Lockerroom:The dirty little secret is that winning is great. It's better than just taking part. That's why they keep score

IF I HAD some nice golden bullets and an assassin’s eye and a big ole mutha of a rifle I would use them all ironically. One by one I would pick off anybody whom I had ever heard utter the most tedious, most mind-deadening phrase in the English language, it’s political correctness gone mad, innit.

I would leave classy little calling cards on the carcasses of my victims. “Yes, It Is! Bloody PC gone mad mate.” I would literally be political correctness gone mad. Pop! Pop! Pop! I would assassinate on an equal opportunities basis with no favour toward northsider or southsider, rugby type or golfer. I might make an exception and bump certain breeds up the queue. Those chaps who conduct late night phone-in programmes for the bewildered on local radio stations. People trapped in chat rooms. Taxi drivers who can tell you a thing or two about Nigerians. Members of the pro-gun lobby in the States.

I’m fundamentalist about this but like all zealots the very diamond-hard purity of my beliefs is the weapon best used against me. I shouldn’t for instance have gone all woozy about the Canadian women’s ice hockey team last week but, so help me lawd, I did.

It probably has to do with the stark, well nigh Calvinist, nature of an Irish upbringing. In my house we would celebrate big occasions with a little more salt on our porridge and a little less lemon in our black tea. That’s the Irish way.

Especially in sport. In recent years I notice that Eamonn Coghlan for instance is increasingly beloved of his countrymen. Middle age irons all the vim out of a man and we have forgotten how we cringed at the extravagance bordering on arrogance of the same Mr Coughlan when he won his World Championship in Helsinki in 1983. Eamonn had come fourth in every race he had previously run in leading myself and certain taxi drivers to believe that the entire thing was a bloody racket designed to do down the Irish. And next thing there was Coughlan blowing past poor old Dmitry Dmitriyev on the last straight and wrapping up a gold medal with more than one hundred metres ago.

We fell to our knees in prayer anticipating that the Chairman of the Boards, as the Yanks called him, would do the same at the finish line. Ronnie Delany had done so in Melbourne, ensuring that our sainted isle stayed free of snakes for another few decades. John Treacy had won two World Cross Country Championships by apparently fasting in a bog for a year before each. Yet no sooner had we started into the confiteor when we noticed that Coughlan had morphed into a Californian and was coming down the home straight all white teeth and pumping fists.

As a nation we were scandalised. We like our celebrations to be muted and our heroes to be ‘umble and for us never to lose the run of ourselves. We preferred the gratitude which Barry McGuigan offered unto Mister Eastwood above the showboating of that Steve Collins. Pádraig Harrington, a lad who got his qualification, has always been a lot less suspect in our eyes than Darren Clarke who is seldom seen getting out of his Bentley without a deep tan on him. We loved it when the Clare hurling team of the mid-90s became as good as anybody else, hated it when they started believing and acting as if they were as good as anybody else.

The Aussies call it tall poppy syndrome. The pleasure one gets in seeing the head taken off a poppy who blooms bright and brilliant above the rest of the crop.

The coolest moments in Irish sport are those when somebody achieves something extraordinary only to reveal themselves as too inhibited, too Irish to celebrate without care. The high point of this tendency came of course back in 1991 when Kevin Foley of Meath scored his extraordinary goal which effectively ended the excruciatingly tense four-game struggle between the Royals and Dublin.

Then late in the fourth game Meath moved the ball in a series of passes from their own square right up the field where Foley, a wing-back, slotted the ball into the Dublin net. The scenes which followed on the stands and the terraces were extraordinary, hearts were bursting and hearts were breaking, but Foley – without changing his facial expression once – turned and ran back to his position to face the kickout. Maybe one Meathman muttered, “good boy Foley” as he was passing but that was about the limit of it.

That’s how we were reared, so imagine the shock it was to see the Canadian women’s ice hockey team celebrate their gold medal during the week. We were scandalised to the point of swooning until the IOC issued a po-faced little statement basically saying, down with this sort of thing. That’s when we realised that everything we knew was wrong.

For those of you who missed it, well you missed it. Game done. Gold medals stashed. Media working away in the stands, the Canadian ice hockey gals, who were looking – it should be said while we are on our break from political correctness – like models who had been given a few decent meals, skated back out onto the ice smoking big fat cigars and carrying cans of beer and bottles of champagne. Being Irish we expect to see the Bishop of Cashel come skating out onto the rink after them, swinging his crozier as Benny Hill music played on the organ.

Anyway in their vivid red uniforms they disported themselves around the sheer dazzling whiteness of the rink soaking it all in, enjoying their moment together, taking pics of each other, laughing and just giving off a sense of style which made you want to forgive everything.

Were they a bad example? Nope. And who cares anyway. We get jaded sometimes with winners who say that it just came down to luck in the end, a kick of the ball, etc. Let’s have a little Ali. Let’s get a little swagger. Times are bleak otherwise.

We get ourselves into rigours of agony over sport for kids. Little Johnny or Little Mary can’t have their self-esteem dented by being beaten or being substituted or being asked to try harder. Enjoyment is better than winning and so on.

Fine , fine, fine but sometimes one suspects that it is all a big lie. Kids are as competitive as any animals in the great big bad world we all live in and if they aren’t they had better learn to be because it really is a big bad world.

And the dirty little secret is that winning is great. It’s better than just taking part. That’s why they keep score.

So the stogies, the beers, the champagne? All forgivable and all endearing when you watched a team at the end of an epic adventure together, an adventure of sacrifice and the pursuit of excellence.

Eamonn throw Kevin a fat Cuban and a can of Labatts there will ya? If the Bishop of Cashel calls tell him to lighten up too. And last one to finish the lap is a looooosah.