Triumph of the Will

Tuesday’s win over Inter represents the ultimate expression of the greatness of Liverpool FC. Not the team, which is so far from being great that they’ve been dragged into a dogfight with Everton for the last Champions League place. No, it was the club that won, an entity of which the players are the most visible expression yet are ephemeral compared to the fans, the ground, the history, even the shirt.

Okay, Pseud’s Corner is on high alert. But how else do you explain such a poverty-stricken display against Barnsley on Saturday versus the vibrant, tub-thumping effort against Inter? Sure, there were a few different players, but I find it hard to credit that Jose Reina would have done any better with those goalbound efforts than Charles Itandje did. And if Liverpool were at 50% capacity against Barnsley – we were, after all, missing Torres, who is now officially half our team – then how much better were the runaway leaders of Serie A than the oh-so-endearingly nicknamed Tykes?

The difference in performance could be explained by ‘stuff happens’, which would be true but wouldn’t make for much of a stream of consciousness. Part of the difference can be explained by that evil (gagh) known as the magic of the FA Cup. Throughout the earlier rounds of the competition we’ve had to endure various manifestations of the reckless hope that someone would trip the Reds up. Listening to the drawn game against Luton, something I rarely do as the radio drives me potty with all its oohing and aahing over nothing, what struck me most was the hysterical desire of the commentator for a cup upset. Rationally this is understandable. The BBC has made a big investment in the FA Cup, and the (gagh) magic of the Cup fills a lot of talk radio waffle and column inches. But it’s galling to have to sit and listen to it, especially when there was precious little evidence that Luton were really going to pull it off. Sure, there could have been a last minute goal (see: Barnsley) but it’s usually traditional to wait until the last minute before anticipating last minute goals. The nonsense reached its peak when commentators – and Don Hutchison – were bemoaning Luton’s inability to hold out for thirty more seconds at the end of the first half of the replay. If it were that simple, it would be a simple matter to split a match into c. 180 thirty second periods and you’d never concede a goal. The desire for a shock creates a maelstrom of hope which occasionally translates into reality, which we saw against Barnsley, damn and blast their eyes!

This kind of self-fulfilling prophecy doesn’t work when it’s a clash between the likes of Liverpool and Inter. Because of the two legged nature of European trophies, you don’t have romance of the European Cup stories. When a team from nowhere like Nottingham Forest went all the way (the bastards) in Europe, they did so as the champions of England so it was hardly a shock. Still, Europe does have its shock-inducing intangible, and that’s pedigree. When the draw was being made for the last 16, there were only three possible opponents: Real Madrid, Milan and Inter. Combined European Cup count: 18. As the draw was taking place, I was down in my foxhole praying that we would draw Inter. This was not because they have only won it twice, and not since 1965 when they beat us in the semi-final (the bastards), compared to Real’s nine and Milan’s seven. Nor was it the fact that we have a recent history with Milan (the bastards) – although they were all issues. The main reason Inter were so appealing is their astonishingly brittle record in the last couple of decades. Inter is a sick club in much the same way that, well, Liverpool is, and no amount of money seemed able to solve their ills. From the time when they last won the league title in 1989 until their recent successes, tainted as they are by the punishments meted out to Juventus and Milan over match fixing, Inter reeled from one calamity to the next. The weight of a history of failure, allied to the all-conquering status of their roommates in the Giuseppe Meazza, crushed the players and no amount of rationalising could overcome that burden in Serie A. Their performances in Europe haven’t been much better. They won a couple of Uefa Cup’s back in the early 90’s when the Uefa Cup really mattered, and there are a fair few English clubs who would combust with joy should they land a diminished Uefa Cup, but their efforts in the Champions League have been puny. Twice they have crossed swords with Milan and twice they have been utterly humiliated, not least when some moron managed to clobber Dida for real, as opposed to the fake clobbering he received when he went down like a sack of spuds after being grazed by a Celtic fan last year. Add in the lift the Champions League gives this particular Liverpool team (you’d wish try as hard against the likes of Barnsley, the bastards) and the metronomic efficiency with which the Kop pumps out another big European night on demand in a manner that is beyond the abilities of every other set of fans in the world at every point in their history, and it’s a wonder that it took eighty-five minutes for Inter’s resistance to crumble.

