1.       There’s plenty of guys putting their hand up for a place in the team this weekend against Wales.

2.       Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

3.       It was a savage battle, Marty.

4.       Game on, Ger.

5.       I got in the turnstile with a man.

6.       He’s never under 16!

7.       Any tips for the 2.40?

8.       He’s still running.

9.       What time’s the second-game on?

10.   Just leave it in to the big fella for shite’s sake!

11.   Bring your boots on Sunday.

12.   We need more go forward ball, Tom.

13.   Game on now, Ger.

14.   Oh no! They’re showing the Northern Ireland Match of the Day tonight!

15.   They call him Santy in the college, Ger.

16.   Do you want to hear my Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh impression?

17.   Who should play at 13?

18.   Anyone buying or selling tickets?

19.   There’s nothing like Thurles on Munster final day.

20.   The city hurling is gone altogether.

21.   You can only ride what’s underneath you.

22.   Did Ted Walsh just say that?

23.   It’d be great for the game if Dublin won it.

24.   Hill 16 is Dublin only.

25.   I cannot stand them jackeens.

26.   Jerry Kiernan looks like he could still get around handy enough.

27.   We should go back to winter football.

28.   Who put the ball in the English net?

29.   F*** Schillachi.

30.   Boot it, Lukey.

31.   Steps!

32.   You should see his brother, he’s playing minor next year.

33.   It’ll always be Lansdowne to me anyway.

34.   What about that on Sunday?

35.   Where were you last Sunday?

36.   I heard you were out Saturday night?

37.   Did you hear what Roy said now?

38.   Pull hard; he’s no relation.

39.   He’s some man for one man, is Paulie.

40.   Heave!

41.   Go on, warm up, I’m not listening to ye any more.

42.   I’m not doing this for the good of my head lads, I’m sick of telling ye.

43.   Go out and enjoy it, lads.

44.   We’ll head in along after this one, they’ll only be warming up now.

45.   That’s a stupid question, Bill.

46.   Come on you Boys in Green.

47.   Did you get a pass at home for Poland yet?

48.   He’ll never kick from there.

49.   In from the side ref!

50.   What was that penalty for, lads?

51.   Name the only man to win an All-Ireland medal and a League of Ireland title.

52.   I saw Bertie at the Shels game.

53.   Katie’s a dinger isn’t she?

54.   So explain this Duckworth Lewis Method once more.

55.   Turn up Dunphy there, Barry!

56.   What has Galvin on him at all?

57.   Will Galway bate Mayo?

58.   Not without Willie Joe.

59.   See yiz in Coppers.

60.   You can’t bate a bit of ground hurling.

61.   Brian suffered a stinger.

62.   Now for the sport with Evanne.

63.   I only use Cummins sliothars.

64.   *Phone beeps* We’re up by two, but against the wind in second half.

65.   You should’ve seen the six-iron I hit last Sunday.

66.   I’m never playing that bloody game again.

67.   Every rugby team needs piano players and piano shifters.

68.   There’s always next year.

69.   Check your change around here – you might get an All-Ireland medal in it.

70.   I don’t know what your man was on about in the paper this week.

adrianjrussell@gmail.com                                            Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first appeared in the Irish Examiner newspaper

SOMETIMES A seemingly innocuous sound or smell can be your ticket back in time.

A turn of phrase might remind you of an old friend whom you haven’t heard on the other end of a phone in years.

Someone, in the distance, clopping football boots together to dislodge the turf from the studs jolts you back to Saturday mornings, togging in.

The half-heard bar of a song evokes nights in that pub with that crowd. There’s probably a name for it.

I was watching Cardiff ‘book their place’ - as is the tabloidese - in the Carling Cup final, with a penalty shoot-out victory over Crystal Palace on Tuesday night when the crowd broke into song.

As their players danced around the Cardiff City Stadium pitch, celebrating their successful passage to Wembley next month, the fans first offered their own version of Hey Jude. Been there, done that.

They followed that up with Men of Harlech - otherwise known, I was told,  as Welshmen Will Not Yield. You might remember it from the battle scene in Zulu as Michael Caine et al face oblivion. Grim.

Then, they reprised something they’d hummed all night: “Do-do-do-do-do-do-doooo. Do-do-do-do-do-do-doooo.  Do-do-do-do-do-do-doooo.“

It’s the White Stripes’ tune Seven Nation Army. And with that, I’m back in Hamburg.

