Disclaimer: Some animals were harmed during the failure of this economy

One mid-summer's evening, some years ago, as the sun dragged its feet and the air tinged with the sweet fragrance of heather and gorse, I trekked through the peatland of Glenveagh, when out of the corner of my eye I saw one.


It was a rare sight to find one in Donegal, or most places outside Leinster for that matter. Now, of course, they are gone from the wild. Their numbers dwindled at such an alarming rate, that even the introduction of draconian conservation measures came too late.


A mere five years ago, to countenance the disappearance of such magnificent beasts from our land was anathema. But there were those few who voiced such concerns. They were called unpatriotic. They were laughed at. "Extinct? Sure they breed like feckin' rabbits," said one politician. "Some parts of Dublin are infested with the bloody things!" said another.


Now the last Celtic Tiger, held in captivity for the past two years, tamed and toothless, is to be released back into the wild, to fend for itself; the cost of feeding its insatiable appetite prohibitive. There, it will be ravaged by predators not native to these shores, here to feed in the lush habitat once occupied by Celticus Tigris.


There is much debate as to the fundamental cause of the Celtic Tiger's extinction. For certain, some were slaughtered amid rumours of maimings. Stories surfaced of unprovoked tiger attacks in suburban areas, concentrated in the greater Dublin region. Soon people were advised to stay indoors, avoid any contact with the animals and under no circumstances should you feed them. Pictures of the victims of such attacks appeared in the papers , baring horrific injuries.


Community based coordinated retaliations were soon conducted throughout the country. Thousands were killed in a matter of weeks. Police clashed with packs of roving hunters, but many in uniform had not the heart for the fight. They too, like many Irish citizens, suffered great loss and pain.


But even as video footage of ferocious attacks emerged, the government continued to trot out the party platitudes; "these animals are safe and are in no way a danger to the people of Ireland." But without the constabulary to enforce this delusion, the fate of the Celtic Tiger was doomed.


After all this time, we are no clearer as to the underlying cause; why did these once subservient beasts turn on their masters? Were we ever their masters at all? It's hard to make sense of it all. As one fella put it:

"Ireland is like an ocean-liner sinking because there's a hole in the lifeboat."

El Clásico

If football teams are a reflection of their coach, then what must José Mourinho have seen when he looked in the mirror this morning? On the basis of Real Madrid's performance versus Barcelona last night, or Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid, as the British media like to refer to them, perhaps it was a gorgon staring back.


There are of course obvious limitations when defining a team, or for that matter a manager, by the result of one game. But if that is to be the fate of The Special One, it is of his own making. Since taking the job with Los Blancos he has attempted to get under the skin, or perhaps more accurately, to get into the head of his Catalan counter-part, with the full spectrum of mind games at his disposal.


Real Madrid spent most of the first El Clásico of the season chasing shadows, though to expand the metaphor, more like apparitions, as the manner in which Barça outclassed Madrid will haunt them, one would think, until the return fixture at least. Those rare occasions when Real did get close enough to make a tackle, the result was usually a free-kick to the home side or an advantage from referee Gonzalez, whose rugby-like interpretation of the advantage rule inhibited Real's disruptive tactics (also deployed by Internazionale under Mourinho in last season's Champions League) and prevented Real from regrouping or reorganising their (high) defensive line.


As the game progressed, Madrid's players resorted to kicking, elbowing and shoulder-charging their opponents, and toward one another cast accusatory petulant gestures which became Real's only means of expressing themselves in the face of such humiliation.


Sergio Ramos, who prior to his sending off could have walked for a swipe on Andrés Iniesta, should face a lengthy ban for the circumstances which finally led to his dismissal. His tackle on Leo Messi, in which his team mate Lassana Diarra was collateral damage, was an assault. The subsequent scuffle and hand-off to the face of Barça's captain and spiritual leader Carlos Puyol was further evidence of Madrid's embarrassment.


