The troubling case of Mike Ashley and the GAA

More than three years have passed since the BBC broadcast an investigation into the work practices of Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct company in the Far East. Amongst other things, the programme showed employees in a factory in Laos working in especially oppressive conditions, earning 1 pound (English) per day for a 12-hour shift. In sapping heat, the employees were often folding and bagging clothes in areas with no air-conditioning. There was one air-conditioner in the building but it was being used to cool down the sewing machine rather than the workers. A telling image.

Even if it’s all too typical to hear these types of stories in the clothing business (witness Penneys’ link to the building collapse in Bangladesh which killed hundreds earlier this week), the Sports Direct case was especially disturbing. Firstly, the owner of the factory openly admitted to reporters that the facility did not conform to the internationally-accepted SA8000 standard. That is a regulation which guarantees no child labour is used  on the premises, and that workers are paid properly and not exploited. In effect, it is an attempt to ensure that people sewing shirts and boots in third world countries for pittances are given something approaching their basic human rights.

Today, Sports Direct has a big blurb on its website proclaiming its interest in fair and ethical trade but back then its only response to the documentary was to declare it “inaccurate and misleading”. Perhaps Sports Direct changed their ways following the BBC’s embarrassing look into their affairs. Maybe they stopped using the factory involved, especially as the cameras caught workers putting on the “70 per cent off” stickers before the goods had even left the production line, proving that not all reductions in shops are what they seem to be.

Whatever happened, we do know that the investigation by “Inside Out: North East and Cumbria” made a lot of Newcastle fans uneasy about the fact their club owner was involved in such an unseemly and seedy business.

“Mike Ashley’s business methods outside of Newcastle United bring into question his ownership of the club,” wrote one irate Newcastle fan. “Sports Direct are believed to have employed labour that does not match international regulations or ethical standards. Whereas companies such as Nike list their suppliers publicly, Sports Direct do not. The reasons why are clear, those employed by Sports Direct have no respect for the international law that ensures minimum standards on labour, wages and conditions are met. He (Ashley) was able to personally make just short of £1 billion in one day when he floated Sports Direct, of which we are convinced none made its way back to his workers in Laos.”

All of this matters only because the GAA and GPA recently got into bed with Sports Direct via the launch of the website Gaelicboots.com.

 “I welcome this joint initiative which is a further indication of the ongoing co-operation between the GAA and the GPA,” said GAA President Liam Ó Néill. “In addition to establishing another joint venture between the two organisations gaelicboots.com will also provide players of all ages and grades with access to the best playing equipment. It will also see tangible benefits in the area of player welfare.”

Purporting to be a vehicle that will allow GAA players big and small to access cheaper footwear, the company is headquartered out of Waterford. That’s all well and good. Except, John Fogarty reported in The Examiner recently that “the directors named in company registration documents are David Forsey, chief executive of Sports Direct International PLC, and Barry Leach, head of brands division at the retailer.”

Most of the ensuing brouhaha surrounding the English company’s foray into Irish affairs has centred around its potential negative impact on shoe stores and sports shops. Jarlath Burns first raised this issue on Twitter and Mayo’s Donal Vaughan, who manages shoe shops in Ballinrobe, weighed in with some public comments of his own last week. Both mentioned how any perceived savings customers will make when they buy online are false economies. For example, where will Sports Direct be when the local club needs to tap somebody up for a bit of sponsorship, the kind local shops have always provided so generously?

If that’s a good question, there’s something else to consider too. Is this the type of corporation that the GAA and GPA want to be partnering up with? Just recently it emerged that a share issue was going to yield tens of thousands of pounds to many Sports Direct employees across Britain. A genuinely feel-good story in a tough economic climate, there was one minor problem. This windfall concerned a tiny minority of workers. Many of those who have worked for Ashley’s outfit testify that the conditions were rough (no toilet breaks during a five-hour shift, no training etc). Sports Direct is a big name and getting bigger but they aren’t known for how well they treat workers.

Sifting through the Sports Direct manifesto, they do make a point of mentioning their charitable donations to sport. Indeed, they list the contributions they have made to the different codes through the various brands they own. Slazenger gave equipment worth £250,000  to a programme designed to bring through the next generation of British cricketers. Dunlop gave (pounds)15000 to a similar golf scheme while Everlast donated $20,000 to the Golden Gloves in New York, and another $14,000 to trainer Teddy Atlas’s foundation. All worthy initiatives.

