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One of the more nauseating media spectacles in recent times was when Ireland played England in rugby in Croke Park for the first time. The levels of ludicrosity were turned up to 11 when Girvan Dempsey dived over for the first try and some wag noted that it was the spot where Michael Hogan had been shot by the Black & Tans on Bloody Sunday, thus demonstrating that we had finally grown up as a nation. Even more so than when we finally grew up as a nation when we removed the ban on divorce from the Constitution. But not as much as when we will finally grow up as a nation whenever the next requirement for us to grow up a nation hits the collective hack in-tray / inbox.

But speaking of immaturity, am I the only one who upon hearing the words “Croke Park” being uttered by a British accent does an immediate double-take? With the Munster – Leinster clash in the Fizzy Dutch Pilsner Cup coming up this weekend we’ve been hearing it said quite a lot in that accent from the likes of John Inverdale, which is quite separate  from all the times I hear it in, uh, my own house.

It’s not as if it bothers me that soccer and rugby are being played in Croke Park (well, not much). It simply seems alien to have the Brits, who for years were blissfully unaware of the existence of the GAA, to be referring to it at all. It’s like the episode from the cartoon The Critic, when Jay Sherman decided to moonlight as a trucker. He is accosted by a Sheriff Buford T Justice-style lawman and his simpleton goon and, far from being made to squeal like a pig, is lauded for his cosmopolitan city ways from the Mostly Mozart-loving hicks. It just doesn’t seem right, and it never will.

Move over, Giles and Dunphy

Given this blog’s utterly cack record in the predictions department, a little bit of forgiveness will need to be sought for bigging up the one observation that looks sound. Paul Flynn’s flat townie drawl and borderline stoner gaze makes him an unlikely candidate to be a successful TV panellist. So credit to RTÉ for giving him a chance, because his penchant for incisive analysis commented upon here shone through last night on Sunday Sport. It was clear he actually watched the game, picking up on important switches and personnel changes. This may sound obvious, but it stood in stark contrast to Michael Duignan’s the-boy-done-good patter. His reference to the 1988 League and how Kilkenny and Tipperary experienced different results in the final from the group stages spoke of either a geek’s love of facts or a willingness to do some research, either (or both) of which will stand him in good stead. With Babs Keating on the radio being his usual garrulous self, it was a good day for hurling comment.

And what of the match? It didn’t seem to matter until it looked like we we were about to dish out a Kilkenny-style beatdown. Then, when Cork began another one of those ridiculous comebacks that have characterised their recent efforts, it suddenly mattered. Of the last five inter-county matches involving the 2008 panel, they gave the opposition a big start on each occasion. Only once – against Kilkenny – did they fail to overhaul said lead. Were we going to be like Galway, Clare (twice) and Limerick before us and succumb to their indomitable spirit (however much you might loathe  the clowns, you have to doff the cap to their never-say-die attitude), or were we going to be like Kilkenny and pile on the pain?

In the end, almost predictably, we were neither. It was good that we leapt out into a 13 point lead, it was bad that we let them back into it, it was good that we held on when the match approached Championship intensity in the last quarter – another thing Paul Flynn had the wit to pick up on. Two steps forward, one step back.

Time spent blogging is time not spent jamming

With today’s match against Cork being a dead rubber, only interesting in terms of the interminable strike furore down Leeside and the question of how good this Cork team are (on the evidence of their last outing, one of the answers is ‘not as good as they think they are’), I’m going to do something more productive today. Party on, dudes!

Getting the Humph

Tallow are relaunching their club website on May 10, and if the regular output is anything like the quality of this initial offering from their club notes, it’ll be one to watch out for:

What Goes Round……..

In the aftermath of the merciless drubbing we received at the hands of Kilkenny in the All-Ireland Final, sports writer Tom Humphries didn’t spare Waterford. In fact the vaunted Irish Times journalist put the boot well and truly in to us at a time when our spirits were at their lowest. In his Irish Times Lockerroom column on the Monday following The Sunday of our Humiliation, Humphries more or less said that the Waterford players got their comeuppance for daring to challenge the infallibility of Justin McCarthy. Implicit, no it was more like explicit, in Humphries’ writing was that Waterford players were an ungrateful, unworthy bunch who got what was coming to them. Karma, you called it Tom. It was a low blow, a cheap shot and unworthy of this talented scribe. It was low and cheap mainly because it was false but also for the timing of its delivery. Tom Humphries was well enough acquainted with what was going on behind the scenes in Waterford hurling to have known better. The very limited action taken by the Waterford players at the time was an honourable course of action which was forced on them by weak and indecisive leadership at county board level.

Imagine my surprise then when the Cork players embarked on militant action and the loquacious Humphries emerged as their main cheerleader. No more noble band of hurling brothers ever graced our green fields sayeth the Humph, yes, honourable men in search of truth and justice (unlike the wretched upstarts in Waterford). There was little honourable about the whole sordid mess which bitterly divided clubs and even families in Cork. Nether was there anything honourable about the conclusion which left a hurling hero in tatters while the real object of the players’ disgruntlement remained intact. The problem hasn’t gone away you know. (I couldn’t figure out if it was a grin or a grimace on Frank’s face in Nowlan Park Sunday)

Was it Karma at play in Nowlan Park yesterday Tom? I’m not saying it was. You were there and wrote about the game, brilliantly as usual. There was no mention of Karma. I scanned your Lockerroom column. Nothing there either. But then you couldn’t .You had championed their cause and defended their defiance. It would be the ultimate act of betrayal to turn on them now at their lowest ebb. You would only do that to Waterford…

(H/t to gain feeds over at AFR.)

