Talking Balls Issue 39 - Well Informed Ignorance
Talking BallsThis week we move a step closer to the National League when the shadow boxing starts. That great hurler TS Eliot described the shadow as the place between the idea and reality and in a fortnight’s time managers like McGeeney will see how much reality breaks in on their big ideas.Speaking of big ideas we commend the Ulster Council for kicking foul language out of the GAA - well trying to at least. Like western democracy it all sounds like a good idea…
We take a look at the men behind the Malcontents and see if you recognize anyone out there? We can but we’re saying nothing. The Cork strike rumbles on to the increasing silence of people round the country asking who cares?
We consider the strange case of firebrand Unionist Edwin Poots and find that by the standards of fellow religionists and some party colleagues he maybe isn’t a bad fella. We still don’t know what he made of the match he went to though.
Other than that - things is quiet. Squareball headquarters is flat to the mat preparing a new range for Spring and what a treat that looks to be from previews we have seen.
Ger Manas considers the foibles of the early season trainer including his or her wardrobe. Are those wheelnuts or are you just pleased to see me?
If you’re stylish, you must be wearing Squareball; if not go sort your self. But for everyone, there’s always Talking Balls.
No Foul Language Initiative - What a F***in Great Idea
The Ulster Council are to be roundly commended for their NFL - No Foul Language initiative which they introduced for the Dr McKenna Cup.
It is all part of a promotional programme to make the games a more attractive proposition to families and generally enhance the appeal of the GAA. In an unrelated but equally interesting development top rugby whistler and former Leinster player Alain Rolland is this week meeting GAA referees to share best practice from rugby. One area in which rugby excels is in the respect given to referees, the lack of slabberin’ at him and calling him a w***er and the like.
Where the Ulster council hope to score as well is in influencing the behaviour of punters outside the wire - you know the sort who can abuse the referee equally effectively whether using foul language or not. Maybe that may be a bit ambitious but certainly there are lessons to be learned from rugby.
When told about the initiative, the office WAG declared, ‘There’s not much you can do about it if the ref’s a total b*****d. Some of the pr**ks they put in charge of games can be right c**ts. Anyway, it doesn’t apply to the likes of me.’
Ears not Poot to use in Pairc Esler
So the man with the biggest ears in the North’s Executive attended a GAA match last week but decided not to Poot them to any good use by arriving in time for Amhran na Fhiann? It was great to see him there but talk about shaking yer hand and kickin’ yer hole at the same time.
DUP Minister Edwin Poots attended the McKenna Cup match between Down and Donegal, taking time off from internal party shenanigans over who would succeed Big Ian and whether or not Baby Doc had abused his position in lobbying British Ministers over constituency issues during the St Andrews negotiations. A highly moral and righteous group these lads are indeed.
Explaining that unlike generations of Dublin supporters he hadn’t missed the start of the game because he was sinking those last five or six pints of stout, Mr Poots clarified for us:
“While I recognise that the GAA has made strong efforts to improve that situation, with the likes of the English rugby team and other sports playing in places like Croke Park, there is still a challenge for the GAA to prove to the Protestant community that things have changed. I attended the game in my role as sports minister but, as a Unionist, I would not feel comfortable standing for The Soldiers Song. I previously attended a GAA conference last October, during which I pointed out to the organisation that there was a substantial section of the protestant community who would still not feel comfortable attending a GAA game because of the political overtones associated with it.”
An Uachtarain Nickey Brennan was predictably positive about the whole affair:
“This is a landmark occasion… when a unionist minister is prepared to attend one of our games.It highlighted the good standing of the Ulster Council GAA, who I know have developed an exceptionally positive relationship with Mr Poots. I look forward to him taking up my invitation to attend Croke Park for an event in the near future.”
So there you have it, despite the playing of the ‘Queen’ in Croker and all that went with it, what is really going on between those two big ears of his? Still attendance at a game in Croker, and a disregard for the protocol of the day observed by all visiting dignitaries would be highly offensive.
Talking Balls was about to condemn Edwin for his actions but then we found this piece on the Burning Bush website. This we might add is not a website devoted to the discomfort caused by thrush or genital warts, but a fundamentalist site run by the Rev Ivan Foster of the Free Presbyterian Church, clearly a man of liberal disposition. The background - our Edwin had dared to recommend the music of Snow Patrol and Ash and plans for a music centre in Belfast called Oh Yeah. Sayeth the Rev Ivan:
“Just what is the character of those ‘musicians’ and their ‘music’ with which Mr. Poots was ‘very impressed’ and for whom he is anxious to provide funding…immoral titles, themes and lyrics [are] employed by these ‘musicians’. That anyone calling themselves a Christian should commend them and so influence the young to listen to such filth, is reprehensible in itself. But when that person is an office-bearer in the Free Presbyterian Church one has to wonder what view of his behaviour his minister and session hold and whether they will stand up for the Word of God and what it has to say on the issue. That Mr. Poots is going to try and obtain funding for such an abomination and blasphemous enterprise sets out afresh how far from the standards of God those who have sold themselves to obtain the ‘glory’ of public office have gone. Murderers in government, funding for sodomy, the pursuit of lottery funds and now the promotion of blasphemous and filthy ‘music’ in which the name of the Lord Jesus is desecrated and intermingled with obscenities.
