Unbridled Joy as England Lose

THERE is a certain type of person, a politically correct type of person, who doesn’t approve of Ireland’s schadenfreude in relation to many things English.
Last night, I tried hard, very hard, to feel sorry for the English soccer team and, indeed, English soccer fans, when they were beaten 2-3 by Croatia at Wembley.
I tried to feel as I felt when Ireland bowed out of the European championships. I tried to feel the disappointment of the fans who had planned a summer of sport in Austria and Switzerland. I tried to feel sorry for players I like such as Wayne Rooney and Michael Carrick and Steven Gerrard and so on.
But I failed. I couldn’t do it.
It’s just not possible.

Now, when I wrote about this in the Sunday World, the last time England bowed out of some tournament or other (it wasn’t cricket. I support them to a degree at cricket) I received a bagfull of mail telling me how immature I am (I acknowledge that) how juvenile I am (no problem there) and how racist and bigoted I am.
Whoa! Not guilty.
My desire to see England lose at, well, soccer, rugby, tennis and a few other sports here and there, stems not from events in 1169 or, indeed, 1607 or for that matter, 1798 or 1916 or even 1972.
It has nothing whatsoever to oppression, perceived or otherwise.
It has nothing to do with the Irish being ‘colonised’ or ‘downtrodden’ or anything of that sort.
It has nothing to do with some of England’s more odious monarchs or the real and actual hardship imposed on Ireland over the centuries.
No, it has a great deal more to do with John Motson and Jimmy Hill and The Sun and Ian Wright than it has to do with history.
It is an extraordinary thing that English football pundits seem to think that any tournament without them in it, isn’t worth having at all.
In fairness to Motty, he acknowledged on Wednesday last, just how utterly lousy the current English team is.
But hardly had he said as much, when Ian Wright was blathering on about how England deserved to be at the finals. No they didn’t, Ian. They didn’t win a sufficient number of games and, hence, didn’t garner a sufficient number of points. It’s simple.
When it comes to rugby, you think Stuart Barnes and Brian Moore and The Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph.
But mostly you think Martin Johnson and how the arrogant lump insulted Mary McAleese and, by extension, Ireland, with his behaviour at Lansdowne Road a couple of years ago.
Rugby players are, in the main, a well-bred bunch, mannerly and so on.
But there’s always an exception.
And if Johnson didn’t do it for you, surely the reaction of their media to their jammy wins in the Rugby World Cup did.
When it comes to tennis, you think Tim Henman. It’s not so much Tim’s fault as it is the media’s. They built him up and up and up. Henman Hill, for God’s sake. What was that all about.
And anyway, I find the name Spiderman reasonably impressive. Batman isn’t bad. Superman is brilliant.
But Henman?
I’m afraid it will always be the same for us, or at least, most of us.
The next best thing to Ireland winning is England losing.
You know, the funny thing about our win against England in Stuttgart, is that it was celebrated as much in Glasgow and on the Shankill Road as it was in the Republic of Ireland.
Indeed, when Ireland was drawn with England again in the World Cup in 1990, a reporter asked a woman on the Shankill Road, how she wanted the Irish team to do.
“Beat England - and lose all their other games,” she said.
Just about says it all, really.

Read More......

Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes) IV

YOU might get out on Monday, they said.
But I’m something of an old hand at this now.
And so I never believe the first date I’m given for my departure from hospital.
I reckoned on Tuesday.
But of course, I should have known.
My Tuesday is their Wednesday or Thursday.
It’s the way it is with doctors.
It’s like my nine o’clock in the morning is their midday.
It’s the way of things. Time is more or less meaningless for doctors. If it wasn’t, so busy are they in our over-administered health service, they’d go mad.
So I’m still in my hospital bed, and still on page 84 of The Time Traveller’s Wife.

