How to lose your shirt
I see Stephanie Roche didn't win a prize last night.
So who the hell is Stephanie Roche and what prize didn't she win you may well ask?
Ms Roche is a footballer, which is fine and dandy if you're into that sort of thing, and apparently she kicked the ball into the net. Now this is a relatively common occurrence in football games, or so I am led to believe but what made this event so significant?
Well, there is an award called the Puskas Award which apparently is given to the player , male or female, judged to have scored the most aesthetically significant, or "most beautiful", goal of the year. Aesthetically significant? Most beautiful? I'm really confused. But it seems Ms Roche managed to qualify under either "aesthetically significant", or "most beautiful", or perhaps both. She is a bit of a looker so maybe that had something to do with it?
The whole thing strikes me as being a bit unfair. When Ms Roche managed to kick the ball into the goal net there happened to be television cameras there so quite a lot of people saw it. But what about young Timmy Drennan who was kicking a ball around the field with his mates? He kicked the ball towards the goal thing and hopelessly missed. However the ball hit a donkey which had strayed onto the field, ricocheted off the donkey whereupon it hit a dried up cow-pat and bounced back into the net. No one saw it apart from his mates, but I think it qualifies as "most beautiful"? And he never got a mention in the awards?
The award is judged by the number of votes that a player gets, which doesn't sound very fair. Maybe if Ms Roche had followed the time honoured tradition of whipping her shirt off and running around the field she would have stood a better chance?
Anyhows, as I said, Ms Roche didn't win but apparently it's my fault.
Ireland has a population of 4.6 million but she only got 1.1 million votes, so three and a half million of us didn't do our civic duty.
Even worse, and just to make me feel really guilty I am told that our forefathers and foremothers shed blood so that we would have the right to vote.
Bugger me!
I always thought it was about self determination.
The Irish Times? Not normally.
Which one did you describe thusly…?
It's soccer! No body gives two shits about soccer! Hell there's probably only three goals scored in all of the games played…combined. No body cares about soccer! It's not a real sport.
There is only one sport and that's whacking the odd tourist up the valleys. For some reason Americans for Philadelphia are the best – the buggers never stand still so it adds to the challenge.
Not from Philly, near Philly. It's exactly 101 miles from my house to Citizens Bank Park where they play a real sport…Baseball.
Baseball I believe is what we call rounders, a children's game we played a long time ago.
Now goal are a relatively common occurrence in football games, not as much as you would think.
As for voting for someone because they were from the parish rather than on merit, is a plague in this country.
"voting for someone because they were from the parish rather than on merit, is a plague in this country." Amen to that.
What if you were Irish and didn't think her goal was the best? Would that have been a betrayal of the men of 1916?
Baseball is a fine game – I was reading recently how Babe Ruth, one of the all time greats, had a hugely successful season in 1927 whilst being overweight and smoking and drinking
The 1993 Phillies partied all night after games and would have been world champs except for a certain pitch thrown by Mitch Williams in game 7 of the World Series.