On further examination and just in case anyone this was a one off outburst, the Rev Foster has this to say about the GAA in the past:
“The GAA hates all things British and soccer is deemed a British game…. the incident demonstrates the inflexible, unbending attitude of this Roman Catholic organisation. With this attitude Protestants have had to contend for centuries. Rome can be accommodated only by the complete capitulation of her opponents. Here in Ulster, literally, that means the surrender of all civil and religious rights.”
Talking Balls reckons that’s precisely the sort of gobshite we want to see at Championship matches, on the Hill at Clones, in the Ard Comhairle in Croker and in our committee rooms. Maybe Edwin isn’t such a bad lad after all but really, the Reverend Foster is the man we want…
Tyrone Throwbacks
Tyrone dual club Fintona Pearses is indeed a throw back to the good old days alluded to by the Rev Foster.
The problem with its dual players is that they are soccer and gaelic football and club has apparently taken a stand by banning players from playing the foreign game.
Club secretary Dessie Campbell has denied this: “No, we have not (taken a vote). They must be misreading the situation. I don’t really want to discuss the situation but we are not banning soccer players.”
Talking Balls thinks he doth protest too much. So Dessie, are they banned or not?
Things Can’t Only Get Better
The hurlers of Antrim headed back up the road in great glee yesterday no doubt, after beating a Kilkenny side featuring six of the All Ireland winning team.
The Antrim side also had an experimental touch about it - the forward line included five under 21 players and Liam Watson who hit 1-8 (there is an interesting form line here for Derry if they choose to look at it that way - their U-21s defeated Antrim in the Ulster Final last year).
So things looking good then for Antrim and Ulster hurling? Well Talking Balls finds it hard to get too enthusiastic and the rest of the hurling fraternity won’t exactly be sitting up taking notice or indeed quaking in their boots. Beating Kilkenny any day is a good result for Antrim and after their rudderless and largely full-forwardless capitulation in Ballycastle last year there is no doubt there is some encouragement in this result. Come the League in which the Saffrons play two home games and have to travel to the likes of Kilkenny and Waterford it looks more ominous after which they tilt at windmills and Galway before exiting the championship to a Munster loser.
No doubt Sambo and Woody are doing their best - the weekend papers had a revealing story about the management duo returning to the team bus ‘ready to fight’ after they confiscated a carry out from two players and f***ed it over the ditch. Match preparation that is Antrim hurling style - visualizing yourself on the piss after the game! They continue to rail at the iniquity of playing Galway ad infinitum and then a Munster loser. Surely that smacks of defeatism, whether they have been handed a crap draw by the Hurling non-Development Committee or not. Sambo complained bitterly about the costs of traveling to matches and claims the good Dr McSparran claimed they had no more dosh - surely that is the job of Club Antrim unless it is all allocated to Jody Gormley.
So elsewhere in Ulster how’s things? Well trumpeting was done about this year’s Ulster championship and its cascade draw which means all Ulster counties will participate - the only province to feature all of its hurling teams.
Across the Bann in Derry things aren’t so good. Last Friday night representatives of the county’s dual clubs got together in Walsh’s Hotel in Maghera to seek ways to have the case for hurling made to a Country Board that - to the hurlers - isn’t interested and isn’t prepared to listen. The hurling committee that met in previous years to look after underage hurling - but in the process provided a forum for discussion about all matters stick and ball - it has been booted into touch.
The hurling fraternity feel the county is unconcerned about hurling and in many corners esp round the lough shore would relish its demise. Brian McGilligan is supposedly the new senior county manager aided and abetted by Sean Roe McCloskey - last year’s U-21 management team. A number of their potential ‘star’ players have been filched by the football management of Paddy Crozier who has been heard to say there will be no dual players this season. Other hurlers are not pushed on playing for Derry because of apathy and the legacy of recent years. According to stories doing the rounds, if Woody and Sambo were on the Derry bus they would have needed a wheelbarrow to get the carryouts to the ditch. Talking Balls reckons McGilligan will be a different story - he tends to say it like it is and is quoted as saying he asked the County Chairman Seamus McCloy was he lost when he ran into him at a hurling match - but will he get an opportunity to show the players that can hurl that Derry are serious about hurling? The county has six senior clubs and hurling meetings have heard the mantra that the Derry league is the best in Ulster. Yet there is no appetite to go and play in the Ulster Hurling league due to a pig headedness about fixture dates and a fixation with the Derry championship and no real prospect of closing the gap on Antrim clubs or county come championship time. So then what for the summer?
