Munster Whitewash Leinster
So it was 9.30 by the time I got to sit down and watch the match. I could think about little else today. Opening up the Turbine this morning and reading Neil Francis’s preview almost brought out the Kevin Keegan in me. I was seconds away from donning the headphones, stabbing my forefinger and declaring “I will LUV IT if we beat them” with my voice cracking and tears in my eyes.
Why, oh why, oh why, oh why do the Irish media have such a hard-on about Leinster? OK, Franno is Leinster to his bone marrow, so it is natural for him to talk them up. But tonight, watching the match on Setanta, the commentary was all about Leinster. If a Munster player broke three tackles and was hauled down by the fourth, it was all about the tackle that brought him down, not about the way he skinned the three players en route. Even Donal Lenihan, a Munsterman through and through was commentating on this game like it was Ireland (Leinster) v. Anyone Else (Munster). In case you haven’t noticed, lads, Munster are the current Heineken Cup Champions. They have won it twice in three seasons. They are a decent outfit. Give them some credit, will yiz?
Even though the one-eyed commentary was constantly talking up Leinster’s defence tonight (and it was good, save for the two tries they conceded), there was precious little comment for Munster’s defence. Leinster never looked like scoring tonight. Any promising-looking move was snuffed out well before the line. Munster put in some monster tackles and turned over a huge amount of ball.
This was a very satisfying win for Munster for several reasons. First up, it was a whitewash. On Leinster’s patch. For all their huffing and puffing, and their great pack and their brilliant backs, Leinster failed to score, on their own patch. It was also a big two fingers to the Irish media, who need to be reminded that Munster are still officially the best team in Europe.
Lookalike
The Big Rivalry - Part One
Traditionally, this match has been seen as the clash between the brawn of the Munster pack and the flair of the Leinster backs. How that has changed. Leinster now possess a pack capable of beating up any opposition up front, while Munster’s fleet-footed backs have the capability to mix it up behind the pack.
Both teams have had good starts to the Magners and remain unbeaten. Munster have won all three of their matches so far, picking up two bonus points. Leinster were held to a draw in their opening match against Cardiff, and won the next two, picking up a bonus point in their thumping of Edinburgh.
Tomorrow is very difficult to call, because there are too many variables in play. It’s a home game for Leinster, and a noisy, partisan crowd at the RDS will help lift the man in blue. (Not that hostile away matches faze Munster all that much.) Leinster will be keen to maintain the domestic superiority of last season, when they won home and away against Munster. The men in red will want to put that right. Munster have a new coaching line-up in Tony McGahan and Laurie Fisher, who will be eager to best their fellow Aussies Cheika and Alan Gaffney.
What I can predict with a degree of certainty is that it will be a tough match, it will be close, and that one of these two teams will be the eventual winner of the Magners League.
Arsenal 6-0 Sheffield United
Imagine what would have happened if they had sent
out the senior squad…
Blogroll Tidy-Up
I have just done a
bit of a tidy-up on the Blogroll page, adding in
some blogs that I have been reading for a while
but forgot to put in. Also moving some which
haven’t seen much activity recently to the
“Resting” page.
If a blog hasn’t been updated in two months, I
consider it to be currently inactive. I keep them
in the Resting page in case they start up again.
Also I have tidied up the Links page, removing
dormant links and adding in a few new ones.
If you would like a link to your blog, or you would
like to recommend a site for a link, leave a
comment or drop me a
line. I can’t
promise all that much traffic, though!
The Hunger
Some Winey Stuff
There was an
interesting Dispatches documentary on Channel 4
last Monday called “What’s In Your Wine?”
It
was a bit up and down, and it didn’t reveal much
that I didn’t know already, but then I have been
working in the wine business for nearly 18
years.
The big issue was about “additives” in wine and how
they aren’t declared on the label. Fair enough, the
programme made a case for a more comprehensive
labelling of what is used in the making of wine,
but many of those “additives” are simply vectors
that convert the grape juice into a palatable wine.
These include yeast (which converts grape sugars
into alcohol and carbon dioxide) and malolactic
bacteria (which convert harsh malic acid into
softer lactic acid, a process that is almost
universally used in the making of red wine and
occasionally in whites.) Sugar is sometimes added
before fermentation in order to boost the final
alcohol level (a process called chaptalisation),
and tartaric acid is sometimes added in
exceptionally hot years. Both of these occur
naturally in grapes anyway. Oak chips are
occasionally used to give a woody flavour to wines,
mainly because the market demands it but is
reluctant to pay for the cost of ageing in an oak
barrel. Powdered egg white is a natural product
that is used to fine wines (i.e. remove a haze
caused by a naturally occurring protein deposit.)