Having picked up a ticket from a tout in the main station early that Friday morning I knocked about the city with a friend who lived in the city for the afternoon.

Then after a fried breakfast while standing at the bar of a packed Irish pub at 6pm, we headed out to the stadium and sat in behind the goal for Italy v Ukraine in the quarter-final of the World Cup in 2006.  (I would tell you that we bought our tickets separately, hours apart, and said it our goodbyes before kick off before realising we were actually sitting together. But no one ever believes that.)

Then we watched the likes of Sheva, Cannavaro, Pirlo.... eh, Voronin and the sun shone.

When three goals for the Azzurri ‘booked Italy’s spot’ in the semi-finals of the tournament the blue army - who’d adopted us from pretty early on - started to sing, what was to me, a familiar refrain.

“Do-do-do-do-do-do-doooo. Do-do-do-do-do-do-doooo.  Do-do-do-do-do-do-doooo.”

It was Seven Nation Army. The first time, I’d heard it outside the sawdust-covered dancefloor of An Bróg on Oliver Plunkett St in Cork, my headphones or the car.

The White Stripes, for those who’s tastes lie elsewhere; are a two-piece Detroit outfit - made up of brother and sister Jack and Meg White.  They’re an idiosyncratic, low-fidelity, Blues-influenced outfit.

So how, you ask, did one of their singles first become an Italian football chant - and then be omnipresent in games across the globe?

Well it all started, like the best stories - in a bar. This one, I learned, thanks to American sports website Deadspin, was in Milan.

I emailed Gaert de Cang this week, a man who leads the Blue Army fans group, who follow Club Brugge around Belgium and Europe.

In 2003, they sat in a bar next to the jukebox, killing the hours before the club’s UEFA Cup game against AC Milan by having a few beers and feeding euro coins into the machine.

They came across the track, liked it, and sang it on the terraces later. Then, like an inside joke, they brought it home from their trip together and sang it at the next home game.

Three years later, AS Roma came to Brugge for another game and like Man City fans taking the Poznan goal celebration home with them, so too the Italians picked their hosts’ pockets of the chant.

A few months later, when Italy won the World Cup, a fortnight after that night in Hamburg, the song became synonymous with the Azzurri.

The Deep south-sounding track has now gone full circle and is a staple of American sports stadiums too. It made the journey across the Atlantic from Germany’s soccer grounds when the Penn State press guy heard a radio documentary about Roma fans singing it at the Olympic Stadium. He played it over the Beaver Stadium PA, the brass band soon learned it too and the college football side’s supporters adopted it as there own.

I emailed that press guy too this week - Guido D'Elia, is his name - but he was otherwise engaged. Their legendary coach Joe Paterno died at the weekend, months after this ‘winningest’ record was tarnished forever by a child sex abuse cover-up scandal. They buried him this week.

On the night he was fired after 45 years in the job, for his role in not bringing what he knew about the abuse to the authorities, fans stood outside his campus home and sang his name, Joe, to the tune of Seven Nation Army.

adrian@thescore.ie                     Twitter: @adrianrussell

I personally spent more of December in a tin of Roses than my running shoes. I broke sweat once around the 27th when I fell asleep in front of the fire during Back to the Future II.

In the busy lead up to Christmas, the couple of games of six-a-side football in which I star fell by the wayside as a calendar full of office nights out and last-minute gift shopping got in the way of my weekly trot out (you should see the Opta Pro Zone stats: on average — three nutmegs conceded, two twisted ankles, one banished ball, lots of intemperate swearing).

Some may have slipped back into the spandex before this first full week back at work. I’m vaguely aware of people who swim outdoors on Christmas morning and others who fill the downtime before New Year’s with runs along the coastline or walks up hillsides.

Eoin Cadogan tweeted a picture on Christmas Day of himself and Cork teammates Sean Óg Ó hAilpín and Donal Óg Cusack at an unnamed hurling alley behind a veil of sweat and satisfied smiles. I threw a few more sausages under the grill and convinced myself it was a JBM photoshop job for Cody’s benefit.

But this week, the cobwebs were blown off throughout Ireland as those of us who pay to play under floodlights after work pulled up outside the cages once again. And as I pulled on damp, unwashed bibs that have sat in the back of a Volkswagen Golf for the break, I thought, it takes all types to make a team.

