Compiled by JOHN O'SULLIVAN
Scots walk the talk with island venues
SCOTLAND will undertake summer Test matches against Australia and the two Pacific islands of Samoa and Fiji. Unlike many of the top-tier rugby playing nations, the Scots will actually play the Test matches on the respective islands.
This is a rare occurrence as Samoa, Fiji and Tonga are usually summoned to Australia or New Zealand if they want those fixtures, with the latter pair not venturing in the other direction. Indeed the last team from the top eight in the world rankings to play Samoa at home was Ireland.
The match took place in June 2003 on a swelteringly hot day at Apia Park and the average weight loss of the Irish players during the match was close to a stone.
The visitors had cold showers at half-time to cool down their body temperatures. Ireland won the game 40-14 on a day when Aidan McCullen, Paul Shields and Anthony Horgan made their debuts.
Fair play to the Scots for making the trip, actions speaking far more eloquently than the hot air about spreading the rugby gospel trotted out by countries who at the same time refuse to travel there.
Na excuse for what Kevin had to endure
SOME AMERICAN male sports’ fans appear to leave the X chromosome in the parking lot along with sensitivity, decorum and empathy. They reserve the option to chastise, heckle and bellow inanities, often in a boorish expression of their constitutional right to freedom of speech.
In the maelstrom of field sports like American football and baseball, so too their siblings ice hockey and basketball, the acoustics ensure players can rarely be assailed by individual comment, the din of the razzmatazz and musical backdrop drowning out most of the bile.
Golf is a completely different matter. The etiquette of the game demands silence when golfers are over the ball but a nanosecond after impact it’s open season for what is often booze-flecked banter. “Get in the hole”, “you’re the man” and “be the one”, are familiar refrains and while annoying there is nothing inhibiting for the golfer other than briefly trying to guess the shoe-sized IQ of that particular fan.
There is an element, though, in the American galleries who positively revel in any technical or mental aberrations displayed by a golfer. Perhaps it makes them feel better about themselves and their lives. As individuals they’d probably require a five-figure stipend to cover the psychiatry costs.
Colin Montgomerie was serenaded with chants of “Mrs Doubtfire”, an unwinnable and one-sided joust for the Scot, while Sergio Garcia had verbal spike marks down his back at Bethpage when he was in the midst of his torturous grip and re-gripping affliction.
Patriotism, real or borrowed, is trotted out at Ryder Cup time to explain a more raucous backdrop to a sport where the hiatus between shots can be a couple of minutes. Ask Lee Westwood, though, what he thought of a few heads outside the ropes at Valhalla whose needle was both sharp and pointed.
The manner in which Kevin Na was upbraided vocally at times at the Players Championship at Sawgrass last weekend is not surprising, just sad. The South Korean, who moved to America as an eight-year-old, is currently battling swing demons.
It’s not the “yips”-type affliction that’s normally associated with the game, more akin to the “dartitis” that effectively ended the career of legendary arrow-smith Eric Bristow. He struggled to release the dart. Na has to consciously delve for a mental trigger to complete his swing.
There were occasions when he took his club back six times without hitting the ball. Remarkably he led going into the final round, quite an achievement when considering the mental anguish he endured. He spoke honestly about the path he must tread to rectify the problem. He wasn’t cut an ounce of slack, though, by those on the other side of the ropes.
He walked quickly between shots so as not to unduly slow down his playing partner and eventual tournament winner Matt Kuchar.
There was one particular incident on the sixth green in the final round that shines a light into that ugly place; or in this case face. Na’s caddie, Kenny Harms, explained: “We had a clown on the sixth hole come up and say, after we just made bogey on five, he said, ‘I’ve got $2,000; you better not start choking’.
“This is a game of etiquette. It’s not basketball. It’s not football. Show come class. There’s no reason to do that to anybody. It’s not like he’s doing it on purpose. He feels more bad about it than anyone else, I can promise you that. He’s doing everything he can to get faster.”
The loudmouths don’t care. They’ll just follow the trail of blood in the water to locate their next floundering victim. Imagine how they’d feel if a stranger walked up and bawled at them in their workplace: see how long their equilibrium would last.
Norman Conquest was never likely to succeed
THIS COLUMN has a limitless appetite for useless, but preferably funny or quirky sporting trivia, so in casually reading across a number of platforms happened upon Norman Conquest. It refers not alone to a period in Irish history but also, rather amusingly, is the name of an Australian soccer goalkeeper, who won 11 caps for his country just after the second World War.