Substitute Alvaro Arbeloa, whether through a spectator's pent-up frustration or a coach's instruction had only one intention on arrival, and within minutes Messi, who was the focal point for much of Real's aggression, could have no doubt as to the nature of Arbeloa's role in the game.


Though it is still early in the The Special One's tenure, if Real Madrid are made in Mourinho's image, on the basis of the Clásico, perhaps José should get a few more early nights.

*

Optics

 ALTERED FOR COMEDIC PURPOSES

Is this a possibility of things to come? One may argue in light of Taoiseach Brian Cowen, and finance minister Brian Lenihan's joint press conference to announce cap-in-hand as official government policy, or as Vogue magazine might put it: In Ireland this winter-season and every other season thereafter, for the foreseeable future; blue is the new green. 


They are here, armed with brushes and paint to rebrand Ireland, the Emerald Isle, Pantone Reflex Blue. Or so it seemed as the two Brians, or Brian², stood shoulder-to-shoulder, well not quite, but perhaps they are practitioners of the Kahlil Gibran model of unity - "and stand together but not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart." D'uh, don't you read philosophy? The Brians do. But it's not brains the Brians lack. Is it?


Perhaps when I refer to either one of them in the singular, I should use the expression square-root-of-Brian. Though that could generate some erratic and contradictory results, as in this case, Brian is a variable.

NOT ALTERED IN ANY WAY

So while the marionettes please their new masters by painting the postboxes blue (RGB: 0, 51, 153), maybe it's not so bad. After all when Jon Hague tweeted this:

"Breaking News. Steve Jobs is to buy Ireland to solve the debt problem. It will be rebranded iLand."

I thought of this:







Chin-up folks, things could be worse.

*

Saving face should not be a priority for Brian Cowen. But it is.

We could almost sense it coming. Disparate pockets of grey would shuffle, zombie-like, toward some intuitive focal point. Hands trousered, eyes darting suspiciously as the diminutive, slumped shoulders and slouched back of australopithecine secondary school students, suddenly erect, surge forth - a milieu of scuffed black shoes moshing; arms akimbo, widening one's frame with a full-back's mentality; no one will get by me today.


And so it went, for six years, the daily barrage, like Pamplona, where we were the bulls and the runners; all for a seat on the bus. If by some calamity (a slip on a discarded buttery corned-beef sandwich perhaps) you found yourself at the back of the mob, the assent to the second deck, knowing that there are no seats, was reminiscent of a dead-man walking. Still you whisper your plea to some hard-of-hearing deity, begging for some cataclysmic occurrence to postpone the fate that awaits you. As you trudge upward, the imperceptive din of sixty school boys envelops you. You stand, fixed to the spot by merciless eyes, like headlights piercing a dense fog of John Player Blue. They feed on the futility of your own perfunctory glance up and down the bus, so as you traipse back downstairs, you are stalked by a disharmonious chorus of heckles, jeers and projectiles. That such inane banalities pierce your acne riddled hide, is proof, if it were needed, that such slurs are merely a reflection of your own pitiful weakness.


I was embarrassed , but you take your medicine. On another occasion, toward the end of the school term, a bunch of us were sitting around, the usual sort of to and fro, though perhaps more jovial, due to the onset of the summer holidays. As was the tradition, the guys would sign each other's shirts before we went our separate ways. Over time this evolved; initially we wrote funny messages, eventually it lead to ripping the pockets and collars off. On this particular day though, as the bus weaved its way along the Greenhills road, the lads who get off at Kilnamanagh gathered their things and began the slow migration downstairs.


I don't recall seeing a wink or a nudge, nor was a word or look exchanged. It seemed to me to happen organically. The guy who got off last, like an antelope separated from the herd, was set upon by ravenous hands, focused on his trousers. In a repetitive motion, inversely imitating the starting of a chainsaw, half a dozen hands or more tore his pockets and began to rip his trousers off. Money flew through the air and amidst the sound of cackling hyenas and rolling change, this poor guy - paisley boxer-shorts and milk-bottle legs - stood at the head of the bus, aghast, clutching his torn garment with a look of complete humiliation. In that moment there was nothing to do except meekly get off the bus.