The Pointer 

Let me introduce this interesting chap. Though his AUL medals are perhaps now slightly tainted by the years, he’s still got it ‘upstairs’. Despite a certain thickening under the retro jersey, he can still strike a ball and head it even further.

His defining characteristic, apart from limited interest in a warm-up routine, however, is ‘the point’. A genius — he reckons — at positioning, he stands in the centre circle and indicates with a flourish of his index finger where exactly he wants the ball (to feet) and if he has the ball (at feet) he points to where he wants those around him to run. Every team needs one.

The Unknown Quantity, # 1 

On nights when both Sullivan twins have work, and the usual lads who can be relied upon to turn up when selected aren’t answering the phone, door or Facebook, you may be faced with an unfamiliar opponent across the halfway line before kick off.

He immediately picks up the ball from the tip-off, puts it through your planted feet and smashes the ball into the jumper in which you stashed your watch in the back of the net.

“Who brought your man?” you ask.

The Unknown Quantity, # 2 

It’s the Tuesday after a long weekend and bodies are thin on the ground. The twins are back on the night shift. We need a new lad. This time you’re joined in the bibs with someone who’s a friend of someone else. From the kick-off you pass to him, he takes a first touch that’s heavier than a black hole and then hops the ball off the bonnet of your car — via your face.

“Jesus, who brought your man?” you ask.

The Zoolander 

We’ve all seen Ben Stiller’s movie Zoolander, right? It’s the tale of a dim-witted but good natured male model. Incidentally, he can’t turn left. Like many of us on the five-a-side pitch.

The Self-Flagellating monk 

It may sound like an exotic cocktail in a men-only nightclub but it is in fact a well known archetype on all-weather pitches. This poor chap takes every sliced shot and mishit clearance like another terrible slip into mortal sin. He’ll shank the ball over the opponents’ defence, the surrounding high wall and into a nearby stream. Then, slapping his forehead and looking to the dark skies he’ll scream loud obscenities which shatter the relative calm in the area.

Flocks of birds clatter out of adjacent trees and bell towers. Sleeping children are later awoken from their sleep when he realises he left the lights on in the car the whole time.

The Skipper 

The man with the plan. He brings the bibs. Rings around every week making sure everyone’s still coming. When, invariably, everyone isn’t coming he chases up replacements. He knows the man who looks after the pitch by name and threatens to buy a respirator out of the kitty one day. Often he is the worst player on the pitch.

The Hacker 

He may not win the game… but you’re going home knowing you played on the same pitch as him tonight. Often wears a Féile 1992 T-shirt paired with O’Neill’s shorts and working shoes an old house-mate left behind when he emigrated to Western Australia.

The Fantasista 

One who can play a bit. And knows it. He calls every nutmeg. Celebrates every goal like he’s Marco Tardelli in the World Cup final. Wears snoods and tights. Claims to have had trials with Cork City but fell out with the manager because he wouldn’t pass to Kevin Doyle.

* adrianjrussell@gmail.com                                      Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first appeared in the Irish Examiner newspaper

FOR me Frank O’Farrell was a sad, grey face sketched in 25-year-old newspaper print.

As a young lad brainwashed by an uncle with a season ticket for the Stretford End before Ryanair brought it closer to home, my brother and I were swaddled in United red – despite the unease of a Leeds United supporting father.

We pored over books and books on the Munich Air Disaster, Cup wins, and league titles won. Names and places like Best, Wembley ’68, McGrath, Whiteside and Robson became familiar.

Before the days when you could buy flash replica jerseys and official club merchandise in every sports shop on every high street in the land, I was given an Aberdeen jersey (they were good at the time) and told, in my innocence, it was a Manchester United shirt.

Neighbours still remind me of that one, quarter of a century on.

Once, home for a family funeral, my uncle ducked out of the pub in Blackpool on Cork city’s northside, to get us a parcel of match programmes from Old Trafford as well as a heap of dusty homemade scrap books from the ‘60s 1970s.

The chunky News of the World headlines told tales of names like McIlroy, McQueen, Strachan and Stapleton.  It was great.

At that funeral, we could have walked for three minutes up the road and hit upon the homeplace of one of those featured in those pages of course.