It’s probably fair to say his parents, Mr and Mrs Conquest, had a good sense of humour or maybe a perverse one in labouring their son with the christian name Norman. Born in 1916 in Balmain, he moved to Kearsley and played with Aberdare Rangers before loyally serving Grace Bros and then North Shore.
Norman, however, achieved notoriety when he kept goal for Australia against a touring England FA representative team, the English winning the match in Sydney 17-0. A former Australian international, the wonderfully named “Tugger” Bryant wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald of the match. “Australia could not handle the mud whereas England revelled in it and ran rings around the Australians. It became farcical. Our players spent more times on their backs in the mud than on their feet. One spectator commented, ‘The only time they were on their feets (stet) was when the band played God Save the Queen’.
“At no time did the home team show cohesive football. None of the defenders properly marked his opponent. Goalkeeper Norman Conquest faced a hopeless task, with the Englishman walking through our defence to deliver a barrage of shots.”
It would have offered a dream for the modern day headline writer, a tame example of which might have been “Hopeless Task for Norman Conquest”.
The Aussie is not the only goalkeeper to have a striking name. Reading had a netminder called Steve Death in the 1970s. He went 1,103 minutes without conceding a goal, a record that endured until beaten by Manchester United’s Edwin van der Sar in January, 2009.
He also made a club record 156 consecutive appearances, which stands to this day. He found it hard to drop the keeper aspect of his profession and after he retired from football went on to tend a local golf course until his death in 2003.
Those of a certain vintage, age-wise, will recall the French goalkeeper Dominique Dropsy, who was a member of the national squad for the 1978 World Cup, a name that might have been drawn from a Monty Python sketch or a Carry On film.
Next week this column will look at the life and times of Paraguayan right back Francesco Javier Arce who played for the national side in the 1998 and 2002 World Cups. He was known to his team-mates and supporters – a name he bestowed on himself – as Chiqui Arce.
Morgan tastes action after Indian interlude
EOIN MORGAN had not played a game of cricket since a T20 international against Pakistan in Abu Dhabi on February 27th until yesterday when he returned to county cricket, albeit a seconds match for Middlesex against Surrey.
After losing his place in England’s Test squad he decided to honour his contract with the Kolkata
Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League (IPL) rather than immediately returning to county cricket in England.
It was reasonable, given England will defend their world T20 title IN September in Sri Lanka. It’s the form of the game used in the IPL.
The only rider was he enjoyed game time but he did not play a single match in Kolkata’s 15 games before returning to England.
IPL teams are limited to four foreign players per match and many squads would contain six to eight players in that category. Kolkata have gone with Jacques Kallis (South Africa), Brendon McCullum (New Zealand, Brett Lee (Australia) and West Indian Sunil Narine, while rotating Ryan ten Doeschate (Netherlands), Shakib al Hasan (Bangladesh) and Brad Haddin (New Zealand) into the line-up at various points.
Phelps has driving ambition to make his mark on two fronts
A RECENT interview with Michael Phelps, written by Rick Reilly, demonstrated the US swimmer possesses both a fine sense of humour and also a gene that occasionally allows him to feel like a mere mortal.
The 26-year-old, who has won 14 Olympic medals, will be trying to break another world record but this one doesn’t relate to time. Instead he’ll look to extend his medal haul past the current record holder, Russian gymnast Larisa Semyonovna Latynina, who has 18: to put this in perspective, Ireland, since independence, has won 23 medals at the Olympics in total.
Phelps, who won eight gold medals at the last Games in Beijing, conceded he felt underwhelmed by the prospect of a return to competitive swimming for nearly three years after his remarkable feat in China. He summed it up in the analogy. “I’m so sick of the water. Even when I go to the beach with my friends, they’re like, ‘Why won’t you get in?’ And I’m like, ‘do you have any idea how much of my life I’ve spent in the water?’”
He told Reilly: “If you want to know the truth. The first three years after Beijing my training was really kind of a joke. I couldn’t find any motivation. But then, in June (2011), I found it again. I just decided if I’m going to do this, I’m going to have fun. And I am having fun. This is the happiest I’ve been since Beijing.”
The change of heart is best illustrated in that he took roughly four days in total off between the Athens and Beijing Olympics and since then that number rocketed to 200 before he re-embraced a training regime that extends to sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber every night between 10pm and 5am set to 8,000 feet.
His real ambition, though, doesn’t involve swimming but to play all the golf courses on a world’s top 100 poster given to him by his coach Bob Bowman. He is having lessons from Tiger Woods’ former coach and whistleblower Hank Haney.
First, though, some more medals to collect.
