Friday, August 26, 2016

Update 27th August


Preview Notices
1.     The Sports Complex, Boyle, Co. Roscommon will play host to the fourth and final round of the M. Donnolly GAA Interprovincial Wheelchair Hurling League on this Saturday 27th August from 10am for the first time that an All-Ireland Wheelchair Hurling event will be hosted in Co. Roscommon. Barry Lowe of Boyle is the Roscommon delegate on the Connacht GAA Games for All Committee and is responsible for co-ordinating this Wheelchair Hurling Interprovincial event in Boyle. Your support would be greatly appreciated.
2.     Boyle Seniors play Clann na nGael on Saturday evening at 6.45 at St. Croan's pitch outside Ballintubber in the final group game.
3.     Nice to see the re-introduction of camogie to Boyle and the positivity of its promoters ‘We are here to stay’!


When one thinks of the current issues causing frustration and pain in this country at the moment the list would include:

1• Homelessness and the many other linkages to the idea of ‘a home’. The lack of availability of ‘homes’ for social provision, for access for people to purchase, cost and availability especially in urban areas such as Dublin, Galway, Cork and so on. There is also the huge issue of student accommodation availability and cost at this time.
2•  Utility costs….motor insurance spiralling, rising at the incredible average rate of 38% due, it is said by Aviva, to the number of claims, the excessive awards, legal costs, regulation, levies for past company failures, fraudulent claims and so on. We usually concentrate on how it effects ordinary motor customers but it is a huge issue now for business with regard to haulage of goods and will probably see businesses having to close down due to this cost. Another group who are being denied a fairly basic right, the right to drive a car, are young people who are being quoted extraordinary amounts for cover.
3•  Child care costs for working parents of young children. There have been some advances in provision in recent years but crèche costs are like another mortgage.  
4•  Is it in our genetic make-up that we are hucksters when we see currently the ticket issue at the Olympics. We had the greatest manifestation of this in the banking scandal and the disgraceful activities of the top echelons of nearly the whole banking industry.
5• The ongoing battle between two gangs in Dublin with the police effort to fire-fight it costing the tax payers of the country millions. The prevalence of drugs and the seeming tolerance of its use on public streets in say Dublin as one walks from Connolly Station to O’Connell Street

II’ve said this before, we live in a small country and we should be able to get to grips, to a better extent, with the issues of our time.  



The Rio Olympics Fallout
I am recovering from the withdrawal symptoms of watching a lot of the coverage of the Rio Olympics. It is being overshadowed somewhat by the Pat Hickey and OCI affair just now and it will be interesting to see how that develops. There is the possibility that there is a local police/political agenda in Hickey’s crucifixion and that the necessary evidence to convict Mister Hickey is not there or will not emerge. If that is the case then he has got a raw deal in Brazil and in the publicity about him here in Ireland and will be a very traumatised man after it all. There is a good chance that it will run into the sand.
Former Olympian and analyst Gerry Kiernan was pretty dismissive of the role and impact of officialdom at OCI on athletes in their preparation and mind-set. Of course when an athlete wins they will emerge like peacocks to shine in the reflected aura of the winner. Justification of existence is a huge sport in this country and happens on many levels.

The Absence of Pele
For whatever reason the absence of Brazil’s most famous sportsman, Pele, from Olympic ceremonies was sad. It is suggested that  since several of his commercial backers — sandwich chain Subway, watchmaker Hublot and credit card company MasterCard — are rivals of official Olympic sponsors McDonald's, Omega and Visa that that had a bearing on his absence. Also that he was recovering from illness. Still If one cast their eyes back to Atlanta and Muhammad Ali, riven with Parkinson’s, doing the honours and again being present at the Special Olympics at Crooke Park I really feel that Pele would have been there but for particular pressures. The very late substitution for the flame lighting ceremony was  Vanderlei de Lima who was disrupted by an Irish priest based in London while leading the marathon in Athens in 2004.


Ticket Issues in other Sports
In terms of tickets there was an interesting snippet by ‘Sam’ page 3 of the Roscommon Herald Sports insert regarding seeing tickets being sold prior to a GAA game in Croke Park by what might be termed a GAA worthy. Personally, while I have been a follower of the GAA all my life though not in a core position, I have never encountered any official with a ‘bundle’ of tickets for dubious sale. Where money shuffles around there is always the capacity for abuse of course. Over ten years ago Roscommon GAA got into severe financial difficulties which were soothed by a huge gesture of generosity by John Murphy of Castlerea with a loan of one million euro. How Roscommon got into that financial chasm I have no idea and it was never fully explained that I am aware of. All of the people involved seemed like honourable men and the GAA being a community where ‘everybody knew everybody’ the hard questions may not have been asked. It is only with independent oversight committees that appropriate governance has a reasonable chance though the record of the bank auditors such as Ernst and Young would not be reassuring!

GAA Attempt to Drift Towards Professionalism
Then in the GAA there is a drift to professionalism and semi-professional in terms of the number of paid employees, coaches and managers. The latter group have, morphed in recent years into huge ‘back-up’ teams with varied roles. It is suggested that Dublin have in the mid- twenties in this role with their senior team and that Roscommon this past year had a very large number also. All these have to ‘looked after’ by whatever avenues of ‘expenses’ payment often by circular routes. At club level when a club has ambitions this is backed up with the employment of an outside ‘team manager’ with a credible record. Fundraising now has become the bane of club activity, the same people doing it and the same people, in general, supporting these efforts. It has been so since the sixpences and shillings of the fifties but can clubs sustain these corrosive efforts?  I do not know how it can be addressed or redressed but it is certainly a major burden on the core group of club officials.       

Marathon TV
I thought I had seen enough of marathons and then our main television channel, RTE 1, saw fit to transmit on Monday and Tuesday night, 3 hours each night of the Rose of Tralee with 64 (?) young ladies a loitering. Now the Rose of Tralee is not my scene and how a festival committee has the power to influence RTE to spend 6 hours of programming (accepting that a couple of hours or more were ads) away from Dublin is something. Then to add to that I kinda heard that ‘Mrs. Brown’s Boys’ was voted the ‘best’ comedy of the 21st century (just 16 years)which with the Rose of Tralee induced the lead line from the Aslan anthem to come into my head; 
“How can i protect you (myself) in this crazy world”.

                                                                                                                                            Sports Review

Three Standing in Football
On Sunday last Mayo again qualified for the All-Ireland final by beating Tipperary in a very poor game. Poor games and very poor games have been the menu of Gaelic football this summer and it is becoming tedious. It has been left to hurling to raise the bar of excitement and real competitive flair. I hope, of course, that Mayo win that All-Ireland at last and each year seems to be at about the same level of possibility. But they would want to get on with it as our patience is thinning. The team seems to me to have about ten very good players but the tail lets them down and to win an All-Ireland final there needs to be a full squad. There is  definition of insanity somewhere that goes roughly; ‘doing the same thing, the same way, over and over again and expecting a different outcome’.
(The referee with his Black Card had me exacerbated on Sunday last and that Black Card malarkey has to be binned. The sending off of the Tipp. centre back had a big bearing on Sunday’s game. What about the ‘sin bin’ as used in Rugby, Hockey and Basketball?) 

