.
There is nothing inevitable or pre-destined about such levels of excellence. Dublin had to fight tooth and nail to win two of the last three All-Irelands, on both occasions triumphing by a single point, and there are no guarantees this year either. If they do go on to flatten all comers, the appropriate response will be to salute their efforts and marvel at their free-flowing attacking approach, rather than bellyaching about population size. These things are cyclical, and a day will surely dawn when the Dubs are down on their luck again. For the time being, I’ll enjoy the view from the summit, thank you very much...