Not a lot of change we thinks but we’ll see…
C-Day Approaches
Still not sign of a resolution in sight for the Cork senior footballers and hurlers as the countdown begins towards the start of the national football league on 2 February.
The Cork players have revealed that they offered not to strike if the County Board delayed revisiting the selectorial impasse until September 2008. It has also emerged that their original plan was to announce lightening strikes immediately before the NHL and NFL matches - action that would have offered Frank Murphy and Co little room for discussion. Regular readers will note that Talking Balls has advocated lightening strikes during games but maybe we are too radical for our own good. The players apparently feel they have shifted as far as they can and can go no further.
The Cork Co Board in turn stated they did not wish to get into a debate with the players via the media before giving a long exposition of the issues as they see it no less. They also have issued a resounding clarion call in support of Democracy.
“The issue has been before the board twice and has been debated. We feel the only way we can agree to any compromise is if democracy and the freedom for people to vote as they wish are both central to that compromise.”
“Having said that, we will work with any form of words which will accommodate that and bring resolution to the situation.
Meanwhile ye should know next week whether the Rebels plan to field a team against Meath in the opening round of the League. Talking Balls waits with unbated breath.
Since Croke Park has said: “Croke Park doesn’t want to go and tell Cork what to do,” Talking Balls has identified a form of words that might do the job.
“Wise up the both of ye and get it sorted, we’re getting bored with it.”
Intrigue, Scheming, Duplicitousness, Now Murder Wrote the Malcontent
Speaking of boredom, in the week that Mark Conway hurled the ‘malcontent’ word back at Dessi Farrell, we ask is this spat taking on the appearance of Jacobean Tragedy from whence the term Malcontent arose?
As you will no doubt recall, Greek tragedies had no humour in them - tragedy was felt to be too serious a matter to dilute however by the time the concept of tragedy had evolved into the 1600s a formula was in place involving the tragic hero, the Malcontent figure, and a fairly standard plot line. Politics, intrigue, dodgy characters, money and reputation all featured in the entertaining plotlines of the day. Any women that were involved were of easy virtue, ripe for the taking and or of virginal standing frequently deflowered with the aplomb of Eddie Brennan banging home another goal.
What then of the Malcontent? Usually he is at odds and unhappy with the established social structure - often an outsider, or made one by their actions they become an outsider offering reaction and commentary on the goings on in the play. Occasionally they even did the deflowering. Their role is a dramatic device wrought with political savvy, they voice their discontent through asides and by poking fun and taking issue with others points of views. Does this sound familiar?
Sometimes they attract sympathy and other times they do not - people agree with them and disagree with them depending on their role play. Above all the Malcontent is unhappy, unsettled, angry or annoyed with the world as he sees it and he is eager to change it or dispute with it. Permanently pissed off in fact. He comments on the events of the day as if he is beyond them - often the commentary may be obscure and suited to his own purpose. Famous Malcontent figures then would include Iago from Othello, Bosola in the Duchess of Malfi, Malevole in Webster’s Malcontent and most famously the eponymous hero from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Some of the greatest creations in literature and certainly some of the most interesting characters were malcontents - it certainly isn’t a term of abuse if the name callers know what they are talking about.
To pay or not play then, is that the question? Or is it not. Well there has been no blood letting or deflowering of virtuous young women for that matter - well not that we know of. We still haven’t established when the clubs that pay their managers will emerge and own up to it, or the players that have been paid for years under the table.
What then of rumours of a certain Derry All Ireland winner getting around £18,000 to manage a Tyrone club on the Loughshore or a Championship winning manager, also in Ulster moving from his own club to another in the same county for a reputed £19,000. Or another driving an hour and a half there and the same back for £17,000 plus a car, or a well known former assistant county manager that charges £80 a session for any club needing a few negative thoughts thrown into a skip.
If you thought Mal Content was the name of a paid up GAA member near you, you mightn’t be too far wrong but it’s more than that. Oh yes there’s something goin’ on here. As Iago said in Othello:
“O, beware, my lord of jealousy;
It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.”
