Such is the impact of the European championships that Sean Óg Ó Kneejerk has been moved from his normal slot on Monday. Sean Óg wasn’t particularly distressed by this. As we disclosed last week, Sean Óg doesn’t know who he is writing for and has never heard of Balls.ie.
It would be remiss if we didn’t mention the soccer.
As one of the 17,000 strong crowd who watched Offaly destroy Kilkenny in the 1990 Leinster Hurling Semi-Final on Sunday 17 June – a match which proceeded while Ireland were huffing and puffing against Egypt in Palermo – one might assume that Sean Óg holds what one might call traditional, old-style ‘GAH man’ views on soccer.
The liberal bigot in us was bracing itself for angry fulminations from Sean Óg about the GAA “taking a wrong turn in 1971 and look at what we have to deal with now”.
But he surprises us.
While he is not above the odd chauvinistic remark about the inferiority and all round prissiness of Premiership soccer, especially in the giddy aftermath of a hurling classic, and while he is still liable to stick the definite article in front of the word 'soccer', Sean Óg is very far from a stranger to the beautiful game.
It transpires that he is more eclectic in his range of sporting interests than the 1980s Hot Press crew, who popularised the terms 'bogball' and 'stick-fighting' back when the Charlton era was at its height and the Dubs were losing to Meath every year.
You see, like many men of his age, Sean Óg has experience of operating under an assumed name. It's the one thing sport loving Irish youngsters in the 1960s hold in common with Mossad agents.
One Seamus O’Kelly played in goal for Park Villa Rovers in the 1968 FAI Junior Cup, keeping a clean sheet as they marched past Avondale United. The locals still talk about his performance between the sticks. Comparisons were made with Gordon Banks.
Unfortunately, that was the last we saw of Seamus O’Kelly and Sean Óg’s dalliance with soccer.
He was shopped by one local Paddy Solemn type in a pioneer pin, a virginal young jobsworth called Martin South who made it his business to surveil the local soccer pitch in the hopes of catching GAA members offside, as it were. A member of Opus Dei, he was also known to break up couples who were spotted canoodling in the local cinema, a practice that would eventually cost him his life in the early 1980s.
They used to call me Gordy back in them days. I was the hero in a penalty shootout one time in an FAI Junior Cup match against Avondale United. Anyhow, Martin South, Lord have Mercy on him, was prowling the soccer field like a branch man, taking down the names of fellas he recognised from the GAA club. I got banned for six months. We won the county title that year and I wasn’t allowed next or near the ground. We never won it again as long as I was playing.
He grew aggravated only once this weekend, when a number of inner-city urchins burst into Mulligans and started grumbling to the barman about the Roscommon-Sligo match on the television. Why couldn’t they just stick on the Northern Ireland game? Had democracy reigned in the pub that night, they would have switched over to the Poland-Norn Iron match. However, the barman looked anxiously at Sean Óg, who holds a longstanding veto over what goes on the television on a Sunday afternoon, and the request was flatly denied. Sean Óg’s teeth had already been set on edge by the use of the phrase ‘Northern Ireland’. Indeed, we had already been upbraided for using it casually and unthinkingly earlier in the conversation.
The Rossies were making a big comeback and a gang of scallies from Sherriff Street burst into the pub. They started cribbing and moaning, asking Cormac (the barman) to change the channel. The Northern statelet were playing against Poland in the European championships. I have no intention of sitting and looking at that rubbish. The lads started wailing.
I thought we were going to have a riot on our hands. A guard who comes in here regularly for a drink said he recognised one of the lads from policing a riot between Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers in Dalymount Park. And fair play to Cormac. He stood his ground and shunted them out of the pub.
Even when he was labelled a culchie bastard and had a glass smashed across his forehead by one of the youths, he was unbowed. That's toughness. The Cork footballers could use some of that. So could the hurlers too for that matter. They've given him the day off so he can get himself stitched up. There'll be a pint sitting there for him when he gets back into work.
While he did watch Ireland draw 1-1 with Sweden on Monday evening (he’s critical of the mentality that says this is a good result. “We should have won the fuckin’ thing”, is his view) he has absolutely nothing to say on Ireland’s win over South Africa on Saturday. In fact, we had to tell him Ireland had won down there for the first time in history. The information made no impression on him.
Sean Óg has remained resolutely immune to the oval ball craze that has swept even the western half of the country in the 21st century.
On big rugby days, Sean Óg comes over like Garret Fitzgerald or one of those civil service boffins who went for a walk around the English Lake District during Italia 90 – uncomprehending and utterly disengaged from the passion that rages round about him.
The only sport he watched on Saturday was the Kilkenny-Dublin match followed by England’s game against Russia in Marseille.
The former gave Sean Óg the opportunity to indulge in one of his favourite pastimes, heaping praise upon himself for being right about things that the vast majority of people are also right about.
In the wake of last year's All-Ireland hurling final for instance, he engaged in an epic and entirely unnecessary bout of 'I-told-you-so-ing' to anyone who would listen.
One didn't need to have a great deal of foresight to predict that Kilkenny would come good in the end but Sean Óg still felt it would be churlish not to acknowledge his own genius in the tipstering department.
I didn’t see the rugby no (silence, before we move along).... I watched Kilkenny v Dublin later on that night. It just confirmed to me what I’ve been saying all along. It’s just a question of how much Kilkenny win this All-Ireland by. All week, people were saying this and that about the Dubs and saying they'd give them a rattle (citation required). And I was saying to people, "look, Kilkenny are streets ahead. The bookies have this all wrong. This will 10 or 11 points, at least" (again, proper citation required).
People are losing the run of themselves on the basis of one loss in the League. We saw the importance of the League last week when Clare got shellacked by Waterford down in Thurles. It's a new ball game now and Brian Cody knows what he's doing. He stands there on the line, watching and seeing all through that peaked cap of his, radiating an intimidating presence. Referees know that if they blackguard Kilkenny, Cody will give them the stare. The Dubs aren't in the same League. There is a major gulf there.
A final word on RTE...
I had to laugh at the Sunday Game at the weekend. They send one reporter down to do a past-tense recap on the Tipperary-Cork football match, a match I had long insisted that Tipp could well win (again, a more reliable citation would be much appreciated) and we get two minutes of the game on the evening show. Then, in their panic, they try and make up for it by ringing Liam Kearns on the show and nattering about his grand-daughter for a few minutes. They spent longer on the kid than they did on the match. Congratulations to the family but this is the Sunday Game!
(Sean Óg Ó Kneejerk was in conversation with Conor Neville)