Frank O’Farrell was born and reared on Dublin Hill, on the other side of the railway bridge, many will know from journeys ending in Kent Station. He watched the carriages rattle by daily and dreamed of one day driving the engine.

Instead his talent as a footballer saw his life on a different track altogether. And one which I did not appreciate until RTÉ aired a wonderful, Christmas treat of a documentary about the man last week.

‘The Shadow of Busby’  framed a tall, soft-spoken man now well into his golden years.. who remains the only Irishman to manage the famous club, Manchester United.

It unwrapped a wonderful secret history of Old Trafford’s backrooms and dark corridors – but like the best history lessons, it was weighed down with contemporary relevance.

The short version is this: O’Farrell played with Cork United until 1947 before he was tempted across to the bright lights of East London to play for West Ham. Far from indulging in the city’s excesses, such as they were, the devout Catholic lad joined the Salvation Army and attended mass daily.

In a familiar twist, injury brought the curtain down on a good career. Someone comfortable as leader, he took the reigns as manager at Torquay and after tasting promotion, took a bigger job at Leicester.

He became the first Irishman to lead out a team in the FA Cup final when he took Leicester to within one stride of the 39 steps.  He was denied by Manchester City.

Twelve months previously on the same patch of grass, Matt Busby had realised his quest to win the European Cup as Best, Charlton, Law et al beat Benfica under the Twin Towers. That should have been the final bar of Busby’s song.

Instead he ‘moved upstairs’ –as was the euphemism – and Wilf Mcguinness was installed as the boss. In fact there was no moving anywhere – Busby remained behind his desk in his office. McGuinness was gone less than a year later.

That summer of ‘69, after a spell as caretaker, Busby sat at Farrell’s kitchen table offering him one of the biggest jobs in football.

Tellingly, he told O’Farrell that he would be on a yearly salary of £12,000 – an old man now, Farrell has no problem remembering the figure. This one sticks in the craw.

Later when the pair –as well as Louis Edwards were sealing the deal – the chairman let slip that the salary he sanctioned was in fact £15k. He should have slapped Busby’s hand away then rather shake it then.

Ultimately, O’Farrell was shafted – you know that. But this testimony put meat on the bones of what is a forgotten Old Trafford tale. For me, reading those books from England all those years ago, Farrell was a failure – a forgotten footnote in the club’s long history. It’s an unfair telling of his tale. And though quietly spoken, he could obviously look after himself on the pitch and off it – and this programme showed him pulling no punches. Even when tilting at United’s idols.

O’Farrell talked of trying to curb the drinking of George Best, he labelled, with some understatement, club legend and English football great Bobby Charlton ‘a bit of a moaner’, and settled scores, calmly and matter-of-factly, with Busby himself.

The Scot had the ear of senior players like Charlton and Law as they went on regular golf outings together. Busby still refused to vacate his manager’s chair and his shadow loomed large.

Now, the shadows are lengthening for the 84-year-old Farrell. He sits in his garden in Torquay, surrounded by family and happy to have been at the top – if not for such a fleeting time.

“I was manager of Manchester United,” he says in a familiar accent. “they can’t take that away from me.”

Alex Ferguson, whomever comes after him, and those ‘upstairs’ in the boardroom at the Theatre of Dreams would do well not to forget the their history.

First appeared in the Irish Examiner on December 23, 2011

ON Sunday morning, many of us will be woken by electronic bleeps and whirrs as new computer-powered gadgets and toys are plugged in, charged up and used for the first time.

But in a world unmarked by Xboxes, the analogue sounds of Christmases past, soundtracked December 25.

Think Meccano pieces clicking, bike wheels turning or – if you were lucky – plastic footballer figures clacking against a disproportionally large ball.

“So, you’re the man exploring the underbelly of Irish table football,” says national champion Mark Farrell as he picks up the phone in Dublin, having been warned I was to call.

I imagine he’s wearing a crown and sitting on a throne with a branded green felt pitch at his feet after his latest All-Ireland victory.

The 33-year-old is at the centre of a ‘resurgence’ in the game in recent years. He and like-minded individuals gather in parish halls, community centres, each others homes every week.

They roll out the pitch, set up the goals and flick-to-kick as the famous slogan went.

“The majority of the players these days would be guys who remember the game from their youth and they’ve probably grown up with the game. There’s a quantity of junior players still but the vast majority would be in their 20s and 30s.

