Entertainment outside the field

Michael Moynihan

SUNDAY and an afternoon in Killarney. Cloudy and clammy at the fag end of November, but still Killarney.

The headline event — Kilmurry-Ibrickane versus Dr Crokes in the Munster club SFC – was being held over the road from Fitzgerald Stadium at the Kerry county champions’ home ground, a sleek setting for a slick outfit. The playing surface was manicured: a bright, healthy, season-defying green.

Curious, the odds and ends that catch your eye at a game in the dead days of the year: the giggling girls selling sweets off a committee table near the side of the pitch; the new fashion statement – common to many club followers, we have noticed — whereby you put the club jersey underneath a thin hoodie; the odd clank of a ball hitting the advertising hoards along the side of the field; the rainbow of high-visibility jackets in varying shades of day-glo yellow and orange; the way all earthly authority falls back before those jackets, if you threw one on it’d be sufficient to get access to the Oval Office, never mind pitchside at a GAA game.

And everywhere, in your face and up your nose, the healthy zip of youth. You take it for granted in the flash and heat of summer, when everyone feels reasonably ship-shape, but in near-December? The clean jawlines of the players and the bouncing strides across the turf are enough to make the less athletic among us shake the head and let the stomach relax.

Some of those players bounce a bit higher than others, of course. The visitors from west Clare – and there were plenty of them – were inclined to lean on one solid ‘U’ vowel in their conversations coming into the Dr Crokes facility, the double ‘O’ of Colm Cooper’s nickname.

It was maybe significant, then, that a crowd of cognoscenti in the green and red of Kilmurry leaned on the perimeter fence to keep an eye on their opponents’ warm-up, and several of them seemed to be keeping an eye out for the red-headed forward. That was the name in heavy circulation there, at least.

That may not have been the case, of course: when Kilmurry-Ibrickane came in after their warm-up they jogged past the men on fence, who met them with a warm round of applause.

You can read the account of the game elsewhere here, and entertaining it was, too. The above tells you there was the requisite entertainment beforehand as well. Try getting to a game early the next time and see for yourself.

If you keep your eyes open, you may even spot one of those moments that show you what sport is truly about. Michael McCarthy of Kilmurry was being lifted into an ambulance at half time when Harry O’Neill, the Crokes manager, came over to wish him well before heading into the dressing room.

A small gesture and a big gesture, all at the same time.

Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/3zwMMKE0Hpw/post.aspx

Blackburn Rovers West Ham United Fifa US politics North Korea Kevin Pietersen