Month: March 2016

Many years ago I was walking through Blarney village with a then colleague of mine, Dan Ahern. We met this older guy that Dan knew and stopped for a chat. It turned out he was a lifelong GAA character and as far as I can remember he had some involvement with the Cork County Board. He was what I would refer to as a ‘die hard’ GAA man.

The two of them discussed football for a bit when he suddenly asked me about my involvement with sport. Dan advised him that I knew absolutely nothing about Gaelic football or hurling and that tennis was my sport of choice.

At that point he looked at me as if I had just cursed him and his entire family with the plague. His voice went up a couple of octaves. He was spitting fury and he said “Tennis, tennis? Hurling is a man’s game played by men. There’s no strawberries and cream in Croke Park”. There were a few expletives in there as well.

I had no idea what sparked that outrage because I hadn’t actually spoken a word to the guy.

I never had an interest in GAA, particularly the football side of it. Hurling is something I can watch occasionally but the football just drives me nuts. The rules, or lack of them, are hard to figure out. The number of steps you can carry the ball in the hand seems to change by the miniute. What constitutes a fair challenge by one player can be determined to be a foul immediately after. It’s the inconsistency that bothers me.

I have great respect for the guys that play the game and their level of fitness and professionalism but as a spectacle it doesn’t float my boat. I think that maybe it is a game better played than watched. Tony Davis, a friend and ex colleague of mine, used to refer to me as a Philistine. Maybe he was right.

It is important though, to recognise the important role that the G.A.A. has played and continues to play in Irish society. It has a huge network of clubs spread across the land and is involved in the life of every village and town in the country in some shape or form. It is an amazing statistic that over 40 per cent of all sports volunteers in Ireland are involved with the G.A.A.

A high percentage of women volunteers are also involved, not only with camogie and ladies football, but also in the core operation. The G.A.A. has developed an impressive network of grounds and club facilities and over 60 per cent of the total attendance at sports fixtures in Ireland is accounted for at G.A.A. games. These are impressive statistics and they just go to prove that the G.A.A. as an organisation, is a well-oiled machine.

In the GAA’s own manual for clubs, the Association itself states that: “The GAA Club is the bedrock of every Irish community and provides an organised structure from which great community spirit is generated.” It’s difficult to argue with that statement. The GAA is always a talking point for Irish people and everyone has their own opinion on the style of their team, the players and the management.

We shouldn’t underestimate the role that the GAA has also played in keeping youngsters on the straight and narrow either. It is well established that young people that are involved in sporting activities are less likely to find themselves getting into trouble. The discipline and training required to perform at a certain level in sport gives youngsters a great foundation for life.

I have to agree with my old friend from Blarney that hurling is definitely a man’s game played by men.

I once heard a Scottish friend of mine who was trying to explain hurling to a Hungarian friend of ours. He described it as being like ‘shinty with attitude’. Shinty is a cross between hockey and lacrosse and is a fast paced game where the ball spends a lot of time in the air. My Hungarian friend was a little confused.

Now, I’m not Hungarian but I may as well be when it comes to trying to understand the difference between a legal tackle in Gaelic football and an illegal one. The legal tackle seems to be open to interpretation.

The Rules of Fair Play state that a player can’t trip, punch, kick or grab an opponent, strike them with arm, elbow, hand or knee and it is completely forbidden, under punishment of a yellow card, to actually wrestle the ball from an opponent’s grip.

From what I have seen though, if those rules were to be strictly adhered to, then the most competitive part of the game would be the coin toss.

There are those who argue that interference with the rules of the game is unhelpful and ruining it as a spectacle. But I would suggest that the rules as they are at present are also spoiling it. It could also be argued that more spectators might be attracted to the game if they could understand what was actually going on. So it would seem that there is a definite issue to be resolved.

For the time being though, it is unlikely that I will be convinced to buy my first ever ticket for Croke Park any time soon. I could, at a push, be persuaded to go to a game of hurling but definitely not to a game of football. Now, if Roger Federer was playing and the G.A.A. was to introduce strawberries and cream then that would be a different story.

 

 

Ireland, it was said recently, is a great little country to do business in. It’s also a nice little country to live in as long as you are not concerned about the weather or obsessed with getting the washing dry. While we do have our share of odd balls and strange characters, we are, by and large relatively civilized. We generally tend to live and let live and we’re quick to give a helping hand to a neighbour when the need arises.

Now, you might think that this is the case everywhere else in the world but you would be wrong. There are certain people among us who seem hell bent on making life as difficult as possible for everybody else. I came across two such groups recently and their stupidity has left me completely bewildered.