It could all go pear-shaped in Milan in three weeks time. All that history is great when all other things are equal, but there’s no point in pretending that things are equal. Inter are far better than us, and just as we’d probably take Barnsley to the cleaners were we to meet them again in three weeks time, Inter might cut loose on their own turf. But hopefully this result will give us the boost we need over the next three weeks, the belief we can beat giants like Middlesbrough. And who cares if we can only stumble past the second leg based on the result we secured on Tuesday? We all have the t-shirts for what comes next.

Plus points

The other day I suggested that “time would tell” who had won the Cork strike. Time has indeed told and it’s a crushing victory for the players. In return for a promise not to strike on the narrow issue that Kieran Mulvey was attempting to resolve, the players secured their prime objective (the manager will pick his selectors), their secondary objective (the removal of Teddy Holland; they even got the County Board to plunge the knife) and got a bonus prize to boot (an input, however meagre, into choosing the new manager Conor Counihan).

What the implications of the routing of the most reactionary county board in the country board by a mutiny are going to be, only time will tell (yeah, I know). But for Waterford, the implications are two soft points. Given the format of the NHL this year – the GAA’s master fixture list suggests that there will be quarter-finals this year, so the top three will qualify – wins over Antrim and Dublin should be enough for qualification, especially if Kilkenny mash everyone as expected. Good news in and of itself, I suppose, but the manner in which Cork have weaseled out of the apocalyptic predictions that they would be turfed out of the League for failing to fulfil two fixtures leaves a sour taste. No doubt there is some obscure rule that the CCCC are utilising to allow them to wriggle off the hook of that particular scenario, and if there isn’t one you can be sure, in a final ironic twist, one will be interpreted as such by Frank Murphy. But it’s not overly tinfoil hat to suggest that no other county would get such kid gloves treatment. A €400 fine per match missed? Why not chuck in a bag of magic beans while they’re at it. And if Waterford’s rivals had skipped Cork we’d he hopping mad, and rightly so. Neither the Cork County Board or the players have emerged with a shred of credit. Now Headquarters have made it a hat-trick of ignominy.

Context is everything

. . . and the context of last week’s defeat to Wexford just changed, and surely for the worse. Antrim might well be the coming thing in hurling, and I think we can all agree this would be a marvellous thing. But Wexford will be sickened to have been beaten after last week’s success. As for Waterford, either Wexford ain’t so hot or Antrim are a bananaskin-in-waiting.

And they’re OFF

Peace of a kind has broken out in Cork as Kieran Mulvey’s recommendations look like being acceptable to both parties. Who the winner is, only time will tell. The players seem to have secured the head of Teddy Holland, which while less than what they asked for to begin with, definitely represents a blow to the County Board who will have to defend the ejection of the man put in place by their own procedures. However, a committee consisting of five County Board men and two players looks heavily skewed, and the insistence that the players cannot go on strike means their future wriggle room is limited.

For Waterford folk, we have the unbelieveable – by which I mean totally believeable, given the supine nature of Headquarters in the face of the big counties in general and Cork in particular – situation where Cork are granted yet another postponement, this time of their match against us. So all that rhetoric that it was two missed matches and you’re out of the NH/FL has been exposed as so much hogwash. Everyone in Cork GAA – and I mean everyone – should be donning sackcloth and ashes at this stage, but instead we can look forward to their smug sniggering as they are given a degree of latitude that no one else would be given but they seem to take as their entitlement.

Should I Play I Or Should I Go?

When the balloon went up between the Cork County Board and the county senior footballers and hurlers, the favoured refrain of Corkonians – particularly those supporting the position of the players – was that you could expect no more from the Rebels. James Dean! Birthplace of Michael Collins! Deathplace of Michael Collins! Last place to hold out in the Civil War, the People’s Republic of Cork, yeah!