Skin Tight and Tasty
It’s that time of year again and Resident expert Ger Manas is back on the beat running the legs of players somewhere in a bid to get them fit. Y’see he thinks that players and the way the dress are a microcosm of life, of course he wouldn’t put it like that…
Many’s the team I’ve trained over the years and you always attracted all sorts of players at this stage of the season. They’ll all be familiar to ye, so there’s no point goin’ over them all in detail, the returning hero, the current county man, the former county man, the useless hoor that turns up every pre-season for a few sessions and then disappears until next year, the useless hoor that turns up and stays, the eager underage star, the refugee from the wife, the guy looking to lose his gut, the homasexual who likes training with other boys - and yes there’s been a few of them over the years, particularly in the ladies games. There’s the solid club player, the soccer or rugby man who admires us boys from afar, the not so solid club man who thinks he’s too good, the pretty boys, the prima donnas, the comedians, arseholes, genuine good lads. The ‘I’m gonna stay in there with the manager’ fella that’s foolin no-one. There all there and this time of year when you see players out sloggin through the muck and clabber you can identity every one of the hoors. Some boys stop and walk as they trudge along, other fellas be going snails pace but by jaze they keep goin’ and others fly at it and are a pleasure to behold.
We’ve been havin’ an oul debate, me and the other fellas bout the best way to train people. Every year, we do the same thing. Run the legs of them for six or eight weeks until they’re sick sore and tired of it, but we always warm it up and slow it down with a ball. We do a bit of oul circuits that haven’t changed that much and now we’ve a lad from rowin’ that helps out with that and he’s some job - our fellas be great on a f***in water logged pitch I tell him. Doesn’t matter whether its women footballers, camogs, hurlers, footballers - they all need that ‘shock and awe’ as the yanks called it when they bombed Iraq back to the stone age - the coul January wind gowling round yer togs. Next thing some f***er hits ye on the thighs full pelt with the ball and ye can read O’Neills below yer arse for a week or the sliotar drops from about fifty feet up into yer hand at a rate of knots and it twice the weight and freezing…
Warming up, jaze it’s inhuman at times I think but the players f***in love it. I see a lot of them now run about in them CCC tops that’s skintight - jaze the nipples quare and stick out through them on a coul day and that’s only the fellas I’m talking about - ye daren’t look near the girls or ye’d get sued - that or get the eye put out of yer head. Boys are running about too in these jobs that look like tights and ye could near count the hairs. I swear I thought a fella the other day was his wee brother so high was his voice. His arse was like two f***in peaches and he only found out afterwards he’d put the wee sisters leggings on - not his own. I think the oul balls were brave and cosied up after a while in that get up.
Could ye imagine Mick Lyons, or Brian Mullins or the Bomber Liston in tights. Jaze the bomber would be like the f***in jolly green giant with a cabbage down in his belongins! The things boys get away with these days. Fellas then wear woolie hats too - why they do I don’t know. I think they see boys on telly wear them and think it looks good and then they fling them off after one lap. I suppose it’s called fashion and that’s what this lark is all about but jaze it makes me laugh.
Ye tend to find that the get-up players appear shows the sort of hoor they are. The good lad or lassie will turn up well kitted out in something practical, no nonsense that doesn’t look like there’s much though went into how it looks but more how it works in keeping ye warm and dry and that’s how it should be. But then there’s the ball bags with the sleeves torn off the shirt in a particular way, or with some obscure shirt like the Phnom Phen Nemos or the Tehran Mitchells or whatever. There’s the pretty boys that look great and wear gear that’s split new - they always have to but it new for the three or four sessions they go to each year. With the women there’s always the ones in the soccer jerseys - they’d get a boot in the hole from me without too much bother.
I find and the other lads agree that ye can nearly tell at the beginning of a session with a new team who the bollixes are and who they aren’t. Used to be you had one of the O’Neill shirts that could soak up three times its weight in rain or before that the rugby jersey type jobs with the buttons on the collar. They were even more absorbent and were a disaster in the summer. I remember playing soccer in London for a pub team one time and the nylon shirts they produced chafed the nipples something schocking. The shorts too rubbed the insides of the thighs so much that one day I was rubbing me chest and the inside of me legs with Vaseline when I got caught on by the tea lady and I think she thought there was something going on with me there lubin’ mesel up. I had to explain but she was from the West Indies or somewhere foreign and she was backin’ off somethin’ shockin when I tried to show her what I was talkin’ about - eventually she ran off. But sure shit happens. Nowadays at least the gear doesn’t do that.
My biggest gripe these days is that for all the gear these clubs get from the likes of O’Neills and them other fellas, none of its really worth a shite in a real bad weather. Those O’Neills rain jackets are like a teabag. I’ve found mesel buyin mountaineering gear and fleeces to keep dry and warm - nowadays the stuff’s great - ye can sweat like a pigs welt and it ‘wicks’ the stuff away so I’m toul. God knows what yer man Hillary could have done up Everest is he had what we have now.
Right enuff have to say some of our players would be better off up a mountain cos they’re shite at football but sure that’s life too.