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A Different View

The drama of Deadline Day – when reason goes out the window

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Sky Sports viewers will be very familiar with a man called Jim White, who is about to come into his own for the one day of the year that his station turns him into a star – just because he has a plethora of mobile phones.

The secret is that, on these phones, he claims to have the numbers of all of the managers, agents and footballers in the Premiership – as well as the ones who might be on their way in or out.

And the reason this is important for just one 24 hour period a years is that Deadline Day is on the horizon – and if you’re not a football fan, that means absolutely nothing to you…..but if you are a fanatic, it’s a day worth taking off work just so you can vegetate in front of the telly.

This year’s Transfer Deadline Day is next Monday week,  and when the curtain comes down on this day of days at 11pm, millions will have been spent on stars and journeymen, all in the hope of winning – or at least staying in – the Premiership.

It’s the day when the football world goes into overdrive, when millions are paid for players you’ve never previously heard of but who have suddenly become the dynamo of your team’s Champions League aspirations.

It’s already happening of course and it’s a strange phenomenon; this week, for example, it looked like my old team Liverpool were going to sign a Brazlian called Willian, who frankly I’d never heard of before two weeks’ ago and even then I thought he was the Black Eyed Peas guy off the UK version of the Voice.

But Spurs nipped in at the last minute to secure his signature and you suddenly felt slightly bereft over someone you’d only recently even heard of.

And as ridiculous as that sounds, it gets even worse on Monday week when the football world is gripped with more rumours than the Dail bar on budget day.

Jim White is the man officially charged with whipping all of this into a complete frenzy, so much so that his arrival at work on this day of all days becomes in itself a news story.

There is a camera positioned at the entrance to Sky Sports to capture Jim talking simultaneously on three phones, and smiling that smile of reassurance that tells football fans they are in safe hands now.

Jim will breathlessly report the covert arrival at a Midlands airport of the flying winger (previously unheard of outside of his own house) from a French third division club who might just be the answer to some Championship outfit’s prayers.

Fans get into the mood by texting in reports of spotting Messi outside Highbury or a bloke with a nose like Zlatan Ibrahimović hovering with intent around Old Trafford.

Fans get wind of a centre-half from the Ivory Coast who didn’t warrant a reference on FIFA 14 two days ago – but now he’s the solution to that leaky defence, according to someone who knows someone who saw a video of him training at the African Cup of Nations.

And given that there’s dodgy Russian and Arab money sloshing around the football world now like detritus on the top of a treatment plant, these previously unheralded stars of the football world are signed for the price of a small country.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune

If you don’t know who you are, the door staff have no chance

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Dave O'Connell

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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Connacht Tribune

Eurovision is just a giant party that could never cause offence

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Dave O'Connell
Dave O'Connell

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.

 

 

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Connacht Tribune

Tapping is contactless – but it’s soulless too

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Dave O'Connell
Dave O'Connell

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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