Twice, in fact. And, as Mrs Doyle would say, it was that bad ‘f’ one and all. The Larry in question was Larry Tompkins and he was a guest on Dessie Ah Now! Cahill’s half-hour stint on Radio 1 yesterday evening. I can’t point you to a link for it because the lazy fuckers (oops!) in RTE haven’t uploaded yesterday evening’s programme yet. (Here’s the link to Drivetime – you’ll need to navigate from there yourself. Best leave it a few days.)

Anyways. Larry was on to talk about the Cork players’ strike and, when he got going, he launched into quite an emotional plea to the players to reconsider their position and to give Teddy Holland and his selectors a chance (Setanta has picked up the story – here it is). In doing so, he got all sentimental and talked about what pride he used to take in donning the county jersey (so much, Lar, that you donned two of them in your time. Boom! Boom!). It was then, in his still-pronounced Kildare burr, that he said the bold ‘f’ word, twice in rapid succession. And him on the radio too.

Now, far be it from me to come over all censorious on matters of uttered profanities. I’m even known to stumble the odd time myself on that particular obstacle, though never on national radio. What was really gas was Dessie’s reaction, which was was something along the lines of “um, ah, well, ah, Larry, that’s um, ah, obviously a, um, ah, strongly-held, eh, um, view”. How the fuck did that clown ever get a job on the radio?

As regards the substantive issue itself, I think Larry’s right: the players are taking the piss big time and they’re doing nobody any favours with the stance they’re taking. Sure, it must be enormously frustrating to have to deal with a bunch of numskulls like the Cork County Board but they are the County Board and they can, to a large extent, do what they like (as we well know in our own patch). The backstairs peace process that appears to be underway – whereby the players resume training under Teddy Holland with the promise that the whole arrangement gets looked at again later in the year – seems a sensible way forward. Nobody is winning with the current impasse. Except Kerry, the hoors, as it’ll only help to speed them on their way to an even easier three-in-a-row. And we don’t fucking want that, do we?

In other news, here’s a very interesting proposal from Dublin’s hurling manager, Humphrey Kelleher, about how he reckons the hurling championship should be restructured. I think he’s right and that, as we discussed on this site last year, the same thinking needs to be applied to the football version as well.