Talking Balls Issue 40 - Well Informed Ignorance
Talking BallsThis week in Talking Balls we reflect on the departure from Stevie O’Neill from the inter-county scene - it’ll be a less interesting place without him. The master of impossible point from the narrow angle - total respect.
As the row in Cork rumbles on the players win the PR campaign hands down with a deft touch from which many businesses could take a lesson.
The Sunday Times blows the load of the paid manager issue - we truly believe this is a matter that needs to be brought into the open - these fellas are lifting twenty times the amounts talked about for inter-county players.
This weekend we move towards the National League as managers cull their panels, breaking a few hearts in the process. How will Geezer get on, will Cork be drivin’ round in the minibus trying to raise a team like many’s a club squad over the years. Will they call at Big Corkery’s house to try and cajole him away from the fry up and onto the bus. What about Corcoran, he could still kick a ball. I would say Larry Tompkins would still be game for a match too. We’ve all been there - cajoled back out one more time - hokin’ about the garage lookin’ for a lost boot and haulin’ out the shorts that will fit in yer wildest dreams.
Graham Geraghty sees red in the Junior Club semi final- there’s a surprise. And, as the ladies footballers look pretty in pink at the All Star exhibition game we reflect on those lost souls, the camogie All Stars that don’t get a trip anywhere.
For all you hardy souls there’s the national league this weekend. For everyone else, there’s always Talking Balls.
O’Neill County Minus O’Neill Equals…
You’ve all heard the one - what do you call a fly without wings? A walk. What do you call the O’Neill county without O’Neill. F***ed.
Yes, Red Hands fans were sick as parrots last Thursday evening when news began to filter through that Stevie O’Neill - the man who, along with Talking Balls favourite footballer Brian McGuigan - powered Tyrone to All Ireland success in 2005 - has decided to hang up his boots. Rumours have been circulating for a while indeed a Derry player told us he was giving it all up but we’d hoped that’s all they were.
Excuse the maritime metaphor here, but in terms on steering a successful ship, one of the ship’s captain’s jobs is to keep the entire crew on board. So just how did Tyrone come to shout ‘man overboard’ last week and what are the chances of hauling him back on board anytime soon?
Well going by the stories emerging the chances of the latter are slim enough. The rumour mongers would have you believe that O’Neill and Tyrone’s ultra successful manager Mickey Harte had a run in over training methods. According to the merchants of doom and gloom, O’Neill voiced concerns to Harte over the appropriateness of the sessions and was not given much of a hearing. ‘Au contraire’ says the manager. According to Mickey Harte he and O’Neill have never had a harsh word in a playing relationship going back over ten years. Tyrone watchers will recall that O’Neill and Brian McGuigan apparently were the two players that went to Harte to ask him to stay on after their Tyrone minor team lost the 1997 Final. This was the season that Paul McGirr was tragically killed in an on field accident. Harte duly agreed, they won the 1998 final and the rest is history.
Stevie O’Neill has fought the good fight for Tyrone over the years. Highlights? Too many of them. At minor he was a classy half forward - his first register on Talking Balls consciousness was when he came on as a sub for Paul McGirr in Omagh the day he suffered his fatal accident. In 2001 he was part of the team that won the Ulster Championship - the Final against Cavan sealed by a fisted goal from the late great Cormac McAnallen - and went on to lift an All Star. Tyrone bowed out of the Championship to a vengeful Derry team - already beaten in the competition by Tyrone - masterminded of course by the legendary Eamon Coleman, much to Eamon’s enjoyment. Boy, we gowled some abuse through the wire in Clones at Coleman that day.
Roll it forward to 2003 - Stevie was repeatedly encumbered with injuries but came off the bench to replace Canavan when PtG injured his ankle tussling for the ball and helped steer Tyrone home in a landmark victory over the Kingdom. In the final he was the key piece in the Canavan/McGuigan substitute conundrum when Mickey Harte managed to successfully perm three from two. Again Stevie steered over a couple of critical points when they were needed. This underlined a feature of his game easily overlooked - he always delivered the goods in Croke Park. In 2004 it was he that rocketed the ball into the Mayo net, to spark a revival that never happened. Earlier that year he balanced studies in London at Strawberry Hill teacher training college with trips home to play for Tyrone, in the process lifting a series of red cards - for many of us it made him even more popular.
