"Ireland had chances at Croke Park and in Paris but didn’t take them. France were there for the taking but Ireland never grabbed it – as usual. They were afraid of that next step and were mentally not strong enough. They can complain all they want. That is not going to change anything. France are going to the World Cup – get over it. They want sympathy as usual. It is the usual carry on and it is boring."
They'll bore you to death - Keano said. Seriously.
"Ireland had their chances in the two games [against France], and they never took them. But it's the usual FAI reaction - 'We've been robbed, the honesty of the game' - he said.
There was one match against Georgia where Ireland got a penalty and it was one of the worst decisions I've ever seen which changed the whole course of the game. I don't remember the FAI after the game saying we should give them a replay."
~
It's a game, for millionaire sports-people, (men really) who deserve our supplications before them as the 'we' they are who care enough to play fair at all times when lying through our back teeth about how appalling it all is, hey? - the neat fair square, as per status quo global luvvies living the dream - inside centre fullback, left and right tighthead prop and number eight, predestinating happenstance as a wheel of fortune spins - fly and scrum half.
One word stressed straight: it's a ninety minute experiment kicking toward the target, in a fortress not one's own. Unlocked and open to all paranoia and success, confined in a space slaying their faux try, from a loosehead prop, blindside flanker, our poetical eye, ay?
ha ha ha ha
hé res a goal guarded by yer one scoring the win away from home, citadel doors ajar - outside centre-cheat, 50/50 karma-prospect kismet serendipity and one's portion of free will, stars to come of our own volition, Choice of English, hatreds eeking the art away, what is written by the heavens, luck and death in one's horoscope as scorpio - low key container of obelisks bought with the obolus tenth or sixth Charon of the metrical measure, tracks in one's aura, site, constellation crumbling overhead as the sentence spent, terminates.
~
"I'd focus on why they didn't clear it. I'd be more annoyed with my defenders and my goalkeeper than Thierry Henry. How can you let the ball bounce in your six-yard box? How can you let Thierry Henry get goal-side of you? If the ball goes into the six-yard box, where the hell is my goalkeeper?"
So, these few frauds looking up to me,
all the colours of an opaque wit, in naked
blush; all the tones of a royal douche-bag
I have been thinking about, them people
blindly deluded that the boys in green, sad soccer knobs, were gonna pull off a miracle in Paris. And who are now in uproar because of an honest mistake they claim as the 'cheat', whose charge sheet contains instant admittance of the 'accident' instinct and the finer, noble qualities humankind exhibit, on and off both stage and pitch, as per the actor Henry, imagine that scene: it is reality - get over it - us not playing in the hallowed Shirt: not even in the stands - we will sell the volvo and fly to Nelson Mandela Bay, ask Santy to take us to where it aint gonna happen, because our sportspeople (men really) can't cut it at the highest level, in the real Premier and super, excellent league. Not on the international pitch as representatives of the Shirt they can't y'all.
~
I was listening to Marian Finucane, with Keano the focus of a mass outpouring of divided and highly incendiary craic: one fan and Irish person so incensed, called for diplomatic relations with France to be suspended until an honourable outcome for what is, perhaps, the human world's most shared cultural signifier and symbol of one's native National pride and spirituality. One memorable quote from the Times: 'we should call in the police' - as if anyone gives a toss about it.
I am glad they didn't get in, because if they did, it would be just another excuse to indulge in jingoistic self-congratulation about how great the Irish are, how friendly and loveable and all that rubbish stuff that flows out of a deep insecurity and colonial hangover, always blaming the 'other' for anything that goes wrong. Bastards.
It is telling, that the Irish who go to Britain, are welcomed and do well, taking over the airways with their funniness, but it's a one way street when their scion returns to where no brits from a similar platform: talk to every person in every county they know, to be a Shirt in every province, and the global success. And yet the official body, the FAI, who won't even acknowledge my e mails about a proposal for doing it on a shoestring of 400,000 a month - to make it happen and for us to go to the finals - are singing in the wind if they think FIFA will be in any way amenable to their begging chorus, we wuz robbed won't cut it in Durban and Port Elizabeth next year, when the group winners and runner-up winners will be proudly representing their Shirt in South Africa.
ha ha ha ha
Who cares?