“These fellas remember the game from their youth – these fellas with XBoxes and Playstations are growing up with those games. They don’t really have an affiliation with table football, you know, and its harder for them to get into it.

“I started playing about 20 years ago when I was about 12 or 13. And it was a big association then. The 90s would have been the heyday then around the game Europe. I played for about five or six years and then I stopped, went  off to college and everything else became more important.

“And then I came back to it when I turned about 30. Like a lot of guys.”

John Moore is one of the reasons the game is on the up again despite the fact that – to paraphrase the late Apple chief Steve Jobs – there’s probably an app for that.

“I started playing when I was about eight years of age, he says. “I encouraged all the friends to play as well, we would have leagues, cups, World Cups and play the old Division One in England with transfers, suspensions, sending offs, injuries.  It was the first version of [computer game] Championship Manager I suppose.

“I had received email a couple of years ago and decided to enter a team in the world cup in Birmingham.  That’s where it all started off again.  Since that tournament , Irish players have travelled to about 10 countries playing in about 40 competitions in the last eight years.”

You might remember punk band Half Man Half Biscuit and their hit song: All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit. It conveyed brilliantly the longing felt by Subbutteo enthusiasts for the extensive collection of paraphernalia that came hand-in-hand with enjoying the game.

“Ah yeah, that used to be a huge thing and that’s what got kids into it years ago,” says Farrell.
“You wanted to have the Liverpool or the Man U side but truthfully nowadays the supplier Waddingtons don’t make it anymore.

“The stuff isn’t available anymore in the high street – you used to be able to buy every little item – from replica World Cups trophies, the goals, advertising hoarding – every nook and cranny. But nowadays it’s mostly Ebay, there’s a lot of sellers out there and you buy teams and start from scratch and build up from there.”

Both table football exponents admit their hobby – (quick fact: Subbutteo comes from the Latin word for hobby) – leaves them open to a ‘slagging’.

“That’s the thing. At time you did get a bit of a slagging and they hear you’re playing table football and they’re like : ah sure that’s a kids’ game, what are you doing still playing that? But I think when people check out the website and they see what’s involved, their eyes are opened.

“When they see you’ve won a national title or whatever, they take you a little bit more seriously and realise there’s a bit of structure to it. We’re just not blokes in our 20s and 30s flicking a ball around a table.”

• Email irishtablefootball@hotmail.com for more details 

“Keep the finger on the trigger, it’s just the slightest movement, there’s no need to squeeze it. You’re jumping away, you’re doing this,” Baldwin, a Paralympian, jerks his index finger towards the palm of his hand.

“Barely move it when you’re ready. Stop moving your finger. Nice and easy.”  Whoosh – the air rifle arrows a bullet towards – I hope – a bulls-eye, which is worth 10.9 in competition.

“Okay…. 3.2,” says Baldwin.

Baldwin came to be standing here, via many bends in the road. An army man, he’s competed in two Military Games, three Military World Championships, three Military European Championships and an Orientation World Championships.

He has also lost a leg while in the uniform.

Now he shoots in both able-body and Paralympic shooting events and aims to be the country’s first-ever shooter at a Paralympic Games in London next year.  He doesn’t usually miss his targets.

“We were out in Liberia, I was deployed in November 2003,” he recalls before filing the bullets into his rifle. “And we were on patrol after being there for about a week and had a car accident. And the driver was killed.

“I broke every bone in my body. Crushed my skull, shoulders, ribs, broke my pelvis. Broke my legs – I didn’t actually lose it though.

“Unfortunately my injuries were so bad, they had to get me home within a certain period of time. And they said the only way to make me stable was to cut my leg off; that was below the knee.

“So, I lost my leg below the knee, was in a coma then after I got back and my body just collapsed really. My lungs stopped working and unfortunately I got that flesh eating disease and, so, they had cut above the knee then.

“It took about six week before I could come off the ventilator; my lungs wouldn’t work. But once I got them working I got to where I am now. Everything followed then.”

Whoosh! “4.1, you’re getting better.”

It’s my first time feeling the weight and weird power of a gun under my chin. And the sharpshooter to my left under a visor and beneath a special shooting uniform, once lifted one up for the first time too.

“Eight years ago i actually met a guy in the military who was trying to introduce this kind of shooting. He was just trying to get some guys interested in it I suppose.

