TV VIEW:NORMAL SERVICE, the Shamrock Rovers faithful might argue, was resumed on Friday night after a lengthy enough interruption, the signal scrambled for many a year by interloping upstarts the likes of Shels, Bohs, Dundalk, St Pat's, Cork City, Derry and Drogheda.
The club, then, won its first league title since the year Ray Houghton put the ball in the Italians’ Giants Stadium net – and that’s not today nor yesterday. Sixteen years, to be bleakly blunt about it, lest you were kidding yourself you’re still but a footballing child.
A joyous occasion for the club, as it was for those of us who tuned in to RTÉ to get a break from all this talk of economic meltdown.
“Welcome,” said George Hamilton, “this is the 71st anniversary of the Wall St Crash”. George? Stop.
A relaxing evening it was for Rovers in no sense at all, relegation-threatened Bray somewhat intent on pooping the party, their efforts even making Hooperman look nervous, despite him having a fixed exhilarated facial expression that doesn’t actually allow for displays of fear.
Hooperman is the Rovers mascot. He’s a six-foot-something superhero, with a bit of a look of Buzz Lightyear. He wears a cape, form-fitting underpants over body-hugging tights, has hands the size of shovels and he has a big green head on him.
Just before the second half kicked off George told us Hooperman had been asked by officials at the Carlisle Grounds to wear a Hi-Vis luminous orangie vest. Why? “Because,” said George, “he looks too much like a Bray player”.
We spent the next 45 minutes trying to figure out whether this was a compliment or a slur on the Wicklow men. We, as you’d imagine they did too, settled on the former.
Anyway, Rovers got their draw and their title. Now? “To infinity and beyond!”
A year before Rovers last won the league Chris Hughton laid his playing boots to rest. Watching him on the touchline yesterday during the English North-East derby it struck us that even if he emerged from the dug-out in form-fitting underpants over body-hugging tights, with hands the size of shovels and a big green head on him it still wouldn’t better that image of him pursuing a dreadlocked Ruud Gullit in Euro 88.
These days, though, he’s steering the ship that is Newcastle, the one that perennially seeks perilous rocks, and is doing a rather fine job of it. Promotion from the Championship, despite having less money to spend than our Department of Education, and now? Seventh in the Premiership.
“We’re back on GMT – Geordie Massive Total,” said Sky’s Martin Tyler yesterday, which explained why our attempt to record Football’s Greatest: Diego Maradona had only yielded Aerobics Oz Style.
So, the clocks went back on Sunderland, to a time when they knew only anguish, Niall Quinn’s heroic attempts to look upbeat when the cameras zoomed in on him somewhat tested by the avalanche of Newcastle goals.
Well, five of them, to be precise. And afterwards Hughton was asked about talk of his imminent dismissal.
He smiled, shrugged, didn’t say much. In fairness, though, to the club’s hierarchy, Houghton doesn’t have quite the glam profile of some of Newcastle’s most illustrious gaffers. Like, say, Ossie Ardiles, Kenny Dalglish, Gullit, Graeme Souness, Sam Allardyce and Alan Shearer. True, they kept Newcastle’s lifeboats busy, but they looked good in the dugout. Big green heads on them.
If Hughton’s feats border on the heroic, it’s nothing compared to the efforts of TG4’s MacDara Mac Donncha on Saturday when he had to commentate on that shinty-hurling international at Croke Park.
There were four MacDonalds on the Scottish team, as you might expect, and a couple of Campbells too, (surprisingly, only one Stuart MacKintosh, though), leaving MacDara with the mother of all commentating challenges.
He survived the test, unlike Ireland, Scotland with their interminably long sticks bettering our hurling boys and their twigs. The jury, to be honest, is still out on this marginally surreal hybrid game, one that has you wondering if, say, darts and javelin or golf and snooker or football and Stoke City should give it a mongrel-like lash. Endless possibilities, when you think about it.
If darts takes up the hybrid challenge then Martin “Wolfie” Adams, winner of the World Masters yesterday, should be the midfield enforcer. In truth, we missed the final, but we saw him see off the challenge of Jan Dekker on Saturday. And, mark you, Jan had beaten “John-Boy” Walton en route to his joust with Wolfie. “Goodnight John-Boy,” said BBC commentator Tony Green, prompting him to laugh so hard his colleague David Croft very nearly had to order an oxygen tank.
Jan fought hard, but it wasn’t enough. “It’s not so much double Dekker as bus fare home,” said David. “Yes, it’s Wolfie who’s conducting the situation,” said Tony. Ah. Next stop please.