Sunday next has the prospect of being a full-blooded encounter between Dublin and Kerry. Each of these teams have more good players than any other county and Dublin have arrived where Kilkenny were a few years with ‘two’ teams. The general expectation is that Dublin will win but Kerry are the one team brand that can be relied on to defy the odds.

The Cats v Tipp.
The All-Ireland hurling final between Tipperary and Kilkenny has the possibility of being a cracker. I was surprised that Tipp. struggled and did not look great against Galway and Kilkenny will miss the great Michael Fennelly. The Kilkenny conveyor belt is not as it has been though young Blanchfield did well in that second great game against Waterford. While there have been a number of very good hurling games this summer the quality of the teams is down a good deal on previous years. I really hope that Waterford maintain their upward curve and take the Liam McCarthy Cup next year.

Camogie In Boyle
It is interesting to see the re-introduction of camogie in Boyle with young girls. There was a camogie senior team in Boyle circa 1970 that I am aware of. Mary Travers correspondent with The Roscommon Herald and Christine O’Callaghan were involved with that team.   It is a regret of mine that I did not make an effort to get hurling going in this area as Bob Carr and P.J. Keane had done shortly before I came here.   



       

Friday, August 19, 2016

Update 19th August

Preface Notes

1• Boyle Senior team play Clann na Gael in the O’Rourke Cup on Saturday next (not Sunday) at 6.30 in Boyle. The team had a fine win over a fancied Roscommon Gaels on Sunday last in Elphin. They play Clann also, in their last group championship game which adds significance as to how they approach Saturday’s league game. League wins are vital too as it is very important that the team stay in the top division of the league which is in danger due to results to date.
2• The all-Ireland Fleadh is on in Ennis this weekend and if you cannot get there it gets great coverage on T.V courtesy of Fleadh TV on TG4 each evening from 8.30 to 11.30 which I recommend.
3•  Another programme which I recommend to you if it gets repeated somewhere, since it was shown on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday on RTE 1 each night at 11.20. The programme title is Exodus: Our Journey Into Europe. It relates the trials and risks endured by people from the Middle East to reach the safety -as they see it- of  Europe. It was also repeated on BBC so the prospect of seeing a further repeat is limited.    


The Drama of the Olympics

On Sunday August 7th Paul Kimmage wrote a column in the Sunday Independent headed ‘You can’t be angry if you don’t care’. It related to the suspension of boxer Michael O’Reilly from the games due to being tested positive for taking a banned substance. I kinda subscribed to that at the time but since then I have watched a good deal of coverage of the main events of the games and my view has changed. It has been a feast of drama, including phenomenal performances, celebration, heartache and heartbreak. The full range of human endeavour, its strengths, weaknesses and emotions.

Sports Highlights and Lowlights
For Ireland there have been a number of highlights. The achievement of Annalise Murphy in getting a silver medal in sailing after her great disappointment at coming 4th at the London Olympics was great to see. However the O’Donovan brothers in rowing will go down as ‘the’ highlight of these Games for Ireland. Their almost exaggerated Irishness obviously disguises a competitive steel which led to their stellar performance in their silver-winning final. They were in no rush back home to indulge themselves in the collective euphoria of their supporters there. There was a very creditable showing by a diver called Oliver Dingley who qualified for Ireland by virtue of his ancestry. Indeed this course so long a feature of Irish soccer is set to expand. There is also an Irish badminton player Scott Evans doing well as I write. A golfer I had never heard of Seamus Power from Waterford based in the U.S. came in 15th after challenging for a higher place earlier.    
On Tuesday night I watched with great surprise and delight as another  Waterford man, a runner I had never heard of, Thomas Barr, qualified for the finals of the 400m hurdles.
It’s the first time since 1932 that Ireland have had a finalist in the 400m hurdles when Bob Tisdale won gold, while Barr becomes the first Irishman in an Olympic track final since Alistair Cragg (5000m) in 2004.
The feat is all the more remarkable given that Barr’s season has been heavily disrupted by injury problems, with few tipping the Irish athlete to earn a final spot.
Watching on in the RTÉ studio, Irish former sprint hurdles athlete Derval O’Rourke hailed the achievement as “one of the greatest Irish performances”. Barr goes into Thursday’s final with every chance of a medal.
Speaking after tonight’s (Tuesday’s) race, Barr expressed delight at the achievement in a typical buoyant interview similar to the O’Donovans.
“I’m astonished. After all the mishaps over the last year with injuries, to win a semi-final and get a national record is incredible,” he said.
“I didn’t think I could run half a second faster than yesterday.
“I’ve put a target on my back for the final. When is it? I haven’t even looked.”
In the final which I viewed a few hours ago Thomas performed heroically to finish fourth by a whisker. His post-run interview again demonstrated the quality and fun character of him. While I hadn’t heard of him until this week we will be hearing plenty about him in the coming years.   

While these are the feel good events I saw, the story in boxing was so much different. 

Boxing Meltdown

The Irish boxing team which set out with such high hopes have seen their hopes dashed in a totally comprehensive way. There had been more than hopes that they would exceed the results from the London Olympics with Taylor, Conlan, Barnes, Warde and O’Reilly being the five real medal expectations and hopes for others. It all started badly with O’Reilly being barred because of a failed drug test. Then it was Paddy Barnes who at the end of the first round showed worrying signs and was defeated. It was suggested that he had long-term issues making the weight so the question was; why did he not move up a weight? Warde also failed fighting poorly. And so it went. This week came our two bankers. Katie Taylor was pretty close but she was shadow of the confident, aggressive boxer of the past. Michael Conlan by all accounts was denied a win by poor judging, especially their assessment of the first round. While it might have been poor judging it is stretching it to say it was a conspiracy. So the Irish team of 8 who left with such expectation return empty-handed. Now the questions will be asked as to where did it all goo so wrong? It will take some re-building to see Irish boxing recover to any great extent for some time as its reputation and confidence has crashed.

  A fundamental question involves the departure of influential coach Billy Walshe earlier this year and the trauma that has caused to the team. Another curious development is the non-appearance of Katie Taylor’s dad Pete from her corner of late when he had been omni-present. This I presume was part of what she referred to as very difficult year for her. Pete is reported to be out of the country on holidays in Europe!

Pat Hickey and Tickets Issue           
If things In the ring were not bad enough things got worse in an unsavoury way. As I write the news is emerging that the President of the Irish Olympic Council, Pat Hickey, has been arrested in connection with ticket sale issues that emerged on August 5th. This is going to be a huge Olympic political story. Shane Ross, Minister for Sport eventually returned from holiday and subsequently went to Rio to meet Mister Hickey looking to have an independent member on the OCI’s investigation into the facts of the origin and path of the 700 hundred plus tickets at the centre of the story. Mister Hickey would not accept any intervention at the behest of the Minister Ross to his disappointment. Indeed Minister Ross too has lost some shine in his interaction with the dilemma. Then the story took a dramatic new turn on Wednesday with the arrest of Pat Hickey and the story now moving centre stage as a major news story.
It again illustrates the governance of national and international sporting and non-government organisations based in large part on amateur foundations and involvement but at the top of the pyramid on high degree of professionalism. This is fine up to a point, but where huge amounts of money, patronage, lobby groups, favours given for favours received, the sharp politics of it all,  come into the mix, the capacity for corruption to blossom is manifold. The best recent example has been seen in the FIFA –the International Football federation- where the activities of Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini resulted in their suspensions.
Mister Hickey and the OCI and all associated with the ticket issue deny wrongdoing, though things do not look too healthy for them, so it will be interesting to follow the story over the coming weeks.

