faithful to memory and mishap,
advertised allegiance,
enjoyed, endured,
supported.
Recently his mind’s not on it.
Determined to disengage,
this August he swore to ignore
the hype, the ballyhoo.
By mid-September he surrendered,
listened for the lists again:
Wolverhampton Wanderers 1 Preston North End 1
Sheffield Wednesday 0 Manchester United 3
That's the ending of a poem I wrote about the Manchester United Munich crash from the point of view of a west of Ireland lad who started to support them as a result of the crash. In the early years it was a matter of waiting for the reading of the results at 5 o'clock on the BBC - read just like a Catholic litany with different inflections giving a clue as to the result as each first team's score was read.
The season has started again and I get the same feeling- I've been following English football since 1958 and maybe it's time to stop, to ignore all the hype and news. Still I watched United yesterday and I have plans to go to Old Trafford and see my first United match.
What is so great about sport is the unpredictability. In spite of the money and the dr
ugs and the hype and the merchandising anything can happen one the game commences. Who would have predicted what happened at the US PGS Championship last night! Yes I watch some golf also.What really irritates me about sport presentation on TV, especially Soccer and Gaelic Games, is the commentary and the fact that they have to have an assistant to add more comments. I'm starting a campaign for a match presentation without commentary only crowd noises. Those who make the decisions in TV seem to have the attitude that the watcher is a complete idiot and needs to be told not only who and what he/she is watching but also has to be told what to think. When Andy Grey on Sky tells us what is going on in a player's head I really get annoyed.
The best result over the week-end was Sligo Rovers 1-0 victory in the FAI Cup. After conceding four goals in each of the two previous matches this was welcome. The scorer was Rafael Cretaro (picture) who sound like he has been bought from Inter Milan for millions but actually the family owns a fast food restaurant in Tubbercurry.
Eamonn Sweeney, the Irish writer, in 1997 wrote There's Only One Red Army about supporting Sligo Rovers .
On Sky you can use the red button to get rid of the commentary. I often do this. However, I like Andy Gray and Martin Tyler's commentary very much. Sometimes the tension is so great when I am watching Arsenal (the team I support) that I have to turn off the commentary though.
ReplyDelete