IN NO PARTICULAR order every Sunday, we flick back through the week’s newspapers, websites, blogs and magazines to bring you the best sports writing.
1. A man walks into a coffee shop. It’s a crystal-skied spring morning and the man is feeling tremendously well-disposed towards life. He’s practically jaunty, in fact. He’s just finished the 25-minute power-plate session that makes up his morning work-out, a change in pace from the days of dumbbells and bench-pressing but the most his murderous knees can take any more. He orders a coffee and a nice, rich chocolate treat. When lunchtime comes he’ll stick to the steamed salmon and boiled veg but for here and for now, we’re in Bridget Jones territory. No qualms, either. Hardly much point being retired if you’re not going to indulge once in a while.”
If ever a man deserved a biscuit, it’s Bernard Jackman. Malachy Clerkin picks up the tab.
2. “Even those of us who work for the BBC acknowledge that Sky can rarely be faulted over what appears on screen, and its commentators and pundits are uniformly good. However, Sky is at least partially responsible for developments in some sports that are questionable at best and harmful at worst. Football is the sport on which Sky Sport was built and by which it is still underpinned; it is also the sport most altered by Sky’s presence.”
Brian Moore gets stuck into Sky. Fair dues.
3. “The location was beautiful, the weather couldn’t have been nicer and the ceremony itself just about as pleasant and pain-free as this type of love-in ever is, but us media folk still found reason to grumble at the handover of the Europa League trophy in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.
Of course, what do the media ever do but grumble, sez you, and you’d have a point. But, yesterday, we had a point too. After all, it’s not every day that UEFA President Michel Platini is in town and all the pre-event publicity had indicated that he would lower himself, however briefly, to rub shoulders with the scurvy hacks.”
Liam Mackey and the rest of Ireland’s soccer writers were left outside the velvet rope as European football’s top man came to town.
4. “For all the marble halls, the immaculate sense of style and the Old Etonian ties and enunciation, Arsenal were never anything more than just a football club. We cloak them in regal trappings because it suits the part of our nature that is never far from the forelock.”
Martin Samuel sticks to what he knows about in his column and does a fine job.
5. “It was a lavish affair and, not to put too fine a point on it, I was exposed to some wonderful fine dining: t-bone steaks, oysters, lobsters, scallops, a designated cheese room, a dessert room, a room in which they served single malt whiskey (for the record I didn’t darken the doorway of the latter) and all on offer for the delectation of the guests. It’s a miracle I am as svelte as I am. We at London Irish have a deal with the Gaucho restaurant in which we get 25 per cent off. What none of us is bright enough to realise is that the Argentine steakhouse is the main beneficiary in real terms as we eat about 10 times as much as we would because we’re getting a discount.”
Bob Casey looks like a man who you demolish the profit margins of any all-you-cant eat restaurant. London Irish let him loose in a new London bistro.
6. “Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia, Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, Charlie Aitken – these are just a handful of the names that graced the original New York Cosmos, names that helped to write the club into global football lore forever. But the legend of the Cosmos was about more than just names, it was about their star quality. It was a story of excess, of boom, boom, boom and then fatal bust. As the players and management strolled around Studio 54 in their flares and wide collars it was clear that this was no ordinary football club.”
The excellent TwoFootedTackle ran a series on the Cosmos this week. Check that stuff out, as they say in Manhattan I believe.
7. “The art of winning is in learning from losing. The Tipperary hurlers understand this. In the 2009 All-Ireland final Brendan Cummins pucked the ball back out within 20 seconds of Henry Shefflin’s game-changing penalty only to find himself within another 20 seconds picking the ball out of the net again. Twelve months later when Richie Power blasted to the net, Cummins made sure to walk all the way behind and around his goal before restarting the game, giving his team a full half-minute to catch their breath and refocus. For all the sympathy and admiration their heroic performance in 2009 garnered, Tipp themselves identified they hadn’t been clinical enough in front of goal and that Kilkenny had beaten them on the hook-block count they had prided themselves on winning.”
Another former Tribune writer, Kieran Shannon, is back at the Examiner. Top stuff.
8. “Riotous waves pummel José Arias. In the frantic scramble to abandon ship, he zipped his survival suit only to his throat and now the freezing Atlantic is seeping in, stealing his body’s heat.
The cold hammers him, a fist inside his head.
Seesawing across the ocean, he cannot tell east from west, up from down. At the top of a wave the night sky spins open, then slides away. Buckets of stars spill into the sea.
‘Sálvame, por favor. Sálvame.’
Save me. Please save me, he prays to Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
This has absolutely nothing to do with sport but do yourself a favour and read this piece in the New jersey Star Ledger from Amy Ellis Nutt. It won the Pulitzer Prize this week, pipping my piece on Floyd Mayweather and 50 Cent’s night out.
