Nothing Holy About Dublin Win

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Irish Voice Sport

Nothing Holy About Dublin Win

July 3, 2008

The Cathal Dervan Column

ANY day now the cars big as bars and the bars big as cars scattered across New York City will start to fill up with fresh Irish faces once again. It’s inevitable.

For months now the media here at home have been telling us incessantly that we’re heading for a recession and, sure enough, the country is starting to believe the doom and gloom merchants.

Every headline, every news bulletin, every bar room expert is peddling the same story. We’re screwed.

Unemployment is rising as fast as interest rates. Spending is falling as fast as interest in new mortgages is waning.

Builders are suddenly out of work. The Celtic Tiger has left the building, pun intended.

Much more of this and we’ll be back to the gloom of the eighties when my generation couldn’t get out of the country fast enough. Back then there was no choice.

Stay at home and you’d be lucky to afford a pint at the weekend. Move to London or New York or Boston and you were sure to become a prosperity addict. So many did, and so many will again now when the doom starts to bite.

We came through it of course, but it wasn’t pretty. Things were different then as I tried to explain to some of the young guns in the Sunday Star office on a recent social outing to one of the few Dublin pubs still packing them in.

In the dark and distant eighties we had no mobile phones, no laptops, no satellite television, no Ryanair and no real access to the outside world bar Vincent Hanley’s MTV USA of a Sunday afternoon.

We also had the Holy Hour, a wonderfully Catholic invention which ensured that the pubs closed in the middle of a Sunday afternoon for two hours even though technically they should only have closed for one!

On the occasions when we did have access to ready cash, the Holy Hour gave us time to play football on a Sunday morning, have a few pints, get home for the mother’s Sunday dinner and then recuperate in time for the resumption of normal social activity that evening.

It has long since been abolished of course — we live in a modern European café culture now, whatever that means — but every now and again the Holy Hour concept does raise its ugly head again, as it did late on Sunday night as we dissected the Dublin football team’s latest attempt to self-destruct.

Thanks to a very pleasant but demanding dinner on Saturday night, Sunday afternoon was spent with the remote in hand, flicking from the French Open golf in Paris to the European Championship final countdown on the BBC, and then on to the supposed Leinster football championship mismatch between Dublin and Westmeath that nearly saw the underdogs pull of a famous win as they had done in 2004.

The game was supposed to throw in 2 p.m., but once again the vast majority of the fans couldn’t drag themselves away from their pint in time for the early start as dictated by live television demands.

Thus the Gardai (police) had no choice but to tell the GAA to delay the start and over half the 67,000 fans arrived through the turnstiles between the appointed time of 2 p.m. and the actual start time at 2:17.

A Holy Hour, of course, would have cleared the pubs in time for the scheduled start of the game, but in reality the Dublin fans who arrived late nearly did themselves a favor.

Their side was poor, so poor that a friend of mine reckons there’s more chance of Prince finally playing in Croker come September than there is of Pillar Caffrey’s team making the All-Ireland final that month.

The problem for Dublin, as it has been for many years now, is not their ability to score, even if Sunday’s 13 point tally was fairly lethargic by their own high standards.

The real problem for Dublin, again, was their lack of strength at the back as Dessie Dolan and Westmeath ran up a 1-8 scoreline but crucially hit eight wides in the second half.

Dolan appeared to struggle with the fact that Westmeath opted to play into the Hill in that second half, but the one certainty is that Wexford legend Matty Forde won’t be so charitable if the Dubs cough up as many chances in the provincial final later in the month.

Forde and sidekick Redmond Barry will destroy Ross McConnell and co. if they are half as generous next time out.

If that’s the case then Wexford could well be crowned Leinster champions and the Dublin fans will have all the time in the world to enjoy their Sunday afternoon pints, Holy Hour or no Holy Hour.

Heroes Of the Week

A MAJOR football finals eventually lived up to its star billing as the 2008 European Championship came to a fitting halt as Spanish captain Iker Casillas lifted the trophy in Vienna on Sunday night. The football over the last three weeks was breathtaking as Europe got on just fine without the likes of Ireland, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. That the best team and the one which played the best football won the tournament is a fitting testimony to Spanish greatness.

Idiots Of the Week

IT wasn’t all sweetness and light as Spain ensured Michael Ballack lost a big final for the third time this season in Vienna on Sunday night. The Spanish midfielder David Silva clearly head butted Lukas Podolski at a crucial stage in the second half, but Italian referee Roberto Rosetti missed the blatant red card offense and Spain went on to lift the trophy. Silva should now be punished by UEFA for his irresponsible petulance. A nice ban would do the trick.

Sideline Views

SOCCER: UEFA announced on Saturday that the European Championships will expand to 24 teams in 2016, and the FAI are falling over themselves to both claim credit for the proposal and celebrate the fact that we have a better than ever chance of qualifying when this motion becomes law. The realists, however, have a different view after a quite brilliant Euro 2008 which left even the last World Cup finals for dead in terms of excitement, passion and the quality of the football. Spain, the best team playing the best football, deservedly won a tournament that thrived on the presence of just 16 teams in the finals, so why change it?

SOCCER: Liverpool want to pay something in the region of $30 million to Spurs for the Ireland captain Robbie Keane. Spurs should take the money and Robbie should run to Merseyside as quickly as his legs will carry him. The chance to play alongside Euro final match winner Fernando Torres in the Champions League has to be too good for Robbie to turn down.

GAA: Good to see new Irish soccer international Damien Delaney hasn’t forgotten his roots and went training with the Nemo Rangers senior Gaelic football team on his return to Cork for a quick holiday last week. Delaney, a former Cork minor, goes back to London for pre-season training this week, so maybe he’ll try a few GAA moves on his teammates.

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