A Different View
Back Door Turns All-Ireland Race into a Sporting Maze
There was a time when the All-Ireland football and hurling championship was a simple affair – you played the teams in your own province and the four winners played semi-finals before the final took place in Croke Park at the beginning or end of September.
But now you’d need a degree in actuarial studies to keep up with it.
Firstly, the fact that you lose doesn’t mean you’re out – it just means a more circuitous and scenic route to September.
And that’s fair enough for two reasons – it gives players who put in enormous efforts the chance to enjoy a championship that lasts longer than 70 minutes.
And it means extra dosh for the GAA.
In fairness to the Association, it’s not like they have Sepp Blatter in charge – the money goes into the grassroots because there isn’t a parish in Ireland without a GAA club. And there are parts of the country that now have floodlights, for example, when a generation ago they were thrilled to have electricity.
Next conundrum – what to do with Galway’s hurlers given that there’s no one interested in taking them on in Connacht?
You can try them in Munster for a while – and they did. And then you can try them in Leinster – and they are.
So far so palatable – until you come to the draw for the qualifiers.
Even more bizarrely they do this live on radio when in reality you’d need four television screens and an abacus. Because there are more rules and regulations than you’d find in the Ku Klux Klan. There would appear to be at least three bowls – or ‘pots’ – for each draw; one for one group of teams, one for the other, and one for the venue. Which is fine.
But then there are teams in Pot A who cannot play Pot B because they’ve played them already and there are teams in either pot who cannot be at home because they’ve either been there recently or they are the subject of a barring order.
There’s a guy who will explain all of this to you in a way that is best compared to the bank manager droning on about house insurance in that excellent ad on the telly. And – having lost the will to live – the best you can grasp is that you can’t meet a county if three of the players from that team have holidayed in the other county in last three years.
There also appears to be a rule that counties beginning with C are separated, and teams with more than three Sagittarians in their squad have to either drop one of them or forfeit home advantage. The fact that you’re effectively ruled out of meeting any of your neighbours almost inevitably condemns you to a tour of Ireland only previously experienced by a showband on dark Winter nights back in the ’50s and ’60s.
And after a couple of excursions into Injun country, you might survive to rejoin those teams who opted for the more traditional route to just simply win their games in the provincial championships. They’ve been away on holidays, built a house, sent the children to college and taken a night course in wood turning while they waited for the rest to come through what is euphemistically known as the ‘back door’.
So by now the teams who – by virtue of defeat in May or June 30 years ago – would have been three months out of the All-Ireland series are now back in the running to be crowned All-Ireland champions all over again.
For more of Dave’s view of ‘championships’ see this weeks Tribune here.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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