It may seem churlish to slam anybody who gives stuff for free with the intent of promoting kids playing sport then but there’s something else to ponder here. In the nine weeks up to March 31^st, Sports Direct sales rose by 14.3pc to £317.4m while gross profits rose 22.7pc to £129m. Those are the type of astronomical numbers that put the company’s charitable impulses in a rather paltry perspective. Gaelicboots.com may save people money in the short run and may make a few bob for the association but ultimately, the GAA could be losing something far more important here.

 

 

 

 

(first published in the Evening Echo, May 3^rd, 2013)

How Alex Ferguson learned his Irish

On May 19, 1997, the Monday morning after Eric Cantona's shock retirement from the game had been announced, Alex Ferguson flew into Belfast accompanied by a small media army. Although Old Trafford was still reeling from the departure of its French talisman, the Manchester United manager had more pressing business at hand. David Gillen, a member of the Carryduff branch of the United supporters' club, needed a new motorised wheelchair buying, and Ferguson was anxious to do his bit to help.

A few months earlier, Ferguson had committed himself to attending a day of fund-raising events organised by the Carryduff faithful, and even the sudden exodus of his most influential player wasn't going to impinge on that. During the day, he spoke at a sportsmen's lunch, ferried the Premier League trophy along to a street party, and attended a dinner. If the media were shocked by Ferguson's sense of duty, nobody at Carryduff would have expected any less. No Manchester United fan in Ireland would have either. More than anybody, Ferguson understood the country and its outsized and historic relationship with the club.

Who else but Ferguson could sit down to be interviewed about Denis Irwin and answer one question by delving into the traditional geographic rivalry between the northside and the southside of Cork city? “Denis says Roy is from the rough part of Cork, and Roy says Denis is from the rough part of Cork,” said Ferguson. “I don’t know exactly who to believe here, but there is obviously a little bit of competition in the parts of Cork they come from.”

Listening to him discuss the merits of Keane’s Mayfield and Irwin’s Togher, it was difficult to fathom there was once a time Irish fans worried about Ferguson. In the years after the departures in quick succession of Frank Stapleton, Kevin Moran, Paul McGrath and Norman Whiteside, before the arrival of the Cork duo, a bizarre legend grew up that Ferguson had something against the Irish. Ignoring the obvious fact that Whiteside was a Protestant from east Belfast, the ludicrous notion was predicated on Ferguson’s perceived anti-Catholicism.

In its way, this was as misguided and wrong-headed as the belief in a different time that Matt Busby’s faith caused him to discriminate in favour of the Catholics in his charge. The reality was Ferguson was interested in players who could help his club move forward and improve, regardless of nationality or creed. In this respect, Keane had been on his radar from September, 1990. Making his first appearance for Nottingham Forest against United, his first act was to go in hard on Bryan Robson. “He absolutely cemented him!” said Ferguson, relish in his voice as he recalled the moment he glimpsed his future captain..

Regardless of the bad blood that apparently exists between them now, it’s not an exaggeration to say that with Keane, Ferguson changed the course of Irish sporting history during that brief moment in the summer of 1993 when Keane had agreed to sign for Blackburn Rovers. Once news of this reached Old Trafford, however, Ferguson had the then hottest property in the English game round to his house for a game of snooker during which he persuaded him to change his mind and to sign for lesser money.

Would Keane have developed into the greatest Irish player in Premier League history under Kenny Dalglish at Ewood Park? Would United have been quite the same without him? All we know for sure is Ferguson was crucial to moulding and shaping this character on and off the field over the ensuing decade, Imagine how Ireland and United would have suffered if he hadn’t.

Then there was Irwin. One morning in April, 2001, shortly after the Premiership title had been secured, Ferguson sat down to talk about him. For close to half an hour, he waxed as lyrical as one would expect about the player and the man. When the cameras were finally turned off, Ferguson lingered in his chair.

“What exactly is this for again?” the Manchester United manager asked.

“It’s a documentary about Denis’s career for RTE,” I said.

“It’s about bloody time ye did one,” he replied.

There was a pause, and to fill the silence somebody in the crew asked whether the latest league medal made Irwin then the most decorated Irishman ever in English football. That was the only prompting Ferguson needed. A fuse had been lit. Using the fingers on both hands, he began counting out the trophies with the passion of a schoolboy leafing through a deck of old Top Trumps’ cards in search of comforting stats. Listening to him reel off all those league and cup victories he had enjoyed with Irwin was to glimpse the raw desire that fuelled so much of what he achieved.

Three times in four years, I was part of RTE productions asking Ferguson to be interviewed for documentaries we were making. Two of the requests centred on Keane and Irwin. Of course, he was up for those. Perhaps more impressive though was his response when we called, requesting him to go on camera for something we were making about Paul McGrath. Even though McGrath was one of the few who prospered after Ferguson deemed him past it, he was still generous enough to go on camera to explain why he got rid of him and to praise how well he’d done since.

