Game for anything

Following months of cold turkey (brought on by soccer withdrawal, I should point out, rather than actual heroin), I settled down with a jar of strongish coffee and a nice bag of weed on a Saturday evening to feast my eyes on the English Premier League’s opening-day action, pleasantly tired and relaxed after a thoroughly lovely afternoon spent chasing my kids around a forest. Having looked forward to it with slobbering anticipation, in all honesty, it – the football, not the parenting – could hardly have been more of a letdown.

The match in question – Newcastle vs Arsenal – was so spectacularly dull and uneventful that it made you feel as if football had never been away – and would never go away either. A stupefyingly torpid, endurance-defyingly laborious 90-minute black hole, it was enlivened only by a full and frank exchange of opinions between Joey Barton and Arse’s feisty new Brazilian recruit Gervinho. If every match was like this, it wouldn’t take long to decide that football was a crock of shit that need not claim any more of one’s precious time – an opinion shared by my better half, who has less than zero interest in any sport whatsoever and would appear to have taken less than 90 minutes to become heartily sick and tired of the 2011/12 season. A strict diet of reality-TV, makeover shows, property porn and interior-design programmes may await if the Saturday evening games don’t get any livelier. And all this before The X-Factor even starts!

The following day, I blanked Man United’s trip to West Brom in favour of the Tipp-Dublin All-Ireland hurling semi-final, then spent a 45-minute chunk of Monday night tearing my hair out in frustration. I’d convinced myself that Paddy Power’s 10/11 odds on Man City leading at half-time and going on to win at home to Swansea was more or less a licence to print free money. Needless to say, Man City spent the first half rattling the woodwork incessantly but didn’t quite make the breakthrough, then rubbed salt into the wound by running amok after the break, en route to a 4-0 triumph. I’ve thought this one through and maintain that, in fact, it was a great price and would still be well worth taking if it was on offer again next week. I’ve ascribed it to Sod’s Law, one of those unfortunate events that Satan inflicts on you every now and then. And I’ve resolved not to let it deter me from another nine months’ fearless pursuit of colossally gigantic profit, with which proceedings I can open an orphanage or doggie shelter. 

Early impressions after two weekends’ combat, and having just finished watching a cracking contest between Bolton Wanderers and the aforementioned Man City, are by and large positive. The top of the table has an extremely appealing look to it, as Man City already sit where they have always righteously belonged, proudly perched in first place, with only Manchester United (who demolished Spurs 3-0 on Monday night) and Mick McCarthy’s Wolves within touching distance. It is, of course, way too early to leap to any firm conclusions about what lies ahead, though having seen Arsenal three times in a week, I think we can state with near-certainty that they will not be breaking their six-year trophy drought without a massive infusion of fresh blood.

Liverpool have been impressive without being exactly blood-curdling, Chelsea have looked more than a little laboured and ponderous, United clearly haven’t lost their uncanny knack of winning games in the closing stages, and the Tottenham Riots have limited our glimpses of Spurs to their trouncing by United and a facile 5-0 Europa League win at Hearts (which brought a smile to my face purely on account of the identity of the victims – Hibs’ tormentors on what seemed to be every single New Year’s Day during my childhood). North of the border, in an astonishing development which nobody could reasonably have foreseen, Celtic and Rangers look the likeliest contenders to scrap it out for the title.
Back at home, thoroughly admirable performances from both Dublin and Waterford weren’t enough to derail the long-anticipated meeting of Kilkenny and Tipp in the All-Ireland final for a third year in a row. It is a mouth-watering fixture on many levels, with a settling-this-once-and-for-all feel about it after the previous two encounters have been split equally. There was the ghost of a hint of a suggestion in both teams’ semi-final displays that perhaps neither of them are quite as overwhelmingly, mercilessly powerful as their better days have led us to believe: Kilkenny have been slaughtered on puck-outs in quite a few recent battles and seem a notch or two diminished from the dreadnought of their 2008 peak, while Tipp only just got over the line against Dublin with a generally lethargic display, vaulting into the lead with an extremely early goal and then proceeding to be comprehensively out-hurled for the remainder of the first half, not hooking, blocking or tackling with anything approaching the level of bloodthirsty enthusiasm that will be required against the Cats.

The notion that either team was ‘saving themselves for the final’ can be completely disregarded, since surely no team in its right mind would be either careless or arrogant enough to give anything less than their absolute all from first whistle to last at the semi-final stage. Nonetheless, it’s still extremely likely that they will serve up another classic when the big day comes around. Tipp’s greater recent evidence of goalscoring power has led them to be installed as reasonably heavy favourites, but I still feel slightly gobsmacked any time I see the Cats listed as underdogs in a championship hurling match. If absolutely pushed to call this one, I’ll keep faith with Kilkenny to nick it by one or two points in an absolute rip-roarer.
The Rugby World Cup gets underway in two weeks’ time, a proposition which will force Foul Play to completely re-arrange the natural rhythms of his body clock, with most of the matches kicking off at a point in the early hours where I’m usually just about beginning to get properly stuck into the serious business of sleep. Three straight defeats in the warm-up games haven’t boded brilliantly for Ireland’s challenge, but it couldn’t possibly turn out any worse than it did four years ago.
I will examine the delights that lie in wait in greater detail in two weeks’ time, but for now I wouldn’t see any cause to panic unduly, with the USA hopefully providing a gentle enough introduction in the opening match before the Aussies and Italians loom into view. Of the competing nations, all look realistically beatable with the singular exception of New Zealand, who have a time-honoured tradition of committing hara-kiri in this event and slaughtering everything that moves during the four-year intervals in between. That said, I can’t envisage them tripping up on home soil against anyone. Stranger things have surely happened, though admittedly none spring immediately to mind.

Dare we entertain notions of winning the thing? The possibility is distant, but it isn’t completely remote either, and the process of attempting it shapes up to be easily the sporting highlight of 2011. Bring it on.