One doesn’t have to agree with all of it – the Waterford panels behaviour was ‘honourable’? Er. . . – to be able to agree with the general sentiment.  If what happened to Waterford in September was a case of bad karma, then what happened to Cork last Sunday has to fall into the same category, right? Tom Humphries is a great hack, but his closeness to the Cork strikers has caused him to lose a proper sense of journalistic perspective, and well done to the Tallow scribe for pulling him up over it.

Mine’s a half

As the defeats began to accumulate in recent weeks, it was comforting that the spectre of relegation was well distant. Clare were pointless, Cork were both pointless and toothless, and surely we were not likely to go through each of the matches against the mid-table teams without picking up a single point. We’d be fine.

Such thoughts seemed like so much hubris midway through the first half yesterday. With Cork having rebounded back into contention after their ‘issues’ with two fine wins, Clare’s lead over Dublin  and Limerick’s over Waterford, things suddenly looked ominous.

First port of call was double-checking how many teams would be relegated. Just the one, according to that bastion of The Truth In The News, Wikipedia. Subsequent checks in more reputable sources like the GAA’s official website (shome mishtake shurely) confirmed this. This didn’t completely eradicate fears of playing the likes of . . . better not name any names in case it returns to haunt us . . . in Division Two next season. So it was a relief to check the table and see that Clare’s points difference was -32 and Waterford’s was zero. They’d have to win each of their remainng two games by eight points and we’d have to lose ours by the same amount just for them to draw.

All that became irrelevant when Dublin secured a draw with the Banner, but it’s awful that a League campaign that should have been engergised by the win over Kilkenny petered out so badly that I was reduced to getting out the abacus to be confident of top flight matches next season. At least the match against Cork should prove to be more competitive as they try to demonstrate that massacre at Kilkenny hands – bigger than our All-Ireland final defeat! – was a blip. Unless, of course, they’ve decided that they can’t work with Denis Walsh.

Return of the Mac

The meeja often get criticised for whipping up storms of indignation where none would otherwise exist. Conflict is grist to the mill of your average hack. Which makes it all the more impressive that Justin McCarthy has kept his counsel on the manner in which he was frog-marched out of the county on which he had lavished such riches. When you see the understandable manner in which Gerald McCarthy lashed out at those who traduced him in the recent strike in Cork, it makes Justin’s silence all the more remarkable – and classy.

This is not to say that I’d rather that Justin was still in the Waterford hot seat. His time had run his course, and like many a successful manager before him the ideas that had invigorated players at first seemed stale nearly seven years on. The manner in which he left still sticks in the craw though. Having hit the ground running in previous stints with Antrim, Clare, Cork and Waterford, it doesn’t seem fanciful to think he could do the same with Limerick, All-Ireland finalists a mere two years ago. If he does, the stick the Waterford panel will receive will be merciless. The only consolation would be that Justin won’t be the type to rub salt into the wounds.

First is first, second isn’t too bad either

Chapter and verse has been written up and down the land on the antics of one Kevin Myers over the years. You can Google his name if you want to find the various assaults on his output over the years, so I’ll just limit myself to observing that Myers is the classic example of someone who thinks they are engaging in straight-talking when they are really being pig-ignorant.

A recent missive from the bould Kevin caught my eye only because it was highlighted on An Fear Rua. He was rather scornful of the hoopla surrounding Ireland’s Grand Slam success because no-one outside of Ireland gives a monkeys. It seems that:

Even if you asked an average Englishman or Frenchman, with a reasonable interest in rugby, which team won this year’s rugby Grand Slam, they might possibly know today, (though I doubt it, for their countries notoriously take an interest only in their own sporting achievements) but they certainly won’t by next Saturday.

I find it hard to believe that anyone with a ‘reasonable’ interest in the sport would not know this. I would ‘fess to only having a passing intererst in American sports yet I could effortlessly tell you who won last season’s Super Bowl, World Series and NBA (would struggle with the NHL – but that’s only the second biggest NHL in the world). But even if it were true, it would only serve to demonstrate the increasingly twisted value system we have when it comes to sport where the big prize is the only thing that matters.

This is pertinent in the context of Waterford. We spent years hacking away in the trenches winning absolutely naff all, then when we finally get some success in Munster and the National League it gets belittled by all and sundry because it isn’t the All-Ireland. It’s not just trolls from Tipperary who think this way. Many Waterford folk seem to subscribe to the idea attributed to Bill Shankly that ‘first is first, second is nowhere’.

Was this attitude always so prevalent? Perhaps the mind is playing tricks on me in my dotage, but having been present before the platform when John Treacy brought home an Olympic silver medal from Los Angeles, I think we were not always so Manichean. At the risk of sounding Zen, people could do with lowering their expectations from their team. Or better still, from hacks.