Sulphur dioxide is usually declared on labels, and
without it there would be no wine at all, as the
grape juice would have gone off before it got a
chance to ferment.
The conclusion arrived at was that the big
corporations (mostly in the New World) are the ones
most likely to have all the hidden additives in
their wine, and that consumers should seek out more
naturally-made wines from small producers. That’s
all very fine and dandy, but as something like 95%
of the wine purchased for off-premise consumption
in the UK is bought in either supermarkets or
off-licence multiples, choice is limited. Also, the
mass market actually prefers the confected,
tutti-fruity wines of the big New World
corporations, and your average punter who is used
to supermarket wines would find most small-estate
wines too complex for their palates.
Here in Ireland, we have the all-encompassing
embrace of the supermarkets as well, but given that
our home-grown supermarkets are that bit smaller
than their UK counterparts, it is possible to pick
up a nice bottle or two from Dunnes, SuperValu or
Superquinn. However, we have a wonderful array of
independent wine shops, mostly owned and run by
serious and knowledgeable wine enthusiasts. A wine
blog called Sour Grapes has
started a collaborative Google map
which pinpoints
the good wine shops of the country. This is an
invaluable resource for the Irish wine
enthusiast.
Last Saturday, Pat Carroll wrote
an article in the Irish
Times all about
alternative closures to cork. Cork taint now
accounts for something like one bottle of wine
in seven being out of condition. I am a vocal
advocate of the screwcap as the closure of
choice. The main argument in favour of corks is
that they preserve “the romance” of wine. I
would much prefer if the closure would preserve
the flavours and aromas of the wine, but maybe
that’s just me.
The best argument I have ever heard against corks
goes like this. Imagine for a moment that screwcaps
were the accepted closure for wines since time
don’t-know-when. Then someone comes along and says
“Hey! I have a great idea. Why don’t we seal
bottles of wine using the bark of an endangered
species of tree that is only grown in one part of
the world? We harvest the bark, boil it, bleach it
and cut it into plugs that are then forced into the
bottle in such a way that you will need a special
tool to remove it. And as a special bonus, it will
render one bottle in seven undrinkable! C’mon, what
about this?”
Finally, this week saw the death of Didier
Dagueneau, one of the
great mavericks of the wine world. His Pouilly
Fumé wines were without parallel, especially his
cuvées Silex and Pur Sang. His reputation went
before him, and legend had it that his arguments
with his neighbours about their approach to
growing grapes and making wines sometimes ended
up in fist fights. He refused to use the formal
“vous” in conversation, even once, it is said,
addressing the former French president Jacques
Chirac using the informal “tu”.
The Politics Of Personality
There is a great
quote from Bob Herbert in yesterday’s New York
Times regarding the
cult of personality that has grown around Sarah
Palin:
"For those who
haven't noticed, we're electing a president and
vice-president, not selecting a winner on 'American
Idol'."
Ever since she
burst into the world’s consciousness a fortnight
ago, Sarah Palin has done exactly what she was
supposed to do - keep the focus on the
personalities in the race, and away from the
issues.
The media love her, even the Eastern Media
Elite. Entire
forests have been consumed whole to supply the
newspapers full of the latest details about her
family, her dress sense, her love of guns, etc.
And as long as the media continues to
concentrate its focus on her, it means that
there is less time to talk about the issues
facing the USA. This is precisely what the
Republicans want to do, because when it comes to
policies, the GOP’s cupboard is bare. Up until
Palin made her debut, Barack Obama was all over
the media and making the poll numbers. He was
doing this without having to denigrate his
opponent. (Of course, there is a cult of
personality around Obama too, but it has almost
vanished in the last fortnight.)
During the week, Obama made use of the expression
“lipstick on a pig”. At the time, he was talking
about the policies of the Republican ticket, and
how little they differ from the failed policies of
George W Bush. The Reps immediately picked up the
“lipstick” reference and spun it as an insult to
Palin, thus bring the focus back from issues to
personalities - and in particular, that of Sarah
Palin - and thus back onto firmer ground for their
campaign.
With just under seven weeks to go until polling
day, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have a big fight on
their hands. Right now, the Republicans are winning
the media war hands down, and this all comes down
to Sarah Palin. The airtime and column inches she
is getting are keeping the Dems off the airwaves
and out of the papers, and brings to mind one
of Oscar Wilde’s famous
sayings:
“The only
thing worse that being talked about is not being
talked about.”
Immigration And Language
It is a serious issue that merits a wide-ranging and open debate, but sadly this has little prospect of happening, because of the tendency for hysteria to drown out rational discussion. It is only in the last ten years or so that we have seen a shift from net emigration to net immigration, and in that time, the number of so-called “non-nationals” (or “foreigners” in the old money) living here is now roughly 10% of the population. Anyone who says that this isn’t an issue for Irish society clearly has their head in the clouds.
