Stage Dublinness -a Roy 🐐 Curtis education

Culture
1706

Is Tucker Reillys not a Press Up type spot?

1707

Is Tucker Reilly not a right wing shock jock on Fox News?

1 Like
1708

Its a ‘bar’ more than a pub and Rake The Ashes really ought to bite the bullet and go back to their spiritual home of Cassidys across the road.

2 Likes
1709

Nails it

4 Likes
1710

He has a great knack of putting into words what people are feeling but they can’t articulate it.

12 Likes
1711

Us mere mortals just don’t have what Roy has.

10 Likes
1712

Chat GPT will be scrambling to add ‘vomiting inanity’ to its library tonight

1713

If Declan McBennett ran a pub he’d have Sky Sports News on and music blaring. It’s what the people want.

1714

Does Roy have any prose for the Parnells story? Or does his bigotry prevent him from giving a fuck about anything on the Northside?

1715

ChatGPT gives you tweets in Roy’s style, but alas not the man himself:

:boom:Parnells GAA Club — the glittering giant of Coolock — brought to its knees not by scandal, but by sheer, staggering ineptitude. A monument to mismanagement, where ambition outran arithmetic. Lavish dreams, empty coffers. The crash was inevitable; the shame, immeasurable. #GAA #Parnells :volleyball::chart_with_downwards_trend:

7 Likes
1716

Roy writes about @bandage

The Redemption: One Man’s Journey from Couch to 5K (and Beyond)"

There was a time—not long ago—when the only thing I ran was the bath. A time when my idea of cardio was frantically patting the pockets of my anorak in search of a rogue fig roll. My gut, a sort of soft emotional support cushion, accompanied me faithfully through many’s a lazy Sunday.

But life, like a reluctant pub quiz partner, eventually gives you hints. And one day, staring into the bathroom mirror—a mirror strained by the acreage of my forehead—I asked myself: bandage, what’s it all for?"*

Thus began a pilgrimage. Not to Santiago. Not to Croker. But to the footpath of Fairview Park, where middle-aged men go to sweat, to suffer, to reclaim lost pride—and to find themselves.

I started running. Badly. Like a fridge with feet. Calves screaming. Lungs burning. Forehead glistening like the deck of an oil tanker in July. But every kilometre I earned was a quiet act of defiance. Against the years. Against the couch. Against the quiet, nagging suspicion that my best days had passed.

Now? I run four times a week. I’ve a Garmin watch. I say things like “easy pace” and “threshold effort.” I drink beetroot juice like it’s holy water. I still sweat like a butcher’s apron. But I’ve found something—something noble in the grind.

So I say this: to all the men with soft bellies and hard memories of their youth—lace up. Take to the road. Let your forehead catch the wind like a proud sail. Run like your life depends on it. Because in a way, it does.

TFK #WexfordRunner #ForeheadAndProud #BornToSweat #MiddleAgedMileage

13 Likes
1717

I’d say not. There probably isn’t a pint on with Clucko but he’s not going to close the door on it either.

1718

I think there could be a series in this @Bandage

The Boy, the Race, and the Revenge”

It was a Sunday morning soaked in the kind of coastal mist that clings to the soul.

The sort of weather where a man might question his decisions—his choice of shoes, his mileage plan, his past forty-two years of carbohydrate abuse.

I was toeing the line of the Kilmore Quay 10K, a humble local race with delusions of grandeur.

Beside me stood teenagers. Lads with legs like breadsticks and the heart rate of a sleeping monk. And there—among them—was Him.

The Rival.

Fifteen, maybe sixteen. A smug sliver of a boy wearing Vaporflys and the unearned confidence of youth. I overheard him whisper to his friend something less than complimentary about my dome shaped head.

I said nothing.

The gun went. He darted ahead like a calf let loose from the mart. I lumbered after him, all knees and gritted teeth, the rhythm of my strides a stubborn poem to middle-aged defiance.

Kilometre four: he was still ahead.

Kilometre seven: he began to fade.

Kilometre nine: I passed him. Not with grace. Not with speed. But with the sort of grim inevitability that tax forms and winter come with.