History has a habit of reallocating the credit (and the blame) for significant events and achievements – how the hell did a cartographer manage to secure the name of an entire continent and the most powerful nation on the planet for himself? And so it is with the Rebel County, with Cork folk blithely assuming they are so named because of their bellicose attitude during the Troubles of the early 1920’s. The truth is much less edifying for the average Cork Gael, and a lot more amusing for the rest of us. They were called ‘the Rebels’ because they supported the claim of one of the inbred aristos attempting to usurp the English throne over the claim of the incumbent inbred aristo who had already successfully usurped the English throne. How very republican.

(Then again, people in Waterford seem to think Urbs Intacta Manet is a reference to resistance to Cromwell. They are, of course, wrong, but I’m not going to spoonfeed you, that’s what Google is for.)

So what to make of the latest spat down in Royalist County? It’s impossible to construct a coherent chronology of what has happened up to this because neither side is willing to be honest as to their motivations. It’s hard to take the County Board’s insistence that, when they removed from the manager the power to choose his own selectors, they were motivated by a desire to see control of fixtures repatriated back to the clubs. While I’ve no doubt that clubs are irritated by the manager of the senior inter-county team sticking his oar in to force the postponement of club matches, other counties are nowhere near such a peasant’s revolt over the same issue – supposedly only the Waterford footballers have the same system as what is now (back) in existence in Cork. The County Board had two goals. They wanted to rid themselves of the nuisance that is Billy Morgan, a character who is near-universally accepted as being able to do no wrong – often, it should be noted after Cork’s miserable effort in last year’s All-Ireland final, contrary to the evidence – but who also seems to be a rallying point for discontent with the way the County Board is run. The second goal was to send a shot across the bows of that small rump of malcontents known as the GPA, a shot that said that the County Board ran the show in Cork GAA, and would use any means at its disposal to ensure it remained that way.

As for the players, good luck trying to extract any consistency from their spinmeisters during this debacle. The core issue is supposedly the managers right to pick his selectors, so what the hurlers, whose managers still possesses that right, are doing coming out in support of the footballers begs the question. I’m sure they are claiming solidarity, but how about some solidarity with the rest of the hurling fraternity? Dublin, supposedly the latest fragile flower that needs nurturing, can look forward to precisely one (1) home match in the NHL this year, and that against Antrim – a match already played. Meanwhile the footballers seem, to put it charitably, to be confused as to what they want. They definitely don’t want to chose the manager, merely to have a veto over his appointment – which surely amounts to the same thing. They want to have the manager to have the power to chose his selectors, yet now they seem to be willing to row back on this in return for the head of Teddy Holland, making you wonder what, if securing the dismissal of a man who took the job after they went on strike (for the want of a better word), they were looking for in the first place. The GPA deny having anything to do with the matter, but when you see the leading lights in the GPA leading the charge, no one would blame you for snorting with derision at such protestations. The players complain about a democratic deficit in the County Board, yet seem to think that their opinions are a useful proxy for what that democratic will is, then don’t canvass their meagre membership when their representatives reject the proposals of a neutral arbiter. And it is unclear whether the status of Frank Murphy is an issue, with some saying it is and others saying it isn’t.

Which brings us to what, when the mendacity of both sides is stripped away, is the alpha and the omega of the matter. Frank Murphy’s Byzantine machinations are the stuff of legend. My own personal favourite was when the first vote on the opening of Croke Park was defeated by a razor-thin margin back in 2001. Frank’s swift intervention prevented a recount on what had only been a show of hands, accompanied by suggestions that some delegates had been in the loo when the vote was taken. It is this kind of smoke-filled rooms nonsense, bolstered by myriad stores, both verified and anecdotal, that understandably antagonises people, casts doubt on the legitimacy of any claim that the vote was the settled will of the GAA membership in Cork, and underpins every bit of support for the players. Anyone from outside Cork should instinctively side with the players against the oddly-follicled Machiavelli.

