It's awards season, and the polls are now open for arguably the most coveted awards in Irish sport: the Balls Man and Woman of the Year. Along with honouring these achievements, we feel that it is time to hand out another couple of awards. 2016 was a largely absurd year, rich in acts of such profound eejitry that they seemed to be competing with each other. So that's what we've done. There are six nominees, so here's your chance to vote for Balls' Eejit of the Year.
Steve McClaren
In such an absurdly hilarious event as England being knocked out of a European competition by Iceland the week they voted themselves out of the European Union, it takes a special kind of eejitry to rise above the thousands of gags; to be heard ahead of the countless cackles. Take a bow, Steve McClaren. During England's pitiful collapse to Iceland, Sky Sports News decided they should service the four viewers they presumably had by booking Steve McClaren to watch the game on camera. What followed was the ultimate performance of what makes the England national team great: utterly baseless bluster and self-confidence, totally oblivious to the fall that inevitably follows. It is all compressed into McClaren's face as Iceland take the lead. Amazing.
h2se by yossarianlives5
Tommy Carr
RTE made a couple of inexplicable decisions in their live GAA coverage this year. One was the interruption of the prime-time game by the Nuacht, but that was at least unintelligible to much of the viewing public. The same loophole does not apply to the second: Tommy Carr. The former Dublin, Cavan, and Roscommon manager got the co-commentary gig at least once every weekend on RTE, and his suspicion approach the fundamental TV rule of entertainment proved, in retrospect, to be a mistake.
Carr's co-commentary delivered an uneasy mix of lack of insight, and lack of humour while all the time speaking incredibly slowly. Unless you were one of those odd existentialists, who enjoy spending time with people who irritate you as they make time go more slowly and thereby make life longer, chances are you're more of a Martin Carney person.
I hope somewhere in the small print of the GAA's agreement with RTÉ, Tommy Carr has been restricted to 1 match every 2 months!!
— Morgan O'Callaghan (@MorgantheBriar) December 10, 2016
Shane Ross
When Shane Ross took his new cabinet position as Minister of Transport, Tourism and Sport, chances are he fancied that the last of those would prove the least bit of hassle. If that was his assumption, then he was spectacularly wrong. Assuming his singular ambition is not to act out an Armando Iannucci script, he has achieved largely nothing. He became the latest in a long line of sports ministers to pick a duel with Pat Hickey, flying to Brazil for talks, which culminated in a photo opportunity with Hickey and Annalise Murphy before he announced that it was time he returned home following Hickey's dramatic arrest.
Ross spent much of his time in Rio tweeting: there was the iconic 'Shell shock here in Rio' following Hickey's arrest, preceded by the Katie Taylor fiasco. Ross didn't help the idea that he is a sports minister out of touch with sport by tweeting 'go Katie go' after Taylor had been beaten by Mira Potkonen. It was the fault of a dodgy 3G connection, apparently, but eejitry seems particularly vulnerable to such mishaps.
Ladies Final Umpire
The Mayo men endured another year of preposterous disappointment, but at least they could somewhat blame themselves as the dust settled. Not so for the Dublin ladies, who lost an All-Ireland final by a point thanks to some rank incompetence by an umpire. Carla Rowe's point quite clearly went between the posts, but the man in the long white coat decided otherwise.
Oddly, referral to Hawk-Eye wasn't an option, meaning this was eejitry without an escape clause.
Everybody responsible for the Christy Ring Cup final fiasco
An important part of officiating Gaelic games - or, indeed, any other sport - is to at least make sure the score is counted correctly. Sadly, that didn't happen in this year's Christy Ring hurling final: Meath lifted the cup, only for everybody to belatedly realise that the game had in fact ended in a draw. The referee was keeping score, but he adapted to a scoreboard error, and ultimately got the whole thing wrong, and a replay was called after the referee admitted he made an error in his subsequent report. Meath won the replay.
It calls into question why the onus is on the referee to keep score in Croke Park, given that he has countless fires to fight across seventy minutes. Hawk-eye, for example, should be capable of totting up the score throughout the game. This was a human error, but it felt like a kind of collective eejitry.
Irish Fans calling out Harry Arter
Ireland's game with Georgia was sufficiently dull for a subsection of eejits to decide they needed to devote their energies elsewhere, and they ended up propagating an utterly baseless rumour about Harry Arter switching allegiances to England. It was started out of nowhere, and people who should know better sent Arter some vile messages. Arter has said that some of the messages led to him considering quitting Ireland, before reconsidering.
Arter made his competitive debut against Austria, fully putting to bed any doubts over his commitment. In a sporting year defined by Irish fans portraying themselves so well on the international stage, this was a grisly moment of profound eejitry.