If that was a gesture that spoke volumes, we kind of expected as much. Over four years at Old Trafford, Brian Carey, another Corkman, became captain of the reserves at a time when Fergie’s Fledglings were starting to cut their teeth. With the first team proving a bridge too far, Carey moved down a division to Leicester City in 1993, and a year later, he played centre-half on the team that defeated Derby County in the play-offs at Wembley to gain promotion to the Premier League. Not long after that triumph, Carey received a letter from Alex Ferguson, a missive in which the United manager told him how proud he was of his performance and how he would go on to have a fine career in the game.

Another small yet wonderful cameo. So many players have trundled in and out the doors at Old Trafford over the past 26 years, and Carey is a name probably only remembered by the anoraks who trek along to reserve fixtures to spot rising talents before they make it to the show. But Ferguson remembered his part in shepherding along some of the brightest stars of their generation, and he took time out to write that note of appreciation. Even now, years later when their paths cross in and around the game, Ferguson will put his arm around  Carey and introduce him to people as “one of my boys”. A story that says something about the man.

Goodnight Paul Scholes (again)

In the spring of 2003, word supposedly reached the Real Madrid dressing-room that the rumours of a new signing from Manchester United were much more than just newspaper talk. Zinedine Zidane and the rest of them began to speculate about the identity of the player who would move from Old Traffod to the Bernabeau and immediately concluded it had to be Paul Scholes. Who else from United could possibly improve their team? Anyway, once they’d settled on the fact it was going to be Scholes, they were thrilled, imagining what an extra dimension he’d bring to their midfield and passing.

While there are no reports on how the Galaticos reacted upon finding out who was actually coming to join them, this tale meant it wasn’t surprising that at the final whistle in Wembley Stadium last Saturday night, no less than five Barcelona players made their way to Scholes in the hope of swapping shirts with him. Maybe two or three years past his prime, he still enjoyed a status that the very best from the very best team of our time sought out a little memento of his greatness. His retirement is overdue but still sad because it robs those of us with children of the opportunity to show them a player who played the right way on and off the field.

This was never the type you’d have to use the word super-injunction around. Perhaps nothing sums up the magic of Scholes more than the simple acknowledgement you could hate Manchester United yet still love the way he played. Yes, we know he never learned to tackle and often wondered why Ferguson didn’t just ban him from even trying. There were so many other gifts to admire though, the willingness to pass, the range of passing, and always, always, the sheer unselfishness of his game. The best part was that Scholes in the twilight of his career was still playing exactly as he’d been taught as a kid at United.

Eric Harrison, the youth team supremo who oversaw the emergence of Scholes and the rest of what will be acknowledged as United’s greatest generation, tells a story in Jim White’s fine book “You’ll Win Nothing With Kids” of a training routine he borrowed from a road safety television commercial. He got the young players to do a passing drill with one stipulation. Before the ball came to them, they had to glance left and glance right to see their options. Simple yet beautiful. A bit like Scholes' style. Right to the end, this was how he approached his task, scanning the field before the ball arrived then moving it on with purpose. A perfect lesson for children involved in the sport.

The teaching opportunities don’t end there. Scholes lacked pace but compensated for this deficiency by simply thinking faster. You can’t teach pace to a kid who doesn’t have it. However, you can coach them in how to think faster and anticipate better. In this, as in so many other ways, Scholes can be held up as an example to every young player.

Many great players have worn the shirt of Manchester United,” said Bobby Charlton during the build-up to Scholes’ last league game a couple of weeks back. “Players I worshipped then lost with my youth in Munich. Players like Denis Law and George Best who I enjoyed so much as team-mates and now, finally, players I have watched closely in the Alex Ferguson era. And in so many ways Scholes is my favourite."

You could see why somebody like Charlton found much to love in Scholes. In an era when so many of his peers became distracted by celebrity and obsessed with the material gains available to them as footballers, he remained grounded. Eschewing the movie premieres or the nightclubs or the commercial endorsements, he could be found instead bringing his son to Boundary Park to watch his beloved Oldham Athletic. Never mind that he’d amassed so much wealth playing for United that he could have bought the lower league club, his idea of a night out was a midweek game in a ground that looks exactly like it must have done when his father brought him there during his childhood.