In the last few days there has been an abundance of reports and analysis detailing the impending bailout (high-interest loan, if you prefer) that Ireland is being strongly advised to take from the ECB and IMF. Echoes of 1916 reverberate amid talk of a threat to our economic soveriegnty. This morning (18th November), with the arrival of the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, we now know with certainty that the government, treating its citizens with contempt, lied for days about policy regarding our economic recovery. The reason is at once simple and pathetic; embarrassment. Brian Cowen is trying to save face. Six billion Euro of cuts in December's budget, hundreds of thousands unemployed and state funding due to run-out in June and still the Taoiseach's disdain for the Irish public manifests itself in cheap political double-speak. The word that springs to mind is optics. The red-face is anathema to this government. Not their legacy, their PR.  But Cowen's position is ridiculous. He is the boy on the bus holding his trousers up. There is no saving face. What's done is done. He must take his medicine and with his tail between his legs, traipse downstairs and exit through the middle doors of political life. It's all he can do.

The Stuff of Fantasy - Week 6

It's never easy being the manager of a top-flight fantasy football club. Injuries, contract disputes, dressing-room bust-ups and media battles with players, other managers or your mother-in-law can cause you to forget why you love this beautiful game.


For the majority of the season thus far, two linchpins of my defence have been unavailable for selection. Michael Dawson and Thomas Vermaelen are crocked; and coupled with Glen Johnson's own injury problems, subsequent lack of form and therefore inevitable demotion to the bench, I have for some weeks now, selected a team where 3 or 4 of my defenders could not play (one of the many paradoxes of fantasy football).


The club's medical team worked around the clock to restore Quannegowes to full strength. The team doctor, Jin Ju Ma - actually he's a homoeopath, but gets ansty if you point that out and rumour has it,  he has a black belt. I have been unable to confirm this, as usually he wears a long white coat, but basically his excellent posture frightens me - continually revised the return date for both Vermaelen and Dawson. The former, initially responded well to treatment - a rigorous regime of echinacea drops and good vibes.


In the case of Dawson though, we saw no improvement and even administering snake venom and ground tiger penis made no difference. Though in obtaining it, three of Dr Ma's staff lost their lives. Or maybe they were arrested? Either way, the club had to make a sizeable donation to London Zoo to keep it out of the news.


It was only after two months had passed, when Michael came to my office one lazy Monday morning, that I discovered why his treatment was failing to produce any positive results. You see, Dawson had avoided going to see Dr. Ma because a couple of the lads had told him that the doc was a homeo. Being an upstanding footballer and homophobe, I should have realised sooner.


We had gone from first in the tables to sixth and my assistant, Doughnut, implored me to bring in a replacement. Easier said then done. At a fantasy football club, you can't simply buy another player. Not without letting one go. That was a decision I was not looking forward to making.

*

Another month went by and our descent into mediocrity was complete. Week after week, we fielded nine, maybe ten players, if we were lucky. There's only one thing that hurts a manager more than his team's rapid decline down the league table; and that's a kick in the nuts. So you can imagine how painful falling into relegation in Mayo South (Div 3a) was. (For those of you, without the requisite anatomy, think of a Brazilian wax, where the strips are pulled off very slowly and the adhesive is dried-on casserole. You'll get no, what would a woman be doing reading this? jibes from me. I'm a twenty-first century man and realise that lots of broad-backed lesbians like football). 

After lengthy procrastination, and to Doughnut's relief,  I finally made my decision. I'm not going to get into the whys and hows, or the whens and wheres or who did or did not eat my Twix , but needless to say, we had a going-away party for Michael Dawson. He was pretty pissed off about getting the boot and didn't attend himself but Tea Time Express provided a life-size chocolate replica. A sponge of such verisimilitude, that on three different occasions, attendees commented on how quiet (and tanned) Michael was. I didn't correct them.