I’m enjoying it. But I keep falling asleep every time I try to read any more of it.
It must be the drugs.
Sodium benzoate, sodium bisulphate, ascorbic acid - and that’s just the Lucozade.
Fortunately, my lunch today was not served by the lady who informed me as she placed yesterday’s offering in front of me, that she ‘felt dreadful.’
Today it was the lady who had the good grace to put my lunch in front of me before she turned to leave the room, coughing and sneezing.
Believe me, suggesting that we divert money into providing sterile pods for the sick, for at least the really sick, is not an idea borne from the ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs.
Talking of which, isn’t it a really brave move by Ireland’s pharmacists to pick on heroin addicts in order to advance their campaign for more money.
Yes, I know they work hard. But so too do those who have dedicated their lives to helping our unfortunate addicts who have now been abandoned by pharmacists not noted for their moderation when it comes to pricing their products.
“We were left with no alternative,” the pharmacists said. Apart from being utter tosh, that’s just a lie.
No alternatives? Why don’t they go on hunger strike or something that might actually test whether or not they have any support from their customers, addicted or otherwise?
My bet is they wouldn’t be thrown a single pea, let alone a sandwich.
Dammit, hospital leaves too much time for thinking.
Right now, I’m thinking how Ireland really could have won this rugby world cup were it not for all the things that are wrong in the camp and with Irish rugby in general - like the fact that very few people are playing it anymore and that it is still, in the main, a middle class game which is fiercely protected from invasion by, well, the middle classes who run it.
I’m thinking how our government has become utterly corrupt, generating sinecures for its supporters at public expense.’
I’m thinking how we have a health service run by people who think it’s ok to shut down front line services while they still have highly paid people in charge of the purchase of staple clips. Let’s see the administrative jobs going, boys.
I’m thinking how those who run our national airline have managed to turn it from a much loved institution to an organisation which is tolerated by some and loathed by others by loved by none.
I’m thinking how the entire Celtic Tiger business was, in the heel of the hunt, the greatest exercise in spin ever foisted on a population, a hoodwinking more successful even than that attempted by Blair and Bush in relation to Iraq.
We know know, there were not Weapons of Mass Destruction.
And we know now that there was no great wealth in the Celtic Tiger.
If there was, why do we still have poor?|
Why do we still have homeless?
Why do we still have some dirty hospitals?|
Why is our healthcare system - brilliant when you’re in it - so badly run?
Why are so many of our ‘minor’ roads (they’re major for the people who have to use them every day) so lousy?
Why don’t we have enough schools?
Why don’t we have enough gardai?
Why are we selling so many of our assets?
Why are we selling the tolling of so many of our roads to private enterprise?
Why do we need Public Private Partnerships in the first place, if we’re so rich?
Because we’re not.
Only politicians, with their 22 pay rises and their sinecures are.
And, it seems, only those of us with time to think. realise it.

Read More......

Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes) III

I’d love a pint. I really would. I am, as they say, gumming for one.
It’s always the same when I’m somewhere they don’t have pints.
And they don’t have pints in hospital. Not pints of Guinness, I mean. They do have pints. Of blood.
But it’s not quite the same thing, drinking through your arm.
So I’d love a creamy. A roaster. A pint of plain.
Not right now, not this second.
But I’d love to have one this evening. Or maybe two. Might even stretch to three.