That he’s retired to a behind the scenes coaching role at Carrington is exactly what we would have expected. Not for him travelling around the world trying to wring a last few bob out of his talent like Nicky Butt or David Beckham. It’s difficult to imagine Scholes telling any club he was missing a competitive match in order to attend a testimonial 6000 miles away as Beckham quite ridiculously informed the Los Angeles Galaxy the other week. Indeed, the only team Scholes ever refused to play for when they needed him was England and therein lies another indictment of the English game.

For years, Scholes was either picked out of position or not picked at all as successive England managers opted for media darlings in midfield ahead of him. Eventually growing tired of this and the time he was spending away from his family (this is one instance when that excuse rings true), he opted out of international football seven years ago. It was only when he was gone that it suddenly dawned on pundits how England could really do with a slick-passing midfielder who could hold onto the ball. By then, it was too late and they were stuck with athletic (which really means runs around a lot without achieving much) Gareth Barry and the like.

When they tried to coax him back for last summer’s World Cup, Fabio Capello finally, belatedly realising this sort of player was severely lacking in his side, Scholes couldn’t oblige. Why? He had previously committed to do so some coaching at a children’s soccer camp in Florida that is run by one of his friends. From anybody else that excuse would have been regarded as trite or treasonous. From Scholes, it was typical. He wouldn’t let a pal down just like he never let his team-mates or himself down. One for the ages.

 

(This first appeared after Scholes retired in 2011)

The day Noel Cantwell captained United to the FA Cup

A famous photograph shows Noel Cantwell casually tossing the FA Cup above his head at Wembley in 1963. He had just led Manchester United to a 3-1 victory over Leicester City. His teammates Bobby Charlton, Tony Dunne, David Herd and Albert Quixall appear visibly stunned. They are staring wide-eyed at their captain flinging about what was then one of the most revered trophies in English football. Moments after the snap was taken, Cantwell got a tap on the shoulder from a stadium commissionaire reprimanding him for his cavalier treatment of the precious silverware.

"Don't worry," replied Cantwell. "I knew I would be able to catch it, I play cricket for Ireland."

That sort of self-confidence was one reason Matt Busby appointed him captain almost as soon as he signed from West Ham United in 1960. The side he led out at Wembley fifty years ago included Charlton, Paddy Crerand, Johnny Giles, Denis Law, Dunne and Bill Foulkes. Nobody doubted he was equal to the task of leading them. At Upton Park, he'd practically been manager Ted Fenton's first lieutenant for years, once famously advising him to give an untried 17-year-old called Bobby Moore his debut.

Cantwell was the first Cork soccer player to write an autobiography, United We Stand, the only manager to take Coventry City into Europe, and an Irish international batsman once bowled by Garfield Sobers. According to legend, he was in the nets at Cork County Cricket Club in The Mardyke when a messenger from Cork Athletic was dispatched to offer him his first professional break. Athletic, for whom his older brother Frank played, were a man short for a Shield game against Waterford United and Cantwell's proximity earned him his debut.

Fenton later paid £750 to take him to London in 1952. How quickly he progressed in 12 months there was shown by his selection at centre-half for his international debut against Luxembourg in October 1953. With Ireland, whom he managed as interim boss for one game in 1968, his popularity arguably peaked on the occasion of his 30th cap at Dalymount Park on May 5, 1965.

Up to the 63rd minute of a World Cup qualifier against reigning European champions Spain, Cantwell had struggled to make an impact. Pressed into service from the outset as an emergency centre-forward -a tactic so successful he finished his international career with a stunning 14 goals in 36 appearances -he waited in the penalty box for Frank O'Neill to send in a free-kick from the right. O'Neill put the ball too close to the keeper, Jose-Angel Iribar, but Cantwell made a play for it anyway.

As was his style when in the opposing area, he had earlier charged into Iribar and got a mouthful of abuse back. This time he ran straight at the Spanish keeper, shouting insanely as he did so and causing the visitor to fumble the match winning goal into the net. The Spaniards were outraged at the manner of the defeat and the embarrassment caused to Iribar, a player reckoned at that time to be second only to the Soviet Union's Lev Yashin in his position. They exacted sweet revenge later that year, beating Ireland 1-0 in a playoff in Paris, ending Cantwell's last hope of reaching a major finals.

Ireland's progress at that time never matched his own. From the day he set foot in England, he had been learning. After training, the West Ham players would repair to an eaterie near Upton Park. At various times, the members of what became fondly known as the West Ham Academy included Cantwell, John Bond, Dave Sexton, Malcolm Allison, fellow Corkonian Frank O'Farrell and Jimmy Andrews, all of whom would go on to manage, with different degrees of success. Using salt cellars and pepper shakers, they questioned every orthodoxy and changed prevailing attitudes in the English game.