2005 was his year. It will always be remembered for Tyrone’s ten match All Ireland campaign that featured three trademark penalties from the Clann na Gael man, each buried in an identical corner of the net and a regular repertoire of points many from outrageous angles - off his right and left side. When we asked, he showed how he practiced them, ten off each foot at five different spots on the pitch - every session. When Tyrone lifted Sam, wiped out were the memories of his errant sending of by Cork ref Michael Collins. The O’Neill county in every sense. All great memories.
Talking Balls abiding memory of Stevie O’Neill however is an earlier one. The footage of Tyrone’s defeat to Laois in the Minor All Ireland Final in 1997 clearly shows a distraught Stephen O’Neill at the end of the game - a young lad that enjoyed his sport, the pain of defeat heightened by the loss he and his teammates had endured that summer. It showed he cared. This summer if you find the time, take a trip to the pitch up at Aughabrack to see Clann na Gael playing and pay homage - you’re in O’Neill Country.
Let’s Be Frank, Murphy Won’t Be Going Anywhere
Dateline Cork: Teddy Holland has not yet resigned as Cork senior football manager. According to well placed reports in the Rebel County, the final sticking point in the ongoing Cork industrial action is the continuing occupation by Holland of the manager’s seat.
Sources suggest that the Cork Co Board is shit-scared that any move to remove Holland would result in legal action as he is the legitimate choice nominated and approved by a majority of clubs. This despite Sean Óg revealing in his ‘explosive’ Irish Times interview on Saturday that as many as six other people were considered for the job but declined after consulting players on the problems surrounding the selectorial fiasco.
For those who slept through the weekend, like the Office Wag, Sean Óg also called for the head of Frank Murphy. This is the same Frank that stuck up for the players during the Semplegate comedy. This is the same Frank that appears to be a Cork man by birth but is a member of the County Board by his own Grace. The same Frank that went on the team holiday with the players a week or two ago. Reports of the weekend’s ‘negotiations’ reveal a nice cameo. Apparently when food was brought in for the warring parties, the Blazers headed out first, as they would, but were reminded by Frank to leave some food for the players. The fact he had to issue this reminder is telling.
Sean Óg revealed that during the year the player’s staple diet of boiled chicken, fruit and pasta was replaced by a pile of sandwiches. What greater love can a man have for his county than to eat boiled chicken - now that is above and beyond the call of duty, especially if all that celebrity Cockney grill boy Jamie Oliver says is true. But they say it’s better for you than sandwiches.
The media savvy team here in the Talking Balls office were mightily impressed with the PR skills of the Cork players. In classic campaign style they targeted the key media, each player stepping forward on message on cue, over the course of a few days - culminating in GAA poster boy Sean Óg driving the boot, knee and butt of the hurley into Frank Murphy on Saturday in his Irish Times piece. Of course Murphy isn’t going to resign but by making exorbitant demands it gives the players wriggle and negotiating room and a position to step back from. That position of least retreat appears to be the ousting of football manager Teddy Holland. The one man that wasn’t put forward to talk was Donal Óg Cusack. It would appear his appearance on the media horizon would be equivalent to a red rag to a bull. Indeed Sean Óg specifically defended his comrade in arms such is his guilt by association.
The system proposed by the Cork County Board is a puzzle to Gaels the length and breadth of the country - especially anyone involved in team management. You want your own people with you and that’s that. Under the new system it is unlikely that John Allen would have been handed the Bainisteoir’s bib when Donal O’Grady stepped down. The ironic part of this is that Cork have had a modicum of success in recent years, driven by the players themselves in spite of the County Board.