A poll published in detail in De Paper today (and touched upon in others) shows that people have concerns about the issue of immigration, with 66% wanting a clampdown on future immigration. Now does that make us a nation of racists? Hardly, given that 54% believe that the immigration experience for Ireland so far has been a largely positive one.
Fine Gael TDs Brian Hayes and Leo Varadkar have both found themselves in hot water recently by airing opinions on the issue. I’m not going to comment much either way on the merits or otherwise of their proposals. The mistake both men made was to use clumsy language. They both used words that have such negative connotations that it immediately brought opprobrium upon both their heads. For Hayes, the offending word was “segregation” and for Varadkar it was “repatriation.”
Segregation is a word that is associated with apartheid in South Africa or with the open racism of the southern states of the US up until the 1960s. But what Hayes was suggesting was that children of immigrants who arrive in a new school in Ireland with little or no English, should initially be given intensive and exclusive teaching of English before they join the mainstream school curriculum.
The word “repatriation” conjures up images of the National Front or the BNP in the UK, demanding that immigrants and even British-born children of immigrants be forcibly sent back to the country of their birth. Leo Varadkar’s proposal was a voluntary scheme for unemployed non-nationals, similar to the one in operation in Spain. Fianna Fáil have jumped upon it and have accused the Dublin TD of racism. Mary Hanafin came to the conclusion that Varadkar had it in for “the Africans.” Her logic was that as it could not apply to immigrants from the EU, then the target had to be “the Africans” and therefore, it was racist.
If we can’t allow ourselves to have a mature and open debate about immigration, without the attendant hysteria, then the issue will fester, as it has done in several European countries already. Here in Ireland, we have the luxury of being able to learn from the mistakes of our EU partners. However if we choose to ignore the lessons that are there to be learned, then we risk making the very same mistakes ourselves. This will benefit nobody, not least the immigrants living among us, and those who will come here in the future.
New Look
Something Is Rotten In The State Of Hurling
Today, Kilkenny annihilated Waterford by 3-30 to 1-13, a winning margin of 23 points. I had a quick look at the list of All-Ireland Final results on Wikipedia, and you have to go back to 1941 to find a bigger margin (Cork put Dublin to the sword that day, 5-11 to 0-6.) Today was Kilkenny’s third All-Ireland in a row, and their sixth in the last ten years. Overall, this is their 31st All-Ireland title, the most won by any county.
Hurling is often described as Ireland’s national game, and the GAA themselves claim that hurling in some form or other has been played in Ireland for 2,000 years. But what we are seeing now is a decline in the game as a national sport, as it becomes more entrenched within its heartland of the south/south-east of the country. Unlike gaelic football, there are only a handful of counties that are competitive in the championship (i.e. have a chance to get to the All-Ireland final to be cannon fodder to Kilkenny.) All of them, with the exception of Galway are in Munster or south Leinster. The Ulster championship is Antrim v. Down (although a couple of years ago, New York made it to the Ulster final, but they couldn’t play the final in Ireland, because they were afraid that several of the New York team wouldn’t be able to get back into the US.) There is no Connacht championship anymore. It could be argued that neither is there a meaningful Leinster championship - Kilkenny have won it every year since 1998, with the exception of 2004 (though they did make it to the All-Ireland that year, losing to Cork.)
Waterford were the lambs to the slaughter today, but in truth fans of Tipperary, Limerick, Cork, Wexford, Clare and Galway needn’t feel too smug. Such is the power of the hurling machine that is Kilkenny, any of those other teams would have been on the end of a comparable hiding. I feel really sorry for the Waterford fans, as they have been there or thereabouts for the last few years, and this was their first shot at the All-Ireland in 45 years. They haven’t won it since 1959. They have nothing to take from today’s match. A bad refereeing decision or an unlucky bounce of the ball would at least have provided some succour if the game had been tight, hope that next year they could come back and finish the job. But the brutality of their defeat today will have the hearts of the Déise’s followers in their boots. I should know something about this. After all I am a Mayoman, and we have been to the All-Ireland football final five times in the last twenty years, with nothing to show for it. Three of those defeats were to the football equivalent of Kilkenny (Kerry) and two of those encounters with the Kingdom were hidings (2004 and 2006.) And I’m not even a serious follower of the game. This lad will tell you a thing or two about what it’s like to lose five All-Irelands in twenty years.
At the moment Kilkenny are unassailable. But for a neutral’s point of view the future is not rosy. Not only did the senior team win the All-Ireland today, but the minors also beat Galway. There will be wild celebrations all over the county of Kilkenny tonight. The festivities will go on to the wee small hours in such places as Grangemockler, Callan and Mullinavat. But deep down, even the most ardent of Kilkenny fans must realise that each passing year and each facile All-Ireland won, the victory is going to get hollower and hollower. Unless the GAA do something to stem the decline of hurling as a national game, it will be practically gone within a generation.