Team GB and their major successes
The GB team have had incredible success and continue to do so. Since I watched a good deal of the international events on BBC, with the very impressive analyst Michael Johnson former U.S. sprinting great, I saw a number of these wins. Amongst their successes were stand out events such as the win by golfer Justin Rose in a down-to- the -wire contest with Henrik Stenson. I imagine some of the golfers who declined to travel because of the Zika scare (of which we have nothing during the games) will be having twinges of regret.
Andy Murray defended his singles tennis and it was not easy in a victory over an Argentinian opponent.
The GB rowing men’s rowing team powered home with the ladies team coming second. They also had fine first-time wins in gymnastics.

It was in velodrome cycling that they really dominated and collected more medals than all the opposing countries combined. The team has won six gold and four silver with all members of the 14 member team have won medals. This leap from the World Championships results has led to muted questions as to how they have come to be so dominant at recent Olympics in this sport. The suggestion being that if it were China or Russia then the questions would ring loud and clear. However they insist that their preparations, major lottery funding, and targeting of the Olympics and all that goes with them is the reason.

‘Lightning’ Bolt
On the international stage two phenomenal performers have stood out; Michael Phelps of the U.S. in swimming and Usain Bolt in sprint racing from Jamaica. Phelps is the most decorated Olympian of all time, with a total of 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold, spanning over four Olympic Games. He has actually competed at five Olympics; however, he did not win a medal at his first Games in Sydney, Australia.

Usain Bolt has become the king of 200m and 100m sprinting and in Rio is going for the triple-triple i.e. the 100m, 200m and the 4 X 100m which he has done at Beijing and London Olympics and is closing in on repeating in Rio with only the relay to come. Bolt is the superstar and some of the antics such as posing for a camera while in full flight and interacting with Andre de Grasse as they came home in the 200m heat and celebratory showmanship has been the centrepiece of this festival of sport.

What else ... the Basketball game between the ‘Dream Team’ no. x against the Australian ‘boomers’ ... the RTE basketball commentator with his ‘downtown’ shots ... the two sisters who represented GB in the 100 m hurdles ... the Brazilian pole vaulter, Tiago da Silva, winning the host country’s  only  gold as the partisan crowd booed his French rival ... the South African winner of gold medal in the 400m,  Wayde van Niekerk, running the fastest single lap in history with a to win the Olympic 400 meters gold whose coach is 74 year Anna Botha ... the success of Bahrain in winning gold with Ruth Jebet of Kenya and the spread of this across the Middle East ... plenty of quiz questions there for December!

So returning to Paul Kimmage, I hope you, a sportsman, haven’t denied yourself this, still the greatest show in the world with Usain ‘lighting’ Bolt as the ringmaster. The Olympics despite all the possible contamination was a triumph and I really enjoyed it ... and on this Friday morning 19th August, it ain't over just yet.

Slan.             





  



Update 19th August

Sean,…..this is almost totally a review of the Rio Olympics which I started to watch with some scepticism but quickly became totally engrossed in, with all its triumph and disasters. A memorable festival of sports competition. T



Preface Notes
1.     Boyle Senior team play Clann na Gael in the O’Rourke Cup on Saturday next (not Sunday) at 6.30 in Boyle. The team had a fine win over a fancied Roscommon Gaels on Sunday last in Elphin. They play Clann also, in their last group championship game which adds significance as to how they approach Saturday’s league game. League wins are vital too as it is very important that the team stay in the top division of the league which is in danger due to results to date.
2.     The all-Ireland Fleadh is on in Ennis this week-end and if you cannot get there it gets great coverage on T.V courtesy of Fleadh T.V. on T. G. 4 each evening from 8.30 to 11.30 which I recommend.
3.     Another programme which I recommend to you if it gets repeated somewhere –since it was shown on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday on RTE 1each night at 11.20. The programme title is Exodus: Our Journey Into Europe. It relates the trials and risks endured by people from the Middle East to reach the safety –as they see it- of  Europe. It was also repeated on BBC so the prospect of seeing a further repeat is limited.    


The Drama of the Olympics

On Sunday August 7th Paul Kimmage wrote a column in the Sunday Independent headed ‘You can’t be angry if you don’t care’. It related to the suspension of boxer Michael O’Reilly from the games due to being tested positive for taking a banned substance. I kinda subscribed to that  at the time but since then I have watched a good deal of coverage of the main events of the games and my view has changed. It has been a feast of drama, including phenomenal performances, celebration, heartache and heartbreak. The full range of human endeavour, its strengths, weaknesses and emotions.

Sports Highlights and Lowlights
For Ireland there have been a number of highlights. The achievement of Annalise Murphy in getting a silver medal in sailing after her great disappointment at coming 4th at the London Olympics was great to see. However the O’Donovan brothers in rowing will go down as ‘the’ highlight of these Games for Ireland. Their almost exaggerated Irishness obviously disguises a competitive steel which led to their stellar performance in their silver- winning final. They were in no rush back home to indulge themselves in the collective euphoria of their supporters there. There was a very creditable showing by a diver called Oliver Dingley who qualified for Ireland by virtue of his ancestry. Indeed this course so long a feature of Irish soccer is set to expand. There is also an Irish badminton player Scott Evans doing well as I write. A golfer I had never heard of Seamus Power from Waterford based in the U.S. came in 15th after challenging for a higher place earlier.    
On Tuesday night I watched with great surprise and delight as another  Waterford man, a runner I had never heard of, Thomas Barr, qualified for the finals of the 400m hurdles.
It’s the first time since 1932 that Ireland have had a finalist in the 400m hurdles when Bob Tisdale won gold, while Barr becomes the first Irishman in an Olympic track final since Alistair Cragg (5000m) in 2004.
The feat is all the more remarkable given that Barr’s season has been heavily disrupted by injury problems, with few tipping the Irish athlete to earn a final spot.
Watching on in the RTÉ studio, Irish former sprint hurdles athlete Derval O’Rourke hailed the achievement as “one of the greatest Irish performances”. Barr goes into Thursday’s final with every chance of a medal.
Speaking after tonight’s (Tuesday’s) race, Barr expressed delight at the achievement in a typical buoyant interview similar to the O’Donovans.
“I’m astonished. After all the mishaps over the last year with injuries, to win a semi-final and get a national record is incredible,” he said.
“I didn’t think I could run half a second faster than yesterday.
“I’ve put a target on my back for the final. When is it? I haven’t even looked.”
In the final which I viewed a few hours ago Thomas performed heroically to finish fourth by a whisker. His post-run interview again demonstrated the quality and fun character of him. While I hadn’t heard of him until this week we will be hearing plenty about him in the coming years.   

While these are the feel good events I saw, the story in boxing was so much different. 

