Football Championship Preview 2013

As the counties stand like greyhounds in the slips on the eve of another All-Ireland Championship, the 2011 Champions find themselves in an unusual position. It’s not that their being favourites to lift Sam is all that unusual, of course, but it is odd that this time there is no inflation in Dublin’s price. And what is positively eerie isn’t the absence of inflation but that it would be impossible for anyone but the most ardent of anti-metropolitans to begrudge them.

We have seen hyped Dublin teams in the past but for whatever reason – and it’s almost certain a combination of reasons, some planned, some happy happenstance – the current Dublin team are on the verge of forging a dynasty. They have quality in every line, radiating from captain Cluxton in goal all the way up to the full-forward line where Dublin have as many options as a Kardashian has shoes.

Opponents of Dublin’s chances talk of peaking too soon or being spoilt for choice or complacency or hype but it’s all clutching at straws. It’s hard to see anyone keeping the ball kicked out to Dublin in Leinster and after that it’s the luck of the draw whether they have sacrificial lamb for dinner on the August Bank Holiday weekend or they meet someone who can give them a game of it.

Who that someone might be is hard to pin down. The odds for the Championship make the past four All-Ireland Champions the favourites for this year, but it’s 10/1 on Mayo or Tyrone after that and then it’s an astonishing 20/1 the field.

If those prices are reflective of the counties’ relative standings, this could be one of the most unequal Championships in over a generation. What’s more, there are big question marks hanging over the other three top contenders, starting with the Champions.

Clare’s genius, Jamesie O’Connor is quoted in Denis Walsh’s excellent Hurling: The Revolution Years as saying that things fell apart from Clare because what it takes for a particular team to win its first All-Ireland is not at all like what it takes to win their second. Donegal are discovering that now. Like Loughnane’s Clare, Donegal were not so much men as a force of nature last year – will they be able to harness that again? The Bitegate business is a distraction that they didn’t need, and the other thing they didn’t need was to start their Championship against Tyrone. There are no easy games in Ulster, but some games are harder than others. If Donegal win, the adventure begins again, but it’s unlikely the Qualifiers would suit them.

There are many easy games in Munster, of course, and the same two teams will be present in the last eight, irrespective of which of them wins the Munster Championship. After that though, it gets a bit murky.

Neither county will ever suffer from a talent shortfall, but both Cork and Kerry have old panels, nearing the end of their days. Cork must be aware that their talent level of the past five or seven years deserved more than the one title they won, while Kerry are Kerry. The Kingdom are never satisfied, never to be written off, and always in the mix. Kerry are disregarded at your absolute peril and, if there is such a thing as a “soft” All-Ireland, it’s generally Kerry that wins it. It’s what they do.

Tyrone, Kerry’s bêtes noirs of the 21st Century, are looking good in Ulster. Seán Boylan is the only manager of the modern era to have won All-Irelands with two different teams. It would be fitting, and a feat begrudged by nobody, were that good man Mickey Harte to equal Boylan’s achievement. That said, anybody with a scintilla of romance or a feel for the history of the game will have noted Cavan’s stirrings at the Under-21 level and dreams of the day when Breifne rises again. Cavan take their bow this weekend against Armagh; best of luck to them.

In the lonesome west, Roscommon are ideally positioned. All westerners dream of relaxing in the long grass, the better to mount an ambush as the hay ripens into June and July. That’s where Roscommon are now, silently waiting on the winners of this weekend’s game in Salthill.

The penny is dropping for the nation that it’s been a long time since Galway were good. A man who studies football closely remarked to your correspondent a few weeks ago that Mayo would stroll Connacht, on the basis that Galway haven’t brought their Under-21s through. “But bejabbers,” says I, “what if this is the year?”

The danger is always lurking. If Galway do beat Mayo it means that Galway are back, and there is suddenly another contender to keep the ball kicked out to Dublin. Whether that will be enough to stop what looks like a skyblue and navy procession through the summer of 2013 is something we’ll have to wait and see.

As for Mayo – we’ll take a closer look at their chances later this week.

Dying Isn't a Right. It's an Obligation

The Marie Fleming case has got blanket coverage in the media in recent months, but last week saw a particular peak after the Supreme Court turned down her application. Saturday’s Irish Times carried two separate stories, one an interview with Marie Fleming’s daughter and the other with her partner, decrying the Supreme Court judgment. “The State spared no resource in denying Marie a dignified death,” is the headline on the interview with Tom Curran, Marie Fleming’s partner.

That is one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is to say the State spared no resource in protecting the rights of its citizens, which is exactly what the State should be doing.

All this is very tough on Marie Fleming, of course. She’s miserable and in pain and will be until she dies. Nobody disputes that, and if death came to her tomorrow, while her friends would grieve and mourn, no-one would wish it hadn’t come later. But whenever death does come, Marie Fleming will die. That is certain. It’s impossible to deny someone the right to die, because dying isn’t a right. It’s an obligation. There’s a difference.