It is probably the firmest evidence of the folly of the players that this particular outsider finds himself siding with Frank Murphy and his cronies. There has been much talk online from those supporting the players about how a stand had to be taken against the tyrant, that the players were speaking for the silent majority of Cork GAA who were unwilling to face down the cabal that are running the association in the county. This may well be true, but that doesn’t negate the necessity for attempting to affect change through the proper channels. If Donal Óg Cusack is unhappy that Cloyne’s delegates are voting against his wishes and that of the wider membership, then by all means engage in a spot of grandstanding, march up to the next meeting of the club’s executive with all of RTÉ’s cameras behind him and insist on having his say on the matter. No danger of a person of his stature being fobbed off and the supposedly cowed majority would surely row in behind him.

I won’t entertain the notion that Donal Óg and his peers have antagonised the grassroots with the endeavours with the GPA. No, I won’t . . .

But having invoked the strike option twice in the last five years with success, it seems the players thought they could strike whenever they like and the mandarins would capitulate. However, if the Cork County Board staged the whole affair to slap the players down, then surely the players should have anticipated that the County Board wasn’t going to be for turning on this matter? Evidence that the players overplayed their hand can be seen in the suggestions from their online supporters that all that is needed at this stage is for Teddy Holland to walk the plank and they will return to, er, work. On one level, this strikes me as being a reasonable compromise. Holland’s position is irretrievably compromised. Whether you think the players are justified or not in their bleating about the breach of trust wrought by him taking the job after they asked that no one accept it, it’s going to impossible for the players to unsay what they said. If the County Board had the cojones to tell the players that they’re under no obligation to play for Teddy Holland (which they’re not), thank them for their outstanding service to Cork GAA in the past, and that they were going to move on to those who were willing to play under Teddy Holland, no matter how fat and useless, then the players bluff will have been called.

The County Board want the senior (read: good) players on board though. Frank Murphy is not going to send out a Rebel team to be murdered in the manner that, uh, every other county bar Kilkenny experience occasionally, and they avoid only avoid such unpleasantness by not fielding a football team at all. But if the players go back having secured an objective (i.e. the removal of Teddy Holland) that became an issue after they had initially gone on strike, therefore not coming near achieving what they had gone on strike for, you’ve got to ask what it was all about (I may have mentioned that already; it’s an important point).

Wheels within wheels. At the time of writing, both sides have agreed on accepting the recommendations of a neutral party, probably Kieran Mulvey of the Labour Relations Commission, a man who has probably encountered the harrowing choices facing workers about how many of them must be sacrificed for the greater good on countless occasions – with that in mind, this clash must drive him mad in its pettiness. Hopefully this will lead to a resolution, even if it’s too late to save Cork’s participation in the National Leagues. In the short run, this should lead to a win for the County Board. Already there are whispers that the Board will engineer a legal loophole to get them off the hook of the initial resolutions and / or the appointment of Teddy Holland, allowing them to brazenly claim that everything they have done has been within the rules, while any compromises on the part of the players will involve them having to swallow their pride and admit they hadn’t got everything they wanted, in spite of all the apocalyptic rhetoric that here they must stand, they can do no other.

The long run is murkier. The County Board may have unleashed forces that have long been dormant in the GAA. The individual member has the power, a power that has either been stymied by political chicanery at higher levels (“the motion was submitted on paper clearly manufactured in France, therefore it is ruled out of order”) or left in the hands of the active minority on the executives of individual clubs who, not unreasonably given the levels of apathy, make decisions without consultation with the membership. After this furore, anyone who says they are angry at the passing of a particular motion will be told in no uncertain terms that they should have kicked up a stink rather than blithely assuming that the delegates would be psychic. Just about everyone thinks what they believe coincides with what the silent majority, or the famed GAA ‘grassroots’, thinks. They can’t all be right and many would get a well-deserved rude awakening should a definitive poll of the ‘settled will’ of the GAA be established on certain matters. I think the majority of the membership of Cork GAA would side with the players over the County Board. Sean Óg Ó hAilpín or Frank Murphy? John Fitzgerald Kennedy or Richard Nixon? It is to be hoped that the mooted resolution will provide the space for a robust discussion of the issues rather than surreptitious motions and kneejerk strikes. And who knows? Maybe the players don’t have the silent majority behind them. Maybe the foot soldiers of Cork GAA think they are a shower of GPA prima donnas who need to be put in their place, much as the County Board wants. Now that would be an expression of the democratic will that would be worth waiting for.