Meanwhile, Croke Park appear to have paid out the slack by apparently postponing this weekend’s NFL game against Meath. But, despite the best efforts of negotiator Kieran Mulvey, the impasse continues, Nicky Brennan remarking:
“As far as I was concerned, the Association was facing a situation where one of our major counties had a problem and they didn’t appear to be solving it. Somebody had to be brought in to solve it… somebody was needed to pull the parties together. It didn’t matter who that person was. We went for the best facilitator and he was willing to do it this weekend when, I’m sure, he could have been doing other things.”
Spending a weekend in Cork with bolshie Cork people - sure who wouldn’t jump at the chance?
Shock: Geraghty Sent off in Club Junior Semi
As Tyrone club the Rock made it through to a Croke Park showdown yesterday, there was surprise in GAA circles with news that Clann na Gael midfielder, Meath star and former Fine Gael Election candidate Graham Geraghty received a straight red card towards the end of the game.
Geraghty had been singled out in most observers’ minds as the Clann na Gael player most likely to cause problems for a Rock team managed by Derry’s Minor All Ireland Final manager Niall Conway. Rock were two points adrift heading towards the end of normal time. They somehow pegged it back and managed to pull away in extra time to seal their appearance on Croker and attempt to return the trophy won last year by Greencastle to Red Hand Land.
Geraghty apparently saw red for what was euphemistically termed an ‘off the ball incident.’ Talking Balls has learned in the wake of the game that Irish film-makers are considering a biopic of the blonde bombsite tentatively called ‘There’s Something About Graham: My Left Fist.’ With enough controversy and more ups and downs than Ron Jeremy it would be compulsive watching.
What is it about Meath men and Tyrone?
O’Hanlon’s Pair Point the Way for 06 Ladies
The 2006 Ladies football team triumphed over their 2007 counterparts in a keenly contested ONeills/TG4 Ladies GAA All Stars match in Dubai. Quite what the local sheikhs made of it isn’t clear - usually they’re more interested in that other sport of the two humps - camel racing.
Played at the only country in the Gulf or middle east that would accommodate burka-less women’s sport the game ended up a sporting 3-15 to 2-13 to the 2006 team. As the Hoganstand site reports, ‘O’Hanlon’s brace duly did the trick.’ Oh Yes.
Talking Balls has been thinking about this and we were wondering just how many people in the Gulf watched this ‘exhibition’ match played at the Dubai Polo and Equestrian Club.
We were also wondering how the camogie all stars feel, sitting at home on their attractive derrieres wondering why every other set of All Stars jetsets round the globe and they get to sit at home enjoying the chill of January. Certainly the likes of Mags Darcy and Eimear Brannigan et al would be worth a few camels to an eagle eyed sheikh out in the Gulf. They dunno what they’re missing.
So Liz, now you have the Camog finals back in Croker, what about a proper set of All Stars?
Rule 11 - Load of Balls
The Sunday Times yesterday lifted the lid on the widespread practice of payment to GAA managers the length and breadth of the country. About time.
Talking Balls has been harping on for weeks about the hypocrisy of people making money out of the GAA. As we have repeated ad nauseum, it is all very well to point the finger at players for lifting a few euro in the form of grants whilst at the same time studiously ignoring the widespread practice of managers lifting hundreds of euro for a week’s coaching. The problem is at its most severe in Derry and Tyrone where club managers are reputedly lifting £100 to £125 a session.
In other counties the problem is less pronounced but the means and mechanisms are all the same. ‘Fill yer car up there Mick every week, and throw in yer expenses too - no-one will know a hate about it. Oh and the car, take that new Passat there with ye and say nothing. Ye need a bit of labour on the house extension. Well, we’ll take a look when we’re round handing over the brown envelope…’.
On the latest tedious to-ing and fro-ing, does it really matter whether the DRA said an agreement was reached in December or not? Well let’s be brutally honest folks, with ourselves. Did congress ever vote on the legality of paying managers? No they didn’t. Still happens. On the subject of under the table payments Peter Quinn famously said they couldn’t even find the table.
