A DAD'S LIFE:The race is on to turn the girls back into Irish kids, writes ADAM BROPHY
IT’S A week since the Olympics ended and the nightmares are starting to ease. I no longer wake shrieking in the night clawing out from under a snowdrift of Union flags or with Mo Farah chasing me down a 5k highway making strange hand gestures and insisting I “do the Mo-bot! do the Mo-bot!”.
The whole experience snowballed over time. We watched the Beeb simply because of the mountain of coverage available and because we wanted to avoid some of the commentators on the national station. But it was towards the end of the second week that the insidious effects began to become manifest.
I went hunting for a cup of Rosie Lee and realised I had called it just that, Rosie Lee, in my head (tea in Cockney rhyming slang). I barely registered the rows of St George’s Cross cups that had mysteriously, during our Olympic fugue, replaced our standard mugs. My personalised Gary Lineker calendar told me there were only three more days to endure, but even as I warmed the teapot with my Diamond Jubilee cosy I realised this was too much.
I ran to the living room and roared at them, “Switch now! Switch back! Save yourselves for God’s sake, even if it’s too late for me, save yourselves!”
They looked up with dead eyes. Their faces wan in the half light. “But her royal highness Zara Phillips has yet to ride. We must wait. The 31 year old still has a chance to break into the medals. And next up Sir Chris Hoy aims to become our most decorated Olympian ever,” monotoned the elder child.
“Our? No!”
My headlong dive over the armchair swept stacks of SunSport onto the floor before I snagged the remote and, in one fluid, Olympian-esque motion, flicked over to Bill O’Herlihy, Bernard Dunne and Kenny Egan extolling Katie Taylor and John Joe Nevin’s virtues. The earth shifted a little on its axis and the buzzing in my ears receded.
Their little faces looked up at me, blinking as if emerging from the darkest of dark caves. “Daddy, what happened? Where are we? Who are these people? What language are they speaking? Does that little man have a squeaker in his tummy for when you squeeze him?”
I slapped them both hard across the face. “Look at me,” I said, “You’ve been Beebwashed. You haven’t had decades of Match of the Day and Wimbledon to inure yourselves to such an onslaught like I have. But I don’t think the damage is permanent. Only Bill and Daire O’Brien from here on in. Tracy Piggott might tip you back so I’ll stick on replays of the Dublin Kerry final from last year whenever she makes an appearance. It’ll be okay girls, don’t worry, we’ll make it through this.”
The last week has been hard, no doubt. We’ve had trouble sleeping and extreme rattiness. They screamed like bereaved Bieber fans when I removed Beckham from their walls but they’re coming round to the charms of life-size Dáithí Ó Sé posters.
I’ve insisted Cian O’Connor is a viable alternative to Zara Phillips for role playing in their living room showjump spectacular, but have had to dig out old Sonia O’Sullivan and Eamonn Coghlan footage to provide an alternative to the cult of Jessica Ennis. Slowly, despite Sue Barker and John Inverdale’s best efforts, an essence of Gaelness returns.
We approached the principal of their school, a Gaelscoil, to re-open early. I cited the immense pressure the girls had been under all summer, what with the Euros and all, even before the skies turned red, white and blue for August. She refused. She claimed teachers would be reluctant to cut their holidays short. Surely not, even with the evidence I could produce?
“What about the children?” I pleaded. “Think about the children.”
She suggested if I wanted to subscribe to foreign channels, that was my lookout. Pah, teachers, they don’t care. With the number of them in government, it’s a wonder we’re not all singing Knees Up Mother Brown in Croke Park.
I have every Sunday Game set to record between now and the end of September. There will be nothing but the clash of the ash and the sound of boot on O’Neills ball to pollute my kids’ senses in the intense repatriation programme I have planned.
We are considering moving to Bray to be closer to Katie Taylor. At times like this we need her strength more than ever – her guts and guile in the face of an onslaught. I will overcome the tyranny of BBC sports programming and its hypnotic, transcendental qualities. I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We shall fight on. We shall fight them on the beaches . . . Ah jayz.