"We were getting away from the big hobnailed, toe-capped, dubbined boot and soon we were playing in lightweight boots and the day had gone when we had big shin pads," said Cantwell. "Teams didn't warm up before games - they got stripped five minutes before they went out and embarrassingly kicked the ball around - but we would go into the gym at quarter past two and have a fairly good workout and come back out then and get prepared. The weight-training gave you tremendous confidence. You felt stronger and you felt good. How one looks and how one appears is always very important. I think it helped when we got away from the baggy shorts and got all the good gear."

That holistic approach meant Cantwell took his own shorts to wear on Ireland duty because he reckoned the international kit was sub-standard. During his last season at Old Trafford, his leadership qualities were acknowledged in another forum when he was elected chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA). He relinquished the union job in 1967 to succeed Jimmy Hill as manager of Coventry City. Essentially, his task was to keep a newly-promoted but very average City side in Division One. He promoted fellow Corkonian Pat Saward from coach to assistant manager, and, having avoided relegation in his first two seasons, Coventry finished sixth in 1970, their highest league position, which gave them a ticket to the Fairs Cup.

In 1972, he took over as manager of Peterborough, an outfit then rooted to the bottom of the old Fourth Division, the worst-placed club in England. Cantwell brought some brio even to that humble role. "There is only one way to go now," he told the press, "and that's up!" He was true to his word. At the end of his first full season in charge they won the Fourth Division championship. Newspaper reports tell of him celebrating afterwards with champagne in hand and a massive cigar in his mouth. No matter how far he strayed off-Broadway, he never lost the flair for the big stage.

An unsentimental character who auctioned most of his football medals in 1995, Cantwell had one constant in his peregrinations, his home town. He once turned down a contract to play county cricket for Essex because it would have deprived him of his restorative summers in Cork. Cantwell never forgot where he learnt the game. Despite Busby occasionally preventing him travelling to Ireland for internationals, he did once persuade the United manger to allow him home to play in a friendly match against a Jerry Lane XI at the schoolboy pitch in Togher. No better example of his silver-tongue and common touch.

 

 

Ireland's Viking warrior heads to Valhalla

In the days before everybody had a camera in their phone, a journalist named Bob Hennessy kept his own photographic archive of Irish international football. Among the many gems in his private collection was a shot of a party at the Icelandic manager’s house in Reykjavik following a European Championship qualifier in 1983. It captured Eoin Hand and his opposite number Johannes Atlason sitting on a couch in the later stages of the evening, captivated by the sights and sounds of Irish captain Tony Grealish skilfully playing the spoons on his knee. 

A single photograph that contained multitudes, it was a portrait of a different time and a very different game. Imagine a journalist today casually taking snaps of Giovanni Trapattoni and Robbie Keane having a few post-match beers with Joachim Low? No, of course you can’t. That could never happen now. It would never happen now. Better yet, imagine a journalist putting the photograph away in a scrapbook as a treasured keepsake of a magical night spent celebrating a 3-0 Irish victory, rather than uploading it onto Twitter in seconds.

When news broke last Tuesday that Grealish had lost his battle with cancer, an entire generation of Irish fans took a collective intake of breath. He was part of the first Irish team many forty-somethings were old enough to get to know and his passing at 56 makes us all a little more aware of our own mortality. It also dredges up bittersweet memories of Ireland sides which, in so many glorious failures under the seemingly snake-bitten Hand, endeared itself to supporters in a way that far more successful outfits in recent years, have never quite managed to do. The return of Grealish and his distinctive beard to the sports pages this week resurrected the disallowed goals and the dodgy refereeing of another era.

Born in London to parents from Galway and Limerick, Grealish was, as the spoons-playing would indicate, one of those children of the diaspora who was truly more Irish than the Irish themselves. If his uncompromising style of play was honed on Hackney Marshes where he was spotted by Leyton Orient’s George Petchey, the abundant facial hair made him look like he’d just arrived in from fishing off the Aran Islands. Of course, his ancestral origins didn’t stop supporters of the many English clubs he played for from dubbing him “the bearded Viking warrior”.

Every obituary has rightfully mentioned Grealish’s unique claim to fame. Being the only man to play Gaelic football and soccer at the old Wembley Stadium is the type of footnote that will make him a trivia question forever, especially when he could also boast an outing at Croke Park. His family was steeped in the GAA.  His father Pakie came from from Lisheenkiel, Athenry to London in the 1950s, was instrumental in founding St. Gabriel’s hurling club in 1960, and helped thousands of Irish arrivals in the city get a start over the ensuing decades. Tony’s cousin John scored the winning goal for Gabriel’s in the final of the London hurling championship last year.

