LockerRoom: Summer's coming, and, in the spirit of "nobody asked me, but . . .", there are some things which need doing.
The Games Administration Commitee needs a watchdog to oversee it. Emily O'Reilly should sit in on all meetings and keep asking "Why?" Failing that, all GAC sessions should be televised live and the business should be turned into a TV show involving Judge Judy and a character called Barabbas, who would be a hard, club footballer from up north. Viewers can text in their votes on whether Barabbas should get, say, a three-month suspension or whether he should go free while a popular intercounty player serves a three-month sentence.
The weather needs sorting. I'm tired of asking about the hole in the ozone layer which was supposed to turn us into a tropical paradise with high prices, no health service and a crime/drink problem. It would be interesting also to see hurling played on a sunny day. There are people on the Dublin County Board who claim it can't be done.
My friend Tommy Clancy's proposal for a sculpture commemorating Lar and Des Foley to be commissioned and placed at the bottom of Griffith Avenue needs urgent action. Art and the community could actually mean something to each other.
There must be some limit put on the number of games which young men at English soccer clubs play. News that Willo Flood has played in the region of 65 games for Man City underage and reserve teams this year is depressing.
Leeds United must be disbanded. Those of us who (as children without the legal capacity to make such a commitment) signed on for life sentences of supporting the club have been through enough cruel and unusual punishment. We have said goodbye to more loved ones than Rose Kennedy. We have seen the club lose money faster than Nick Leeson. We have endured Thomas Brolin. We have endured Lee Bowyer. Time to set us free.
Padraig Harrington must move to America for a year or two. I know, I know, he'd like to have a say in this and I know he likes home and I know he's loyal to Yurp and I know he probably doesn't like answering to Paw-Drag Hairington, but the big time, the real big time, is over there. You just think that if he is to win the major he deserves to win it's not going to be on a transatlantic raid but on a sustained campaign.
Ger Loughnane and Liam Griffin should by an act of law be made to manage county hurling teams in weaker areas. Nicky English should be conscripted too. The idea is simple. They work full-time. During the day they evangelise, they put together development squads, they supervise the full-time coaching staff which Croke Park has trained and provided and they create structures and priorities.
In the evenings they take county training and they take phone calls from journalists during which they say controversial/ inspiring things. Then, after five years, like Mormon missionaries, they are done and DJ, Johnny Leahy and Jamesie will go forth to other counties and begin working there. Again, it could all be televised as reality TV.
For the good of humanity they should bring back professional boxing. I've looked through my notebooks from the past few years and not one has blood splattered on it (well, okay, there's a fair few splotches on the pages where rich guys tried to take over the Olympic Council of Ireland). Journalists are being deprived of the cultural nourishment which weeks in Las Vegas bring and the spiritual replenishment involved in listening to heavyweight boxers at their press conferences. Is Lennox Lewis still alive? Can he be kept out of it on account of having no criminal record?
The GAA should ignore all the sententious cavilling about the Guinness sponsorship of hurling. Not a whelp last week about Le Heineken Cup. Not a breezy swing of the crozier over Witnness. Not a whimper about Celtic's Carling shirts. Not a moan about quality TV shows like The Sopranos being sponsored by Miller. Not a question about pols (from the Taoiseach down) opening pubs seven days a week. Guinness have been good for hurling and vice versa. Get over it. The wider culture is the problem.
Eddie Jordan. Is there no modified version of Section 31 which can be re-introduced? Long ago, even those of us who didn't give a hoot were slightly uplifted by his promise that he was going to win a World VeryFastCar Championship on behalf of the ould sod within a week or by lunchtime or whatever. Now we're just tired of that voice. If he spent more time looking under the car and less shaving his sideburns in that funny way perhaps things would be better.
David Beckham must be decommissioned. I'm sure the chap is perfectly harmless and would be quite happy living in Sydenham or somewhere and being the best pool player in the Sydenham Arms. No great imposition on him then to ask him to abdicate his position as a monarch of Hello! culture and to stop bothering elderly people like Nelson Mandela and Roy Keane.
Frank Stapleton in the Big Brother house. Don't know why. Just a dream I had.
Under-18 and under-21 grades in camogie in Dublin. You'd halve the city's drink problem in a stroke of the pen.
A new Broadcasting Authority is needed. An authority which would, upon pain of death, enforce a draconian rule about the treatment of GAA players on The Late Late Show. This would involve liberating the viewing audience from the cruel and unusual punishment of having to listen to old worthies explain what a great, great fella the GAA player actually is, and it would remove the potentially toxic cringe factor as the mammy and the missus are glad-handed lasciviously. It would also free up Brian Carty from several Friday nights a year spent vouchsafing GAA characters to Pat Kenny. There is a risk that the GAA player might actually end up saying something interesting, but that's what ad breaks are for.
Can there be a global moratorium on Tiger Woods books? Tom Callahan's In Search of Tiger is excellent and it should be accorded the respect of a five-year ban on Tigerworks. This ban to be reviewed only if Woods does or says anything interesting off the golf course. Should he take a stand on any issue, or begin dressing like Priscilla Queen of the Desert, certainly a new book would be warranted, but something has to be done about the present drivel surplus.
This is an old one, but what about building, say, three modest but nicely appointed grounds for progressive League of Ireland clubs in Dublin to share.
Some form of reward or recognition for hacks who bravely waste 16 column ideas in just one column.
