Decent Journalism

[Bod95]

Roy Curtis’ latest piece

Greatest? Top Five? A day like no other? Who cares? Just bask in the sunshine of immortal joy

These contests raise the thermometer of the national mood to a point where the mercury dances in an ecstatic sizzle.

Saturday and Sunday were theatres for dreamers, occasions of blinding light that brought a glow to the everyday.

Most of all a jolting reminder of the redemptive and unifying power of landmark sporting days.

Ireland loosening the shackles of history, Limerick advancing into rarely visited terrain, intoxicating statements permitting jubilation and togetherness to spread in a lovely, unstoppable contagion.

It was a weekend that gifted us the kind of thrills that make it entirely natural to embrace complete strangers.

Hurling and rugby were like guardian angels, steering us away from the perils of inflation, a cost-of-living crisis and the darkening mood besieging Europe.

Through towering athletic deeds these pathfinders were announcing that this can still be a wonderful life.

Leave aside the debates – entertaining, though ultimately meaningless – about where precisely these victories reside in the pantheon of the divine.

Greatest? Top Five? A day like no other?

Who cares?

It is enough – more than enough - to bask in the sunshine of immortal joy, of days and memories without end.

Sport touches us at the heart, a mind-bending narcotic that stimulates us in places others struggle to reach.

Who did not feel a rare stirring of the blood as that unbending gladiator Peter O’Mahony, a wall of green defiance, submitted to tears in the New Zealand murk?

Or to decode the bone-deep satisfaction in Johnny Sexton’s words at what was a moment of long-pursued emancipation in his sporting life.

Likewise, there was something primal about that sequence ending with Declan Hannon’s lasered score into the Davin End, the foundation-shaking noise that engulfed the old coliseum announcing an authentically seismic event.

For minutes after Sunday’s final whistle, there was magic in the air as the clans of Limerick shook their heads and held each other and sobbed in wonder at the days of thunder that, after decades of nothing, have visited their county.

Only a creature without a soul could resort to cynicism at such a moment.

John Kiely and Andy Farrell delivered gems of the senses that are so much more than fleeting treasures.

Rather they amount to postcards from the best of days, a few lines of enduring sunshine in which to bathe on colder nights.

Cultural milestones, the very best of what it is to be Irish.

How else can we describe the visceral masterclasses Hegarty and Beirne unveiled?

Hegarty, an amalgam of sledgehammer power and surgical instrument poise, detonated a hurling Big Bang from which a new universe of brilliance was born.

Enlarged by the occasion, he grew beyond his already mammoth 6’4” frame, until, it seemed, he was looking down on his fellow gladiators, on the Poolbeg stacks, on O’Connell Street’s Spire, the highest point on Dublin’s skyline.

To have a ringside seat felt as he composed his lyrical July sonnet felt like nothing so much as an enormous privilege.

Hegarty pursues the jugular like a creature of Bram Stoker’s imagination.

That Transylvanian pursuit thirst yielded a goal; long before his final soaring, long-range point, the big man held the title deeds to Croke Park in his paw.

What do you think of that, Garth Brooks?

Limerick’s lion of summer, even as he inflicts magnificent carnage, even as he bounces off other huge men as if they are no more than pebbles, never seems hurried or stressed.

Rather, he moves in Gearóid-time, appearing to casually lope over the ground, like a flip-flopped Mediterranean holiday maker on his way for a morning dip in the hotel pool.

A beautiful freak of nature.

Limerick’s duel in the sun with Kilkenny – and how great were the stripey men in squeezing out every last blob of potential to make this an All-Ireland final for the ages – capped two days of heartsoar.

The All Blacks class of 2022 clearly reside many rungs of the ladder below some of their storied predecessors, but winning a test series on New Zealand soil remains a gold standard by which the rest of the rugby world measures its worth.

Perspective is often machine-gunned down like a Mafia snitch in 1930s Little Italy in the hail of hyperbole that follows oval-ball glory, but Saturday morning was a true masterclass, at once visceral and refined.

Ireland’s first half performance, a study in clinical efficiency in attack, unyielding in defence, set the bar at a new mark.