The first one is called, ‘Return of Kings’. Its main man calls himself Roosh Vorek and he’s about thirty six years old and he has been widely criticized for allegedly promoting the legalisation of rape. Apparently he believes that rape should not be a problem if it takes place on private property but he has since stated that was a misinterpretation of what he actually said.

His website has some odd notions and he was, until recently, trying to spread the word of Roosh through a series of meetings across Europe. One of the proposed locations was Naas, Co. Kildare but there was so much outrage that he cancelled all the meetings. He feared for the safety of his people. He shares his ideas on how to seduce women while he promotes a male dominated world. Women, he believes, should be confined to the kitchen. As you can see, our Roosh is a real charmer.

According to his website, ‘men who live in modern Western liberal democracies under the influence of third wave feminism have a distorted view of reality’. But don’t worry about your distorted view because he goes on to say, ’Thanks to ROK and the neo-masculinity movement, we can share truths and observations about women, self, and society, waking up disillusioned men more rapidly and in greater numbers’. So at least salvation is at hand.

Or is it? Before you start to relax let’s take a look at the second group, The Ku Klux Klan. I saw a member of this outfit giving an interview recently and it was quite bizarre. Even though he wasn’t wearing his bed sheets or a pointy hat he still came across as a complete idiot. He was suggesting that Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps were very accommodating and had swimming pools and saunas and that the naughty Jews had made up the stories of the Holocaust. He said it never happened. The sad thing is that he really seemed to believe it.

Well, I visited both of these camps a few years ago and while I saw lots of unpleasant things I would have to say that I didn’t see the remains of any swimming pools. In fact, I didn’t see anything that vaguely resembled a recreation area but then maybe these naughty Jews had hidden all the evidence.

According to the Ku Klux Klan, The Knights Party USA, website, ‘the Christian way of love and law and order and love of family and nation is the way forward’. I find it a little difficult to equate the KKK with any form of Christianity given their history of hatred and violence. Their attitude towards black people, immigrants, gays, lesbians and Jews is well documented. They’re also fond of awarding themselves fancy but ridiculous titles like Imperial Wizard and Exalted Cyclops which to me conjures up an image of some nutter with an eye in the middle of his forehead.

But they are far from being comical characters and at one time they must have frightened the life and soul out of many decent people. They are famed for their lynchings and for tarring and feathering their victims and for using extreme violence. The sight of a large group of masked men on horseback carrying burning crosses must have been fairly intimidating back in the day and it would appear that they are still around.

So what do we do about them? Well as far as the Return of Kings is concerned, the best way to deal with them is to forget you ever heard the name. They are guys with serious issues hiding their identities behind a computer screen. I’m not sure how far they believe they can really progress with this nonsense but the best way to defeat them is to reduce the number of hits to their website to a dribble. Ignoring the muppets is the best way to achieve that.

As for the Ku Klux Klan, well they’re a different story. They have been in existence since the mid eighteen hundreds and they still have a certain following. Even though their numbers have decreased dramatically since the sixties there will always be a certain element of American society who will follow their cause but it would seem that they are a dying breed.

So while we occasionally complain about the weather in our little corner of the world, we should look at the positives. We will never have the Ku Klux Klan in Ireland and I’ll tell you why. They wouldn’t be able to keep their torches burning in the rain. And as well as that, as every Irish mammy knows, there’s no drying out there for those sheets. So unless the KKK are prepared to go marauding in the nip carrying soggy torches it’s unlikely we’ll ever see them over here.

 

 

St. Patricks Day is nearly upon us and it’s a day that is celebrated by Irish people across the globe. It’s an opportunity for those would be Irish and wannabe Irish to wear green and become citizens of the auld sod if only for twenty four hours. It’s a public holiday, a day off work and a time to stick a bit of green weed on your lapel and have ‘the craic’.

Paddy’s Day has become an internationally known festival, celebrating Irish culture and tradition with parades, music and sing- songs. It’s a day for dressing up in silly costumes and ridiculous hats. It’s also a day where it is almost compulsory to drink alcohol to extremes and drunkenness is not only tolerated but is encouraged.

For many, this celebration is an opportunity to meet the mates, stay out till all hours and have ‘the craic’. We can justify all types of behaviour in the name of ‘the craic’.

The pubs will be bursting at the seams and there will be no shortage of soggy floors wet from spilled drinks and over flowing urinals and occasional vomit. This will extend to the streets as the night wears on. Some will pass out and miss the worst of it and for most, the hangover the following morning will be the painful reminder of a great night had by all.

But not everyone sees the funny side of ‘the craic’. While many see the reputation of the drunken Irish as a badge of honour there are also many who are embarrassed by it.

