The Mayo News

SOCCER Should Thierry Henry be made kick Bishop Brennan up the arse? We look at the lighter side of the French handball. Why don’t we just replay the ’96 All-Ireland final while we’re at it?


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Daniel Carey

SHOULD Thierry Henry be made to kick Bishop Brennan up the arse?
This, of course, was the punishment doled out to Father Ted Crilly by Father Dick Byrne when the Craggy Island cleric was found to have been using a concealed remote control device to steer Fr Jack Hackett’s wheelchair during the All-Priest Over-75 Five-A-Side Football Match.
Since Fr Ted had used ‘fake hands’, the ‘forfeit’ which was the preserve of the victorious priest passed to Rugged Island. And so, Fr Dick dreamed up ‘an extra special forfeit’ because Ted had proven himself to be ‘a big cheating b*****d’. The character played by Dermot Morgan had to give His Grace an almighty root up the behind.
And if the image of Henry being publicly humiliated seems a little remote, then it’s no dafter than some of the ideas that have been floating over the past few days.
Yep, it’s been one hell of a week. From a demonstration outside the French Embassy to the man dressed as a dinosaur demanding a replay on Sky Sports News, there were more than a few clues that things had got just a teensy bit out of hand. The Evening Herald ran a headline with the words ‘I’m boycotting French produce’. Cowen and Sarkozy even had a brief tete-a-tete at the European summit. (Surely if the countries’ respective leaders were involved, invasion should at least have been threatened? A military historian friend reckons that strategy would have had much more success than appealing to the fair play instincts of the French Football Federation.)
The moment when I realised that things had gone too far came towards the end of a long phone conversation last Thursday night. A friend rang from abroad to say she had just signed a Facebook petition seeking a replay. I told her I would do so if she signed my petition seeking a re-run of the 1996 All-Ireland Football Final, and while I was at, back my call for a new version of the 1966 World Cup Final with the surviving English and German players, but without the Russian linesman.
The point of my sarcastic ‘campaign’ – that ranting about injustice is what sports fans spend half their time doing – was rather lost as a result of what happened next. Because my friend interrupted and uttered eight words I will never forget. She said: “I have to go … my bra is on fire”.
This, needless to say, was worrying news. Bra-burning hasn’t been done since the late 1960s, and she hadn’t mentioned at this stage she wasn’t wearing the article of clothing which was combusting. It turns out that was neither a blow for feminism nor a bizarre protest against a nefarious Frenchmen that took the form of self-immolation.
It seems that having begun tidying while discussing events in the Stade de France over the phone, my friend threw the offending brassiere across the room, where it got caught on a bulb. A few minutes later, engrossed by the precedent offered up by Bahrain’s meeting with Uzbekistan, she absent-mindedly turned on the light, and a few minutes after that, her underwear was lighting up like Christmas at Macy’s. “If somebody doesn’t tell us to cop on fairly soon,” I said, “somebody is going to get seriously hurt.”
That job was eventually left to Roy Keane. And when Roy is the voice of reason, you know you’re in trouble.

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