In the three years this weekly column has been winging its way south, inspiration has come from many weird and wonderful directions. There are weeks when topics and themes tumble over each other vying for attention, others when the tortuous process of filling this space has all the creative allure of watching paint dry.
The old reliables, of course, rise to the surface with alarming and at times depressing regularity. In April, 1998, the first instalment in this series focused on moves within the body politic of the GAA to remove Rule 21 from the statute book. Three years later, that particular boil has yet to be fully lanced, and in the meantime a number of other issues, most notably Rule 42, have taken their places in the public consciousness.
Then, as now, a recurring theme was the GAA's battle with that great imponderable known as good PR. The more GAA things change, the more they remain the same.
Three years ago, too, the first efforts were being made to beat the drum for a future for local football that did not march to the same sectarian beat as previous generations. In the aftermath of some shameful nights at Windsor Park, there had been some signs of green shoots of optimism in the intervening weeks and months. But the recent Neil Lennon episode was graphic proof of how shaky those new foundations are. Come back in a decade and there is no guarantee that the bones of the story will have altered significantly.
But beyond these hoary imponderables some incredible stories of selflessness, endeavour and courage have graced these columns. In no particular order, these have included Darren Clarke's efforts on behalf of the Omagh bomb fund, Martin O'Neill's magical mystery tour at Celtic Park, David Humphreys' peerless grace with Ulster and the commitment of all the faceless and nameless GAA people who have kept the games alive and flourishing here in the face of what was often intolerable pressure.
Sometimes those stories come easy and, like the proverbial buses, tend to come in twos and threes. So it was last Saturday. If it's late April and the Crucible it must be Joe Swail time, and once again he has arrived to kick-start a lacklustre world championship. There is something about Swail that is just so eminently likeable and which enables him to transcend the narrow confines of his sport.
Someone once wrote that attempting to write about music is as futile as trying to dance about architecture. So it is with snooker. The parameters of the game and its scoring are so rigidly defined that it needs its characters like Joe Swail to move beyond the mundane. Few have been able to fit that bill, and it is no coincidence that when Swail was in full flow against Mark Williams last Saturday morning he resembled no one more than Alex Higgins in his pomp.
Taking on and beating the reigning world champion did not seem to faze Swail, and he approached the raft of interviews that followed in his inimitable, self-effacing way. Most modern sportsmen and women frown and grump their way through question and answer sessions with the good people of the Fourth Estate. But Swail bucks the trend with shy smiles and jokes at his expense. He is one of our own and a joy to behold. Long may that continue.
An hour or two later, Tony McCoy, the sportsman who has probably garnered most individual plaudits in this column, stepped up to the plate. The difficulty now is that we are fast running out of both language adequate enough to do justice to McCoy and jockeys of comparable talent against whom he can be realistically judged.
The bare facts of McCoy's career are astounding in themselves. As the 2000-01 jumps season ended on Saturday, McCoy collected his sixth successive champion jockey title. For a man who had his first ride over fences only in 1994, and who is not yet past his mid-twenties, this is a stunning achievement.
The ultimate testimony to what he has achieved in that ludicrously short period is that he has altered fundamentally the criteria by which his peers and those who will come after him are measured. Within the last decade, pre-McCoy, riding 100 winners in a jumps season was a rare and eminently laudable target. McCoy, in association with trainer Martin Pipe, has trampled all over that sort of logic and has moved the goalposts to such an extent that he could profess himself unhappy with "only 191 winners" at the close of play on Saturday evening and not be greeted with laughs of derision and incomprehension.
Last Saturday afternoon at Sandown Park should have been a victory parade for McCoy as he basked in the glory of another long but successful winter's racing. But any thoughts of congratulatory handshakes and pats on the back were clearly not part of the champion's agenda as he turned in the riding performance of the year to inch Edredon Bleu in front of Fadalko in the showpiece two-mile chase.
It is impossible to conceive of another jockey coaxing a comparable performance out of a horse in a similarly tight finish. Except, of course, McCoy himself, who delivered a carbon copy on the same horse at Cheltenham last year. When you are touched by greatness, lightning can strike just as many times as it likes. Just now, and for the foreseeable future, McCoy is so far ahead of the rest that they are mere specks in the distance.
It all made for a life-affirming afternoon. Joe Swail and Tony McCoy are important to this place because they prove that there is sporting life beyond petty sectarianism and endless navel-gazing. They are reminders that we don't have to lurch from one squall or one crisis to another, and that there are still times when it's alright simply to sit back and enjoy the wonder of it all. For that alone we have reason to be thankful.
