HOLD THE BACK PAGE:THE DISPROPORTIONATE lengths to which some newspapers go to get stories sets you guessing who the fraudsters and hypocrites are.
England rugby captain Lawrence Dallaglio was caught in a sting in 1999 after saying he was involved in drugs dealing (nine years previously). It was stupid hubris. He thought admission would make him more credible. Bang went the England captaincy.
John Higgins was entrapped by the same paper. Journalists had set up a convincing website which indicated the snooker player was talking to a subsidiary of Russia's largest private commercial bank, Alfa Equity. Higgins and his sport are now in troubled waters over him accepting, in principle, a bribe from a journalist (he didn't bet). Telling elaborate lies in the hope of getting truths or lies back seems duplicitously unreliable.
Sometimes the journalists are the hypocrites. Often they get found out. And to get found out takes a certain amount of arrogance, enough at least to blindly wade in at the bar and tell Darach McQuaid that Lance Armstrong isn't credible.
Darach comes from a highly-respected cycling family. He is the project director of the Tour of Ireland. Intelligent, articulate and knowing what he's talking about, he holds the three things that would usually trigger a retreat from such a sweeping statement.
You say the petulance of the riders when the drug scandals broke in the 1990s was outrageous. He says everything has changed. You say you don't believe in Armstrong's innocence. He says he's never tested positive. You say cycling can't be trusted. He says cycling is the cleanest sport in the world now. You try to remember the name of a cycling world champion who tested positive but can't. He says you don't know what you're talking about. He's right. That's journalistic arrogance.
Then he says he's got a bike for sale that Armstrong owned, that he's going to put it on eBay but he's willing to part with it for a decent price despite you dancing on Armstrong's career. You think about it. Riding around Dublin on a Lance Armstrong bike. Jeez, that's like a rugby wag walking into Krystle night club in Manolo Blahnik shoes, or, Uma Thurman stumbling on a Hattori Hanzo sword. Cool. Nice. You ask is Lance Armstrong written large on the frame so everyone can see it.
You ask Darach what Lance is like personally. He's says he's a lovely fella, busy, real busy.
Lance Armstrong's bike cutting through the Dublin traffic. Cool. Nice. Darach tells you how light it is. You ask will it break in half on a manhole cover. He says it's super strong. You ask about the saddle – might it be bad for a gentleman who wishes to settle on a large family. Trying his patience you empty your entire cycling information locker on his head. He tells you the wheel size and frame spec. You ask him what colour it is.
Darach knows Armstrong, likes Armstrong, respects Armstrong. But for an hour you consider buying a bike simply because Armstrong once rode it, a rider you've publicly insulted, denigrated and disbelieved. But the kudos is irresistible. Never mind his cancer battle, your backside would be where the backside of a seven-times Tour de France winner once put his. You'll happily dump on Armstrong because it's a more conceited position to take in a pub conversation than loving Armstrong. But you'll take his bike too. Hubris. That's the hypocrisy. No need for a fake website. Perhaps Dallaglio and Higgins were momentarily swayed. We all are.
Niland travels far and high
CONOR NILAND is now ranked higher in tennis than Chris DiMarco, Fred Funk, Rich Beem, Corey Pavin, Brad Faxon, John Daly and Tom Watson are in the golf PGA Tour ladder.
Last Monday was good to the Limerick Irish Davis Cup player. He moved up the ATP rankings 57 places to 165th in the world. It was the highest move of any player in the world last week ranked inside the top 200.
Last week was good for Niland because he put Irish tennis in a place it hasn’t been for decades and the players he beat were better than those Louk Sorensen overcame in his run to the second round of the Australian Open in January.
Niland defeated three players at the Israel Open who were ranked higher than him. In the final he beat Brazilian Thiago Alves, ranked 127. He also took the scalp of Harel Levy, ranked 122 and Germany’s Rainer Schuettler, who in 2008 was reaching the semi-final stages of Grand Slams. That year he lost out to Rafa Nadal in the last four at Wimbledon.
But Niland didn’t get there without sacrifice. The 28-year-old has been doing some dirt tracking. In January he played twice in Doha, Qatar, and then in Melbourne, Australia.
