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Sport
Sept 12, 2018 9:33:15 GMT
Post by Maolsheachlann on Sept 12, 2018 9:33:15 GMT
Is anybody on the forum a sports fan? I've noticed there have been very few discussions of sport here.
On the bus in today, I was reading a long article on my smartphone about Graeme Souness's tenure as Liverpool manager in the 90's. Interesting character. A flinty Scot who was incredibly successful as a player and then turned around the fortunes of Rangers in Scotland, famously signing the first Catholic player, who doubtless is a daily communicant, since there was such a fuss about his religous faith.
My interest in him lies in the fact that I "supported" Liverpool in the nineties, when I was very interested in soccer, after my interest was roused by Ireland's first World Cup Finals in 1990. In the time I supported them, Liverpool went from being all-conquering to complete failures. (Every cause I support, however, passively tends to plummet in its fortunes. This is why I'm amazed Leave won the Brexit referendum and Trump won the 2016 election. But 2016 was a special year, it seems. Anyway, I digress.)
It's very interesting that, in time he went from playing in England (in the seventies/eighties), to managing there (in the nineties), he said players had become much more cossetted and emotional, that they had to be managed and have their hands held rather than just told what to do.
I rarely watch sports now, but soccer is still my favourite to watch. I sometimes think I would enjoy indoor American games like basketball and ice hockey.
I have an article on strange sports coming out in Ireland's Own at some point.
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Sport
Sept 13, 2018 8:42:58 GMT
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Post by Séamus on Sept 13, 2018 8:42:58 GMT
Is anybody on the forum a sports fan? I've noticed there have been very few discussions of sport here. On the bus in today, I was reading a long article on my smartphone about Graeme Souness's tenure as Liverpool manager in the 90's. Interesting character. A flint Scot who was incredibly successful as a player and then turned around the fortunes of Rangers in Scotland, famously signing the first Catholic player, who doubtless is a daily communicant, since there was such a fuss about his religous faith. My interest in him lies in the fact that I "supported" Liverpool in the nineties, when I was very interested in soccer, after my interest was roused by Ireland's first World Cup Finals in 1990. In the time I supported them, Liverpool went from being all-conquering to complete failures. (Every cause I support, however, passively tends to plummet in its fortunes. This is why I'm amazed Leave won the Brexit referendum and Trump won the 2016 election. But 2016 was a special year, it seems. Anyway, I digress.) It's very interesting that, in time he went from playing in England (in the seventies/eighties), to managing there (in the nineties), he said players had become much more cossetted and emotional, that they had to be managed and have their hands held rather than just told what to do. I rarely watch sports now, but soccer is still my favourite to watch. I sometimes think I would enjoy indoor American games like basketball and ice hockey. I have an article on strange sports coming out in Ireland's Own at some point. Not an avid sports fan, but I take general interest from a distance, seeing that it's part of civilisation and can't be ignored anyway. I'm sure that there's other things that I'd rather see the tens of thousands of people who attend matches doing with themselves, but we can always reflect far back on The Colosseum and, not so far back,at Taliban-controlled-Afghanistan where the same crowds gathered for scourging, stoning and beheading, and be thankful for the civilised amusements of today. One of the most touching public moments I've come across happened at a sports event two years ago when Luke Beverage Australian Football coach, after the unexpected grand final victory of his team took off his medal and unofficially awarded it to Bob Murphy, his injured captain (the whole story is too long-winded to go into- the first big Australian Rules fan I really became friendly with was a Neo-Catechumenal Way priest who was a great fan of these, the Western Bulldogs as he was from rough Western Melbourne, their main fan base, so I might have felt extra-emotional on his account)
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Post by Séamus on Sept 18, 2018 12:21:35 GMT
Rathfarnham man Jim Stynes, who had played GAA football as a youngster, became so important in Australian rules football that, after his premature death a few years ago (of cancer) @45,a sculpture of him was commissioned and is apparently near the MCG grounds in Melbourne. He became a minor news story again yesterday when Foxsport reported that a Melbourne Demons fan draped a red and navy-blue club scarf on his tombstone in Wexford. Being in the semi-finals makes this their most successful year in some time, the Demons' award a team prize now called the Jim Stynes Medal
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Post by Séamus on Oct 29, 2018 3:32:57 GMT
Vale: Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and staff, now confirmed dead. Owner of Leicester City and O.H.Leuven football teams, I know nothing of the economics of sports teams to wonder at it taking a Thai millionaire to save a European team, but: Rather tragic and, seeing that he made his money largely through a duty-free empire, he can be said to have been part of an Irish business creation.
