Cricketers also prove we're better together

HOLD THE BACK PAGE:WITH ONE swipe of his willow bat, John Mooney – once known in north county Dublin sporting circles for his Gaelic football prowess with junior club Man O'War – did a lot of things in Bangalore the other day. One of them was to affirm that international teams from this island of ours achieve mightier feats when they play as one, with no political or religious baggage, rather than when they plough a lone furrow.

On Sky Sports’ footage on Wednesday evening, it was also revealing to see how Kevin O’Brien, the history-maker in a history-making team, cut short his interview because he had something to do. What was it? He was required back in the dressingroom . . . to sing!

The song, as it transpired, was the Phil Coulter anthem Ireland's Call, ostensibly a rugby anthem but one now also adopted by Ireland's all-island cricketers to promote inclusiveness.

With the dressingroom closed to outsiders for the moment of togetherness, the TV cameras were left simply pointed at the doors as the microphones picked up the chorus of men belting out how they were standing shoulder to shoulder and taller than they’d ever stood in their lives.

There was further evidence of sporting togetherness aprés match as incoming Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson led the chorus of appreciation with statements of congratulations.

Not dissimilar statements have been issued over the past few years, to greet Ireland’s Grand Slam in rugby in 2009, golfer Graeme McDowell’s US Open triumph at Pebble Beach last year and Irish boxing’s haul of medals from the European championships.

The common trend is that such successes have been achieved in sports which operate on an all-island basis.

Surely there is a moral to all of this, although historical baggage and, on a broader scale, the international ruling bodies would seem to militate against Ireland competing as one in the most globally popular sport of all: soccer!

These days, the presence of two governing bodies in one sport on the island – the IFA in Northern Ireland and the FAI in the Republic of Ireland – stands out like a sore thumb.

And while there’s a lot of talk about “co-operation” between the two soccer organisations, the issue that registered with most of us more than any other in recent times has been the eligibility, or not, of players from one jurisdiction to represent a team from the other.

The dispute over Derry-born Darron Gibson’s decision to declare for the Republic rather than Northern Ireland even led to it being discussed in the Northern Ireland assembly, before Fifa backed his right to chose.

The successes over the past couple of years of teams like the Ireland rugby team, the boxers and – most currently in the limelight – the cricketers provides some confirmation of how the all-island model works for the better.

Indeed, the hosting of the World Rally Championship in 2007 and again in 2009, which were staged on both sides of the border, was another huge success story. Maybe it’s just a pipedream that Ireland could one day have one soccer team competing in the European championships or the World Cup.

The IFA, quite rightly, could point out they were actually there first and there was a time when players from the south – a la Con Martin, Tom Aherne, Reg Ryan and Davy Walsh – had no problem also playing for Northern Ireland, before Fifa moved in to stop players representing both teams.

Who knows what a combined Ireland soccer team might achieve beyond what the two currently manage, but George Best – months before his death – offered his take that the two should play as one on the basis that, at any given time, “the Republic and Northern Ireland have had some great, world-class players”.

Perhaps, though, the feats of the all-island cricket team – coming from a smaller pool base but clearly with fine developmental structures in place – will provide some food for thought somewhere within the offices of the IFA and the FAI, two bodies who are actually more alike than they realise. Or is it that the distant memories of Spain ’82 and Italia ’90 make their independence worth it all?

Auld Firm bosses' bad example

AS RELATIVELY young football managers or, in the case of Ally McCoist, a wannabe manager, you could be inclined to give the benefit of doubt to “Super Ally” – as he is known by Rangers supporters – and Celtic boss Neil Lennon for their contretemps on leaving the pitch after the Scottish Cup replay the other night. Except the two should really know better.

McCoist, who is 48, and Lennon, who will celebrate his 40th birthday in June, are passionate about the game but must learn that different manners are required of them in their off-pitch roles rather than when they were heroes to the masses on the terraces.

In fact, it would do neither of them any harm to be reminded of the classic Billy Connolly gag about the Old Firm rivalry which has Bovril as an integral part of its punch-line.

You can view it at, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JjVg0Sbsh4. Connolly’s twist is an old joke that encapsulates the relationship between the two sets of supporters.

But there is a more serious side to the whole situation and, after the fifth meeting of the Glasgow giants this season, Strathclyde Police adopted a different view of what it sees as the heightening violence and public disorder which comes with the derby matches and have expressed their concerns to both clubs and to the Scottish FA in no uncertain terms.

Perhaps it’s a case of familiarity breeding contempt. By the time the season winds up, Celtic and Rangers will have met no fewer than seven times.

The pair have already met five times this season and have two dates left, the Scottish League Cup final at the end of this month and the final Old Firm league meeting.

Before those games, officials from both clubs will have met with Scottish government officials and the police in a round-table forum to work out ways to cool temperatures on and off the field in their derby encounters.

St Kieran's hurling machine grinds on

ONE OF the more remarkable feats in Irish sport will barely have registered with the wider audience this week, but the on-going supremacy of St Kieran's College in lifting hurling title after hurling title down through the years shows no signs of diminishing.

During the week, St Kieran's – whose school motto is "Hiems Transiit" (the latin for "The Winter Has Passed") – celebrated the move into spring by collecting a 51st Leinster colleges hurling championship. Indeed, it's more of a rarity for Corn Uí Dhuill to be out of their possession, given the number of times the trophy has been housed in the Kilkenny hurling powerhouse.

Since winning the title for the first time in 1922, St Kieran's have won 51 titles – with St Peter's, Wexford in second place with eight wins – and racked up a record nine-in-a-row in the years from 1987 to 1996. In the early part of that run, a certain Denis Joseph Carey was the star hurler, who also guided them to back-to-back All-Ireland colleges titles in 1988 and 1989.

The conveyor belt from college to the county team is a sweet piece of machinery and a look at the latest team sheet with familiar names of Cleere, Brennan, Cody, Hickey, Power et al confirms that history is finding a way of repeating itself.

Daly cites snapper for rib injury

THE FINAL STRAW:TWO-TIME major champion John Daly may have been suspended on five different occasions and cited no fewer than 21 times for not giving his best effort in tournaments (according to a court documents given by the PGA Tour in a libel case lost by the golfer last year), but he is showing perseverance of a different kind in his pursuit of an injury claim against the organisers of the Honda Classic.

In a lawsuit first filed in 2008, Daly claimed a female spectator snapped a photograph of him and caused a rib injury. Daly claims the woman jumped the gallery ropes and snapped him at the top of his backswing. The former US PGA and British Open champion says he feared hitting the spectator and got the injury when he abruptly stopped his swing. Showing no sign of letting the matter go, Daly updated the claim at a court in Florida on Wednesday.

Hack gets the sack and sports magazine gets the flak

NASCAR mostly has its constituency amongst a section of the American population disparagingly referred to as hillbillies or red necks. But the sport attracts a massive TV audience, as well as gathering copious column inches in magazines and newspapers stateside, and it is for this reason why the decision of Sports Illustratedthis week to sack one of its contributors has created such a furore. Tom Bowles "crime" was to applaud (captured by television cameras) the unlikely win of 20-year-old Trevor Bayne's in the Daytona 500, with the magazine taking the view that its reporters shouldn't be seen as fans with laptops. Bowles argued that "it was okay to applaud because of the magnitude of the moment, as long as you don't let any bias show up in your writing."