A right is something you can choose not to exercise. For Marie Fleming to be denied the right to die is impossible. We all going to die. Even if the State wanted to deny Marie Fleming that “right”, it couldn’t. The single fundamental, undeniable truth about life is that it ends.

What the Marie Fleming case is about is whether or not someone has the right to decide how, when and where they’re going to die, and that’s a completely different thing. It doesn’t fit a headline as neatly as “right to die,” of course, and neither does it give the commentariat a chance to show the endless depths of its compassion. But as the question of whether or not a person has the right to choose the circumstances of their own death is the issue, let’s look at it for a while.

There are two points at issue here. The first is whether or not someone should decide when his or her own life ends, rather than let nature take its inevitable course. If you accept that notion – and it’s a big if – the next question is then to decide on what basis that decision is made.

If you are of the opinion that a person should be able to decide how, when and why his or her life should end, that means you are in favour of suicide as a practice. The ancient Romans and Greeks had no issue with it, the Japanese – it’s far from unprecedented.

But you’re opening a profound can of worms when you go down that route. You are saying that there are some pains in the world that are worse than the pain of death, than the pain of not being alive any more. You are reducing the taboo on suicide by making it acceptable in some cases, which will then become more and more cases as the taboo and stigma wears off. And this isn’t a good thing.

That there is nothing so bad in this world that you should leave it by doing violence unto yourself is, or should be, a fundamental truth. That is hard luck on those in similar predicaments to Marie Fleming, but the greater good is very much more important.

Besides. If society does accept that notion that there are things in the world that cannot be borne and that self-destruction is a better alternative to that pain, it is then faced with the thorny problem of how to decide what those things that cannot be borne are.

And this is even more dangerous that an acceptance of suicide because what it does is quantify the right to life. The right to life is currently an absolute – the life of the Taoiseach or President is as important as the life of the homeless person who slept rough in the doorways of Georgian Dublin last night and will again tonight. The quality of their lives are completely different of course, but they have an equal right to life under the law.

Legislation that would change that right means that just being human and alive will no longer be enough. Your life will have to have a certain quality, judged against a certain series of parameters. If your life dips below this quality, it will be the inevitable judgment of society that it’s time you were shuffling off and not be lingering, depressing your healthy and well fellow citizens.

Advocates of euthanasia would be (rightly) horrified at this, and argue that the choosing of when, where and how to die is entirely a private matter. But that’s not true. If that were true, there would be no such thing as society.

But there is such a thing a society, and there are rules about how a person can or can’t act in society, rules that exist for the protection of the society in general to the sometime inconvenience of the individual. Besides; it’s no longer a private matter if you are no longer capable of suicide and need assistance, which is where we came in with the Marie Fleming case in the first place.

It’s a very complex issue. Philosophical progress on the nature of what it is to be human has not kept pace with scientific progress. We have advanced scientifically while regressing philosophically – ours is an age that treasures youth, even though we now live longer than ever, and the longer we live the further away youth, our culture’s utmost treasure, gets from us.

We now have people living longer and longer in an age for which only being young matters. There is no great sign of joined-up thinking there, but a bridge will have to built, and by smarter people than your correspondent.

It won’t happen in time for Marie Fleming, and that’s tough. But it would be tougher on everyone if the right to life were put on a sliding scale because of misplaced compassion in a debate that is much more complex than is being portrayed in the media.

FOCAL SCOIR: I’ve been talking about suicide and I am all too fully aware of what a problem it is in Ireland at the moment. I would sooner sound precious than be irresponsible so here goes: If you’re not feeling great, the Samaritans’ number is 1850 60 60 90, and the website is http://www.samaritans.org. Call them, even if it’s only to talk about football. Sometimes, five minutes can be all it takes for clouds to break and things to look better. Nobody will think you’ll stupid – wouldn’t they much prefer to chat with someone thoughtful like yourself than do regular office stuff, or listen to a lot of yak from the HR department? You’ll be doing them a favour when you call, if anything. Let the black dog go chase parked cars. Make the call.

Aodhan Ó Ríordáin and the Urban-Rural Divide

The fact that Aodhan Ó Ríordáin is pro-choice in the matter of abortion is only news to people for whom it’s news that ducks have feathers. What else would he be? What else could he be?

Equally, the fact that Ó Ríordáin chooses to be discrete – until last summer, of course – about how he shares this information isn’t really news either. He is an Irish politician, after all. There may be some of that vocation to whom you could feed a five pound bag of nails and not expect five pounds of corkscrews to be egested after due time, but my goodness there wouldn’t be many.

What is much more jaw-dropping is Ó Ríordáin’s attitude to people from County Monaghan and, presumably, most of that place outside Dublin that the general population think of as “Ireland.” He’s not gone on them, to say the least.