There was a recent report in The Irish Mirror of an incident that took place on a Jetstar flight at Melbourne Airport just before takeoff. A group of “drunk and unruly” passengers were booted off the flight and it’s believed they were from Irish hurling and football teams. There was an 80 minute delay as the unruly passengers, as well as some of their pals, were marched off the plane.

You don’t have to travel to Oz to experience this type of behaviour. Any weekend in Cork City in the early hours of a Saturday or Sunday morning you will find large numbers of people gathered around Washington Street / Grand Parade after coming out of the pubs and clubs. Drunkenness is the common denominator and it’s not unusual to see incidents of disorder, including fights and assaults, taking place among the revelers waiting at fast food outlets and taxi ranks. All in the name of ‘the craic’.

RAG Week is another occasion when party goers wreak havoc on areas of the city. There is an abundance of media reports recording tales of drunken students causing mayhem and behaving with total disregard for residents. Students justify their behaviour because they are young and entitled to have a good time or because they are raising money for charity.

So why are we so out of step with the rest of the world when it comes to the consumption of alcohol? One theory I’ve heard is that Ireland has never had a café culture because our climate doesn’t lend itself to sitting outdoors as it does in other countries. So we meet indoors in the pub where it’s dry and warm and this encourages us to drink alcohol.

This is a pretty lame argument. While the weather might force us indoors a lot of the time it can hardly take the blame for our excessive drinking. When we visit other countries, the first thing many of us look for is the Irish Bar and then we proceed to behave the same way in thirty degrees of heat as we do at home.

Binge drinking and gulping shots also plays a part. This is a relatively recent phenomenon in our culture but it has established itself as the current fashion, particularly among the young. The idea seems to be to get as much alcohol into the system as quickly as possible. The fact that this often leads to oblivion and unconsciousness long before ‘the craic’ even starts seems not to matter.

A few years ago I went to Lviv in the Ukraine not too far from Kiev. This is a university city with a population of approximately of seven hundred thousand people and no shortage of young students. I stayed in a hotel with a room overlooking the large main square surrounded by wide streets which is fairly typical in that part of the world.

The square was peppered with restaurants, bars, hotels and cafes, many of them open until the early hours. In the evening time they were populated with young people, full of couples and small groups eating, drinking beers or coffees, some having ice cream but all socialising in a civilised manner.

The amazing thing about it was that while I had anticipated that the square was going to become the centre of chaos as the night wore on, the opposite was the case. I didn’t see or hear any signs of drunkenness or loud, boisterous behaviour. Everyone went home quietly and the only sound I heard at night was the occasional beeping horn of taxi cabs as they saluted each other in passing.

So it would appear that it’s not necessary to submit to an alcohol induced coma in order to have a good time. It is possible to socialise in a civilised fashion without soiling your clothing in urine and vomit. It is possible to have a laugh without making enough noise to be heard by everyone within a ten mile radius and you don’t have to beat someone to a pulp in order to rate the night as a success.

Becoming a complete mess is not a necessary requirement for having ‘the craic’…at least, not in some countries.

 

 

This photograph appeared in the Sunday Independent recently and the image continues to bother me. The child second from the left, in the blue jacket, is looking straight at the camera. He’s squatting down with his hands in his pockets and he has the face of someone older who has seen too much. It’s like a look of acceptance but they are just toddlers.

I find it difficult to get my head around the rights and wrongs of what is essentially a very confusing and complicated civil war in Syria.

It seems that Russian and Syrian government forces are fighting to take the city of Aleppo back from the rebels and the fighting there has caused thousands to make their way to the Turkish border to seek refuge.

You have the Syrian army, backed by Russian and Iranian-supported militias including Hezbollah and you have Isil militants who control eastern Syria. You have other rebels too and I’m not sure who else is involved.

Turkey is under pressure from the large number of refugees and has closed the border but will admit others in a controlled fashion.

The UN does what the UN does best and makes strong protests. It has expressed concern that access and supply routes are now cut off. It has asked Turkey to open the border and has called on other countries to help Turkey with aid.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel accused Russia of bombing civilians and Russia said it didn’t.

It is a complete mess but in the meantime, you have God knows how many children, like those in the photograph above, living in fear and confusion when they should be at home playing with their toys and their friends. They should be laughing and having fun without a care in the world. They should be in the comfort of their own homes surrounded by their families and not out in the elements hiding under trucks like frightened rabbits.

 

One evening during the summer I was sitting in a bar having a drink when four young people, two couples, came in and sat at a table and ordered some drinks. When I looked at them again I noticed that each one of them was on his or her mobile phone. I assumed that maybe they just wanted to have a quick check in to see if they had any messages or missed calls or whatever. Twenty miniutes later they were still at it.

