Revenge is a dish best served cold

Last February I came to the conclusion that the settlement of the Cork strike represented a crushing victory for the players. How naive was this sentiment as it seems the GAA’s version of the most cunning, the most ruthless, the most brilliant of them all was content to play the long game. What seemed at the time as a bonus prize – getting an input into choosing the manager – has turned out to be a booby trap as the players have to either like the reappointment of Gerald McCarthy courtesy of a phalanx of County Board nominees or lump it. They clearly don’t like it, but given they can’t go on strike (at least not without looking completely dishonourable), it looks like they’ll have to lump it.

Ger Mac’s reappointment cannot be seen as a meritorious one. A record of five defeats and no trophies in two years of Championship hurling, including – snigger – losing twice to Waterford in the same year, would do for most managers. Richie Bennis only lost three matches in his tenure this time around as Limerick manager and got the heave-ho in a most undignified manner. In Cork, it should be a hanging offence. Yet Ger’s reward (punishment?) is a further two years in charge. The main reason he has been reappointed is to let the players know who that there can only be one master in Cork GAA, and it isn’t Donal Óg Cusack. It will be interesting to see what strategy Donal Óg and co devise to deal with this turn of events, but whatever happens should lead to much belly laughs all around the rest of the GAA world.

Managerial murder-go-round

When the Waterford hurlers staged their heave against Justin McCarthy back in June, comparisons were made with the infamous strike the Cork hurlers and footballers staged last winter. While there were superficial similarities, the core issue was quite different. The Waterford hurlers were rising up against an individual. The respective Cork panels were revolting against the entire body politic of the GAA; indeed, they were at great pains to emphasise that they had no issue with the personalities involved (that didn’t stop their supporters casting online aspersions against Teddy Holland, but in fairness to the Cork players they didn’t waver from their position and they can’t control the trolls, nor should they be expected to). You can argue about which is worse – I know where my vote on that matter is – but the differences between the situations are clear and unarguable.

Well, the situation in Waterford now has a companion in the departure of John Meyler as Wexford hurling manager. Faced with a situation where the players refused to play for the manager, the County Board decided to fire the manager.

It’s not unheard of in GAA history – Brian McDonald memorably faced an open letter from the Mayo football panel where they excoriated his management style, not least the indignity of pushing a car round a car park as training – but the proximity of two senior panels behaving in the same manner suggests it is becoming more common. At the risk of sounding like one of the tinfoil hat brigade, it’s easy to speculate that many managers are relieved of their duties after their counties exit from the Championship after a quiet consultation with the players, or at least the superstar ones who are to be found in even the lowliest of inter county panels.

So this looks like the future in the GAA, and it ain’t right. Watching the Wexford panel warm down after they had beaten Waterford in the League this year, there didn’t seem to be any personality issues as they cheerfully engaged in an activity that makes players look utterly daft. It’s only when the Kilkenny train smashed into them that the personality issues became a problem. As per above, we can instantly dismiss the statements for and against John Meyler online. If players had a problem with Meyler it was their responsibility to walk away from the panel, not collectively spit their dummy out.

The one consolation from the Wexford situation is that it makes the manner in which Justin was dispatched look almost dignified – this report on RTÉ tells a tale of county tearing itself apart. With the players in each county no longer a bunch who show up after the saving of the hay but a coherent group throughout the summer, it would be a strong County Board that could drive a wedge between any panel set on a course of action.

Kelly Hero

And after the revelation of all of one hour ago that the All Stars are not awaited with baited breath by the nominees, an even bigger shock occurs as my predictions about Waterford’s chances of success come to pass – if you think that’s too harsh, witness last year’s effort at prognostication – as Eoin Kelly picks up Waterford’s lone bit of bronze. I stand over my feeling that John Mullane would have been a more worthy winner, but well done to Kelly who bounced back from some woeful performances from the dead ball in the League to be the top scorer in the Championship, scoring a goal in each non-Munster match along the way. Well done, Eoin.

Full list of winners here.

Can you spot a Waterford hurler from ten paces?

Seeing some man tonight who looked like Tony Browne made me wonder, seeing as he really should be in Dublin.

Unless . . . they know the All Stars before they’re announced! Who’d have thunk?