“So I jumped up off the bleachers one day, had one shot and then I had to leave. But I met him six months later and I got into it.

“Not long after I qualified for European Championships. Then unfortunately then I had to go to Africa and I lost my leg.”

“Are they expensive? That’s about two thousand in your hands there. Hey, hey! 7.4… one more?”

Baldwin is at the top of his game. He has won several nationals, competes against all-comers international over four separate events. So what’s the key to reaching the top of this sport? Try, dealing with nerves.

“Butterflies? Without a doubt. Everyone gets them. It’s how you handle the butterflies.

“Everyone gets the nerves, the bit of shaking, the whole lot. It’s how you relax into it. And whoever relaxes the best is the guy who wins it. That’s just the way it is.

“In the air rifle prone there’s a young lady from Australia. She’s 58-years-of-age. On her 12th Olympics. She shot a world record in Spain and she still has another Olympics in her.

“The beauty about this sport is, you don’t have to be 20, it’s great though if you do start young, because you need about 10 years until you reach the top level.”

“You’re getting worse, zero. come on you can’t finish on that.”

Baldwin admits his new leg makes his passion that bit more difficult especially dragging the gear around on his own a lot of the time. But he was grateful to pull on the fatigues again and return to his day job.

“I’m back to work full time, no worries with the health” he says, “I work in logistics – I had to change tack a little – in the Training Centre in the Curragh.

“I don’t go overseas now, because of the conditions being so difficult in that part of Africa, the prosthetic leg I have wouldn’t work properly. The one I have is computerised and it just wouldnt work, y’know?” he shrugs.

“But now we’re back in the Leb, you never know. I’d go back in the morning for you. My last your in the Leb was ‘92. So it would be good to go back and see what’s changed.

“It’s all about balance not strength at all. you’re using your muscle, that’s the problem… Nice one, seven.”

adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

THEY say everyone has a book in them. Paddy Coyne dragged it out kicking and screaming.

Unemployment arrives at the door with plenty of baggage. Lots of us know it all too well these days. For the 35-year-old, Coyne, opportunity knocked too, however.

The north Tipperary man no longer filled his days on the floor at a factory. Instead he cracked open his laptop and wrote his first novel The Drinker with a Hurling Problem. When no-one would publish it, he did so himself.

The book, on the surface, is about someone who returns to the homeplace for one final lash at the junior title with the local club. It’s about a lot more besides, one suspects.

“I suppose I was trying to have a conversation with myself about why I played hurling and became so obsessive about it over the years,” Coyne — who played junior hurling, but ‘was never any good’ — tells me.

“It worked to an extent in that I got those feelings down on paper in a structured way. The story isn’t completely auto-biographical, but it certainly does reflect how I feel about hurling. An old axiom suggests that writers write about the one thing that bothers them so much they have no choice, but to write about it.

“One day I came across something that Maurice Mitchell had said in 1973 — ‘not enough young men and women arrived in university without ever having shipped a punch in the nose’. That really struck a chord with me and got me thinking about writing a book about the GAA. In Ireland now we have this excruciating problem whereby every man and his family seem to be run like a private company.

“Our sense of community is being diluted. And, I think the GAA matters more now because the old certainties of rural life no longer hold. That, I suppose, is the point I was trying to get across, that the GAA can still help a man to find a sense of himself.”

Having read the opening pages however this is no Fáilte Ireland, soft-focus clip through an idealised rural Ireland. Put it this way, if it’s ever adapted into a movie, Cillian Murphy rather than James Nesbitt will play the lead.

It’s a long way from the silver screen now admittedly. Coyne, the sound of slamming doors ringing still in his ears, took a punt and published it.

“I sent off a draft of the book to several mainstream publishers and was, as I expected to be honest, roundly rejected. I then turned my attention to self-publishing. I wrote the book for myself, as an exercise in self therapy if you like, so I was never banking on making a lot of money off it. But since I had written the damn thing I reckoned that I should try to make people aware of its existence.

“Self-publishing is easy enough and free which is always nice. With Amazon you can quite easily piece together a physical book and an eBook. It’s ridiculously easy to be honest. Once you have that accomplished the idea is to market it. I have not made much progress with that, but am hopeful that a couple of reviews, whether good or bad, might help it to get some traction in the market.”