As a boy, Grealish and his brother Brian often accompanied their father in a car full of expatriates driving around Paddington, searching for higher ground so they might better eavesdrop the crackling RTE radio signal for championship matches on Sunday afternoons. The kind of background that ensured when the England U-17s called him up, Grealish was quick to pass on what everybody else thought would be an honour.

Petchey, who had put him in a formidable Orient youth team that also featured Laurie Cunningham and Glenn Roeder, was among those advising him to throw his lot in with Ireland  Later, the same man wasn’t thrilled to discover Grealish was still playing GAA on Sundays in New Eltham, long after he’d become a first-team regular at Brisbane Road.

“He (Petchey) said, ‘You’ve got to knock this on the head, especially the hurling, let alone the Gaelic football because you’re in the first team now, you’re playing two days a week,’” recalled Grealish in Paul Rowan’s classic The Team that Jack Built. “’All those mad fxxkers can do what they like but you’re not playing with them!’”

For whichever of his many clubs and for his country, there were always better players than Grealish yet few who were so honest in their toiling for the cause. He wasn’t a superstar but he was more than a journeyman. The other day, a Brighton fan recalled his role in their best ever top flight season and described him accurately as the type you noticed and appreciated more when he wasn’t there. Suddenly, gaps started to appear in the midfield and you realised the amount of hard labour he put in so more gifted colleagues, the likes of Jimmy Case at Brighton, Steve Hunt at West Brom, and Liam Brady with Ireland, could wreak havoc going forward.

Although mostly remembered in green for holding down the midfield in a time, as Opel once put it, before the band joined the wagon, Grealish started his Ireland career at full-back when Johnny Giles gave him his debut as a 19 year old against Norway in a friendly at Dalymount Park in 1976. He went on to captain the side 17 times in his 45 caps over the next nine years.

On the biggest day of his professional career, Grealish led Brighton out at Wembley in the 1983 FA Cup final against Manchester United. Steve Foster, the club captain, was suspended for the game and when the team emerged from the tunnel, Grealish was wearing a white headband, exactly like the one Foster was famous for. Some saw this as him giving two fingers to the FA for the ban, others saw it as him acknowledging the club’s spiritual leader. All agreed it was a gesture typical of the type of man he was.

He had a career trajectory typical to the pros of that era. After a good spell at West Bromwich Albion, there was a short stint at Manchester City but, his powers on the wane, there was the inevitable drift down the divisions, Rotherham, Walsall, Bromsgrove Rovers, and a bizarre loan spell in Portugal with Salgueros, the club of his former Irish team-mate Mickey Walsh. Later, he did some managing and coaching off-Broadway and, like all players of his generation, he worked in the real world, dabbling, amongst other things, in insurance.

A few years back, Grealish was the subject of one of those “where are they now?” features. At that time, he was working in Birmingham in a business that described itself as specialising in aluminium recycling.

“I still call it scrap metal,” said Grealish.

No fuss. No pretence. Calling it like was. Exactly how he played.

 

The gay revolution will be televised

In the process of researching Brendan Behan, I came across the cast for the 1960 Broadway production of his play “The Hostage”. I ran my finger down the list of names, none of which meant much to me until I came across Glynn Edwards. It rang a bell. I wasn’t sure why so, as we all do, I googled it and once an image of the face popped up I smiled. Edwards was the round-faced actor who played Dave, the barman and owner of the Winchester Club, the small-time villains’ hang-out in the beloved 1980s television show “Minder”. Even seeing the name brought me back to my childhood.

For those of us of a certain age, “Minder” was a staple of our cultural lives. In an era before hundreds of channels became available and quality became seriously diluted, the adventures of Arthur Daley and Terry McCann, watched over by the stoic Dave, were appointment television on Thursday nights. Decades later, I can still recall sitting on the couch with my father and brother, waiting to see who Terry would have to inevitably fight to save Arthur’s bacon. Of course, the mere memory of it prompted me to go looking for the show and a trip into the past. In minutes, I was downloading an episode called “Whose wife is it anyway?”

Forty minutes later, I turned off the computer, a bit sad yet also a lot provoked. The show hasn’t aged well – something those of you who catch it on one of the various retro channels available in Cork – may already have known. But there was more to it than that. In this particular story, Arthur and Terry have to protect a London antiques store for a pal who is in hospital. To do this they must work with a man who is his partner in the shop and in life. Just in case we didn’t realise this, immediately upon meeting him, Terry tells Arthur the guy is, and I quote, “a poofter”.

