Defund Horse Racing.
Defund Greyhounds.
We go again.
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Get a small bit of funding. Gather a group of 30 senior hurlers in an underdogs type scenario.
Teach them Lacrosse.
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I have this kids equivalent identified with our U9s
If we follow that plan thereâs no reason why we canât take 8 golds in LA
Can we beat England and Australia in menâs and womenâs Lacrosse?
I believe absolutely yes the skills of hurling and camogie are hugely transferable. Bronze minimum in both.
Is it even in the Olympics?
It is being added in LA afaik
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Informative.
I hope weâre all still around in four years time, to see this thread come to fruition.
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I hope Timmy makes Los Angeles but heâll be doing well to.
Even after âtoughâ year, Timmy McCarthyâs love for basketball shines on RTĂ
In May 2023 he left a bed in the Galway Clinic to go up to Dun Laoghaire to be inducted into the Basketball Ireland Hall of Fame. The following morning he returned to that bed in Galway. He had been so frail at the banquet, some friends feared that it could be the last time theyâd see him.
BOOMSHAKALAKA: Timmy McCarthy being inducted into the Basketball Ireland Hall of Fame in 2023. Picture: ŠINPHO/Bryan Keane
Fri, 09 Aug, 2024 - 19:35
Kieran Shannon
The other day, on the eve of Team USAâs epic Olympic menâs semi-final against Serbia, The New York Times profiled a basketball sensation.
You might have expected such treatment to have been reserved for a LeBron James, still balling at an extraordinary level at 39, his beard more grey now than it is dark.
Or perhaps Nikola Jokic, the reigning NBA MVP standing between USA and the gold medal game.
Instead the subject was Timmy McCarthy.
Just like Snoop Dogg going around feeding carrots to dressage horses, McCarthy was one of those âstrange, communal treasuresâ that only the Olympics can bring. And all the more precious because the way âhe growls, sputters, shrieks so loudly the microphone cracklesâ is broadcast only to those with access to a station called RaidiĂł TeilifĂs Ăireann.
Thursdayâs subsequent semi-finals underlined again the unique style and appeal of McCarthy.
âYabusele. Give it to Wemby [Victor Wembanyama]. Oh, donât give it that low down â heâs 7â4!â âBogdanovic says, âYouâre not stopping me, LeBron. You might be the King but Iâm the prince.â But now LeBron steps outside the arc and drains the three! The King has announced, âIâve come to my court â this is my court!ââ
In the first quarter when Stephen Curry was single-handedly keeping USA in touch of Serbia, McCarthy was quite restrained. But when Curry hit a go-ahead three-pointer with two minutes to go, his ninth âfrom DOWNTOWNâ on the night, McCarthy couldnât contain himself. âSteph! Oh my God! Oh my God!! What Steph is doing tonight! Oh yeah baby â count it all day long!â Commentators arenât meant to go on like that. Or at least they donât go on like that. Especially the Irish variety. Implying the existence of a higher power and their belief in it. Being potentially corny. Being so unashamedly joyful and joyous.
But thereâs a reason he goes on as he does. Basketball to him is such fun. And to him watching â and listening to â it for the viewer should be fun. Especially when the rest of our lives can be so tough.
9 May 2000; Ireland senior menâs coach Timmy McCarthy during the international basketball friendly match against Scotland. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
A year out from the Tokyo Olympics, McCarthy spoke extensively to this paper about how in early 2018 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. On the Gleason scale McCarthyâs was registering as the most aggressive kind possible. The surgery lasted three times longer than the average prostate procedure.
âFirst my mortality was challenged,â heâd tell us. âThen [after the surgery] my humanity was. I was incontinent. I remember being helped out of the bed by the physiotherapist and I saw I was wearing nappies.â In that interview he outlined his successful recovery. How he called on the resilience of being one of the first athletes in this country to come back from a cruciate ligament injury and be voted Player of the Year. How he continued to work and exercise and even golf a bit before undergoing 18 weeks of chemotherapy. How that treatment was successful.
What he has not spoken about before is that last year the cancer returned. In May 2023 he left a bed in the Galway Clinic to go up to Dun Laoghaire to be inducted into the Basketball Ireland Hall of Fame. The following morning he returned to that bed in Galway. He had been so frail at the banquet, some friends feared that it could be the last time theyâd see him.
âI had a tough year last year all right,â says McCarthy now. âI had been doing great, feeling great, and then you had to deal with this hammer-blow that the cancer had returned.
âBut I have great faith. In my medical team in the Galway Clinic. Our Lord has been very good to me. And Iâve had great family support from my family. So while I had to have a couple of surgeries and chemo right through the year, thatâs all behind me. My health thankfully is very good now and continuing to improve, Iâm in good form and working away.â
The day job is with The McCarthy Consultancy, the executive and communications coaching firms he set up around the time of the Rio Olympics after decades working as a CEO with multiple companies. But this past fortnight, just like he does for a couple of weeks every four years, he has put on a set of headphones and transformed into something of a national and even international cult figure.
He went viral as early as 2012. The Off The Ball team paid homage by putting his distinctly-animated commentary to the light groove of that well-known Petula Clark track. ESPN contributors gushed that his commentary could power the USA for the next hundred years and that he should be calling NBA games for that same network in the same USA.