Boxing Meltdown

The Irish boxing team which set out with such high hopes have seen their hopes dashed in a totally comprehensive way. There had been more than hopes that they would exceed the results from the London Olympics with Taylor, Conlan, Barnes, Warde and O’Reilly being the five real medal expectations and hopes for others. It all started badly with O’Reilly being barred because of a failed drug test. Then it was Paddy Barnes who at the end of the first round showed worrying signs and was defeated. It was suggested that he had long-term issues making the weight so the question was; why did he not move up a weight? Warde also failed fighting poorly. And so it went. This week came our two bankers. Katie Taylor was pretty close but she was shadow of the confident, aggressive boxer of the past. Michael Conlan by all accounts was denied a win by poor judging, especially their assessment of the first round. While it might have been poor judging it is stretching it to say it was a conspiracy. So the Irish team of 8 who left with such expectation return empty-handed. Now the questions will be asked as to where did it all goo so wrong? It will take some re-building to see Irish boxing recover to any great extent for some time as its reputation and confidence has crashed.

  A fundamental question involves the departure of influential coach Billy Walshe earlier this year and the trauma that has caused to the team. Another curious development is the non-appearance of Katie Taylor’s dad Pete from her corner of late when he had been omni-present. This I presume was part of what she referred to as very difficult year for her. Pete is reported to be out of the country on holidays in Europe!

Pat Hickey and Tickets Issue           
If things In the ring were not bad enough things got worse in an unsavoury way. As I write the news is emerging that the President of the Irish Olympic Council, Pat Hickey, has been arrested in connection with ticket sale issues that emerged on August 5th. This is going to be a huge Olympic political story. Shane Ross, Minister for Sport eventually returned from holiday and subsequently went to Rio to meet Mister Hickey looking to have an independent member on the OCI’s investigation into the facts of the origin and path of the 700 hundred plus tickets at the centre of the story. Mister Hickey would not accept any intervention at the behest of the Minister Ross to his disappointment. Indeed Minister Ross too has lost some shine in his interaction with the dilemma. Then the story took a dramatic new turn on Wednesday with the arrest of Pat Hickey and the story now moving centre stage as a major news story.
It again illustrates the governance of national and international sporting and non-government organisations based in large part on amateur foundations and involvement but at the top of the pyramid on high degree of professionalism. This is fine up to a point, but where huge amounts of money, patronage, lobby groups, favours given for favours received, the sharp politics of it all,  come into the mix, the capacity for corruption to blossom is manifold. The best recent example has been seen in the FIFA –the International Football federation- where the activities of Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini resulted in their suspensions.
Mister Hickey and the OCI and all associated with the ticket issue deny wrongdoing, though things do not look too healthy for them, so it will be interesting to follow the story over the coming weeks.

Team GB and their major successes
The GB team have had incredible success and continue to do so. Since I watched a good deal of the international events on BBC, with the very impressive analyst Michael Johnson former U.S. sprinting great, I saw a number of these wins. Amongst their successes were stand out events such as the win by golfer Justin Rose in a down-to- the -wire contest with Henrik Stenson. I imagine some of the golfers who declined to travel because of the Zika scare (of which we have nothing during the games) will be having twinges of regret.
Andy Murray defended his singles tennis and it was not easy in a victory over an Argentinian opponent.
The GB rowing men’s rowing team powered home with the ladies team coming second. They also had fine first-time wins in gymnastics.

It was in velodrome cycling that they really dominated and collected more medals than all the opposing countries combined. The team has won six gold and four silver with all members of the 14 member team have won medals. This leap from the World Championships results has led to muted questions as to how they have come to be so dominant at recent Olympics in this sport. The suggestion being that if it were China or Russia then the questions would ring loud and clear. However they insist that their preparations, major lottery funding, and targeting of the Olympics and all that goes with them is the reason.

‘Lightning’ Bolt
On the international stage two phenomenal performers have stood out; Michael Phelps of the U.S. in swimming and Usain Bolt in sprint racing from Jamaica. Phelps is the most decorated Olympian of all time, with a total of 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold, spanning over four Olympic Games. He has actually competed at five Olympics; however, he did not win a medal at his first Games in Sydney, Australia.

Usain Bolt has become the king of 200m and 100m sprinting and in Rio is going for the triple-triple i.e. the 100m, 200m and the 4 X 100m which he has done at Beijing and London Olympics and is closing in on repeating in Rio with only the relay to come. Bolt is the superstar and some of the antics such as posing for a camera while in full flight and interacting with Andre de Grasse as they came home in the 200m heat and celebratory showmanship has been the centrepiece of this festival of sport.

What else ... the Basketball game between the ‘Dream Team’ no. x against the Australian ‘boomers’ ... the RTE basketball commentator with his ‘downtown’ shots ... the two sisters who represented GB in the 100 m hurdles ... the Brazilian pole vaulter, Tiago da Silva, winning the host country’s  only  gold as the partisan crowd booed his French rival ... the South African winner of gold medal in the 400m,  Wayde van Niekerk, running the fastest single lap in history with a to win the Olympic 400 meters gold whose coach is 74 year Anna Botha ... the success of Bahrain in winning gold with Ruth Jebet of Kenya and the spread of this across the Middle East ... plenty of quiz questions there for December!

So returning to Paul Kimmage, I hope you, a sportsman, haven’t denied yourself this, still the greatest show in the world with Usain ‘lighting’ Bolt as the ringmaster. The Olympics despite all the possible contamination was a triumph and I really enjoyed it ... and on this Friday morning 19th August, it ain't over just yet.

Slan.             





  



Thursday, August 11, 2016

Update 12th August

1. Boyle GAA Auction takes place on Saturday at 1 in the Sports Complex.
2. Boyle GAA Senior team play Roscommon Gaels in their fourth Championship game on Sunday next at Elphin at 4.
3. I have been asked if I had a copy of the 2015 Old Moore’s Almanac. I do not but perhaps a reader out there may have one to give away.

Preface to Pensions Discussion
I have mentioned before about the importance of people having the appropriate ‘stamps’ on for pension purposes. I was alerted to this by the fact that a farmer friend had not been advised or else forgetting the advice in terms of paying ‘self-employed’ stamps which would have entitled him to a ‘contributory’ as opposed to ‘non-contributory’ pension. The difference being, apart from rates, that a ‘contributory pension’ is not ‘means tested’ whereas a non-contributory is means tested. In writing these notes as a preface to some main paragraphs below I say I am a novice in these matters so they are to be treated with a ‘health warning’.

In reading last Sunday’s Independent lead front page story, half way through, I came across a systems unfairness which resonated with me. It deals with pension entitlements for people who worked in say the late sixties and seventies, left work to raise families and returned to the work place subsequently and I produce it here;              

“Fianna Fail set to force €5-a-week pension rise”

Thousands of stay-at-home mothers get rock-bottom payments

TDs from all parties have been inundated in recent years with complaints from constituents, mostly older women, who are losing out on hundreds of euro every year due to an anomaly in the pension rules. In some instances, people who worked full-time and paid PRSI for most of their lives are getting smaller weekly pensions than those who worked fewer years.

It has even been suggested that some PRSI workers are receiving less than those who have never worked and who receive the €219-a-week non-contributory pension.
The weekly contributory pension ranges from €93.20 to €233.30, depending on PRSI contributions and years in the workforce. The problem arises for people who worked briefly when they were younger, before leaving the workforce to raise a family or become a full-time 'carer' for a loved one but who then returned to employment in later life.

**If the period of time that they left the workforce was before 1995, their PRSI contributions are averaged out over the number of years since they first gained employment, which could date back as far as the 1970s.

