THE SUBLIME.
The other week, I touched on the sublime and watched golfer Rory McIlroy do just that, in winning the US Open. I was trying to understand what it is that places a sportsman in this unique bracket of near perfection.
Crude analysis is that they make playing the game look ridiculously easy. Eschewing an open top bus ride to commemorate it, is telling.
By the time McIlroy has won more majors and gone on to prove this is no flash in the golfing pan, the bus rides will be but journeys to another summit of sporting sublime.
For a country of population 1.7 million we have produced some of the greatest sportsmen and women in the history of sport. A heady claim with evidence to support it.
There’s Best, second only to Pele in terms of soccer greatness, whilst Gibson and McBride bestrode the world of rugby legend. Higgins at snooker and McCoy at horse racing are testimony to the talent that lies within.
Each one of them has handled their sporting fame off the pitch in different ways. Best and Higgins, two working class boys, were unable to deal with the coterie that surrounded them when their sporting star glowed. It subsequently died an unedifying, prolonged death through the tabloid media.
Gibson, recognised by the New Zealanders as one of the games greats has lived his life off the field in media obscurity, mostly unrecognised in the street. He is the epitome of the self-effacing star, comfortable with his own sporting greatness.
McBride by contrast has continued to live off his sporting greatness in a manner that is an example to others. McIlroy has much to live up to.
Hooray For Holywood
Rory McIlroy illustrates the kind of sporting lustre all our youngsters must aspire to attain both on the field and off it. Congratulations to his hometown of Holywood who have gone about celebrating his sporting achievement in a high-profile but not garish way with large billboard type signs congratulation.
The world is his sporting oyster.
Tellingly McIlroy returned to his roots, eschewing bus rides, he was clearly happy to be back where he feels he belongs, being photographed with his rugby mates, Darren Cave, Stephen Ferris and Niall O’Connor.
Decking You Could Do Without This Summer
Prior to photographs with McIlroy, Stephen Ferris made a less flattering picture on the front page of News of The World complete with typically sensationalist headline, condemning him to 7 years in the slammer.
The truth appeared much more prosaic and Ulster Rugby struck a pre-emptive note by announcing they were standing by the player. The off the field incident is subject to court proceedings and it is not suitable to make direct comment about it on this blog.
It is an unwelcome distraction for a player who is on the cusp of sporting greatness. Ferris’s game is based on tremendous athleticism and physicality. It is the physicality off the field that becomes the most difficult to handle I believe.
Others, notably Welsh players such as Mike Philips and Andy Powell, whose strengths lie in brutish collisions of rugby, have found off the pitch there are any number of guys who want to test their physicality in the street.
I’m not suggesting Stephen Ferris is of the same mentality as Messers Powell and Philips are. They seem to attract trouble the way light attracts moths but it is clear his career could head down that troubled path if he isn’t careful.
Rugby ‘hardman’ Trevor Brennan heeded the siren call of some media elements and others round him when he began to believe he could do no wrong on or off the pitch in physical terms.
The blurring of the lines between when the game stops and another code of behaviour kicks in led Brennan to overstep the mark with consequences for him that will remain forever a stain on his character.
Again I’m not suggesting Ferris is off the same ilk as Brennan but it serves to illustrate how sporting agression must be controlled on and off the pitch. For my money Ferris is rooted off the pitch in a family environment and that he will transcend the unwelcome diversion of court appearances.
Providing his dodgy knee rehabilitate’s and allows him to step on to the rugby pitch again, I believe he will go on to achieve the kind of sporting greatness achieved by Gibson, McBride, Humphreys and Kyle.
There is real pedigree there and, provided the robust style permits it, he will achieve enduring sporting mythology.
Horse Trading
Bitching intruded the Tweet zone last week when Andy ‘T’ Trimble responded to Stephen ‘horse’ Ferris’s suggestion that his leanness wasn’t the meanness the horse possessed.
Rapped Andy, all that boxing in the off season has made you skinny, to which the horse replied that it was 2 years ago when he was a British Lion and wondered was Andy still plying his trade at Ballymena back then.
When these two finally meet on the training ground, things will get interesting. I imagine, headmaster Humphrey’s probably called time on two of his star players trading blows in the tweet zone.
The Bitch is Back
The FRU have resurrected ‘Insider’. Bitchier than ever, ‘Insider’ was at her most acerbic.
I got a mention, as a myopic art critic on the Original Kimble. I have researched Kimble’s provenance and cannot see anything to suggest originality.
If you have to call yourself ‘original’ then there’s something to suggest you maybe aren’t!!
Cartoon Shirts ‘r’ Us
Ulster have launched a cartoon shirt strictly for the supporter. Clearly the players baulked at being in the same space as Captain Marvel, the shirts comic book hero.
UR probably reckoned all those wrinkly supporters in skin-tight pro shirts were against the Ravenhill trades description act which promises you will be afraid when you enter the hallowed ground.
Skin tight shirts and wrinkly middle-aged men is less a paragon of fear and more a thing mirth, hence the new shirt’s beer belly pouch disguised as a cartoon!!
Prop Idyll
Bumped into an old crony from the team the other night in the local garage. Scotty served up a plateful of memories in his playing days as a prop.
Not the least the time he was the youngest member of a front 3 at 48 years young and a joint front row union age of 156 years.
Scotty must have been inspired because I recall he scored a try, the only one I can ever remember him scoring which led to oddly ecstatic celebrations among the old dogs.
Ill Informed!
Le Tour starts this weekend and I found this post on the UAFC site.
‘Sorry Davy, will be changing channels quicker than you can say “drug cheating, blood banking shower of gits”.
Just not interested in weight lifters in two wheels. Maybe that’s unfair but if they’d actually regulate their “sport” they might have some credibility. That is by no means to cast any doubt on the many thousand amateur cyclists who you see every weekend.’
These sort of uninformed comments make my blood boil quicker than you say clueless idiot.
Corrections, comments or questions?