Ó Ríordáin’s wife is from Monaghan and it seems that he finds going up to visit the Farney folk something of a trial. Ó Ríordáin remarks, in the course of his gloriously indiscreet interview in yesterday's Sunday Independent, that “I go up there and sometimes I just scratch my head at some of the . . . just the . . .”

Words fail him at the horrors he’s seen. You can imagine him holding his nose walking down the streets of Castleblaney or Clones, pinkie extended, alternately horrified at the milieu to which he’s exiled yet still able to marvel at the local yokels walking upright and what not.

Not that he’ll be going back anytime soon, of course. Someone from the cast of Tallaghtfornia has a better chance of solving Fermet's Last Theorem than Ó Ríordáin has of seeing the next dawn should he choose to enjoy a Saturday night pint in the Busted Sofa in Clones or anywhere like it. In fact, the thing most likely to keep him intact in Monaghan may be a belief among the Farneymen that it’s Ó Ríordáin’s wife’s people who should have first claim on satisfaction. But the silver-tongued socialist might be better off not chancing it, just in case.

Not that a Monaghan exile would be any great sacrifice to him, judging by his comments. Ó Ríordáin seems to be a prime specimen of that peculiar type of Dubliner for whom the existence of some sort of rural rump anywhere outside of Dublin is something of a mystery.

The continent exists for weekends away and wine-tasting, Great Britain for setting a certain tone and standard, you know, and the United States for Macy’s department store. But for Ó Ríordáin and his tribe, that strange place north, south and west of the M50 is like one of those medieval maps that show nothing but great empty spaces, speckled here and there with bendy dragons, fierce and fire-breathing.

It’s a peculiar trait of the Dubliner to be insular even amongst his own. This is true across all social divides. A fellow from Finglas could live his whole life and never visit Cabra, even though it’s the next parish to him. A native of Terenure might get lost in neighbouring Templeogue, and have to turn his jacket inside out in order to break the spell and come safely home again.

But the insularity between urban (meaning Dublin, by the way – try telling a Dubliner that you are not a culchie because you’re Cork, say, and Cork is also a city, and see how far it gets you) and rural Ireland is more pronounced among the middle than the working class. Not that the working class particularly care for culchies, of course, but loyalty to the GAA and some of the tropes of republicanism cause a certain nostalgia when they hear of places like Aughrim, Kilmichael or the lonely Banna Strand.

For the middle classes though, Ó Ríordáin’s attitude is not at all uncommon. They are charmed to see Munster rugby players wearing the emerald green of Erin but Marian is always more likely to ring Brian O’Driscoll’s pater before a game than Paul O’Connell’s. And of course, if there were no culchies, who would populate the Garda Síochána, and hold the line marked by the river Liffey?

But the notion of being in the actual culchie heartland, far away from Fade Street or the Dundrum Town Centre – well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. “I just scratch my head,” as Aodhan Ó Ríordáin so eloquently put it.

There is No Free Press Without Regulation

Greybeards and seanfhondóirí who remember the ‘nineties can’t help but to have been a little bemused by the alliance formed by Eamon Dunphy and Pat Kelly on Pat Kenny’s radio show the other day. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has issued a code of conduct for broadcasters in Ireland. In response, Pat and Eamon teamed up to pretty much pour scorn on the whole idea before Michael O’Keeffe, chairman of the BAI, who didn’t really land a glove in his own proposals’ defence over twenty minutes.

What made the mouths of those greybeards grin beneath their grizzled whiskers was the memory of an article Eamon Dunphy wrote about Pat Kenny on the back page of the Sunday Independent in the early-to-mid ‘nineties, when Dunphy was the Designated Boot Boy of that particular organ. Unfortunately, the article can’t be quoted here as research shows this blog is sometimes read by children but take An Spailpín’s word for it – by the time Dunphy was finished kicking the stuffing out of Plank (sic) Kenny, there wasn’t enough of poor Pat left to put in a teaspoon and send back to his people.

Dunphy’s profile of Pat Kenny was utterly vicious. A stomping the like of which you rarely see. Appropriate to Pol Pot, maybe, or Stalin or Hitler. But not to TV show host who wore a jumper on his chat show.

And now here they were, kicked and kicker as bosom buddies, defending the right of the broadcasters to make their own decisions without interference from the dastardly BAI. Proof that principles come and go, but show business goes on forever.

It was a pity that Michael O’Keeffe wasn’t a bit more ready for them. He came across like a substitute teacher from whom naughty children have detected the smell of fear, and are determined to reduce to tears in the time allotted to them.

O’Keeffe should have pointed out that neither Kenny nor Dunphy are against regulation, per se. It’s just that they themselves are the ones who wanted to do the regulating, rather than someone else. Scholars will remember the ancient world had the same attitude to slavery; people had no objection in principle, as long as it was not they themselves who were the actual slaves.

