So Clare hurling is in an uproar. Still.
For those of you that don’t know[1] there has been a bit of a kerfuffle in the county of Clare recently. Clare is a hurling[2] stronghold. Hurling is an Irish game, played with a sliothar[3] and a hurl[4] and the scoring of goals and points[5]
A short while ago Clare held an awards ceremony. Where they celebrated their players of the past. Only not everyone was happy. Not everyone got an award.
Enter Ger Loughnane
Now Ger will be well known to any of you who watch the GAA on the telly[6] what with his outspoken comments and mini rants and raves that are so entertaining in a telly pundit. But Ger is also a hurling great. And he is from Clare. But (you can see where this is going) he didn’t get an award. Instead his arch-nemisis got one. Some priest called Fr. Harry Bohan. He is a Clare selector, but I know nothing else about him, I’m not a huge hurling-follower.
Okay, so all that is the background. Clear is it? As mud? Good.
Now, after the awards ceremony Ger was on the phone to the Clare County board chairman Michael McDonagh. I enjoyed In Fact, Ah’s description of this so I’ll quote it here:
To let off some steam, Loughnane telephoned the County Board Chairman Michael McDonagh to make known his displeasure about the awards. He said he used colourful terms to describe his annoyance (this can be most definitely read as fucking him out of it from a height). Loughnane made the call on speakerphone and forgot to hang up properly. He then called his friend Colum Flynn on his mobile, the team doctor who was being accused of all sorts by the team management at the time, to console him. He did so by detailing how he’d imagined shooting a certain person’s head (Fr. Bohan his arch enemy) that was on top of an oil can while out hunting.
Heavy breathing emanating from the speakerphone alerted Loughnane to the fact that he failed to terminate the call to McDonagh who happens to be a Garda. Unbelievably, McDonagh reported the matter to the Gardai.
Jayzis lads, it is like the Roy Keane affair all over again, only instead of an Irish footballing civil war we are going to have a Clare hurling civil war.
Let’s hope that the Irish Blog Awards don’t suffer such a fallout.
And I haven’t even mentioned the Welsh rugby saga. looks like the sporting world is going insane :)
- I’m guessing all of you? ↩
- the fastest ball game in the world, so they say. I’m not sure who they are but nevermind that. ↩
- that’d be a ball ↩
- that’d be a bat type thing. I’ll not get into the debate over whether it should be called a hurl or a hurley. That all depends on what county your from ↩
- Wikipedia’s entry on hurling ↩
- hmmm, that’ll be none of you again ↩
Ah now, that's GREAT. How feckin entertaining can you get? I mean, other sports might have performance enhancing drugs, suspicious urine samples, tacky three-in-a-bed scandals, Russian gangsters and permatanned undertalented trophy wives, but Gah is far more entertaining.
It woulda been better if he'da challenged yer man to a death by sliotar contest steada calling the Guards though.
Does this sound straight out of Jilly Cooper?
*snicker* Anne, if it was Jilly Cooper they'd all be involved in horses and pretty to look upon.
NM, could you imagine? Two them, squaring off as though to play the puc fada, only they'd be smashing each other with sliothars instead of seeing how far the ball'd go.
Exactly how I imagined it. It'd be like that Guinness ad where Setanta's there with Culann's hound snarling at him and Setanta with his hurl(ey)/Hugo out screaming "you wanna piece a me?"
I don't know why the three gentlemen don't use the time honoured Clare approach to settling an argument – compare the length of their penal organs? Might sort out the row until a Limerick man joins the argument!
Sigh. Sometimes I feel like I'm from another planet. When I hear "hurl", all's I think of is Wayne's World and barfing. Honestly, you guys have the strangest sports over there, nothing like ours. Why, in our town alone, we have tractor-pulls and lawnmower racing! And now I feel like hurling…
You have hurling in the states Kelly. See, you American's have your own GAA. And New York even enter the All-Ireland Championship. Although they always lose.
But remember? I said I'm from another planet. We don't have hurling HERE. Except the vomitous kind. Sigh. I am so undecidedly NOT Sporty Spice.
I forgot :Jayne voice: you was a alien