1. “The life of a League of Irelander is a life spent in the cultural shadows. You walk into a pub and you know that nobody else wants to debate whether Ally Gilchrist can step-up. You go for lunch with colleagues and instinctively know you’re the only person who spent the morning googling Krisztián Adorján.
It’s part football league, part self-help group. That tends to make us a bit frightening to the rest of society. And they probably have a point. It’s probably not normal to spend this much time thinking about Robbie Benson.
The rest of society understands how strange our little cult is, but what they don’t understand is the League of Ireland’s biggest secret: it’s actually quite fun.”
2. “Andy Woodward, one of the boys lost and brutalised during Barry Bennell’s decades of preying on young footballers, can remember one story that probably helps to explain why the detectives investigating the man described as a “child molester on an industrial scale” believe the true number of victims will be incalculable.
Bennell had taken a group of Crewe Alexandra players to Florida in the summer of 1990 to help with a series of junior coaching courses. He had hired jet-skis and was out in the sea at Pensacola beach, with an 11-year-old on the back, when he fell into the water. He was climbing back on board when Craig Hignett, the first-team striker, came past on his own jet-ski and turned to spray him. Except Hignett also lost control of his machine.
Woodward, raped several hundred times during Bennell’s years as Crewe’s youth-team coach, was on the beach. “I heard the crack 100 metres away. Craig had hit him full-on and suddenly it was pandemonium. I just sat there, praying Bennell would go under. Everyone was on their feet shouting: ‘Oh my God’ and panicking. But I didn’t move a muscle. ‘Please,’ I thought, ‘let him sink.’ I knew what that man was like, I knew what he was capable of. ‘Please, just let him die – just die, please, please.’”
3. “Coasting toward a gold medal at the 2006 Turin Games and, adding a little style to a coronating jump, she slipped and skidded to the snow. She was passed and finished second, one of the saddest silver medals of them all.
She has been trying to overcome it since — not for herself, really, because she has moved on, quite spectacularly, if people would just pay attention more often than every four years. What she was trying to overcome was something ghostlier, something harder to catch and release, which is the nagging feeling that when huge numbers of people think of Lindsey Jacobellis, they see a blooper, not a champion.”
4. This is Mayacamas, one of Napa Valley’s most iconic wineries. Not many of the Cavs have been here, but LeBron James has, and he recognizes that the area where he’s standing now, the small clearing, once belonged to a building that is no more.
At Mayacamas, organizers had rushed to prepare for the Cavaliers, hauling away burned rubble in huge bins. Now, after the champagne toast, players gather beside fermentation tanks before moving next door to a spacious living room, where glasses of 2015 chardonnay and 2013 cabernet dot a heavy wooden table. They playfully sneak more glasses of wine. James tries to tempt rookie forward Cedi Osman, who, along with some of the other rookies, isn’t into wine just yet. “Drink me … ” James says, holding the glass near Osman, but Osman declines. “Their loss,” James would say later. “More for me.”
Mayacamas winemaker Andy Erickson introduces the chardonnay by describing how proud he is that it’s not a typical Napa Valley chardonnay, not over-the-top with buttery-tasting notes. The players sip and are asked for their thoughts. Guard J.R. Smith, sitting on a couch against a back wall, raises his hand. What comes to mind as he sips the wine?
“It’s like butter,” Smith says, smiling. Laughter erupts from all over. Classic J.R.”
Baxter Holmes sheds light on the NBA’s secret wine society on ESPN.
5. While in many ways Ó Sé’s column was refreshing for its unashamed candour, its sentiment, combined with the outright bolloxology that was so pervasive in Salthill, made us pose and ponder another question: Yes, all the leading teams in Gaelic football feel the need to be cynical, but why don’t champions in other sports have to think and act that way?
Did you ever hear anyone say last summer that the Philadelphia Eagles would have to become more cynical if they were to challenge for a Super Bowl? That if the Pep Guardiola project at Manchester City was to be realised, his team would have to become more cynical? That the reason why the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers had contested the previous three NBA finals was that the likes of Steph Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant were willing to resort to whatever it takes?
There is something sad that Peter Canavan, the best ball-player of his generation, won his two All-Irelands with his last act seeing him jump on the back of an opponent and hauling him to the ground. Likewise, the abiding image of Lee Keegan, arguably the best wing-back to ever play the game, and Diarmuid Connolly, definitely the best wing-forward of his generation, will be of them wrestling on the ground when they weren’t throwing GPS devices at each other. LeBron and Durant never had to resort to such antics in their finals face-offs.
