We are comfortable amongst our own. This blog is our blanket, our family, our haven. All our highs, our lows and doubts are ventilated and assuaged back into belief and faith. There comes a day, though, when we can look inward and forget that life outside our personal bubble goes on and maybe, just maybe, that the bus and journey […]
With about eight minutes left in the drawn All-Ireland final I espied Maurice Deegan running the line in front of me. I had not passed heed on him prior to that. One of the Dublin backroom team sidled up to him, like a guy starts chatting to you at the bus stop. Deegan smiled as he listened, one eye on […]
The manager stayed up all night. His keeper, his loyal custodian, had contributed to three vital scores against them. What to do, how to do it, he mused. A rocky league and some disgruntled supporters had ensured his credit rating was almost in debit. “Bugger it” he thought and rolled the dice. Thirteen Premiership titles, two Champion League titles and […]
In the film Heat we have an iconic coming together of two greats in what’s known as the Restaurant Scene. De Niro, the bad guy, Pacino, the cop, come face to face. They talk, the scene is mesmerising. Both, though on opposite sides, have a lot in common. I suspect they even like each other. Towards the end of that […]
Let’s dissolve two narratives taking root at the moment. They are that Mayo are fortunate to be in an All-Ireland final and secondly they have had a handy run there. Narrative number one is Mayo are in another All-Ireland final because six of the seven teams they have met so far weren’t good enough to beat them. This is despite […]
The recent success of the Mayo U21s ushered in the end of a long winter and the dawn of a promising summer. One of the contributors to the blog asked if those U21s were the first from Mayo since 1950/51 to have won two All-Ireland winners’ medals. Sometimes I am sad at the lack of connection and history we have […]
“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words it is war minus the shooting.” So said George Orwell. So, are we serious about sport or are we sportsmen? There is a huge difference. For all Mayo’s frontline battling, […]
Jose Mourinho fascinates me. Never a player of note, Jose started out as Bobby Robson’s translator at Barcelona. The rest is history. Like most ultra successful people, Jose has the bully’s streak. His great achievements come, often, tainted with cheapness. His treatment of the Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro smacked of chauvinistic boorishness. His undoubted brilliance comes tainted with a price. […]
It’s not dropping back that worries me, no, it’s the standing still that makes me nervous. Mayo are at a level comfortably ahead of most counties and on a given day equal to Dublin and Kerry. That they will remain there bar a collapse of catastrophic proportions is a given. But remaining there no longer cuts the mustard. Kerry, Kilkenny, […]
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”. Oh yeah? Well, let me tell you that as a child growing up, as a young man and as a tax serf in later life, words often left me completely bereft. Ireland in recent years has been convulsed with scandal after scandal. Clerical abuse, unmarried mothers hidden away, their children […]