It was led by the defining hour in the career of Ireland’s number four.

During the half time break, I put the breakfast on the plate, reached for the knife and fork, only for Beirne to jackal out from beneath the table and steal my fry.

It was a performance from another planet.

Yes, Ireland’s record in World Cups is abject and what unspooled on Saturday is no guarantee of deliverance in France next year.

Worry about that when the time comes. For now, forget future consequence and surrender to these thrilling moments.

Why self-flagellate on those days when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, and when David Clifford and Damien Comer are poised to accept the baton carried so unforgettably by Hegarty and Beirne?

[Biff_Egan]

Iconic. Roy just gets it

[Bod95]

@Bod95

For minutes after Sunday’s final whistle, there was magic in the air as the clans of Limerick shook their heads and held each other and sobbed in wonder at the days of thunder that, after decades of nothing, have visited their county.

Roy gets us

[peddlerscross]

‘Days of Thunder’ is a fantastic turn of phrase.

Its up there with ‘Cathedral of Porter’ as one of my favourite Royism’s.

[Cheasty]

@peddlerscross

‘Days of Thunder’ is a fantastic turn of phrase.

Its up there with ‘Cathedral of Porter’ as one of my favourite Royism’s.

I’d say Roy could write an article entirely through the medium of Tom Cruise film titles.

[Johnbird]

I cannot stand that mans writing style.Visual vommit.

[BruidheanChaorthainn]

I broke down in tears reading that.

[myboyblue]

So did I

[Spidey]

Just back from an AIF up for the match lunch with Roy, Tomás Meehan, Dara O’Cinneide and Martin McHugh as speakers.

Roy LOVES Hego. Expect more garlands over the winter

[Bod95]

Ah lovely

[Iggy]

Keith Duggan’s final Sideline Cut column today.

Gaelic Games

When sport fully takes hold and gives us tingles and shivers - isn’t that all we can ask for?

In his final Sideline Cut column after 20 years, Keith Duggan on how sport’s greatest gift is bringing out the child in us

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A young Kerry fan celebrates during the All-Ireland SFC Final against Galway at Croke Park. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho

Keith Duggan

Sat Jul 30 2022 - 06:00

One night in 1989, the disc jockey and stadium announcer Tommy Edwards was at the cinema with his wife waiting for the show to start when he heard a few bars of synthesizer music and experienced a lightning strike of inspiration.

The Chicago Bulls had been tinkering with darkening the house lights since the 70s and introducing their team to music. But the teams were generally awful, the music never worked, the crowds showed up late and there was always the danger of spilled beers and tumbles when the auditorium went dark.

But now the Bulls had Michael Jordan. And Edwards discovered Sirius, the dark, gorgeous synth instrumental which opens Alan Parsons’s 1982 album Eye In the Sky. Edwards sat at home playing the record and practising an introduction later made iconic by the gravel-voiced Ray Clay “And now …”

It took a few seasons before the pregame guaranteed an absolute full-house by tip off – which was the main aim. But as Jordan made the strange transition into the most famous athlete on the planet, the intro became an essential part of the mythology. Its power is derived from the ominous beauty of the piece of music and the daunting charisma which Jordan radiated. The Bulls’ introduction might have been a marketing ploy but it required no budget or convolutions.

Jordan has been out of elite sport for almost 20 years but the recordings of those introductions have not dated. It’s the oldest trick in the book: turn off the lights and let the imagination do the work. And it presaged the move towards rehearsed polished introductions and entertainments at sports stadiums across the world – and countless have borrowed Sirius.

The presentation may be more slick and polished, but nothing will touch the Bulls’ idea. It was the perfect crossing point of sport as fabulous entertainment and real, authentic experience – which is a very tricky, elusive balance. You watch it again – these old, long finished games and still: it gives you the shivers.

And isn’t that all we can ask for from sport?

We’ve always been fortunate in this country to have a century of tradition through which Ireland has been in thrall to Gaelic games. It was, of course, far from a perfect tradition, promoting an active hostility and suspicion of other sports and remaining a male preserve for decades after it might have. But it has moved and learned and shape-shifted and opened its doors and has retained its miraculous balance of amateurism and sense of local identity which generates a depth of emotion which cannot be faked or fabricated.

