Think that was Coghlan after he shaved off all his body hair with a Bic razor the night before the Olympic 5,000 metre final in 1976.
Kiernan was bitten on the bollix Coghlan was bitten on the hand. [quote=“Fagan ODowd, post: 150947”]
Weird alright. This is from boards.ie
'tis nothing new.
Jerry Kiernan was a teacher in my primary school back in the 80’s.
His second biggest claim to fame to us all (after coming 8th or 9th in the 1984 Olympic marathon of course) was getting bitten in the lad by a dog while out running.
[/quote]
Listened back to that this evening, good points made by Kiernan I thought. If he hadn’t said “your show” at the start the conversation might have gone differently, but as it was McDevitt got very defensive right from the off. The drugs thing was something of a bullshit argument from him, public interest would have been the right topic to argue over and on that front there would be very justifiable questions about the level of rugby coverage. Kiernan was right, fuck all people play rugby at the end of the day.
yeah kiernan came across well i thought was fair enough in most of what he said? didnt think eoin did too badly either though seeing as he seemed to be completely caught on the hop.
Couple of questions about it though, what are the playing numbers for rugby in england is it as small as here?
Also why do ye think coverage of and interest in sports outside soccer, gaa, rugby and possibly golf has dropped so much in the last 20 years? Sweeney in the sindo had an article about it a while back the way snooker, boxing, athletics and the likes used to be much bigger deals but cant remember what he came up with…
Not sure exactly of the actual figures but read not too long ago that England has the highest playing numbers in world rugby. Think it was around a quarter of a million. Think there are around 2 million worldwide
According to IRB it’s
1 England 2,531,705
2 South Africa 632,184
3 France 302,023
4 Ireland 140,000
5 NZ 126,146
6 Japan! 121,543
85,000 in Australia
There are apparently more rugby players in Bath and Bristol than there are in Ireland. That’s an old fact though and Ireland are fourth on that IRB list when a few years ago we were way behind Japan even.
Is that registered members or active playing numbers rocko. There was an article I read earlier in the year saying that playing numbers had dropped below a quarter of a million and the lost a bit of funding off the governement over it.
not the same article but along similar lines
It all comes back to marketing I reckon. Athletics is very difficult to market compared to rugby or soccer. Obviously the premiership has massive money and sky sports to sell itself to the world. Rugby teams straight away have got an identity that’s easy to buy into, whether it’s national or local (Munster, Leinster, Ulster). It’s not hard to create ‘rivalries’ in that scenario. As well as that, rugby isn’t that big internationally which gives Ireland a much better chance of being relatively successful, and nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Interest in athletics has declined due to a combination of drugs and lack of Irish competitors.
Boxing - declined due to Sky’s monopoly, pay per view and a drastic decline in the quality of the heavyweight division. High profile fights on RTE involving Irish fighters on top of the amateur success have brought about somewhat of a resurgence domestically.
Cycling - decline due to lack of Irish competitors and drugs. The vast majority of Tours de France in the EPO era were processions as well.
The sports that declined in media coverage also suffered due to a lack of “celebrity” factor, but mostly because of the drastic change in the media landscape with the advent of satellite TV and then the internet. In the 1980’s it was six channel land or two if you were unlucky enough to live outside Dublin. You watched what was on because that was all you got. TV sports events were a relative rarity and stuff like the World Athletics Championship was quite a big deal. Rugby League matches on Grandstand on Saturdays had quite a decent viewership. The Big Fight on ITV was always a big event. Formula One motor racing was something I guarantee almost everybody here watched religiously.
As I’ve said before, golf, horse racing and idiotball were the opium of the type of person who thought debt = wealth. These pursuits also took up a lot of media space because the type of people who populate the media tend to come from the aspiring classes. Women found it acceptable to write about these pursuits because of the social class aspect and the legs, they love the legs…Sport-themed pursuits for those not into sport, an oppurtunity to create celebrities out of nobodies. Perfect for the vacuous, modern socially aspiring, celebrity obsessed society.
Sky Sports and particularly Sky Sports News is the tabloid version of that.
Gaelic Games have done exceedingly well to strengthen their popularity against this cancer in much of Irish society. They probably do it in large part due to the fact they are the antithethis of the culture I described above.
Agree with all of that. The bit on the sports of the aspirational classes is especially accurate, except maybe for horse racing which does have a strong working class base, as counter-intuitive as it might seem.
Another thing that’s counter-intuitive is that more choice leads to a narrowing of interest in a select group of sports, to tthe detriment of others. People have more media outlets to choose from but they tend to keep going back to the same ones, or at least ones that focus on the same sports, as opposed to maintaining an interest in a wider number of sports. It doesn’t help that all this choice means people’s concentration spans are shot to pieces now and they have no interest in straying outside of the stuff that’s constantly dished up to them.
Anyone listening to Nicholas Roche this evening? Mother of God. And this guy is supposed to be a staunch critic of doping?
McDevitt asked him what he thought of Lance and Roche said he didn’t have a problem with him, McDevitt pushed him a bit further then and he more or less said "Why are these people coming out and saying these things now when they’re retired, why didn’t they do it ten years ago? Even to someone like me who knows nothing about cycling this is obvious, and so McDevitt responded that self-interest may have played a role. Roche then said that he could maybe understand that with Hamilton, but the rest of them “must be trying to get revenge on Lance…for…something.”
Car crash stuff. A pity Kimmage wasn’t there.
Surprised to read that. Roche is usually critical of dopers and his credentials on the subject are very good.
Thought he came across as fairly bland and inoffensive in the interview. Maybe it is the accent but seemed to lack charisma
Has anyone read the book yet? Planning on picking it up at the weekend, interesting to see his memories of being schooled in Ireland.
David Millar’s book was a great read, and his childhood explained a lot of the question marks that hung over his personality and behaviour in his early days.
It was like listening to Pat McQuaid withoout the pig ignorant arrogance. Distinctly unimpressive from Roche and would give me doubts about him.
Well according to “The Death of Marco Pantani” his oul fella was , well, less than virtuous in that regard. Roche may well know that the entire era was badly tainted, and not want to be seen to slag off a scene his da was part of (cycling in the 80’s i mean).
Roche is cycling establishment in many ways. He is not going to rock the boat too much.
Roche ain’t on anything for sure.