Shaving foams and nursing homes — my initial World Cup thoughts
So it wasn’t a pre-tournament wind-up after all. Referees in Brazil for the World Cup are actually using a shaving foam-like spray to ensure that players don’t encroach past the wall at free kicks.
This columnist – once a junior soccer referee who knew all about the frustration of keeping players in tow at linesman-less games in the Irish midlands – thought that it was a June Fool’s Day trick. However, it is actually working well and some other broad-minded sports fans are clearly enjoying it too, as a Gaelic football referee friend of mine tells me he was jovially asked at a club game in Westmeath at the weekend about the use of the new magic spray to discourage players gaining a few metres at free kicks! Sure maybe it was the solution (pun intended) to the 'Anthony Nash dilemma’ all along, rather than a record-breaking rule amendment by the notoriously slow-to-change hierarchy in Croke Park.
Watching the opening game between the hosts and Croatia (where, from my experience, some 'home town’ decisions made by the Japanese referee would have you scurrying for your life in the dearly departed Longford and District League) with my daughter and son-in-law enabled the latter and I to try and keep straight faces when the former asked what this spray was for, as Mr Nishimura whipped it out.
“This health and safety business is gone way OTT,” I said, “imagine the ref has to shave any lad with a beard now.” When the laughter ended a few minutes later, her (typically female!) response was to wonder “how many more of these silly matches have I to sit through?”
Well, the answer then was 63 and, at the time of writing (two hours before the hugely-anticipated Germany v. Portugal clash, the latter featuring the best – joint best? – player on the planet), that is down to 53. And the good news is that the first 11 have provided splendid entertainment, with no dour goalless draws (a serious anathema for the females!), plenty of great goals (including a special from the best - joint best? - player on the planet), incidents galore and, of course, bad officiating despite five men in black per game. (Try the Longford and District league sometime lads, with your awful offside calls and chickening out of flashing red cards – and make sure you park near the boreen at the entrance to the cow pooh-laden field).
President Higgins recently encouraged us all to support England when he was licking the part of the Westminster establishment from which the cows soiled many a Longford and District League pitch. However, my less-than-convincing response earlier today to the question from the lovely Colombian priest on secondment in Mullingar (still bemoaning the loss of their injured star player Falcao) as to whether I would be roaring on the Three Lions probably echoed the general Irish apathy towards Roy Hodgson’s charges.
However, with Eamon Dunphy promising to wear a dress (a good dress, not a great dress) should Eng-er-land reach the last eight, we might just hope they at least win their remaining group games after their 2-1 defeat by those perennial challengers at major tournaments, Italy.
I texted some friends after that game, suggesting that the respective performances of the two ageing captains-cum-midfielders neatly encapsulated the gap in quality we had witnessed. I loved the reply of my aforementioned son-in-law (albeit a Manchester United fanatic): “Pirlo looked like he could play on for another 90 minutes, while Gerrard looked like he should be in a nursing home!”
This is the 13th World Cup that I recall, starting with 1966 and England’s finest hour. Over a half-time cuppa in Cusack Park last Saturday during Westmeath hurlers’ highly commendable display, excellent Kinnegad-based soccer journalist, Garry Doyle, asked me could I recall that tournament, wondering indeed was there live coverage of games, or just highlights. Garry, you may have seen re-runs of my favourite comedy from that era, Green Acres, and Mr Douglas having to climb a pole to use the phone, but it was not quite the Stone Age!
My abiding memory is of watching the England v. Argentina quarter-final (Antonio Rattin, 'animals’ – long before the Falklands! – et al) and score-checks coming up as the unheralded North Koreans took a 3-0 lead v. Portugal, before a foam-less referee made the minnows pay for their indiscipline, with the late, great Eusebio making the most of it by scoring four goals.
To be very fair to Alf Ramsey’s triumphant side, while home advantage undoubtedly helped, they possessed the four key players I have always felt were sufficient to win most World Cups, with even average international standard back-up - a top goalkeeper, a great defender, a classy midfielder, and a striker on form for just a matter of a few weeks. Gordon Banks, the late, great Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton and Geoff Hurst (and not Jimmy Greaves as we all anticipated) tick the boxes there. Indeed, had Munich not robbed England of the seemingly-sublime Duncan Edwards, the team would surely have been significantly stronger. So keep an eye out for a team with that more or less essential backbone and have a flutter.
Four years later came the World Cup which converted all impressionable teenagers into soccer fanatics. The greatest team ever won the greatest tournament ever. I still retain in mint condition the complete sticker album from the Brazil-dominated extravaganza in Mexico and was actually offered good money for it in recent weeks, following on from coverage of similar collections on radio and television.
However, my daughter has asked me to pass it on to my grandchild-to-be, please God. Sure he/she can flog it in years to come and pay for a night in a nursing home for her decrepit grandfather.
Stephen Gerrard beware – this old bore could be sharing a room with you!
Gerry Buckley