The following month he moved to Europe with tournaments in Kazan, Russia and two in France, ending in up in the port city of Marseilles. In March it was back to Dublin for the Davis Cup in Fitzwilliam before heading east for his ATP points to Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After that it wasn’t such a long hop to get to the island of Jersey.
He then jetted to Houston, Texas, in April, dropped down to Leou in Mexico and travelled north again to Tallahassee in Florida before arriving in Israel at the beginning of May.
Granted that’s a little more effort than Watson is putting into his golf these days.
But for all of that mileage Niland has earned himself €30,500 in prize money, €11,400 of which was picked up at the Ramat Hasharon event in Israel. Modest in one way.
In another it’s a tennis breakthrough.
Thomas' transition in a different league
AT THE beginning of this month Gareth Thomas returned to the scene of one of his greatest triumphs as rugby league side Crusaders beat Bradford 19-0. It wasn’t all roses for Thomas as he was subjected to homophobic abuse by Castleford fans. The catch phrase “I’m here and I’m queer”, draws applause in California but doesn’t sit well in league terraces.
Last December Thomas became the first international rugby player to come out as gay prompting the pre-eminent American sports magazine Sports Illustrated to send a feature writer to Britain to talk to him. They were struck by his decision.
University lecturer Pat Griffen, a medal winner in the hammer at the Gay Games in 1998, wrote a book about lesbians in sport called Strong Women, Deep Closets. The title is probably more apt for male athletes. No American sports star in the US has ever come out and said he was gay, while still playing. But even Thomas, who made the transition from union heterosexual to league homosexual, used to be gay intolerant himself.
After his marriage in 2002 to teenage sweetheart Jemma, Thomas spoke movingly of their desire to become parents and the heartbreak of her suffering three miscarriages. In his first interview he also explained if anyone dared to suggest he was anything other than 100 per cent straight, then the man nicknamed “Alfie” was prepared to make them see the error of their ways with his fists, if necessary.
It defies the laws of statistics that the general population has a ratio of one in 10 people who are gay but there isn’t a single homosexual professional rugby player known in Ireland.
The Welsh player has helped to normalise the issues around his sexuality. But the chances are there won’t be many “Alfies”. He is now a sociological experiment, who many gay sports people will watch, possibly with lugubrious interest.
First man out of the trenches in a war of attrition, that little nook of Castleford may only be the beginning.
Irish boxing in high stakes face-off
F I N A L S T R A W:SMOKE SIGNALS rose from the National Stadium last Saturday following a brief statement from the Irish Amateur Boxing Association.
It read: “The boxing council of the IABA have voted in support of their board of directors in relation to the appointments of IABA CEO and High Performance Director.”
The IABA board of directors received an almost unanimous show of support during a meeting of the boxing council at the National Stadium.
Don Stewart was recently appointed CEO of the IABA and Dominic O’Rourke was appointed IABA high performance director.
The Irish Sports Council, who provide the funds for those two roles, say they won’t cough up the money.
The question now is where this will end as the “medal factory” that is Irish boxing fronts up to a Government agency in what is now a high stakes face-off.
We will await the next move in the hope that it is not in the same direction of Irish athletics, which cost the tax payer a reported €800,000.
Williams winning all the way
THE VOLCANIC eruptions in Tiger Woods’s life seem to be having the same effect on his sponsors, family, golfing fans and coaching staff as Iceland has had on airline travel. Caddy Steve Williams seems the one person who has survived. Williams was a talented young rugby player in his teens and might have become an All Black had he kept his career going. As a 15-year-old the world’s biggest golf course grouch captained the New Zealand under-15s and seemed destined for a decent career as a player.
Where did it all go wrong? Williams, who never talks about his financial arrangement with his good friend Tiger, would take between six and 10 per cent of prize winnings from the serial Major winner and cash cow. In 2006 Tiger won just under €7.9 million and in 2007 just under €8.7 million. In 2008 he raked in a mere €4.7 million before returning to normal levels of earning with €8.2 million last season. That gives Williams several million over just four years and his career lives on. Would Kiwi Popey get that kind of money for singing duets with Hooky on the Roadshow?
