Pronounced Kwan

I couldn't watch. And yet I couldn't take my eyes off of it. That these statements seem contradictory is an illusion. Let me explain. You see, I dislike Sky's coverage of the Heineken Cup. Not because they lack in terms of stylish graphics or presentation, not even because their analysis bores me. I dislike it because I am xenophobic. Wait, wait, don't misunderstand me! I mean it merely within the context of rugby. It's like that feeling you get when you've been away from home for too long and yearn to be with others who ... understand you. I guess you could say it's that need to feel like you're not alone. 


Don't get me wrong, I'm not the type to hug every faded acquaintance I happen to meet. So when I say, from time to time, when watching Leinster in Europe, I seek out my kind, what I mean is that I turn on the radio. 

If you don't know, Sky have exclusive rights (I dislike the practice of anthropomorphising large corporations by using words such as rights) to broadcast Heineken Cup games for television in Ireland and Britain. 


Yes, there may be a pleasure derived from an outsider's unshackled pronouncements; that this Leinster team is the greatest we have seen in the European Cup, and yes, from it there may also be an unnatural feeling of confidence, not so much a swelling of assurance in one's bosom, more an indigestive bloating. But to a dwindling few, such thoughts ... such bravado is corrosive. Am I making myself clear? It's like Betty Draper in Mad Men, when she calls Don, who by now is her ex-husband, on receipt of bad news, and like a sapling whimpers, "Tell me its going to be all right." The reply, "It's going to be all right," is sweet, and perhaps for a moment comforting, but she doesn't really believe it. 

And neither does the Irish rugby fan, who cannot live with the false hope that such assurances bring. So we grip our anxiety like reluctant children clinging to our mothers on the first day of school. We are outcasts in our own rugby supporters' fraternity. Perhaps, we are the result of a slight genetic variance? A rogue protein, where in a trillion ons, it went off and no one notices, why would they? For this misfiring is minute, it is a droplet in a deluge. And though it is seemingly insignificant, for some, such as me, it is a underestimated torture, like the unceasing annoyance of an infinite stream of single raindrops running down your back. 


The anomaly... see it as a complex computer program which executes a simple one word command. In our case: agonise.

So, at half-time I turned on the radio for a more palatable perspective. I couldn't stand to hear any of that Leinster are a great second-half side hooey. I needed to wrap myself in the comfort of doubt. As the adds rolled on Sky, the second-half restarted on the radio. There's nothing unusual for a television broadcaster to be a few seconds behind the radio, what with satellite relays and all that.  So I kept the radio on, low, in the background, focussing on the t.v.


But as Clermont battered Leinster's try line, I couldn't watch. I couldn't just watch. I had to listen too. I needed to know what was happening now. There was only a forty-odd second lag but I muted the television and turned the volume up on the radio. Michael Corcoran's mangled voice undulated in intensity, painting a vivid picture of the battle and reaching its crescendo as Leinster, exhausted, win the match.  


Even then, as I turned to the t.v., and though what I was watching was already known to me, I waited for that second final whistle. It was as if I was hearing two languages, the first I only had a rudimentary knowledge of, enough to think I knew what was said, but not until I heard the second, the translation, as it were, that I fully understood. With certainty.