Being ill, or a little bit ill, or not at all ill but with an annoying infection, I firmly believe in the restorative powers of pints. Specifically, pints of Guinness.
For years, you were handed a bottle of Guinness after donating blood in this country.
Women who gave birth were immediately given Guinness every day to build up their strength. Their children were, however, forced to wait years for the same, er, beneficial medicine.
I have no idea why such practices ended.
Economic reasons, no doubt. Some accountant figured out that by stopping the Guinness, they could buy more ledgers or pencil sharpeners or something.
Or maybe, Carlsberg or Heineken got the hump and demanded equal treatment. Silly, that. Lager, though, hasn’t got the same powers as Guinness.
I’m pretty sure that if the lady with the trolley came around today and asked us all if we wanted tea, coffee or Guinness, she would be returning to her kitchen with pots of cold tea and coffee.
I am also pretty sure that, after a couple of trips to the trolley, we patients would all be feeling a great deal better.
And even if hospital food is, well, hospital food, boy, wouldn’t we look forward to it if it was to be accompanied by a nice Merlot or a nice, round Cote de Rhone.
You may very well think I am obsessed with alcohol.
I am not.
I merely miss it.
I don’t miss it as much as I miss my partner or my child or my dog or my house or my bed at home or a decent cup of tea.
But it’s not here. They don’t encourage it in hospitals.
And I miss it.
It’s not that I think about it all the time.
This morning, for example, I was thinking again about what a good my idea to put each sick person into their own sterile pod.
I thought about that again when the lady who brought me my breakfast informed me that she felt ‘absolutely dreadful.’
Brilliant, I thought. She feels sick and she’s walking around a hospital handing out food to people who are trying to get better. Put her in a pod, I thought, and stop her from spreading her sickness.
And today I also thought about England reaching the final of the Rugby World Cup.
I thought, there’s a mediocre, ageing, average team in the world cup final.
Why?
Because they have passion and heart and determination. And they have been well prepared.
And our younger, more skilled and more fancied team dumped out in the qualifying round.
If we’d been properly prepared, we could have won the damned thing.
And then I was looking at the hung-over England fans and the hung-over former England player Matt Dawson on television talking about the joy of the England fans.
The best of luck to them.
There is a perfectly logical reason as to why there should be bars in hospitals.
I’m not talking here about The Dog and Duck or the King’s Arms.
Maybe The Doctor and Nurse or The Cut and Stitch or something.
But it would be strictly for patients only.
And admission would be by coloured wrist band so that certain patients, for whom a drink might be harmful, would be wearing a red wrist band and would not be admitted.
There might be, say, a green wrist band for someone allowed four pints and a blue one for someone allowed three, a yellow one for someone allowed two and a pink, yes, I think pink, for someone allowed one.
And it would only be Guinness.
And maybe some decent red wines.
I mean, the thing is supposed to be medicinal.
Of course, a mini bar in the room would solve the problem too...

Read More......

Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes)

❍Two of the loves of my life, Charlotte and her 'brother' Eric

Back to hospital.
Though I visit St James’s Hospital in Dublin regularly to see my doctors - I think I have five or six at the last count - it’s almost three years since I have spent a night here.
Last time, at least, I was sick.
Hospital’s a grand place to be when you’re sick. In fact, I can’t think of anywhere better. And, when you get right down to it, hospitals were built to look after sick people. So it all makes a perfect kind of sense.
Right now, I am not what you might call sick in the conventional sense.
I feel tremendously well. Any feeling of nausea or being unwell that I feel is a result, still, of Ireland’s lacklustre performance in Rugby World Cup.