The contributory state pension is calculated by averaging the worker's PRSI contributions over the number of years that they were in the workforce.
This means that a person who entered the workforce for the first time later in life will potentially be entitled to a bigger weekly pension than someone who worked more years than they did.

*Fianna Fail's policy document gives the example of a woman who spent most of her life working in the home and entered the workforce aged 56 in 2005. She would be entitled to the full contributory state pension of €233.30.

*By contrast, a woman who re-entered the workforce aged 46 in 1995, after briefly working in the 1970s before becoming a stay-at-home mother, would get less, despite having worked more years.
The policy document on the issue states: "Individuals, mainly women who have raised families, are being penalised for having paid a small handful of PRSI payments during what effectively amounts to a previous working life."

If this applies to you, you could let your TDs’ know about it as it is unfair and needs to be reviewed.


The Death of Bishop Daly of Derry
One of the very good guys of the Northern Ireland Troubles, Bishop Edward Daly, died last Monday and thousands of people flocked to Derry city centre and to his funeral mass to pay their respects to the former bishop. Father Daly, as he was then, will be forever remembered photographed with a white handkerchief as members of the public carried a wounded colleague out into the open during the Bloody Sunday shooting of 13 civilians by British army paratroopers in Derry on January 30th 1972. They had all been part of a Civil Rights march in the city.  Later as Bishop Daly he confronted the I.R.A. as he imposed restrictions on what was allowed during funerals of I.R.A. members also shot during that war. He was, along with giants like John Hume and many more, involved in efforts to bring the ‘troubles’ to an end. I met him briefly at the official opening of the Derry City’s Tower Museum of local history and the Troubles when I happened to be visiting the city.  

Ronnie Delaney 
I mentioned Ronnie Delaney last week and then I was told that he was in Carrick-on-Shannon very recently at a GAA function honouring Packie McGarty and Cathal Flynn two Leitrim football legends from the fifties and the sixties. He was also on RTE Radio on the Friday morning of Olympic opening day with Keelin Shanley talking of his athletic career and his trip to the Melbourne Olympics of ‘56 which I referenced. It was a gem of an interview which I enjoyed he being in my mind. Sometimes you meet someone you haven’t met in many years and then you seem to bump into them a number of times in a short period. He talked of the Irish team of 11 including one manager travelling to Australia via the U.S. and Ronnie linking up with the team in New York and then to the West Coast, Honolulu and other hops to Sydney and on to Melbourne a real marathon of a journey then. ‘I basically looked after myself though Maeve Coyle, a previous Olympian, helped us. There were a number of fine boxers who did well Freddie Gilroy, Johnny Caldwell, ‘Socks’ Byrne and Fred Tiedt. He described his mile race in detail and of coming from way back ‘The race began with the bell (for the last lap) only that the bell ringer forgot to ring it. I was a racer, the youngest there at 21. I had my tactics well off, follow John Landy and then, with 400 yards remaining, make a decisive move and it worked. I had practised crossing the finish line and my prayer of thanksgiving went down very well with clergy everywhere.’ Ronnie Delaney, now 81, related his story with humour and clarity. It was a throwback to an era of purity in sport and respect for the original Olympic ideals. 

Reflections on Boxer Michael O’Reilly’s Error
Michael O’Reilly made a mistake, a big mistake. He let himself, his family, team and coaches and country down, maybe even in that order. There is a climate now that suggests he will be cast off like some leper of old. I do not know anything  about Michael. Perhaps like a lot of boxers he would not be a MENSA candidate but as the saying goes ‘he who never made a mistake never made anything’. Most of these are private mistakes. Michael’s problem is that it is a very public mistake and impinges upon others. Many sportsmen have made mistakes Beckham kicking out, Zidane, Roy Keane exiting Saipan which I imagine he regrets, down to Sean Cavanagh getting sent off last Saturday evening and possibly costing Tyrone the match against Mayo. Sport is speckled with mistakes. Life is littered with them also. People still drink and drive, people gamble too much, people succumb to all the weaknesses of human nature. 
O’Reilly’s ‘public’ mistake discomforts those who engage with his sport and feel cheated as many of us who coast in our armchairs watching our Irish representatives and from time to time get the feel good factor from their efforts. In life we often shun people who make mistakes trying to ensure that we are not seen as condoning what they did. 
I imagine that Michael O’Reilly will return with a heavy, even a broken heart. I hope that the organisation who has him in a distant land do their duty of care by him until he gets home. I imagine there are photographers  arranging to get the ‘first’ snap as he comes out of arrivals at London, Paris or wherever.
He will need more support than he has ever needed heretofore in his young life. While I doubt if that will come from the ‘sports supporters’ or commentators it will have to come from his primary font of support, his family.  

Irish Boxing Team Further Woes

Paddy Barnes Weight Issues
I watched as Paddy Barnes was defeated by a very good and confidant boxer from Spain, who actually got beaten in his next round. After the fight speaking to Evanne Ni Chuilinn on RTÉ, Barnes was brutally honest about the fight and how he felt drained after even round one. It emerged that had he got the decision he felt he would hardly have been able to take on the next round. It apparently was the result of Paddy struggling to make the weight of light-fly weight of 7 stone 10 pounds which is the lightest boxing weight. Apparently there have been issues for him with this weight for a couple of years. It finally caught up with the double bronze medal winner in Rio. I am puzzled though since he was struggling to make this light-fly weight that he had not moved up at least one weight division. 
The defeat of two other Irish boxers Joe Ward and David Oliver Joyce means that the bright expectations for the team have now contracted to Michael Conlan, Stephan Donnelly (winner today Thursday) and Katie Taylor. Joyce was up against a formidable opponent but Ward might have done better. One could see the frustration of the RTE analysts, Bernard Dunne –especially- and Michael Carruth to Ward’s performance. The absence of former coach Billy Walshe has re-emerged as a factor in the woes of the boxing team from whom so much was expected. 
A question I did not ask in the paragraph on Michael O’Reilly above, but I ask it here, why, since it appears that the ‘positive for drugs’ results had to be known before the team flew out to Rio, were the IOC not informed and the boxer disallowed from travelling if and until things were clarified?  Indeed the management of the whole episode by those the organisations responsible seems to be a mess.  
The fiasco continues with the story of an Irish connection to black market tickets. No wonder that Paul Kimmage in Sunday’s Independent spoke of his disillusion with the whole carnival that is the modern Olympics. 

The coming week-ends two big hurling games
Saturday sees the replay of Kilkenny and Waterford in Thurles. Waterford should have sealed the result last Sunday and most people will be saying that they missed their chance. However Waterford have many fine hurlers and though it is a great stretch back to 1959 Waterford defeated Kilkenny in the final in a replay. Also Kilkenny looks a good bit short of the invincible team of a few years ago. 
The Galway v Tipperary Semi-final on Sunday could go any which way.  

(I had intended to write some lines on another legend of Irish sport, handballer Ducksie Walshe of Kilkenny, who died suddenly last week so hopefully I’ll get to doing that for next week).    

Slán.       

             



                 

Update 12th August

1. Boyle GAA Auction takes place on Saturday at 1 in the Sports Complex.
2. Boyle GAA Senior team play Roscommon Gaels in their fourth Championship game on Sunday next at Elphin at 4.
3. I have been asked if I had a copy of the 2015 Old Moore’s Almanac. I do not but perhaps a reader out there may have one to give away.