The shock of the new

The senior county championship is entering the final furlongs and thanks to a truly astonishing work of Wiki-scholarship by ManFromDelmonte, those of us who take it all a bit casual can keep track of it. With Ballygunner’s defeat at the hands of Tallow and Mount Sion long gone after a woeful performance in the group stage, we have five teams left who between them have won the princely total of 12 championships. There doesn’t seem to be any causation between the competitiveness of a county championship and success at inter county level – Crossmaglen Rangers’ dominance in Armagh, for example, doesn’t seem to have harmed their county’s standing – but it’s nice to see the wealth being shared now and again.

It had to happen . . .

The 2009 Munster Championship draw took place along with all the other senior action tonight, and no doubt the pundits will be braying with delight at the prospect of Waterford crossing swords with Limerick and their new manager, one J McCarthy of Passage West. This is good, as it should distract from the fact that it is a blissfully soft draw with the three best teams in Munster last year bundled in the other half of the competition and Cork having to play Tipp in the first round.

In the football, we see the pleasure / pain principle at work as Waterford’s reward should they overcome Cork would be a tie against Kerry. C’est la vie.

The Munster draws in full:

Hurling
Quarter-final:
Cork v Tipperary
Semi-finals:
Waterford v Limerick
Clare v Cork or Tipperary

Football
Quarter-finals:
Tipperary v Limerick
Waterford v Cork
Semi-finals:
Tipperary or Limerick v Clare
Waterford or Cork v Kerry

Ode on the Uefa Cup

Sitting down at the telly last Tuesday for a short break from counting every grain of sand on a hurricane-whipped Welsh beach, I flicked to Eurosport for the draw for the group stages of the Uefa Cup. At the time it was obvious that Portsmouth were the big winners, pulling the plum that is Milan out of the pie. But even at the time it struck me how exotic and exciting the whole thing seemed. Villa were going to be playing PSG, which brought of memories of the tub-thumping Cup Winners Cup semi-final in 1997 when Liverpool came a whisker away from overturning a 3-0 first leg deficit. That game was certainly more memorable than our seemingly interminable games against Marseilles in recent years. And look at Spurs, playing Dinamo Zagreb. Their fans are mad, it would certainly be more fun playing them than PSV for the sixth time in only three seasons.

Remember when all European draws had that frission of tension brought about by venturing into the unknown? When Liverpool tripped up against Bradford on the last day of the 1999/2000 season to miss out on the Champions League, I consoled myself with the idea that the implosion at the end of that season demonstrated we were incapable of having a tilt at the main prize and that the Uefa Cup might prove more fruitful.

And how fruitful was that? We did barely enough in the early rounds to suggest we were going to get past the inevitably improved teams we’d run into later on, but each time we did just enough to keep going. The excitement was almost overwhelming, to the point where the late drama against Roma at Anfield when the ref gave a penalty then changed his mind led me to quite literally go home from a night out and have a lie down. Six successive two-legged, winner-takes all ties against progressively harder teams from Rapid Bucharest to Barcelona, and it all culminated in that night in Dortmund when we roared to all of Europe that we were back.

It was ace, and an object lesson to the dreary sameiness of the Champions League in how Europe should be done, what it is that made European football so great. Naturally I’m not advocating we drop into this exciting cauldron. I want us to be at the very top, and the Uefa Cup is not the very top. But perhaps the expanded Europa League will invigorate the competition, make being in it less of a consolation prize and more something to relish. And it might even make this ditty (author sadly lost to the mists of time; please let me know via the forum if you know their identity) less poignant.

Where have you gone, Dynamo Dresden? (to the tune of ‘Mrs Robinson’ by Paul Simon)

And here’s to you, Slovan Liberec
Liverpool loves you more than you will know (wo ho ho)
God bless you please Rapid Bucharest
Liverpool holds a place for those we play,
(Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey)

Shanks took us into Europe back in 1965
A dodgy ref cost us the game
But Anfield’s famous songs they kept on belting out
As Inter shook to the Kop’s name

And here’s to you Paris Saint Germain
Bottles of wine just a pound a throw (wo ho ho)
God bless you please Dynamo Kiev
Expensive but the trip was worth the pay,
(Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey)

We got to know Ferencvaros and Eintracht Frankfurt fans
We helped them drink the night away.
Look around and all they’d see were banners made of red.
The famous Kopites singing off their heads.