Lacklustre? Lack-everything.
Anyway, I’m here in hospital feeling perfectly well from the ankles up.
And therein lies the nub of my problem.
Since I was diagnosed with this damned cutaneous lymphoma about 12 years ago, I have been well from the ankles up bar one period where I was well only from the ankles and wrists up. You will gather that it was my hands and feet that were causing me problems.
And since the last time I was confined to hospital - they don’t actually confine you, they just strongly suggest you stay - my partner has given birth to our wonderful daughter Charlotte. And, up to four months ago, the greatest pleasure in my life was going for a walk around our neighbourhood with Charlotte and the hairy Samoyed we like to described as her ‘brother’ Eric.
Yes, I walked around with a deal of pride. I probably looked smug and maybe, even, arrogant. But certainly proud.
But the feet started acting up. Bastards. If I didn’t need them, they’d be gone long ago. But, like most bodily organs, they have a role to play.
Whether it is to do with being on a clinical trial for a new drug and having stopped my old drug, I can’t say. Even with the old drug which was, generally, excellent for my health bar the fact that it raised my cholesterol so high it almost killed me, my feet were bad.
But they just got worse and worse.
And then the infection set in.
Now, it’s four months since I wore a pair of shoes. Not that I measure happiness by the number of pairs of shoes I get to wear in a given month. Was Imelda Marcos happy, I ask?
Now, I’m in hospital. And I feel well from the ankles up.
Here, the sound that wakes me in the morning is not the baby pressing the buttons on her musical frog, but the nurse telling me I’m about to be fed more antibiotics through a vein in my arm. Funny that, you’d think it would be a vein in my leg, legs normally being nearer to feet than arms.
Confined, so to speak, to a hospital bed and big things happenning elsewhere.
Tomorrow and Sunday, there are two Rugby World Cup Finals.
First up, it’s England and France. I’m cheering for France.
I’d love t o cheer for England. I love the place. I like the English. I admire many of their players.
But, even though I cheer them on at cricket, there’s something....
Maybe it’s “Swing Low...” I don’t know.
And then, on Sunday, I’ll be cheering on Argentina, largely because I think world rugby has given them a raw deal over the years and they have beaten the big boys politically and I’d love to see them winning on the field.
(I know, though, that some would take an Argentina/France final as some kind of vindication of Ireland’s lousy performance. But it would be no such thing.)
For the first time ever, I will be watching Rugby World Cup semi-finals stone-cold sober.
No pints. No wine. Nothing.
I cannot imagine what the experience may be like.
A friend has suggested I will interrupt the game with cries of ‘handball” and “that was a push.”
He said I might even express surprise that the goalkeeper is so far off his line or that someone or other missed a perfect opportunity for a clean header at goal.
Unlikely.
I will, however, miss the expertise that comes with the fourth or fifth pint. I will miss the knowledge of the game and the tactical nous that comes half way through the sixth pint.
But I am, despite what some say, in the care of what I can personally attest, to be one of the finest healthcare systems in the world.
It is a system which would be all the finer if the enormous layer of bureaucracy at its top could be removed or halved.
But on the basis that a decision to halve bureaucracy would be taken by bureaucrats, such a thing is as unlikely as politicians voting to reduce their number or to pay themselves an honest salary.
But let nobody say that once in the door of an Irish hospital, the care is not as good or better than anywhere in the world.
Let nobody say that, despite the problems, the health service is not generous in the way it deals with patients, in that I, and several I have met since my latest incarceration, as being fed drugs unavailable to patients in Britain’s much lauded healthcare system on the grounds of price alone.
So while I will complain - of course I will, I’m a grumpy old man - about being in hospital in the first place.
While I worry that seeing my much loved game of rugby through sober eyes might alter my view of it entirely.
And while I miss my partner Connie, my daughter Charlotte and my dog Eric, madly, I am in a place designed and built for sick people.
Even if they’re only sick from the ankles up.
(At leat, I hope it’s only from the ankels up.)

Read More......

Referees: Why They Are Utterly Useless

YOU will know, from my description of myself above, that I love rugby.
I don’t just love Irish rugby – it’s a struggle to do so right now anyway. I love rugby – period.
And although my own country has been, so far, an enormous disappointment at the World Cup in France, there have been some wonderful games.
And despite a few lopsided scores, it seems, to me at least, that the gap between the strong and weak countries is narrowing, however slightly.
But one thing is spoiling the tournament for me.
It is the same thing that spoiled last year’s Six Nations tournament.
It is the same thing that, week after week, spoils the Premiership.
It spoils international games at whatever sport wherever they take place.
It spoils our domestic games of hurling and football.
It is referees.