And though the market may be crowded, Coyne — who devours sports book obsessively — isn’t impressed with those present. That perceived lack of quality in sports writing, on this side of the Atlantic particularly, prompted him to add another spine to a tower of books.

“I suppose I have been frustrated with the sports books I have read over the past few years. None have really come close to capturing what it is like for someone to play with a less than glamorous hurling team or with any hurling team for that matter. I don’t know if I have managed to capture it in the book, but at least I have given it a go. Some GAA books are fairly insulting efforts. A child could do a better job with a crayon.”

So now the cruel world can judge his effort too. Though he may not be in the parish if and when his tale of local rivalry and universal themes finds its audience.

“I’m not sure what I am going to do with myself now,” he answers when I enquire to his situation.

“Emigration is an obvious option. Personally, I don’t think I’m good enough a writer to make a living out of it, but I really enjoyed writing the book and might try something more mainstream next time round.”

* You can buy the eBook (€2.99) or a physical copy (€9.99). Both can be ordered off Amazon.com, search for ‘The Drinker with the Hurling Problem’.

* Email: adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first apepared in the Irish Examiner ion October 14.

Having shuffled in from under another cloud-scarred sky of an evening, I enjoy kicking closed the door, sending the kettle towards its whistle-stop and snapping open a book like an umbrella.

Bob Dylan explained once that A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall was written during the dark days of the Cuban Missile Crisis and enjoyed a unique journey into existence.

“Every line in it is the start of a whole new song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn’t have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one,” he shrugged many years after Kennedy and Kruschev steered us away from catastrophe.

I often think the same about all the books that are stacked high beside my bed in a mocking pile of uncreased spines; maybe I should read the first line of each… just in case.

One book, long since purchased on the recommendation of several colleagues on the Irish Examiner sports desk, has been keeping the cold from the threshold — or the storm raging at my door as Dylan would say. Let me pass on the recommendation; Kevin Mitchell’s Jacobs Beach.

Journalism is, we are told early and often, about the who, what, where, why and how.

Well this book is about the Mob, professional boxing, Madison Square Garden and money. But the ‘how’ unfolds happily over a couple of hundred pages in sweat, blood and whisky-stained detail.

Stop someone on the street this afternoon and ask them who the heavyweight champion of the world is today and most would rub their necks before shaking their heads in surrender.

But there was a time when names like Marciano and Clay were filed under household.

When today boxing fights are dressed in the garb of a pantomime, introduced and hyped in the language of the school yard and boasting all the intellectual heft of your average celebrity-filled gossip- magazine, there was actually a time when fights meant more.

The epic duology in the late 30s between the black American Joe Louis and the German Max Schmeling was widely regarded as a crude, intriguing metaphor for the looming struggle between democracy and fascism. Ali v Frazier echoed with racial connotations. There was more on the line than David Haye’s pride.

Dust off the romance of course and it’s clear that boxing’s heart did not beat true. In New York it was in the 50s that the mob really took over, easing out relatively respectable figures like the Irish-Jewish promoter Mike Jacobs, who had run the Garden venue for decades.

More sinister winds blew through the game with the mafia tightening a happy grip on the sports own mechanism, the International Boxing Club.

The sport’s honesty was on the canvas and it ‘haemorrhaged so much credibility’, writes Mitchell, ‘that it almost died of shame’.

Forgive the hyperbole, but you’d feel the same is happening now, watching Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather sometimes. I’ve personally long been a fan but Saturday night was embarrassing.

Mayweather Jr — one of the totems of the modern fight game — knocked out Victor Ortiz in boxing’s new garden, Las Vegas. He did so, you’ll probably know, with a highly controversial one-two that’s been tarred as the most inexpensive of cheap shots. I reckon it was Ortiz’s fault for not having his hands up — but the real showdown was after the bell anyway.

An 80-year-old boxing commentator Larry Merchant climbed through the ropes to ask Mayweather Jr about the fight’s inglorious denouement. With the questions feeling like jabs and the crowd’s boos growing louder, Mayweather lost it for the second time.

When he told the stunned HBO man that he knew ‘shit about boxing’, Merchant replied with a laugh: “I wish I was 50 years younger and I’d kick your ass.”

Mayweather and Ortiz are likely to meet in a re-match. One hopes that Merchant gets his too.

adrianjrussell@gmail.comTwitter: @adrianrussell
This column first appeared in the Examiner on Friday, Sept 23.