Well, He Would Say That, Wouldn't He?
Munster coach, Munster
captain and majority of the side from Munster –
Ireland might as well play in red.
Indeed, Franno. We might win something then,
mightn’t we?
172 Is Your Friend
But it still amazes me how many people in business haven’t grasped the concept of voicemail. When you call someone on their mobile, you might be a bit annoyed if your call is diverted to voicemail, but it’s understandable. The person at the other end could be in a meeting, or having lunch, or in the jacks, or in a hotel room with someone who is not their spouse, or whatever. No matter what the reason is for your call not being answered, you should have the opportunity to leave a message.
I phoned a customer the other day on his mobile. He’s the MD of a fairly big company, and a guy who would be in demand from customers and suppliers alike. Instead of a voicemail message, I got “The customer you are calling is out of reach at present. Please try again later.”
That, to me, is the pits. If you’re out of reach, your phone should divert to voicemail.
Another customer I phoned this week had obviously left his phone on the kitchen table that morning before he left for work. It rang out without going to voicemail. As bad as the above.
Somewhat better, but still not good enough is when you phone someone and you get the default service provider voicemail message. “You have reached the Vodafone voicemail box of… Oh. Eight. Seven. Two. [pause] Three. Two. Nine. Five. Four. Oh. Please leave a message for the person you are calling, after the tone. [beep].” Whenever I get this, I often think that I have dialled a wrong number, as I expect the person I have called to be savvy enough to have actually recorded their own voicemail message. So I go “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and redial the number.
But there is a crucial coda to this rant. You can set you voicemail up perfectly and make sure it diverts as intended. You can even do what one guy I worked with some years ago does and record a new message each day - “Hello this is John Smith on Friday, 5 September, etc.” But of you don’t respond to the messages on your voicemail, you’re as bad as the person who doesn’t bother to set up their voicemail in the first place.
Next rant: Out of Office Assistants.
Random Stuff
14126 days ago? Using the method I discovered a while back, I calculate 14126 days ago to be 1 January 1970. Good Lord, have I been blogging for 38 years?
You may have seen this already, but if not, enjoy.
Guy “Mr Madonna” Ritchie has a new movie out soon, which by all accounts is the same as his last two. This classic Fast Show sketch sums it up.
Was in Lidl the other day, and they had a display on the wall by the checkouts of their own brand logos. They seem to be following a pattern for quite a few of them. Goes like this:
Draw an oval, and fill it red. Choose a three-syllable name, preferably ending in a vowel. Type that name in white text into your red oval. Use a font like Optima and italicise it. Hey, presto! Your own low-cost, discount supermarket brand.
Apply to packs of pasta, boxes of washing powder, tins of sauerkraut or packs of incontinence pads. Hordes of recession-maddened punters will queue up to buy them.
Mo Léathanta Saoire
This being 2008, and with digital photography, Web 2.0 and all that, here’s my “composition” for this year.
It's Too Early To Even Attempt To Call It
Straight away, the pundits, amateur and professional were on hand to call the election. Those of a Republican bent were quick to claim that the selection of Palin for VP was a masterstroke and that the McCain/Palin ticket will hoover up swathes of disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters. Democratic-minded analysts pointed out that Palin’s lack of experience, coupled with McCain’s age, would be the Achilles Heel of the Republican campaign. A VP who two years ago was mayor of a town of 6000 people would be a heartbeat away from the most powerful political job on earth, and a 72-year-old heartbeat at that.
This is all too simplistic by far. The Republicans’ hopes of converting hordes of Clintonistas meets one considerable obstacle - Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin may have their gender in common, but they have precious little else. Clinton is a blue-state liberal and Democratic Party royalty, while Palin is a red-state conservative and was hardly known outside of Alaska until last Friday. Equally, the Democrats would be wise not to point too much at Palin’s lack of experience, as it might reflect unkindly upon the lightweight CV of their own main candidate.
But the main reason that this election cannot yet be called with any certainty is because there are nine weeks to go and anything can happen. Revelations can come to light that could undermine either of the camps. We saw that today, with the news that Mrs Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. (She is, we are told, going to marry her boyfriend. Mommy’s lifetime membership of the NRA presumably makes access to the necessary shotgun somewhat easier.) You can be sure that the attack dogs in the right-wing media and blogs will be sniffing around for anything that could knock the wheels off the Obama chariot. Expect to see wingnut pols and hacks being interviewed and making slips like “Well, according to Senator Osama - I mean Senator Obama (heh) himself…” etc.
One thing’s for sure. It’s going to be a dirty fight.