I first encountered referees at a very young age, playing rugby in Willow Park School in Dublin.
I came to the conclusion then, that they were, without exception, eejits. I formed the opinion that they were, to a man, incompetent. I reckoned way back then, that they were ego maniacs who believed the games centred around them, inadequate folk who got their jollies ordering people around on a football pitch, nasty, authoritarian figures who craved attention.
Nothing that has happened in the intervening 47 years has changed my opinion.
In this Rugby World Cup, the refereeing has ranged from incompetent to farcical to downright suspicious.
The worst thing the rugby authorities ever did, was give these attention-seeking dimwits microphones, at least, microphones that permit television viewers and radio listeners to pick up what the referees are saying.
They now, God help us, feel obliged to talk every micro second of every damned game.
“Hands away blue, stay on your feet red, bind green.”
It is incessant.
And the rugby authorities then invited them to talk even more with their nonsensical "crouch, touch, pause, engage” nonsense. In fairness, most front rows – I was a prop – ignore the poor eejits completely. Listen, and you will hear referees trying to get as far as ‘pause’ before the front rows have actually engaged.
(I presume, on this score, that the rugby authorities, chuffed with themselves will now bring this idiotic idea one, or even two further. Why not “crouch, say hello, have a wee chat, kissy kissy, touch, hug, have a little rest, engage.)
I have seen more forward passes in this World Cup than I had in my life heretofore.
I have seen more balls but crookedly into scrums, more blatant offside, more crossing, more obstruction, more crooked throw-ins and more refereeing incompetence than I thought it possible to witness in a lifetime, never mind a few weeks.
The other night (I had better not say which match, I’d reckon the little Hitlers are litigious too) I saw a referee standing three feet from a player who knocked on and then proceeded to pass the ball for a try. Do these boneheads not realise we can see and hear them (unfortunately)?
And it’s actually worse in soccer.
A blind man would see some of the dives. Indeed, commentators do the sport no favours, generally either ignoring dives or saying something like ‘there was minimal contact’ when, clearly, there was none.
In Gaelic football, players are, variously, penalised for taking five steps with the ball or not penalised at all for taking ten.
And did you know, for example that it is illegal, in Gaelic football, to trip, punch, hold, drag, pull or rugby tackle another player.
God help us, there’s nothing but dragging and pulling and holding going on for the entire 70 minutes!
There is debate, in most sports, about the use of electronics.
I cannot see a single argument against employing technology.
In the first instance, computers don’t have egos.
In the second, they don’t have faces, which they wish to be seen on television.
In third, while they are fallible, they are, generally speaking, unbiased.
Get rid of referees, I say.
Chuck ‘em out.
Let them all go off to become traffic wardens or school attendance officers or something else with a uniform and which involves ordering people about.
But sport can do without them.
There has to be a better way.

Read More......

Well, Charlotte, it was like this...

Someday, maybe in the not too distant future, my daughter Charlotte may ask me what life was like when I was a child.
At least, I hope she asks me.
Now, I know how boring the past is for some. I have personally witnessed eyes glazing over at the mere mention of the Sixties.
But for little Charlotte (she's not 18 months old and really isn't into my music yet) it will be important to know what life was like for her daddy. If she isn't permanetly on her phone and her computer, that is.
I made a little list for her. Ok. A big list.
Here, I will tell her, is what we DIDN'T have.
1 More than one television channel.
2 Colour television.
3 Live soccer on television.
4 Reality television.
5 Satellite television.

6 Personal computers.
7 Email
8 The Internet.
9 Mobile phones.
10 Playstation or Nintendo.
11 Health food.
12 Late night drinking (legally, at least).
13 Cheap air travel.
14 CDs
15 DVDs
16 Even the now obsolete videos.
17 iPods or any form or MP3 player.
18 Identity theft.
19 Digital cameras.
20 Digital anything.
21 Shredders.
22 ATM machines.
23 Chip and Pin.
24 Motorways.
25 Commuter rail services like LUAS or DART.
26 Greed.
27 Barbecues.
28 Sushi.
29 Chinese/Indian/Thai/Japanese/anything other than Irish or Italian, restaurants.
30 Wine (other than Blue Nun, Black Tower and Green Lable).
31 Chick Lit.
32 Bonsai trees in offices.
33 Sandwich bars on every corner.
34 Kebabs.
35 Karaoke.
36 Hair gel.
37 Botox.
38 B list celebrities, C list celebrities all the way down to Z list celebrities.
39 Multiplex cinemas.
40 Shopping malls or even shopping centres.
41 Enough taxis.
42 The money to get taxis.
43 Gap or transition years.
44 Work experience.
45 Points to get into college.
46 Two, three, four – or even one car per house in many cases.
47 Dishwashers.
48 Detergent tablets.
49 Quite as many corrupt and useless self-serving politicians.
50 Black pepper and sea salt.
51 Speed cameras.
52 Alternative medicine.
53 Dairy spreads.
54 GM foods.
55 Heelys.
56 Replica football shirts.
57 A Rugby World Cup.
58 A card-carrying imbecile in the White House.
59 Widespread availability of drugs. Other than a bit of blow. Maybe a tab of acid here and there. And a little speed.
60 Rap 'music'.
61 Footballers paid, per week, what most people earn per year.
62 WAGS.
63 Any concert venues.
64 Bad manners.
65 Booking fees for tickets.
66 Toll roads.
67 The Green Party.
68 Fridge-freezers.
69 Islands in the kitchen.
70 Stereo.
71 Remote controls for the television.
72 Property speculation.
73 Crap summers.
74 Foreigners and immigration.
75 Christmas ads in September.
76 Pat Kenny
77 Millions of radio stations.
78 People making millions out of Irish dancing.
79 Boy bands.
80 BMX bikes.
81 Latte, cappuccino or  mocha.
82 Croissants, bagles, Danish pastries.
83 Croke Park – as it is.
84 The Spire.
85 Smoke alarms.
86 Iraq and Darfur and tensions with Iran. (But we did  have Vietnam and Biafra and tensions with Cuba)
87 The Brit awards. The Soap awards. The Irma awards. The Meteor Awards. The Mercury Prize. The IFTA Awards. And so on.
88 Alternative comedians.
89 Wheely bins.
90 Wormers.
91 Anybody going to Leinster rugby matches.
92 Disc parking.
93 Smoke-free pubs.
94 Natural gas.
95 Church scandals.
96 Dirty hospitals.
97 Chuggers.
98 Garda helicopters.
99 Political correctness.
100 The cheek to tell our fathers they were boring when they told us about their childhoods.