Preface to Pensions Discussion
I have mentioned before about the importance of people having the appropriate ‘stamps’ on for pension purposes. I was alerted to this by the fact that a farmer friend had not been advised or else forgetting the advice in terms of paying ‘self-employed’ stamps which would have entitled him to a ‘contributory’ as opposed to ‘non-contributory’ pension. The difference being, apart from rates, that a ‘contributory pension’ is not ‘means tested’ whereas a non-contributory is means tested. In writing these notes as a preface to some main paragraphs below I say I am a novice in these matters so they are to be treated with a ‘health warning’.

In reading last Sunday’s Independent lead front page story, half way through, I came across a systems unfairness which resonated with me. It deals with pension entitlements for people who worked in say the late sixties and seventies, left work to raise families and returned to the work place subsequently and I produce it here;              

“Fianna Fail set to force €5-a-week pension rise”

Thousands of stay-at-home mothers get rock-bottom payments


TDs from all parties have been inundated in recent years with complaints from constituents, mostly older women, who are losing out on hundreds of euro every year due to an anomaly in the pension rules. In some instances, people who worked full-time and paid PRSI for most of their lives are getting smaller weekly pensions than those who worked fewer years.

It has even been suggested that some PRSI workers are receiving less than those who have never worked and who receive the €219-a-week non-contributory pension.
The weekly contributory pension ranges from €93.20 to €233.30, depending on PRSI contributions and years in the workforce. The problem arises for people who worked briefly when they were younger, before leaving the workforce to raise a family or become a full-time 'carer' for a loved one but who then returned to employment in later life.

**If the period of time that they left the workforce was before 1995, their PRSI contributions are averaged out over the number of years since they first gained employment, which could date back as far as the 1970s.

The contributory state pension is calculated by averaging the worker's PRSI contributions over the number of years that they were in the workforce.
This means that a person who entered the workforce for the first time later in life will potentially be entitled to a bigger weekly pension than someone who worked more years than they did.

*Fianna Fail's policy document gives the example of a woman who spent most of her life working in the home and entered the workforce aged 56 in 2005. She would be entitled to the full contributory state pension of €233.30.

*By contrast, a woman who re-entered the workforce aged 46 in 1995, after briefly working in the 1970s before becoming a stay-at-home mother, would get less, despite having worked more years.
The policy document on the issue states: "Individuals, mainly women who have raised families, are being penalised for having paid a small handful of PRSI payments during what effectively amounts to a previous working life."

If this applies to you, you could let your TDs’ know about it as it is unfair and needs to be reviewed.


The Death of Bishop Daly of Derry
One of the very good guys of the Northern Ireland Troubles, Bishop Edward Daly, died last Monday and thousands of people flocked to Derry city centre and to his funeral mass to pay their respects to the former bishop. Father Daly, as he was then, will be forever remembered photographed with a white handkerchief as members of the public carried a wounded colleague out into the open during the Bloody Sunday shooting of 13 civilians by British army paratroopers in Derry on January 30th 1972. They had all been part of a Civil Rights march in the city.  Later as Bishop Daly he confronted the I.R.A. as he imposed restrictions on what was allowed during funerals of I.R.A. members also shot during that war. He was, along with giants like John Hume and many more, involved in efforts to bring the ‘troubles’ to an end. I met him briefly at the official opening of the Derry City’s Tower Museum of local history and the Troubles when I happened to be visiting the city.  

Ronnie Delaney 
I mentioned Ronnie Delaney last week and then I was told that he was in Carrick-on-Shannon very recently at a GAA function honouring Packie McGarty and Cathal Flynn two Leitrim football legends from the fifties and the sixties. He was also on RTE Radio on the Friday morning of Olympic opening day with Keelin Shanley talking of his athletic career and his trip to the Melbourne Olympics of ‘56 which I referenced. It was a gem of an interview which I enjoyed he being in my mind. Sometimes you meet someone you haven’t met in many years and then you seem to bump into them a number of times in a short period. He talked of the Irish team of 11 including one manager travelling to Australia via the U.S. and Ronnie linking up with the team in New York and then to the West Coast, Honolulu and other hops to Sydney and on to Melbourne a real marathon of a journey then. ‘I basically looked after myself though Maeve Coyle, a previous Olympian, helped us. There were a number of fine boxers who did well Freddie Gilroy, Johnny Caldwell, ‘Socks’ Byrne and Fred Tiedt. He described his mile race in detail and of coming from way back ‘The race began with the bell (for the last lap) only that the bell ringer forgot to ring it. I was a racer, the youngest there at 21. I had my tactics well off, follow John Landy and then, with 400 yards remaining, make a decisive move and it worked. I had practised crossing the finish line and my prayer of thanksgiving went down very well with clergy everywhere.’ Ronnie Delaney, now 81, related his story with humour and clarity. It was a throwback to an era of purity in sport and respect for the original Olympic ideals. 

Reflections on Boxer Michael O’Reilly’s Error
Michael O’Reilly made a mistake, a big mistake. He let himself, his family, team and coaches and country down, maybe even in that order. There is a climate now that suggests he will be cast off like some leper of old. I do not know anything  about Michael. Perhaps like a lot of boxers he would not be a MENSA candidate but as the saying goes ‘he who never made a mistake never made anything’. Most of these are private mistakes. Michael’s problem is that it is a very public mistake and impinges upon others. Many sportsmen have made mistakes Beckham kicking out, Zidane, Roy Keane exiting Saipan which I imagine he regrets, down to Sean Cavanagh getting sent off last Saturday evening and possibly costing Tyrone the match against Mayo. Sport is speckled with mistakes. Life is littered with them also. People still drink and drive, people gamble too much, people succumb to all the weaknesses of human nature. 
O’Reilly’s ‘public’ mistake discomforts those who engage with his sport and feel cheated as many of us who coast in our armchairs watching our Irish representatives and from time to time get the feel good factor from their efforts. In life we often shun people who make mistakes trying to ensure that we are not seen as condoning what they did. 
I imagine that Michael O’Reilly will return with a heavy –even broken- heart.  I hope that the organisation who has him in a distant land do their duty of care by him until he gets home. I imagine there are photographers  arranging to get the ‘first’ snap as he comes out of arrivals at London, Paris or wherever.
He will need more support than he has ever needed heretofore in his young life. While I doubt if that will come from the ‘sports supporters’ or commentators it will have to come from his primary font of support, his family.  