This got me wondering what they were doing in a pub. Why didn’t they just stay at home and surf the net in the comfort of their own couch? Why meet up with another couple to sit in a bar and ignore each other? Of course they are perfectly entitled to do that and you’re right, it is absolutely none of my business.

On another occasion, I saw three young girls walking towards me on Patrick Street and each one was staring at their phone and tapping away merrily. There was no chat between them that I could see, unless they were texting or messaging each other, but maybe this is the way young people communicate with each other now.

It would appear that instant contact and access to communication and social media is as vital as oxygen for many youngsters. The idea of leaving home without their mobile is worse than leaving the house naked. A low battery is enough to bring on a panic attack and severe sweating. No internet connection is just the last straw and is probably worse than contracting a rare terminal illness. There seems to be a dread that they will miss some life changing event if they switch off for a miniute.

These kids are lucky they weren’t born a few years earlier. It is only a relatively short time since this technology became part and parcel of our social fabric. But life went on before the mobile phone and we all coped very well.

I can remember as a youngster having a big hulk of a phone on the wall in our kitchen. If it was still in use today you wouldn’t be allowed near it without a hard hat and a high vis vest because it could crush you to death if it ever fell down. We were the only house in the terrace to have one because my grandmother, who lived with us, was a midwife and had to be contactable.

This was probably in the mid-sixties and I can remember being sent out to fetch people to take a call from some far flung relative. It wasn’t unusual for someone to be carrying on a full telephone conversation next to us while we ate our dinner. Neither was it unusual for someone to come knocking on the door looking to use the phone, usually at dinner time.

I can remember sometimes my father would have a rant about the the bill if there had been a run on the phone for that period. He often threatened to pull it off the wall but he never did, probably because he would have needed a large amount of explosives. He did come up with a solution at one stage though when he bought a little metal savings box with a slot in the top of it for coins.

The idea was that whoever was using the phone would put the correct change for the call in the box. Alas this was not to be and it only proved to be a useful toy and a source of distraction. Callers would fiddle with it while they were on the phone, tapping it like a drum or pushing it around like a kid playing with a toy boat but it remained empty.

Fast forward then to the eighties, when the house phone became a standard piece of equipment in every house. It always sat in the hall for some reason but those who fancied themselves had extensions in the bedroom and the sitting room.

Where there was a phone there was also a note pad and a biro because everyone took messages. There was no such thing as voicemail. Invariably when you needed to take a message, you would discover that someone had taken the pen. This would lead to a frantic search for something to write with while at the same time trying to avoid either strangling yourself with the chord or pulling the whole thing onto the floor.

That was only thirty years ago but so much has changed in that time. The phone has now become an extension of the hand. Instant contact has made the world a smaller place and there is no information that can’t be accessed within seconds. Nobody has patience anymore. It seems that we have all become slaves to this technology and maybe we are losing out in some ways.

Many people are living their lives out on social media by constantly sending messages on the current state of their health, sharing photos of their breakfast or posting images of the cat licking its paws. They share good news, bad news and news of no interest to anybody but themselves.

So maybe that’s the reason that certain people spend all their time looking at their phones. It’s because when they do get together for a catch up they have nothing left to say to each other.

 

 

 

It seems that a group of doctors got together and decided that physical contact in rugby should be eliminated due to the fact that young people will suffer later in life from the injuries they receive. While this might seem a bit extreme there are serious concerns being raised about the nature of some of these collisions and the impact they have on the body. In particular, concussion is causing concern among those involved in the sport and despite the precautions that have been put in place to protect the players, there is still a worry about the long term implications to the players’ health.

While there is a serious side to the story, there is also something a bit silly about trying to avoid contact in a contact sport. To do that means changing the nature of the game or doing away with it entirely. Playing rugby without being able to tackle is a bit like playing hurling without a stick. So if this is the way forward then let’s look at some of the likely implications.

For the 2020 Olympic Games we could see the javelin competition being held without the javelin just to avoid anyone getting speared. So you could have the thrower going through the motions and pretending to throw and the guys marking would have to estimate where they thought the thing was likely to land and mark that spot.

The guys in the rowing competitions would have to do without their oars because those things could give someone a nasty bang on the head. So the idea is that the rowers would sit in their little boats and hold on to the sides and just float with the current. First one over the line wins.

The Marathon would also have to go I’m afraid because running on the public road is just too dangerous so all the runners would have to use tread mills within the confines of the Olympic Stadium. This would be much safer for everyone.

Boxing, fencing and gymnastics need to be addressed to but I’m working on it.