In this case Talking Balls is increasingly of the opinion that the player’s mistake was to try and sort out the grants issue via official channels. They would probably have had more success if they had just tore on ahead and sorted something out by the back door - same as ever other person seems to do it.
Anyway, Talking Balls is sick of the finger-pointing-points-scoring bollix we’ve watched unfold. So we’re away to a coaching session, which we don’t get paid for, in our GAA, which is exactly the same as it always was, which actually costs us money when we think about it. Some of the players are club men and some are county men. Whether they get paid or not makes no odds to us or them, nor does it affect the way they train. In fact, for some of our club’s student players, we’ve been guilty of pay for play ourselves - a few quid here for a train fare or there to pay off a debt or two, or a lift here, or a few beers there. Rule 11? Load of Balls.
Burnout Proposals Burnt Out
Hard to stop grinning at the spectacular failure of GAA congress on Saturday to push through the proposals in relation to Minor and U-21 grades. Not because we disagree with the burnout findings but because we think the solutions were half baked.
Say you’re from the likes of Laois - how many senior titles have you won in recent years. Not many. How many minor or U-21 titles - a few. Are you going to vote for the removal of two age grades where you actually have a chance of winning something. No way Jose.
Next piece of comedy. The two month closed season - let’s see how that works out. I see in Dublin last Friday night that the League Division 1 Final was played. I assume that was last year’s competition. In Tyrone, the league finals at Junior grade were played in the mouth of Christmas. For both counties they exited the Championship in August. If you were from a county that were knocked out of the Championship in June or July, potentially you could be facing into a six month break. Why November and December? Why not October and November - sure the Championships are done and dusted in September. This all seems very arbitrary.
Next up,the weekend training camps. It will be interesting to observe the verbal gymnastics to explain away why a particular team were away together for a weekend.
‘The lads all got a holiday voucher for the Slieve Russell and they decided to go there. Just happened it was the same weekend.’
‘There was a special deal on in the City West and the boys invited me down for a game of golf. A few other lads were about anyway, they were just passing through and another fella was on honeymoon. Just coincidence you see.’
‘Well La Manga’s a very popular holiday resort these days and with the cheap flights ye can get I’m not surprised a few availed of the offers.’
What makes this all the more risible is that there is no punishment for transgressors so basically lads the rules is there but do what ye please. Bit like many of the other rules. Why Croke Park wishes to tell players when they can and can’t train is beyond us. It smacks of big government like them loopers complain about in America. Next thing you know the armed wing of the GPA will declare war on Croker and maybe blow part of it up. Stranger things have happened.
The Dodgy Manager - Sleeping with the Fishes
This week resident expert Ger Manas casts an eye sideways at rugby and while he can understand why Eddie O’Sullivan says he made a balls of things he can’t imagine too many GAA men get away with it.
I was reading there in the papers over the weekend yer man Eddie O’Sullivan talkin’ balls about the rugby world cup and how shite Ireland were. Sez he ‘I made a total balls of it.’ Well now fair f***s to him for bein’ so honest but it’s a wee bit late for bein’ that honest. In fact, since he hadn’t the balls to own up at the time and admit how shite he thought they might get on he really needs a good boot in the hole is what he needs. He as good as admitted there yesterday that he knew there was something wrong during’ the competition - the players weren’t rugby ready was how he put it. Imagine now at work if some boy in a football or hurling club cocked something up and turned round and said ‘I made a real balls of it?’ Sure he’d be out on his hole. How it is then that a fella that’s a professional manager can be such a bollix?
It comes out then that they have no psychologist and no manager and no defence coach. What struck me about was that when I was up with Armagh Big Joe had all them things taken care of. He had more specialist boys there than ye knew what to do with. There was a French fella that was an expert at making poached eggs with no yolk in them. That was all this boy did as far as I could see. There was another good lookin’ yoke that made sure the players looked good. Wee bit of hairspray here, bit of gel there. Some boys maybe told to play with the shirts tucked out - others with theirs in. She was able to tell boys how to intimidate other players by the way they stood beside then with their crotches pushed out as if to say ‘I’m the biggest swinging dick round here.’ That’s all she did, that and flash her bosoms now and then at some of the younger boys to get them revved up.