The language wasn’t the only thing dated and shocking. Part of the storyline and the humour centred on how Terry and Arthur were both afraid to be in the same room as the gay man in case he’d foist himself upon them. Yes, that old shibboleth. Every time he came too near them, they got nervous and queasy. Watching the whole thing, suddenly I came upon an awful realisation. If this was the type of stuff we saw on regular television every week, is it any wonder there was so much homophobia and suspicion of gays in the Ireland in which we grew up?

Television is one of the most powerful media when it comes to influencing people, especially the youth. We thought terms like “poofter” and “iron” (curious London slang for gay – the full term is iron hoof because it rhymes with poof) were perfectly acceptable because we heard them bandied about by beloved characters on our screens. So, aside from shattering one of my most cherished television memories from my childhood, watching “Minder” also made me thankful that the cultural landscape has changed so much in recent years.

Every week, my 13 year old son watches the sitcom “Modern Family”. One of the most popular shows in America over the past few years, among the families featured is a couple of gay men and their adopted Chinese daughter. It all seemed such a normal part of modern life in this country that I never thought of it as that important. Until now. The prehistoric attitude towards gays evinced on one episode of “Minder” made me thankful that my children will grow up in a world where on weekly television, gay men are called “Dad” rather than “poofter.” This represents progress.

 

 

Boston now more than a feeling

Yeah, down by the river
Down by the banks of the River Charles (aw, that's what's happenin' baby)
That's where you'll find me
Along with lovers, fuggers, and thieves (aw, but they're cool people)
Well I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston, you're my home

- Dirty Water, The Standells (1966),

(traditionally played when any Boston team wins)

After so much coverage of the Boston bombings, so many stories of devastation and reports of carnage, somebody mentioned on the television that Jane Richard, a six year old girl who lost her leg in the first explosion, is a keen step dancer. Since turning three, she’s been a student at the Clifden Academy of Irish Dance in the south of the city. When the World Championships came to town last month, she was an awestruck spectator, gazing up at the older kids hoofing across the stage at the Hynes Centre, just a block away from the spot where she stood to watch the end of the marathon with her family last Monday afternoon.

That small byte of information was enough. Jane Richard was now more than a name on the screen, more than another entry on that lengthy list of 180 who were so grievously wounded. Jane suddenly became Janey, a red-headed sparkplug of a child in an elaborate, decorative dress, jaunting around a hall with a dozen others just like her, their parents filming them with cameras and phones, taking part in one of the great formative rituals of an Irish-American upbringing. One of the firefighters who came upon the horror on Boylston Street recognised the little girl because he’d seen her Irish dancing with his own daughter in Milton.

When news started to come through of the attack on the Boston Marathon last Monday afternoon, nobody would have needed to be told this is the most Irish city in America. We didn’t have to hear that the now infamous Boylston Street is the location of the Irish Consulate and of an Irish pub called Lir to remember that the bond between these two places goes way back. Boston is where the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade was held in 1737 and, on Evacuation Day during the Revolutionary War in 1776, anybody trying to get through the continental lines had to know that the password was “St Patrick”. Our histories have long been intertwined.

Even on race day when the city is always awash with runners and tourists from all over the world, it wasn’t surprising that two of the three people who died, Jane Richard’s eight year old brother Martin, and freckle-faced Krystle Campbell (29), happened to be Irish-American. No other city boasts such a concentration of people with genuine Irish heritage so that type of death toll was, unfortunately, going to be inevitable. Of course, the irony is that when the Irish first arrived in Boston in huge numbers in the 19^th century, the Brahmin elite didn’t want them to stay.  The Irish made it their home anyway, evincing the same sort of belligerent attitude that still informs the city’s spirit and which has served it particularly well during these past few difficult days.

I’ve never lived in Boston but my father-in-law’s entire extended family is based in and around the city and I’ve spent a lot time there over the years.  When Irish people ask me what it’s like, I don’t have to think very hard. “It’s like Cork,” I tell them and, of course, I mean that as a compliment. It’s charmingly parochial, entertainingly quirky (at a certain point you have to drive south in order to go north!), and always, always carries a massive chip on its shoulder about a bigger, more glamorous city down the road. Bostonians regard New York with the same suspicion Corkonians reserve for Dublin. Sure, Manhattan may be the finance and media capital of the country but Boston is the capital of the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, the centre of its very own universe.