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Post by Séamus on Nov 6, 2018 12:03:18 GMT
Vale:Irish racehorse TheCliffsofmoher, put down after injures at today's prestigious Melbourne Cup,apparently, a not-uncommon reality with horseracing. And some thought the wet weather would work in his favour. Volumes could be written in the ethics of animal sport, (greyhounds are said to have out even tougher) but it's worth reading the memoirs of Irish language commentator Micheál O'Muircheartaigh concerning his visit to a Scandinavian greyhound racing event to hear how it can be can all be done with great dignity to man and beast alike.
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Post by Séamus on Nov 18, 2018 7:06:52 GMT
The Saturday races in Perth yesterday featured a 1500m win by an Irish jockey, Dan O'Connor, who the paper highlighted as being originally a steeplechase jockey, who changed to flat-track after emigrating. Steeplechase would be probably rarer in Australia,good for him........ Before seeing this,I just happened to be reading a review about a recently reprinted/updated book GAELS IN THE SUN GOLDEN JUBILEE EDITION about a 1968 tour of Australia by Meath football team, who had won the All-Ireland before this. They seem to have won most of the games in Perth, Sydney, Adelaide and MelbourneX2, I couldn't make out whether it was pure Gaelic football or the hybrid game, such as they play against Australia now. A photograph in the article shows the team and mastermind of the tour, Peter McDermott, himself a former 1940s/50s Meath player, stepping off a special Aer Lingus flight. Seems quite a 'special interest' publication though "copies may also be purchased at newsagents and other shops in Navan",I think you'd need to have a pretty profound sports interest!
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Sport
Nov 18, 2018 12:36:53 GMT
Post by Maolsheachlann on Nov 18, 2018 12:36:53 GMT
This might not be the thread for it, but it would be interesting to hear more generally from Séamus about Irish-Australian attitudes to Ireland, and to the kind of topics that preoccupy us here.
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Sport
Nov 20, 2018 11:35:28 GMT
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cato likes this
Post by Séamus on Nov 20, 2018 11:35:28 GMT
This might not be the thread for it, but it would be interesting to hear more generally from Séamus about Irish-Australian attitudes to Ireland, and to the kind of topics that preoccupy us here. Hmmmmmm...my brain has the tendency to freeze over when I'm asked to say something in particular.
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Post by cato on Nov 20, 2018 15:38:13 GMT
This might not be the thread for it, but it would be interesting to hear more generally from Séamus about Irish-Australian attitudes to Ireland, and to the kind of topics that preoccupy us here. Hmmmmmm...my brain has the tendency to freeze over when I'm asked to say something in particular. I hate being put on the spot or asked to go up with spontaneous witty remarks. Most people who appear to be good at this actually put in a lot of work and preparation in order to seem natural and off the cuff.
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Sport
Nov 20, 2018 15:57:48 GMT
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Nov 20, 2018 15:57:48 GMT
Hmmmmmm...my brain has the tendency to freeze over when I'm asked to say something in particular. I hate being put on the spot or asked to go up with spontaneous witty remarks. Most people who appear to be good at this actually put in a lot of work and preparation in order to seem natural and off the cuff. It reminds me of Winston Churchill's claim that all of his off-the-cuff remarks were thought up long beforehand. It's like being asked to tell a joke. The mind blanks.
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Sport
Nov 20, 2018 16:11:05 GMT
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Post by cato on Nov 20, 2018 16:11:05 GMT
Oscar Wilde's famous quotes were often shamelessly borrowed without attribution. In Melmouth the Wanderer ( which he greatly admirered) there is a theme of a hidden portrait of a dead ancestor.I presume some biographer has previously linked this theme to his famous Portrait of Dorian Gray.