Irish Boxing Team Further Woes
Paddy Barnes Weight Issues
I watched as Paddy Barnes was defeated by a very good and confidant boxer from Spain, who actually got beaten in his next round. After the fight speaking to Evanne Ni Chuilinn on RTÉ, Barnes was brutally honest about the fight and how he felt drained after even round one. It emerged that had he got the decision he felt he would hardly have been able to take on the next round. It apparently was the result of Paddy struggling to make the weight of light-fly weight of 7 stone 10 pounds which is the lightest boxing weight. Apparently there have been issues for him with this weight for a couple of years. It finally caught up with the double bronze medal winner in Rio. I am puzzled though since he was struggling to make this light-fly  weight that he had not moved up at least one weight division. 
The defeat of two other Irish boxers Joe Ward and David Oliver Joyce means that the bright expectations for the team have now contracted to Michael Conlan, Stephan Donnelly (winner today Thursday) and Katie Taylor. Joyce was up against a formidable opponent but Ward might have done better. One could see the frustration of the RTE analysts, Bernard Dunne –especially- and Michael Carruth to Ward’s performance. The absence of former coach Billy Walshe has re-emerged as a factor in the woes of the boxing team from whom so much was expected. 
A question I did not ask in the paragraph on Michael O’Reilly above, but I ask it here, why, since it appears that the ‘positive for drugs’ results had to be known before the team flew out to Rio, were the IOC not informed and the boxer disallowed from travelling if and until things were clarified?  Indeed the management of the whole episode by those the organisations responsible seems to be a mess.  
The fiasco continues with the story of an Irish connection to black market tickets. No wonder that Paul Kimmage in Sunday’s Independent spoke of his disillusion with the whole carnival that is the modern Olympics. 

The coming week-ends two big hurling games
Saturday sees the replay of Kilkenny and Waterford in Thurles. Waterford should have sealed the result last Sunday and most people will be saying that they missed their chance. However Waterford have many fine hurlers and though it is a great stretch back to 1959 Waterford defeated Kilkenny in the final in a replay. Also Kilkenny looks a good bit short of the invincible team of a few years ago. 
The Galway v Tipperary Semi-final on Sunday could go any which way.  

(I had intended to write some lines on another legend of Irish sport, handballer Ducksie Walshe of Kilkenny, who died suddenly last week so hopefully I’ll get to doing that for next week).    

Slan.       

             



                 

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Update 4th August

1Beware


I• I am getting junk mail from my own address and if anyone gets mail from tconboy1 @eircom.net, be wary. There are so many scams out there that it is becoming a jungle. Most of them are recognisable from odd telephone numbers to the usual ‘bank with details’ requests and bank card skimming but the occasional one takes some studying before deletion.)
• • If you are insured by Enterprise Insurance, which is/was regulated(!) in Gibraltar, it is being wound up with 14,000 at risk. It is just two years after Setanta insurance regulated(!) in Malta was wound up which affected around 70,000 people and whose losses are now being paid for by way of a levy on all our car insurances today and I presume for some time to come.


“Three top bank execs. jailed for ‘dishonest, corrupt’ Anglo Fraud”

This was the headline on page 5 of last Saturday’s Irish Independent reporting on the sentencing of Denis Casey, John Bowe and Willie McAteer for their part in the infamous €7.2 billion circular transaction scheme in September 2008 to bolster Anglo’s balance sheet .

Importantly the sub-heading was auditors “Ernst & Young ‘should have known’ about massive scam.

Also in the background was the name of David Drumm described by the judge as a “ ‘driving force’ behind the huge banking conspiracy…… it is grossly reprehensible what he did and a great shame on him’ “.

The jury took a total of 65 hours deliberating on the case following an 89 day trial, the longest in the history of the state.    

The trial judge Martin Nolan pulled no punches in his language describing the affair and he was obviously aghast at the scale of it all. The scheme was “dishonest, deceitful and corrupt, they knew what they were doing was wrong and their behaviour was reprehensible.’ ‘In law following orders is not a defence’ he said. “ ‘ He should have known and did know that this was a sham transaction’ the judge said of the actions of Denis Casey. 
While the critical language of the judge is broad and regularly repeated he seemed to be almost struggling to find language strong enough to describe the corrupt transactions and behaviour of the defendants in the case.

He also fired a broadside at the auditors Ernst & Young (now E Y) with “ ‘ it beggars belief that Ernst & Young signed off on the accounts…….how they signed off on the accounts as true and fair is a mystery to me….they should have known the true situation at least by the end of October 2008 if they had been doing their job properly…..he didn’t know if it was blindness or wilful blindness on the accountant’s part…….(the signing off of the accounts) “ ‘seems incomprehensible’ “. 

While they did not feature too much, the blindness, inaction and ineptitude of the chief executive of the office of Financial Regulator Patrick Neary and the long-time governor of the Central Bank, John Hurley bubbled under the surface.
It all led to the ‘collapse’ of Anglo Irish Bank  and the bill being passed to the Irish tax payer for the coming decades. The Saturday Editorial was headed “Destroyed lives are the real legacy of Anglo”.  


Remembering Ronnie Delaney’s gold in the 1500 metres from the Melbourne Olympics of 1956.

Down the decades the Olympics was a huge carnival of sporting excellence and drama to which I looked forward.  The sheen seems to have slipped from it now though and even before it begins in Rio on Friday next there are considerable issues such as drug taking and monitoring with the primary example being the Russian team and also the threat from the Seiko virus and one might suggest the social and economic capacity of Brazil to accommodate the games.
I don’t know if this memory is actual or invented after the fact, of listening to the radio to hear Ronnie Delaney winning the blue riband event, the 1500 metres, at the 1956 Olympics at Melbourne. It would have to have been in the early morning considering the time considerations. I attended a football game in that stadium now known as the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) in 2001 but my consciousness was of one my first sport’s heroes, Delaney, winning gold there in ’56. (As an aside –as I am won’t to do- early last week I visited the GAA Museum in Croke Park which now embraces small exhibits from other sports along with its main emphasis on Gaelic games and there is one dedicated to Delaney’s Melbourne victory). Delaney went to Villanova University in the U.S. where his coach was the legendry Jumbo Elliot. He took part in a famous mile race in the Billy Morton track at Santry in Dublin some time after Melbourne when perhaps four to five athletes broke the famous four minute barrier led by Herb Elliot. He was most famous in the U.S. as an indoor runner setting numerous records and had a winning sequence of 40 races. Of course a number of other Irish athletes were to follow as great indoor runners including Eamon Coghlan. Delaney was the first Irish sub four minute miler and first gold medal winner since Bob Tisdale in ’32 at Los Angeles and no Irish participant won gold again until Michael Carruth in Barcelona in ‘92.  Delaney was born in March 1935 and is still revered as an icon of the sport from when it was entering its prime. In that race he defeated the Australian favourite John Landy and England’s Brian Hewson. There are U tube films of the race and Delaney comes from a near impossible position over the last three/four hundred metres to win and fall to his knees as he says a prayer of thanks after his great Olympic victory.

Two Roscommon Olympians

There have been a couple of Roscommon Olympic participants including Bill Jackson from Ballinlough who was a stalwart corner back on the Roscommon All-Ireland winning teams of ’43 and ’44. He was on the all-army Irish basketball at the London Olympics of ’48. They played out of Athlone.
Boyle man Jim McGee was also a member of that team. He was the uncle of Brendan McGee and joined the army at a very young age and was perhaps one of the longest serving army members ever on his retirement in ’88 aged 70. He became associated with the army bands and conducted and arranged their music. At first he conducted the Band of the Western Command and later the Army Number One Band. These bands were regular visitors to Boyle, usually in November, in the seventies, because of Jim being from the town. Jim conducted the band for several presidential inaugurations and state occasions. Has anyone ever seen a picture of that Olympic Basketball team of ’48? 