That’s why I couldn’t understand the Irish Rugby team. As well as that O’Sullivan hung around with yer man Clive Woodward. He had asked me over at one stage working with the back line on defensive kicking but the grandfather would have turned in the grave at the thought of it. The one thing Woodward was good at was bringing in men to do the things he couldn’t. If he needed something done he got the man in that could do the job. Funny how this never rubbed off on O’Sullivan. It did on Big Joe, they regarded England as one of their role models and it helped them lift her to the next level.
It was yer man admitting he made a balls of it that got me. I can just see the headline if yer man big Peeler Caffrey came out and said ‘aye I ballsed it up but sure all the gabshites on the Hill will understand, we’ll get it right the next time.’ Would they f***, they’d queue the lengthy of O’Connell Street to kick him in the hole. Can ye imagine Mickey Harte saying he balls’d something up. Well firstly Mickey wouldn’t say that - he would say he ‘was in a place he didn’t like to be’ or some mumbo jumbo like that but jaze them loopers up in Tyrone would rip him to pieces. Ye can see Paddy Crozier to Seamus McCloy - I made a balls up. Me hole. And that’s not to mention what would happen to some of them highly paid club managers we’re hearing all about, these fellas liftin’ twenty and thirty grand a year to manage some two bit tumbleweed shower of ballixes that’d win nothin if the entire Kerry team parachuted in to help. ‘I made a balls of it’ would quickly translate into a drop into a flooded quarry from the money man’s helicopter with a couple of bags of concrete wound round the feet for company. Bring that one to the DRA.
That’s the difference with rugby - it’s that bit more civilized. They can slag the bejasus out of each other in the politest way - the only exceptions bein’ some of them ex players. Brian Moore the English fella is a hateful c*** if I ever saw one and I use that word very carefully. I remember an English boy beside me looking scared one time up at Lansdowne when I shouted ‘stamp on the hateful b*****’ one time Ireland was playing England and Moore was lyin’ on the deck, jaze I near went down and dropped the size twelve mesel’. The boy in the blazer tould me ‘that isn’t very sporting old chap…’ I toul him he’d get f***in levered if he ever even looked at me again, but that was the sort of effect that boy Moore had on me. Before me mother died she was lyin’ up in bed, she always liked that fella Jack Kyle playin rugby and that, and yer man Moore was on spouting something about Ireland and he made her upset too. He was as offensive a hoor as I saw but still even though I can’t stand him I have te say them rugby boys is more civilized. I see their referee Alain Rolland was meeting some of our refs to discuss how they deals with things. Well if they could sort out people not slabberin’ at the ref that would be a good start.
This weekend the big action starts in earnest with the league. Should be a good oul weekend with a bit of the oul rugby and then a few matches on the Saturday night and then Sunday. I’ve that Setanta and it’s the greatest job yet for watching matches. There’ll be something on nearly every Saturday night now between the hurling and football and it repeated during the week. Then the TG4 boys are on Sunday afternoons. Jaze it’ll be great. There’s no real second chances this year although I think havin’ no semi finals might just turn some of the games into non events if there’s nothin’ to play for. I was expectin’ things from Derry and then I watched them on Saturday night get cleaned out by Down. There’s work to be done there yet for Paddy. I’m lookin’ forward to see how the Kerrymen get on and Tyrone without O’Neill. That’s one of the saddest bits of news I heard now this long while that he’s give it up, tho’ if I was the club manager I’d be leppin’ about.
I’ll be up that road one of these days now and I’ll maybe call into see Stevie up thonder in Gortin school. And if he’s readin’ this, I’ll tell ye, look out it’ll be a boot in the hole ye’ll be gettin’ from me!