Waterford 3-8 (17) Wexford 2-12 (18)

Why, enquired my wife, would you stand on the terrace at Walsh Park when there was a perfectly serviceable stand there and the terrace looked like a shingle beach after a hurricane? It was a good question, especially considering the price difference between the stand (€15) and the terrace (€13).

(The price, incidentally, seemed a bit steep given the furore over the €20 price for one of Walsh Park’s rare championship outings against Dublin a few years back. Even taking inflation into account, was the first league match in early spring worth three-quarters of the price of a championship match? After this enjoyably high-octane clash, and factoring in the chicken-feed student price of €5 that my wife paid – she is a student! – it didn’t seem so bad.)

Ten seconds after throw-in, the wisdom of the several hundred people standing on the terrace opposite became apparent. We in the GAA, along with the rugger buggers, routinely slap ourselves on the back for the lack of segregation at our games compared to the savages of soccer. Yet soccer’s policy of not putting opponents alongside each other seems more sensible when you are stranded with a Wexford woman behind you hollering like a New Ross fishwife. “Come on Rory! Come on Eoin! Come on John! Well done John! Come on Rory . . .” Wash, rinse and repeat. Oh, to be on the terrace where you could move away from such attention seeking nonsense.

It’s an endearing phenomenon, that of referring to GAA players by their first name. In soccer, players are referred to by their surnames – no sense in getting too close to a person who is waiting until someone else comes along with thirty-one pieces of silver. Referring to a player every time he hits the ball though, that’s telling everyone just how much you care. In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I was like that when I first started going to games regularly back in 1998, and I never realised just how annoying it is until yesterday. The old Wexford man who sat beside me, calmly noting the scores and wides in his programme, must have been shaking his head at such youthful exuberance.

Still, there was plenty to shout about in a game that bristled with energy. Lacking much knowledge of Wexford hurling, I couldn’t tell you whether their’s was an experimental lineup, but the absence of Damien Fitzhenry would suggest a few of the team will not see the summer. As for Waterford, there were a few new faces in Richie Foley at centre back, Brian Farrell at wing forward and Shane Casey, scoring machine for the intermediates last summer at corner forward. Whether these players make the grade or not, it would be a glimpse into a future without Ken McGrath, Tony Browne and Paul Flynn.

The game started, we tried to filter out the Hook lighthouse behind us and Waterford took an early lead through a fine Seamus Prendergast point. Having survived the first Wexford assault on the always nerve-wracking full back line, Eoin Kelly had a free about fifty metre out just to the right of the posts. The ball drifted wide, but it wasn’t an indicator of the horror show he would have during the following sixty-odd minutes. Points were swapped then Brian Phelan was harshly penalised for overcarrying deep in the Waterford defence, harsh for it seemed it was his momentum that caused him to overcarry and he had been running towards his own goal. The ref was probably strictly correct though, and he whistled up several times throughout the game for this offence, so at least he was consistent and players knew what was coming if they took too much out of the ball. The free looked marginally too far out to be a goal chance but the Wexford forward went for it anyway and was rewarded as it went to the net via Clinton Hennessy’s hurley.

Waterford didn’t have to wait long for a riposte, and what a nice goal it was, Shane Casey eluding his marker under the high ball right near the endline by the old scoreboard. Again, it looked an unlikely goal chance but he fired the ball across the bows of Dermot Flynn into the far corner. Things got even better a few minutes later when Dan Shanahan tried to cut in from the same corner and was hauled down for a penalty, which Eoin Kelly buried with aplomb.