The list of Olympic Venues since 1956 for your convenience.
1956 - Melbourne, Australia. Delaney and Dawn Fraser.
1960 - Rome, Italy. Abebi Bikila the barefoot marathon wonder. Cassius Clay wins light-heavy gold medal.
1964 - Tokyo, Japan. Snell of New Zealand wins 800 and 1500 and Joe Frazier wins in boxing
1968 - Mexico City, Mexico. Black power and gloves of Smith and Carlos, the high jump of Fosbury and the long jump of Beamon. 
1972 - Munich, West Germany (now Germany). The killing of members of the Israeli team. Mark Spitz.
1976 - Montreal, Canada. 14-year-old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci and her perfect tens.
1980 - Moscow, U.S.S.R. the U.S. boycott because of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Ovett and Coe.
(now Russia)
1984 - Los Angeles, United States. The Russian boycott because of the U.S. 1980 Boycott! 84 white pianos. Lionel Richie. Coe again Steve Redgrave the first of five.  Zola Budd decks the favourite Mary D. 
1988 - Seoul, South Korea. Ben Johnson drugs v golden boy Carl Lewis.
1992 - Barcelona, Spain. The diving board in the sky. The U.S. dream team in basketball arrive with the Boston Celtic’s Bird and Magic Johnson.
1996 - Atlanta, United States. Muhammad Ali shakes as he lights the flame. Michelle Smith ecstasy and Sonia agony.
2000 - Sydney, Australia. Aboriginal athlete Cathy Freeman’s win. Magic ending ceremony….like many great opening and closing ceremonies.
2004 - Athens, Greece. Was that where the Kerry priest interrupted the Brazilian marathon leader?
2008 - Beijing, China. The Birds Nest Stadium and swimmer Ml. Phelps.
2012 - London, United Kingdom. James bond and the Queen of England take the jump. Lightning Bolt.
2016 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Samba time with the possibility of a bit of bite.
2020 - Tokyo, Japan

So in the two weeks or so of the Rio Olympics what stories and heroes are to emerge? Will Ireland, especially in boxing, achieve and will the spirit of the Olympics be enhanced or besmirched.
Television coverage of the opening begins on Friday night on R.T.E. at 11.30 with earlier Olympic preview coverage on B.B.C.

Back to School Costs

We were supposed to get ‘Free Education’ through the initiative of the then Minister for Education, Donagh O’Malley in the late sixties. This was true to an extent and saw the considerable rise in the numbers of students attending secondary schools especially and a more limited but increasing number going on to third level. I have heard on radio of the costs of preparing students for a return to school for the new year coming in September.  According to a report from Barnardo’s it takes €800 for a first year secondary student including uniforms, 3/4 hundred for a primary student and €3,000 to register at a University. So the idea of ‘Free Education’ has eroded hugely since its inception. One of the real issues at schools is the regular changing of books. Once, and many older readers will remember, there were books which could be transferred to younger family members or traded as second –hand books. In our English ‘faculty’ there were the standards Exploring English One, Two and Three and of course for years at leaving Cert. the great poetry standard ‘Soundings’. Today the syllabus seems to change every two or three years but the genre of books that create real issues are ‘work books’ which of course are non-transferable.
I will have to do it but I will see the waste when I get around to disposing of boxes of school books, from all levels, which clutter the attic.  

Errata


Senator Black
If I ever knew it I had forgotten that Frances Black is in fact a Senator. It is pretty rare to me that an entertainer becomes a politician but on reflection maybe not.

Rental Market
The rental market in Dublin is now obscene as young couples are being forced out to the distant commuter belts of Mullingar, Carlow and Portlaoise. I know of a group of tenants in a house in Dublin who pay collectively over €2,500 a month for a house which is set on a room basis with communal utility rooms. So that adds up to a rental income of €30,000 per annum. Is that possible or have I remembered it wrong?
Not only are young couples moving to commuter belts but they are abandoning Dublin altogether and trying to re-establish themselves in other cities or large towns. This isn’t easy as it often means dropping down a number of rungs of the job ladder and starting out again.

After Console
A term I heard for the first time last week was ‘chuggers’ a mix of street charity collectors and ?

Running Mates
For Hillary Clinton Tim Kaine and for Donald Trump the Indiana Governor Mike Pence. ‘Not a lot of people know that’…..yet.

Frenchpark Crossing
I see some moves afoot to make the hazardous Frenchpark crossing of the N 5 safer. Christine McHugh, Editor of the Roscommon Herald has been championing this for some time.   

Croke Park Museum and Tour
With a visitor friend I participated in the above on Monday of last week. the Museum is impressive and constantly evolving it seems. It now contains some small displays from other sports such as boxing and athletics. You need to allow a good deal of time to absorb the museum and its contents but this is true of any good museum. While the tour was regular maybe my familiarity with Croke Park meant that while I was, as always, impressed by the stadium I was underwhelmed by the actual tour, if that is not a contradiction. One of the great things about the grounds at Croke Park is the amount of game activity it is able to absorb.  On the day we were there it was a hive of activity with an under-age blitz or some such. Altogether a busy and interesting environment.    

Sports Review


Boyle V Padraig Pearse’s Senior Championships
Club fixtures within county Roscommon return with the championships this coming week-end. Boyle play Padraig Pearse’s on Sunday at Tulsk at 2pm. Boyle have beaten Castlerea in the first round but got well beaten by St. Brigid’s in round two. Boyle lost out very narrowly in last year’s championships to Pearse’s at the quarter final stages. I don’t know what the situation in Boyle is currently with injuries but both Donie Smith and Evan McGrath are key players who will be missed. Still it is all on the day and it a game that Boyle will be hoping to win.
The following week-end they play Roscommon Gaels. They played the Gaels some time ago in the league in Boyle and it was a very well contested game but the championship is a very different scene as we all know now.   


National  Games Gone and Coming
Perhaps it should not have been such a surprise that Galway went down to Tipperary but the nature of it certainly was. Galway looked as if they were putting together a decent side but that all fell apart on Sunday. The implications for us of course are also there on the T. v G. v R. equation. Tipp. looked really good with a commanding midfield which dominated what we thought was a capable Galway midfield and only Comer offered a threat up font while Tipp. had two excellent forwards in Quinlivan and Sweeney. How Tipp. deals with the winners of Mayo v Tyrone -who are the favourites for that tie- is to be seen but next year when they will probably have more players available they could be a real force if this year’s form is built on.
I left watching the Mayo v Westmeath game at half time as Mayo were really in command but old weaknesses emerged in the second half and they just got through. Kerry defeated Clare while cruising in third gear and now play the winners of Donegal v Dublin. Donegal is one team that can really give Dublin a game but the Dubs panel is too strong and they should emerge on Saturday. So the Semi-Finals are shaping up now as Dublin V Kerry and Tipperary v Tyrone….despite my hopes for Mayo. That looks like a Dublin v Tyrone final. Who knows?
On Sunday there is the first All-Ireland hurling Semi-final with Kilkenny v Waterford. While Waterford seem to be getting a young team together they have to be a mature outfit to take on the cats, so a win for Kilkenny here. On Sunday week it is Tipperary hurlers v Galway and this looks like a pretty even affair.

Golf
It is sad to see that Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry are having a rocky time with their games but nice to see Padraig Harrington do well. Of course Harrington represents Ireland at the Rio games and good luck to him and all our participants.

Slán for now.