As I thundered across the finish line—cheeks ablaze, nipples in crisis, forehead now its own microclimate—I turned, gave him a nod.

No gloating. Just the quiet, dignified joy of a man who has suffered and come through it.

Afterward, he shook my hand. “Fair play,” he said. “Didn’t think you had that in you.”

I looked him in the eye and replied, “Neither did I, lad.”

TFK #MiddleAgedVengeance #WexfordWindbreaker #10KAndRising

3 Likes
1719

This is a text book case of “hammering the hammer”. You’re now doing unto me via ChatGPT, as I’ve consistently done unto The Porter Laureate.

2 Likes
1720

Will ye think of the environment here lads?

@Little_Lord_Fauntleroy

1721

Write a song in the style of the well known Irish sportswriter Roy Curtis. The song is called “Parnells: The Uncrowned Kings Of Dublin”. The song is about the Dublin GAA club Parnells, who in 2008 received €22 million from a land deal. Over the next 16 years, Parnells proceeded to squander the proceeds of this deal with extreme financial mismanagement, such as signing inter-county players who were past their best and paying them lavish expenses. These players, far from improving the Parnells team, made their team much worse. Parnells is the club of the great Dublin goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton, who was deeply unhappy with the way money had corrupted his club. Eventually in 2025, the Parnells club was liquidated. In the song reference the lines “they flew too close to the sun”, “the Tiger roared”, “the money was just resting in the account”. The song should be full of humour and whimsy in Roy Curtis’s trademark style.

ChatGPT said:

Sure! Here’s a whimsical, Roy Curtis–style song called:

:notes: Parnells: The Uncrowned Kings of Dublin :notes:
(To the tune of a rousing Dublin ballad, somewhere between “The Rare Auld Times” and “Seven Drunken Nights”)

Verse 1
Oh gather ‘round ye Gaels and scribes, I’ve got a tale to tell,
Of marble halls and golden dreams, that all went straight to hell.
'Twas Parnells of the capital, with plans both bold and grand,
Who swapped their pitch for riches deep—a tiger-fed demand.

Chorus
They flew too close to the sun,
With boots of gold and brains of none,
The Tiger roared, the cash it flowed—
Till every cent was overblown.
“The money,” they said, with a cheeky pout,
“Was only resting in the account!”
Oh Parnells, the uncrowned kings, now gone without a crown.

Verse 2
They signed auld lads with creaking knees, who once wore county blue,
And paid them more for playing bad than some lads earn at UCDU.
“Expense sheets long as Stephen’s kickouts!” cried the lads on Hill 16,
“While young bucks rotted on the bench—what does this madness mean?”

Chorus
They flew too close to the sun,
With dreams as bloated as a bun,
The Tiger roared, and roared some more—
Till all that roared was Revenue’s door.
And whispers came from dressing rooms:
“Cluxton hasn’t smiled since June!”
Oh Parnells, the uncrowned kings, now gone without a crown.

Verse 3
Stephen Cluxton, silent knight, stared at the falling rain,
Each cheque a dagger in his back, each loss a moral strain.
He’d seen the glory, earned it too, with boots laced up in pride,
Now watched as corner-forwards played like they’d just come from Brideshead Revisited on the southside.

Bridge
Oh they bought a cryo-chamber, sure, and two espresso bars,
They paid a man from Kerry just to stretch out lads in cars.
They built a gym with granite floors, and photoshopped the past—
But none of that could win a match, or fix a hopeless pass!

Final Chorus
They flew too close to the sun,
Like Icarus on the clubman’s run,
The Tiger roared, the lights were grand—
But now it’s weeds on Parnells’ land.
The pitch is gone, the dream is spent,
The golden days? A bounced rent.
Oh Parnells, the uncrowned kings,
Who danced while fiddles burned the strings—
Now ghosts in sky-blue blazers haunt
The grave where glory went.

1722

The county holds its breath

4 Likes
1723

Is Ray Boyne a sober Roy Curtis?

3 Likes
1724

That’s just incredible from Roy.

1 Like
1725
1 Like