The rivalry between the two cities is most magnified in the sporting arena. It wouldn’t be uncommon to be stuck behind a car on the Massachusetts Turnpike and to spy a bumper sticker of a little boy in a Boston Red Sox cap peeing on the New York Yankees’ logo. Think Celtic-Rangers without the sectarian horribleness. Last Tuesday night then, Yankee Stadium echoed to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”, a song that has become part of the game-day experience at the Red Sox’ Fenway Park (built by a Derryman named Charles Logue). The Yankee fans sang along lustily in one of those enduring moments when historic sporting enmity melting into  true solidarity.

In many ways, sport is the beating heart of the city. The Sox, the Pats (New England Patriots), the Bruins and the Celtics (named to reflect the Hibernian heritage of the fanbase). They live and die by the fortunes of their teams and the passing of the seasons.  Within 48 hours of somebody thinking they could strike fear into the heart of Boston with this attack, TD Garden was packed to the rafters for the Bruins’ ice hockey game against the Buffalo Sabres. Both teams wore decals displaying the slogan “Boston Strong” on their helmets, and when it came time to sing the national anthem at the first sporting event since the bombs struck, 17,000 people cleared their throats and nearly took the roof off the place. Defiant, I think, is the word.

 “Two different friends texted me the identical message yesterday: They messed with the wrong city,” wrote Dennis Lehane, the novelist and native of Dorchester, the same neighbourhood now grieving for the Richard’s family. “This wasn’t a macho sentiment. It wasn’t “Bring it on” or a similarly insipid bit of posturing. The point wasn’t how we were going to mass in the coffee shops of the South End to figure out how to retaliate. Law enforcement will take care of that, thank you. No, what a Bostonian means when he or she says “They messed with the wrong city” is “You don’t think this changes anything, do you?”  Trust me, we won’t be giving up any civil liberties to keep ourselves safe because of this. We won’t cancel next year’s marathon.”

The Boston accent is, even the natives admit, harsh and unpleasant on the ear. The butt of so many jokes on national television through the decades, the missing r and the dropped g are almost badges of authenticity, worn with stubborn pride. “The accent is more of an attitude than an accent,” said Ben Affleck, who grew up across the Charles River in Cambridge. Well, the attitude was something we all saw up close in the footage of the immediate aftermath of the bombings, all those people rushing towards the smoke and the blood and the devastation.

At a time when nobody knew whether there was going to be a third, a fourth or a fifth device, dozens of cops and race stewards ran into the danger rather than away from it. So did many of the runners, shrugging off the crippling fatigue of the 26^th mile of a race, peeling off their singlets and t-shirts to use as tourniquets. Whatever else this person or persons hoped to achieve by blowing up Boston, they have to know now this is the calibre of people they are dealing with. They won’t run and they definitely won’t hide.

Last Monday, the city bent very briefly but it didn’t break. And anybody who has ever spent time there would have expected nothing less from a city that has always been a charming mess of contradictions.

It prides itself on being tough and blue-collar (American for working-class) yet has more universities per square foot than any other city in the country, with 53 institutions of higher learning in the metropolitan area at last count. Like many, Lingzi Lu, the third person to die in the attack, had come from Shenyang, China to study mathematics and statistics at Boston University. She made the short walk down from the campus to watch the finish of the marathon. Why? Because that is what you do on Patriots’ Day, a landmark event in the city calendar, a joyous occasion often compared by boastful locals to spending New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

It should be noted Patriots’ Day is not your traditionally dull Irish bank holiday. The Red Sox play a home game at Fenway that kicks off the celebrations at 11am while around Copley Square hundreds of thousands gather to watch the concluding stages of the marathon. After the typically unforgiving New England winter, here, on the third Monday in April is what’s supposed to be the official start of spring, a day to get out and about and to look forward to summer. Originally, established in order to celebrate the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the Revolutionary War, it has turned into a sporting festival, as much as a remembrance of the city’s unique contribution to the story of America.

Not that the history isn’t taken seriously. This is where the Pilgrims built their beloved city on the hill. This is the site of the Boston Tea Party when they threw the East India Tea company’s produce into the harbor to protest taxation without representation, the birthplace of the revolution that would send the British sailing home. Many of those visiting for the marathon last weekend took time out to walk the “Freedom Trail”, a two and a half mile stretch that stops at the house of Paul Revere who rode through the night warning that the British troops were on the move, and Bunker Hill, where in a glorious defeat, the rebel militia proved they had the fighting credentials to take on a superior power.

This then is the town these terrorists, whoever or whatever they claim to represent, have picked a fight with. A place with a heritage hallmarked by courage, a tradition of overcoming adversity, and a people who didn’t back down when they were faced with the might of the empire where the sun never set. This week, they might have been bloodied but they remain proudly unbowed. Boston Strong.

(A version of this piece first appeared in the Irish Daily Mail on April 20th)