HOOLIGANS IN THEIR ELEMENT

The time of the year that is in it, I suppose you are all expecting me to say a few words about the ancient sport of Bogball, what it means, and where it is headed.
This, however, would waste valuable space which could be much more auspiciously filled with matters of greater moment, such as Athlone Town’s barnstorming start to the FAI National League Premier Division.
After three pulsating draws and two arrogant victories, including a 4-2 annihilation of Shamrock Rovers the Town are right back in the big time where they . . . eh . . . belong.
They look set fair to emulate their amazing achievement of last year, when they were the only unbeaten football team in Western Europe and perhaps The World, as the season reached the Christmas turn.
They are certainly doing a whole lot better than their old Euro adversaries, A.C. Milan. Yes indeed, Fabio Capello must be looking covetously towards St. Mel’s Park, contemplating a cash-plus-players deal, with Savicevic and Boban being swapped for Donal Golden and Rod De Khors, and Milan throwing in a few zillion lira to make up the shortfall.
Fabio can shove it up his Italian arse. I was recently reflecting on Athlone’s 0-0 slaughter of Milan in 1975, and figured out that the team of Benetti and Rivera got confused by the fact that ‘Town sport the same colours as Inter Milan.
Blinded by traditional hatred, the Italian aristos were easy meat for the crack outfit of Minnock and Duffy, and eventually scraped through with three lucky goals in a near-deserted San Siro.
Of Bogball, I must however remark on the favourable noises made by GAA supremo Jack Boothman, on possible changes to the rule barring members of the RUC from participating in the odd 30-man Donnybrook.
Boothman, it must be recalled, is a Protestant, though he surmounts that obstacle by not really looking like a Protestant.
Now, with peace in our time looming large, he has opened up intriguing possibilities for the sport he loves not wisely, but too well.
Assuming a massive influx of members of the Northern fuzz, anxious to settle a few old scores with Republican shit-kickers, certain changes must be initiated in the ethos of the grand old game.
The playing of ‘The Sash’ before the Ulster Final, for example, would help to acknowledge all the traditions on this island. It may take some time for the aficionados to come to grips with a Fermanagh team starring individuals with names like Wesley League, Carson Brooke, Alastair Craig and William Knox. However, on the positive side, if the gun is taken out of Northern politics, the G.A.A. fields of Norn Iron will be target-rich in opportunities for the Billy Boys and the Provos to kick seven shades of shit out of one another in a congenial setting.
This can be the GAA’s contribution to the peace process.
Moving naturally and seamlessly on to violence in sport (I don’t know how you do it – Ed), I have noted that Soccer seems to have had its day on the hooligan front.
The mayhem of the ’80s is now a memory as distant as the footballer’s frizzy perm, as the boot-boys turn their attentions to other arenas, while the football crowds chomp hot-dogs in their luxurious futuristic all-seater stadiums of light.
In Boxing, there is now considerably more violence outside the ring than inside the square circle. Certain English pugilists are attracting a following of evil bastards who view the exploits of their boys as a catalyst for their own Donnybrooks. It is all very touching.
At the recent Nigel Benn fight, there were scenes of bad craziness reminiscent of the old days at Millwall and Stamford Bridge. Benn is a cousin of Paul Ince, a poignant reminder of changing times in the world of free-form milling. Boxing has become such an obvious fraud on so many levels, a war-game between ultra-sleazy promoters, that perhaps all the malevolence has drained to the fringes, and the punters have to provide their own bloodsport.
One thinks of those suggestive little reports buried at the bottom of the sports pages, describing how “fighting broke out between players, spectators, and officials” at the Laois county semi-finals.
Suddenly, the idea of “participation sport” carries new meaning.
Even horse-racing, ostensibly a non-contact sport, has had its troubles in this regard. Some time ago, the phenomenon of racing hooligans appeared to be on the rise, with bus-loads of sad motherfuckers being decanted at Newbury or Haydock to raise hell, fuelled by oceans of lager.
While this has apparently gone into abeyance, the action has switched to the track itself. Last week, jockey Kieran Fallon, a man from Clare, dragged his bitter rival Stuart Webster out of the saddle at the end of a fractious race at Beverley.
Later, Webster emerged from the jockey’s room sporting a bloody nose, a wound apparently sustained after an intentional clash of heads.
Earlier this year at Ascot, an exceptionally drunk person decided to take a short cut from one enclosure to another, via the track. As the race was still in progress, he found himself being run down by Michael Kinane’s mount, and one can only speculate about his condition when he woke up in hospital. “I must have had a bad pint” were unlikely to be his first words.
But Civilisation still reigns in the League of Ireland, perhaps because everyone, players and spectators alike, knows one another so well.
Shamrock Rovers and Derry City fans can get a bit, shall we say, ‘tetchy’ with one another betimes, but the chairman of the Tory Party has a word for that.
Exuberance.