Kerry fans celebrate during the All-Ireland Final. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho

And so, the spirits raced through Croke Park last Sunday when Galway and Kerry pushed one another to the edge. Those few seconds of anticipation and the surge of uncontainable crowd noise before the throw-in were as good as it gets. But then, on the road up that morning, a man had decorated his tractor in the Galway colours, parked on an overpass not far from Moate and, with his children, saluted the passing cars on their way up to the city. It was a lovely, simple gesture and as much a part of the occasion, the day, as the noontime gatherings around Dorset Street. It was a reminder that Ireland is still a land of eccentricities and all the better for it.

There remains something extraordinary about the depth and solemnity of effort behind elite Gaelic games for what will remain, for the vast majority of players, an unrealised idea. Few will get to play in an All-Ireland final, fewer still win it.

But what a glorious distraction. Isn’t that the point? Isn’t the joy of being transported to a place where you feel fully alive and temporarily shorn of the inevitable day-to-day worries and concerns. It doesn’t have to be the fancy stuff or the big days. And it doesn’t even have to involve winning. The game keeps changing and yet the game will always be the same.

Galway players including Damien Comer and Dylan McHugh celebrate as manager Pádraic Joyce’s horse Chavajod comes in last during Tuesday’s Galway meeting at Ballybrit. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

On Monday evening, the defeated Galway football team made their way home. It might have been a sombre conclusion but as Pádraic Joyce acknowledged later, the homecoming proved to be an uplifting event. The bonfires were lit. The people turned out on one of those dank west of Ireland July evenings. And the team and supporters became indivisible and in his words of thanks, Joyce began to turn his thoughts to next season.

Right now, that seems a far-off thing. Meantime, there will be the big glittering distractions – the football nights in England, the winter rugby afternoons, the late-night broadcasts out of football fields and basketball arenas in America. And there will be the best stuff too – the excruciating few miles you plod through alone, the morning swims, the team you coach still losing but maybe something that makes their eyes light too. The million tiny victories!

Those come boxed in many forms.

Armagh’s Stefan Campbell and manager Kieran McGeeney celebrate the victory over Donegal in the Ulster SFC Final at St Tiernach’s Park in Clones. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho

For years, the press box in Clones had among its guests the resident Donegal Democrat columnist ‘The Follower’ whose closing line on a particular Donegal win which stirred his blood remains unfathomable and unbeatable: ‘As Marie Antoinette, Banríon na Fraince, said: Après Moi, Le Deluge.’

Who knows what that means? And who cares?

On one of his last visits, The Follower sat on a blazing summer day of an Ulster final, a Dairy Milk and Club Orange close at hand, delighted that he had been able to conquer the steep hill past St Tiernach’s one last time. He’d been attending these games for decades but surveying the scene now the field, the teams parading, the faces in the crowd, he couldn’t contain his delight. He was like you or me when sport fully takes hold and gives us the tingles and shivers. He was like a child.

Sideline Cut has been running since 2002 and this is the final column in the series. Keith Duggan will shortly take up a new role within The Irish Times. Many thanks for reading.

[myboyblue]

Smashing

[Fat_Pox]

Duggan is fantastic.

What is his new role?

[Fagan_ODowd]

@Fat_Pox

Duggan is fantastic.

What is his new role?

Deleting all the Tom Humphries articles from the archive.

[caulifloweredneanderthal]

@Iggy

Keith Duggan

An absolute gem of a writer.

[TreatyStones]

I see The Times have removed the Ireland section from their daily news. Was never much in it, but it means I probably won’t renew it when it’s due again.

[caulifloweredneanderthal]

They cut a load of staff recently

[Ralphie]

I see Denis Walsh (previously of the Sunday times) has a column in the Irish times today,

Always thought he was decent on the “GAA beat”

[anon67715551]

I’m only seeing this now - condolences on the loss of your Dad. He seems to have been a gent. The light of Heaven to him.

[binkybarnes]

Thanks Boxty