That didnât quite transpire but McCarthy does regularly commentate European basketball champions league games on FIBAâs own version of GAAGO. Any fears or accusations back then that he was a novelty act that would soon wear thin have been disproven. London was his third Olympics as RTĂâs lead basketball commentator. This is his sixth. Still going coast to coast, still making folks shake and bake.
As a former national team coach there could be a temptation for him to dazzle people with his tactical knowledge of the sport, a trap some fellow coaches can fall into whenever they analyse or co-commentate on National Cup finals or international matches covered live by TG4.
But all the time McCarthy is conscious of who is real audience is. Itâs not about impressing any fellow coaches. Itâs not about impressing anyone. Itâs about entertaining this rare mass audience basketball has.
âYou have to remember the majority of people watching the Olympics are not basketball people. Basketball is a minority sport in Ireland. But the great thing about RTĂ and the Olympics is itâs a chance to show and see other sports.
"So what Iâm trying to do is to make sure that whether youâre young or old, on a farm, in college, in an office, hospital, wherever, you stay with the game whether itâs close or not by me making it entertaining and informative enough for you.
âThatâs what I always say to myself just before I pick up the mic. Entertain. Inform. Perform. Donât try and impress.â
Part of the appeal is that he could say anything. Even the stock catchphrases had their origins in pure spontaneity. In 2004 Luis Scola threw down a dunk on Argentinaâs way to a shock semi-final win over USA and before McCarthy knew it heâd gushed the now immortal word âBOOMSHACKALAKA!â
It wasnât just McCarthy that was surprised by his reaction. Anyone who had known and listened to him for years was as well. From 1990 on McCarthy had been co-commentator to Ger Canning in RTĂâs annual live coverage of the National Cup finals. His style would have been closer to Enda McGinley and Ăamonn Fitzmaurice than Brendan Cummins or Michael Duignan: more measured than animated.
But as a lead commentator something came over him. His main job now was less to analyse and inform as engage and entertain. âIf I canât get into it,â heâd once explain, âhow can the viewer get into it?â The result is his broadcasting delivery is now more like John Mullane, the same individual he once famously enthused over when briefly covering Gaelic Games the summer following Beijing (âMullane â he bakes! He shakes! He scores!â)
If some people had their way heâd be back covering some Gaelic Games. In a chat I had with Ursula Jacob during the week, she mentioned how her husband suggested that RTĂ or whoever could do worse than get McCarthy to commentate on some of those pedestrian football games we had to endure this past summer. âHeâd make them more exciting!â Like seemingly almost everyone on social media, they canât get enough of Timmy.
In the meantime Timmy canât get enough of hoops. He thoroughly enjoyed covering the 3x3, especially both finals that each finished with buzzer-beaters. (âIâd love to have played it. [Liam] McHale and Tom Sull [OâSullivan] from my time as well. Whatâs great about it is you have to want to score and be able to score. You can get away being a defensive specialist in regular five-on-five. Not in 3x3.â) Now in the coming days heâll commentate on both five-v-five finals, which RTĂ will be showing live.
âIâm excited now as I was 20 years ago doing my first,â he says.
He turned a significant birthday on Friday, at least significant in the eyes of The Beatles. Does he still love it, does he still feed it (into the post) when heâs 64?
Oh yeah, baby! Count it all day long!
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Bit silly for Cricket to be included
8 teams is all, so your country has a 37.5% chance of a medal just from turning up
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And it already has sufficient international profile. Bolloxology.
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Wiffen will win two golds.
Adeleeke will win a silver.
Two boxers will medal. One will be won by a woman and sheâll become a national hero. The other will be won by a traveller whoâs name will be forgotten within a year.
Weâll win a rowing medal but the lightweights no longer having their event will hurt us.
Weâll win one other random medal, maybe in sailing or some other shite.
The horsey set will win fuck all.
There will be no horses in 2028
On the cricket one, Iâm fine with it.
Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh are the bones of half a billion people.
They sent 18 athletes to this Olympics combined.
We sent 133.
If it kickstarts Olympic interest in that corner of the world, great.
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Half a billion people but with some of the worst poverty.
India is a funny one, thereâs no real cultural or religious constraints to stop anyone, especially women, taking part in sports but most of their participation seems to in sports like tennis, hockey, golf and obviously cricket⌠Thereâs some sort of old colonial mindset going on when it comes to non native sports participation⌠Tho cricket is played by the masses obviously.
Over 90% of women donât participate in sports in Pakistan. Iâm not sure even the arses of the Irish ladies relay team can change this.
Cricket, like rubby, can fuck right off.
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Hard to argue with that. More money for areas that deliver like Skibbereen, working class Dublin and the county of Down. Then target areas that are delivering nothing, ideally by replacing the greyhound track with an athletics track and velodrome. Mullingar and Galway city look like 2 sensible ones to start with. We have seen over the past fortnight that little raises the spirits of the nation like the Olympics, it all seems very obvious what the way forward is.
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I cant honestly recall a case where greyhound racing has ever raised the spirits of the nation?
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Whatever about nobody with African parents playing gaa for Dublin, only having one on an athletics team (or the whole Olympic team?) seems very strange.
Tag Yank Football seems like a makey-uppy enough sport that we could surely target an auld bronze.