Kenny and Dunphy found the proposed BAI regulations too constrictive. The found the forbidding of TV or radio show host to express his or her own opinion terrible, one of them remarking that such a regulation would put George Hook out of a job.

Like this would somehow be a bad thing.

And O’Keeffe took all this on the chin. What he could have said, of course, is that there are two words that prove that the broadcasters do indeed need a regulatory authority over them – The Frontline, and see what Pat Kenny made of them apples.

Not much, probably, but the facts are clear. Sean Gallagher had one foot in the Áras at half-nine on that Monday night, by midnight his head was cut clean off. No head has rolled. Not one.

The Chairman of the RTÉ Board is married to the most powerful spindoctor in the country. They say it doesn’t matter, because they never talk about work at home.

[And may An Spailpín take a moment to repeat again that the house does not belong to me. It belongs to my wife. A complete different person. Sure I barely know the woman, I don’t know why you people in the Revenue keep busting my nuts over it].

And so on, and on, and on. Of course it’s necessary for journalists to hold politicians to account, but journalists are also part of that same dance in the public square. Journalists have to be held to account too.

The BAI proposals aren’t perfect. They may not even be good. But that they are necessary in as clubby a society as Ireland’s is beyond all shadow of a doubt.

The Labour Party's Zero-Sum Game

Mr Colm Keaveney, Chairman of the Labour Party, had something interesting to say in the Sunday Independent yesterday. The paper quotes Keaveney as saying that “the recent defections from the party are in no way co-ordinated. They are simply the organic expression of the dissatisfication with certain aspects of our behaviour in government.”

Which then should have been followed by the question of why aren’t they co-ordinated? What’s the point in not co-ordinating them? Why not get the whole thing over with?

The Labour Party is falling to bits and is looking at the same root in the seat of the pants from the electorate at next year’s local elections as the electorate delivered Fianna Fáil in the general election, and it’s every socialist for him or herself from here on in.

Labour promised the devil and all before the election – tables thumped in Brussels, no education cuts, bondholders burned at the stake, clear skies, dry turf, hot weather and lashings of the cold, wet porter. That’s not quite how it turned out, and someone’s got to pay.

The someone being Eamon Gilmore, whom Labour were touting for Taoiseach until about seven to ten days before polling, when they realised they were cooked and would take what they could get. Now, Gilmore is going to get the blame. It’s not entirely fair but life isn’t fair and politics is even less fair again. Besides; this isn’t the party’s first time to go looking for a head.

The division in party is so heated now that there must be a reckoning or the party will explode entirely. A tweet yesterday from SenatorJohn Whelan shows just how bad things are: “Susan O Keeffe's attempts to discredit Nessa Childers and to suggest she is a closet Fianna Failer on Marian Finnucane is despicable.”

Not only is “despicable” an extremely strong word to use about a member of your own party but the veteran ex-journalist’s fury is so intense that not only does he misspell “Finucane” but he also fails to have his subject (“attempts”) agree with his verb (“is”). This is unprecedented stuff.

But the real problem for Labour is that even if Eamon Gilmore is rolled away to his political doom by Labour’s sans-culottes, it won’t make a blind bit of difference to anyone bar Gilmore himself.

If Gilmore gets the chop, the party can go two ways. It can appoint Joan Burton as leader on the basis of her being the obvious successor, or it can get radical and appoint Keaveney himself, as some sort of Irish Hugo Chavez.

If the members appoint Burton, nothing changes. What’s she going to do that will be different, other than dance a long-awaited jig on Gilmore’s remains? What can she do? She can move Gilmore’s mates out of cabinet and her own in, but business will continue as before in every other respect.

If the party appoint Keaveney or some likewise radical, things do change. The problem is they do not change for the better.

If a Keaveney-ite Labour party emerges to kick up about the Troika and austerity, how do they get on with Fine Gael in Government? They don’t, is the short answer. The government falls, and there’s an election that returns a Dáil of – what, exactly? Labour drop a few seats, but perhaps not as many as they are currently on course to do. Fine Gael drop a few, but not that many either. Fianna Fáil pick up a few but not enough to return them to Government after the massacre of 2011.

And then there’s all-out war – ahem – between Sinn Féin and God knows what sort of collection of raggle-taggle independents for a third of the seats in parliament. How in God’s name will anyone form a government out of that feral lunacy?

Chances are, they won’t. The Troika will have to continue for another five years while the Teachtaí Dhála roll about in the mud. And then maybe, just maybe, the penny will drop for the Irish people and they’ll realise that the current electoral system has failed and reform means more than reducing the Presidential term and scrapping the Seanad. It’s a slim hope, but right now the nation must clutch at such straws as it can get.