Good stuff thus far, but the itch that would be impossible to scratch would, despite the goal, be Eoin Kelly. He had already missed a few relatively easy chances both from plays and deadballs, and those misses become more acute when a Wexford forward is permitted the freedom of the Waterford half to bear down on goal and knock it home. That’s unfair really, it was a fine run and an unstoppable shot, but dark thoughts burrow in when your freetaker is having an off day. Still, there’s always Dan, who pounced on a rebound off the post to snaffle Waterford’s third goal and he looked to have a hand in a fourth when his rampaging run was halted only for the ball to come to Kelly who put it in the back of the net only for the ref to rule it out for – again – too many steps. It looked right to me and the body language of the players suggested they had few complaints. A few people whooped in the crowd but the always sound policy of waiting for the green flag reaped dividends for the rest of us.

So a scrappy but entertaining first half ended with Waterford up by two points. The early part of the second half was most notable for the angst among the Wexford fans over substitutions. While Justin McCarthy brought on a steady stream of the old (Mullane), the new (Nagle) and the inbetween (Moran), John Meyler seemed in no hurry. Perhaps he had a point though, because Wexford, despite a few poor misses so typical of their hurling, were outscoring Waterford by two points to one. The backs were doing

Trojan work, particularly Jack Kennedy who was mopping up everything in the half back line, but the forwards were nowhere to be seen, and in a game dominated by backs you couldn’t afford to miss soft chances. That may seem obvious, but you can’t get away from the labouring of Eoin Kelly, who missed back-to-back easy frees midway through the half that clearly deflated the crowd who had greeted the frees like manna from heaven. Wexford only took the lead eight minutes from time and were quickly pinned back by John Mullane but had Wexford converted a penalty not long before they took the lead it could have been a lot worse. As it was there was still hope of a late equaliser as the ref signalled four minutes of injury time, but that was merely time for Shane O’Sullivan to show he had left his free taking hurley at home before the final whistle went and Wexford fans ended a frenetic encounter like they had won the All-Ireland. Or so the man next to my wife said. Perhaps they got a little too excited, but as a team who were walloped twice by Kilkenny last year they were entitled to see beating the Munster and League champions in their own back (scrap) yard as evidence of progress.

As for Waterford, the message was inverted from normal. The backs were fine, particularly Kennedy and Michael Walsh doing his cover-every-blade-of-grass routine, but the forwards were poor. The odds are that those statements will be reversed by the summer, but surely it’s easier for the backs to go wrong than for the forwards to go right.

Waterford: Clinton Hennessy, Eoin Murphy, Declan Prendergast (Kevin Moran), Aidan Kearney, Brian Phelan, Richie Foley, Jack Kennedy, Michael Walsh (capt), Shane O’Sullivan (0-1f), Brian Farrell (John Mullane, 0-1), Seamus Prendergast (0-1), Eoin Kelly (1-1f), Shane Walsh (0-1; Jamie Nagle), Dan Shanahan (1-1), Shane Casey (1-1).

Wexford: Dermot Flynn, Malachy Travers, Keith Rossiter, Paul Roche (Denis Morton), Richie Kehoe (0-1), Willie Doran, Diarmuid Lyng, Michael Jacob, John O’Connor (0-1; T O’Dwyer), Stephen Nolan (1-3, 1-2f), Eoin Quigley (1-2), John Breen (0-1; David Redmond), MJ Furlong (Pierce White), David O’Connor, Rory Jacob (0-4).

HT: Waterford 3-4 (13) Wexford 2-6 (12)

Referee: John Sexton (Cork)

I left the match report in my other trousers

Or, more accurately, on my work computer. Thoughts on Sunday to follow on the morrow, I’m not avoiding it. Honest . . .

Waterford v Wexford, 10 February 2008

A bit of Ardmore timber

Won’t someone please think of the children, that dastardly Seamus Prendergast is force-feeding his opposite number ash! Alas, such commitment to the cause did not translate into success as Waterford were beaten by Wexford by a single point, 2-12 to 3-8.

The rise and rise of Wexford . . . camogie

On the day that I hope the Waterford knock seven bells out of their adult male representatives in the NHL, I’d like to congratualate the young women of St Mary’s Secondary School in New Ross on winning their Leinster camogie final yesterday. I’m reliably informed that the school is camogie mad, so it’s good that such fanaticism is being rewarded.