Allez allez les vertes St Etienne,
Moenchengladbach, Bruges we so miss you (you hoo hoo)
Where are you now Polands’ Widzew Lodz
The teams Bob’s lads flew from Speke to play.
(Allez Allez Allez Allez)

Gerard had a Euro dream, the draw was never kind
Roma, Porto, Barca then Alaves
We could never beat those teams the papers always said
But we had Macca’s shiny baldy head

Joe Fagan and his Mighty Reds
Strode into Roma’s Lion’s den, (way back then)
But we had Brucie and his wobbly legs
And smokin’ Joe took the Treble away,
(hey hey hey… the Treble away)

Sitting on a sofa on a Thursday afternoon
Watching the Champions League draw on TV
Spanish, Swiss and Russian are the teams we’ll have to play
Till Sami lifts the European Cup for us in May

Where have you gone, Dynamo Dresden?
The red and white Kop still remembers you (you hoo hoo)
And we’ll sing You’ll Never Walk Alone
As Europe falls to Liverpool once again

Power to the People

Football fans are completely powerless to influence results, an observation whose most glaring exception – the Reds beating Chelsea in the 2005 European Cup; and will I ever get tired of referencing that night? I think not – only goes to prove the rule. We react to what we see on the pitch, not the other way round. The performances shape our hopes, fears and expectations. You only have to look at the way the ambitions of Newcastle United fans have crushed successive teams of managers and players, not lifted them up where eagles fly as the orthodoxy would have us believe happens, to see the truth of that.

So if you are looking for evidence that Liverpool are moving in the right direction, you could have done worse than observe my demeanour at half-time of the match against Manchester City at Eastlands. Anyone who read my pessimistic screed a few weeks back after beating Manchester United would have been forgiven for thinking I would have being slitting my wrists when Garrido rattled in that free kick. This isn’t to say that I wasn’t perturbed at the prospect of our decent start to the season coming to a crashing halt against the Premier League’s latest moneybags club. But mixed in with the despair was hope.

The hope didn’t spring from some nonsense about the spirit of Istanbul – only three of the players who started that day lined up against Citeh, a remarkable enough stat in and of itself. It was simply that this team has shown themselves to be made of stern stuff in recent weeks. After the frustration of being denied repeatedly by a small club like Stoke they would have been forgiven at half time in the derby for thinking ‘oh no, not again’. But they seemed confident that if they kept chipping away that their superior football skills would be decisive, and so it proved as Fernando ‘doesn’t score much away from home’ Torres came up trumps. For all of my previous talk of reverting to the mean, it didn’t seem outrageous that we could come out in the second half and do a number on the Mancs.

Think of it this way. At 2-0, I was confident we’d get one back. At 2-1, that we’d equalise. When they had a man sent off, I was eagerly anticipating the Reds going for the jugular which they did in most impressive fashion. When we had won, it was heartening to think that we battered a team when we had the man advantage, not an accusation you could level against us in recent times. Then I found out that the third goal had come 10 v 10, which just made it better. Heck, nothing short of a long term injury could ruin this buzz!

Darn.

I’ve always been a fatalist, preparing for the worst and therefore being ready for it if it happens. On the other hand, I’ve always been determined to extract the best out of any situation. So you might be 2-0 down against Man City, but they’re probably better under Mark Hughes than most of us expect and losing there is no shame. Compare that to the legions of online Reds who went into complete meltdown when staring defeat in the face. People were already talking about defeat before it happened, oblivious to recent robustness, the harshness of the deficit in the context of the match or trivial things like, you know, every game lasting 90 minutes.

Those people will claim that they’ve seen decent starts to the season before only to have the Reds hit the wall in true marathon fashion. This is fair enough, and I’ve been saying to my wife (to the point where she has stopped listening to me) that we seem to be only one bad result from complete implosion. But that result hadn’t happened by half time against City and – get this! – it still hasn’t happened. To make matters worse, most of the Cassandras behaved post-match as if the result were a blip and that their half time prognostications were a more reasoned analysis of what had just happened.

There is a world of difference between sounding a note of caution after a great result, whether it be beating Man Utd or coming from 2-0 down away to beat any team you can think of, and braying that the world is coming to an end because you happen to be losing at half time. Who knows, if people could learn to appreciate the distinction they might enjoy following their team a little bit more.

In your face!

I don’t normally blog about the Reds here – Liverpool posts are an eternal record of the splendiferous goings on at Shankly Gates – but with this one I can’t resist. Hat tip to AnfieldReds.