And yes this has absolutely nothing to do with Sport. Sorry Seamus.
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Sport
Nov 20, 2018 21:53:45 GMT
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Nov 20, 2018 21:53:45 GMT
There is a story that once, when James MacNeill Whistler (famous for painting his mammy) said something witty, and Osar Wilde said: "I wish I'd said that", Whistler replied: "You will, Oscar. You will."
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Sport
Nov 22, 2018 9:24:55 GMT
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Post by Séamus on Nov 22, 2018 9:24:55 GMT
This might not be the thread for it, but it would be interesting to hear more generally from Séamus about Irish-Australian attitudes to Ireland, and to the kind of topics that preoccupy us here. I happened to read an interesting chapter yesterday in LEATHER SOUL, autobiographical book by (Australian) footballer Bob Murphy, "Irish (descent) on both sides, bearing one of the most common surnames in Ireland.... Somehow the penny hadn't dropped about my origins. I remember the moment all that changed, in the backstreets of Dublin. In 2002 I received a very late call-up for the Australian International Rules team. It was unexpected and a massive thrill. In a whirlwind week,I joined my teammates...for a quick training camp at Trinity College in Melbourne's East, then flew out... After overcoming jetlag and acquiring a taste for Guinness, we got to work on the round ball" One of the principal differences between the two sports is the shape of the ball. "...before we took on the Irish in front of 70,000 passionate locals in a two-test series at Croke Park we had to overcome a local team that had been thrown together for our benefit. Dublin City welcomed us to their home ground on the edge of town. It looked like a pretty rough part of Dublin" Comment: That's something coming from a Western Bulldog considering their Western Melbourne fanbase. "...As the bus rolled into the car park behind the pitch,a piercing Whack!Whack!Whack! sounded, something was ricocheting off the bus windows. I looked out to see five or six kids standing on a small embankment each with a rock in hand...our unofficial welcome party. I looked closer at the handful of ratbags...with their mousey brown hair, red cheeks and freckle-dotted cheeks they looked familiar. Rewind a decade or so and any one of them could have been me! OH BOY,I REALLY AM IRISH!" emphasis in original "I soaked up the culture of Dublin and Galway like a sponge and was regularly caught off-balance by the Irishness in me. It wasn't just the way I looked, it was everything-the humour, the music, the storytelling the mood swings, it was all there. For the first time I realised how much Irish culture had seeped into our home.... After we beat the Irish in front of their home crowd in THE MOST AMAZING STADIUM I'VE EVER PLAYED IN (Croke Park this time) I came home and YES I think I had changed... Back in Melbourne I found myself again and again turning to things were undoubtedly Irish in spirit...over the next 15 years,I became fascinated..." emphasis mine that time
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Sport
Feb 6, 2019 9:04:32 GMT
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Post by Séamus on Feb 6, 2019 9:04:32 GMT
Realistically no hope left for the life of Emiliano Sala... RIP... Probably sad and pathetic of his girlfriend to suggest sabotage, but it does shed a glimmer of light on the darker side of life as lived in the professional sports world.
To mark the UAE papal visit(one of the few countries where hawking remains popular) it might be worth noting a line which Walter Scott put in the mouth of a Waverly character: "why should there be no more hawking for you? Why man, what were our life without Sports? Thou knowest the jolly old song- And rather would Allan in dungeon lie Then live at large where falcon cannot fly And Allan would rather lie in Sexton's pound Then live where follow'd not the merry hawk and hound" I'm sure some activist groups would question how merry the 'hawk (or falcon) and hound' are, but I saw once, in a newspaper travel column,a story on a UAE rehab hospital for sporting birds of prey. As well as being an attraction for the public, they seem to be well looked after.
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Sport
Apr 15, 2019 5:02:38 GMT
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Post by Séamus on Apr 15, 2019 5:02:38 GMT
Congratulations to Perth Glory, particularly to Dublin-born striker Andy Keogh who has been the face of the team for a few years now. Yesterday's win over Newcastle Jets assures them their first Australian soccer Premiership Plate. Later this year they'll play visiting Manchester United in a display game. Not sure about that one.
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