Read More......

The Rugby World Cup: Excitement and Fear

❍Max Brito: I wonder how he is doing

I AM seriously looking forward to the Rugby World Cup.
I look forward with, not a little, hope.
Ireland, for its size and population, manages to produce outstanding performances in many sports. Golf, for example. Or soccer where we managed to rise to eighth in the world in 1990. We’re pretty good at athetics. We have a good history in cycling. We almost rule the world of horse racing. We’re not bad at hockey. We’re top ten in cricket. We, er, box above our weight in boxing.
And, of course, there is rugby.
We’re goling into this world cup with a good chance. If we perform at our best, we can do very, very well. If we perform at our best and other teams, such as New Zealand and France, don’t perform at their best, we could actually win it.
But while I’m looking forward to the competition with a huge sense of expectation I also look forward with trepidation.

Because, like previous world cups, the 2007 tournament has thrown up some blindingly obvious and potentially dangerous mismatches.
Twelve years ago, Scotland beat the Ivory Coast 89-0. New Zealand beat Japan 145-17.
In 1999, New Zealand beat Italy 101-3
England beat Tonga 101-10.
In the last tournament, four years ago, Australia beat Namibia 142-0.
Apart altogether from the fact that routs such as these do nothing to encourage rugby in what are laughinly called ‘emerging nations,’ these are mismatches on the scale of putting a ballet dancer in the ring with a heavyweight boxer.
Rugby has, if anything, become more physical in the professional era.
In 1995, Ivory Coast winger Max Brito, was left tetraplegic as the result of a tackle. It seemed innocuous at the time. And there was certainly no intent.
But Max was playing for a country that rarely plays internationals and qualifies for world cups - not this one - not because they’re good, but because other teams are worse.
Maz received £1560,000 from the International Rugby Board’s insurance scheme at the time.
But soon, the memory of his injuries seemed to fade. A couple of years later, he was in deep depression, living with his parents and still, incredibly, watching rugby.
Max is the father of two children.
So far has his plight faded from the memory, that web searches turn up little about him now.
Wikipedia offers only a stub.
One Portuguese blog contains a short and innacurate piece about him.
ASouth African blog refers to the tragic game in which Max was crippled and then adds this: “The rest of the match was a non-event in the bigger scheme of things. Ivory Coast battled bravely while Tonga smashed and bashed their way to a 29-11 victory.”
Sad, that the result of the game is considered by someone to be “the bigger scheme of things.”
This world cup is throwing up more mismatches.
There is New Zealand and Portugal, France and Namibia, Ireland and Georgia, South Africa and Tonga, Australia and Japan.
The minnows will, likely as not, be eaten up. Morale will be, perhaps fatally, wounded, Young kids in those countries will turn their backs on rugby.
Hopefully, there will not be another Max Brito.
Hopefully, Max is alive and coping. I don’t know.
I wonder if the rugby authorities do.

Read More......