I went to see comedy’s own David O’Doherty in the Pavilion, here in Cork, on Saturday night.

Despite the former Perrier winner not remembering meeting my friends and I in 2004 in a field in Laois, it was a ridiculously enjoyable evening of laughter/muzak. Here’s his ode to the world’s greatest golfer/love-maker.

To paraphrase one of Ronald Reagan’s White House advisors, speaking during a particularly stressful political stand-off, Eli Manning is an NFL quarter back so chilled out he sometimes endures sleepless afternoons.

Thanks to this calm demeanour, a chronscopic arm and a thimble of good fortune, he managed to drive the unfashionable New York Giants to an unlikely and famous Super Bowl victory in the 2007 season.

Pulling off vivid cartoon comic-book displays against monochrome backdrops in places like sub-zero Green Bay and Buffalo, the usually affable Manning insisted his young fiancee sit outside on the backside-numbing bleachers — rather than in the toasty corporate players’ box. For luck, you understand.

A slightly-embarrassed Manning explained when asked: “I’m not superstitious; I’m little-stitious”.

After the stinging defeat in Paris almost two weeks ago, tomorrow’s game in Twickenham against a resurgent England takes on — if this were possible for a showdown with the Auld Enemy — yet more consequence. And God knows our little-stitious rugby stars may need every bit of luck we can rub together, deep behind enemy lines.

Donncha O’Callaghan will carefully choose a new pair of stockings from a pile of fresh laundry the height of a medium-sized human child tonight. They’ll then be packed — by someone else — in a bag before the LateLate show. Ritual. Ritual. Ritual.

Other members of the playing staff will avoid the otherwise-popular David Wallace. Like the special breed of fainting goats that farmers in South America strategically keep with their more prized cattle, ‘Wally’ goes deathly quiet when a predator is on the horizon. He’s getting in the zone.

Meanwhile, back in the real world where the likes of you and I pack our own dirty socks into an old Roches Stores plastic bag before heading to the gym (just me?), fans are doing their bit for the ceremony of a big-game build-up and committing to tape their heartfelt team talks, which the squad view before kick-off.

One personal favourite features a ruddy-faced, unshaven gentleman under a woolly hat. This guy is the living embodiment of Yeats’s idealised Irishman depicted in The Fisherman. Fittingly, his speech is pure poetry.

In comparison, Al Pacino’s Game of Inches call-to-arms sounds like the automated voice on the Luas Red Line. A soaring lyric employing every rhetorical device seen in great political oration, by it’s climax I launch a wild Flannery-like swipe at the dog as if he’s a French winger, while the evocative music swells yet more.

(Incidentally, World Cup-winning England head coach Clive Woodward appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs last Sunday. His music choices were, quite frankly, a thundering disgrace and should fill every Irish heart with optimism. Ronan Keating. Take That. 90s euro pop, which he explained evoked memories of Lawrence Dallaglio dancing on the team bus. Is this what they listen to in the home dressing room at Twickers while Paul O’Connell is throwing a rake of f***s into the lads? The Fear of God speech versus ‘Life is a Roller Coaster’? I know which foxhole, I’d prefer to be in tomorrow.)

Another clip shows a guy recalling the one occasion he witnessed his father crying; not at his wedding, not at his sister’s wedding, he says. But ‘when YOU Rog stuck that drop goal last year in Cardiff’. Your dad didn’t wait 60-odd years for his son to get married though, in fairness.

Eli Manning doesn’t have to ponder long on when the last time he saw his big brother cry.
The Indianapolis Colts’ Peyton is considered one of the best QBs ever to play the game, as Martin Johnson — a massive gridiron fan — will well know.

The Colts play with horseshoes — superstition’s touchstone — on their helmets but their luck had bolted by the time Peyton realised he had thrown away the Super Bowl last month against his hometown team of New Orleans.

With the blue-hot favourites driving in the final minutes for a game-tying touchdown, Peyton drilled a ball into the waiting arms of a Saint, who returned for a touchdown. Game over, Ger. And so the world’s greatest week big-game hype – with all its pomp and festooned ritual – came to a shuddering stop for one side.

Another set of Manning brothers — the ever-popular showband greats from Leeside — might have sung: let the heartaches begin. But let’s hope that’s an English tune tomorrow.

Email: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first appeared in this morning’s Irish Examiner newspaper.

This was the view from my hotel room in Ballsbridge last weekend (after the Examiner v Indo game).

The new Aviva – or The Palindome as we’re calling it around here – looks like it’s gonna be an amazing new home for Irish football and rugby. And Michael Buble.

Damien Duff will this morning unpack a suitcase in his London pad after leaving the Ireland camp, on the back of a 10-day stint away from home, to rejoin his new team-mates at Fulham.

If a week is a long time in football, as the truism rings, then a week-and-a-half on the road for an international double-header must feel like an eternity. I attempted to find out just what the Ballyboden native and his Irish roomies do for entertainment on trips stamped in green. And I decided to have this chat over a game of Tomy Super Cup Football.

For those wretches unfamiliar with the joy that is Tomy Soccer, as we knew it, I must explain that it was the pinnacle of sporting gaming in the 1980s. Produced by the Japanese toy giants (the now-faded box features a picture of Graeme Sharp in his Eveton blue jossling with Manchester United’s be-mulleted Arthur Albiston) it features two teams of tiny (and fragile) players who are moved up and down using levers, striking the ball with a flat paddle attached to their base.

If American presidents and supreme court judges face the crude litmnus test of the abortion debate, we children of the 80s divided all men into two groups; Tomy Soccer and Subbuteo.

Duff’s languid style and magician’s trunk of tricks betrays a flick-to-kick merchant, and he eyes suspiciously the battered cardboard box. I try to sound confident in challenging a talented, millonaire football star to a showdown, in an empty room, on a tiny, mechanised pitch. “Go on then,” he says, “Let’s have a game.”

Tension builds in the famous old stadium, as the two teams line up
Subbuteo was a game designed for the decade’s New Romantics; Tomy was a game played by skinned-headed boot-boys with Madness patches sewn to jackets. In contrast to the Highbury-like silence the other code is played in, here, the players fizz up and down the field spinning and whirring amid an impressive racket. This is because the game is battery-powered; it makes interviewing one of our great sports starts a challenge.

I do turn off the machine however, to impress on a bemused-looking Duff, the one rule of Tomy: do not talk about Tomy. No, actually, it’s: if the ball leaves the arena – which they are wont to do – then turn off the switch, immediately, get on your hands and kness and find the missing piece. Only then may the game re-start. This was a lesson learnt the hard way by many an enthusiast who was forced to compete with rolled up Blu-Tack.

Irish Examiner goes one-nil up as Duff left reeling.
The mood, as they say, in the camp, was upbeat despite some early Duff pressure as he quickly found his groove, despite not playing in years, he admits. But then the Fulham winger was hit with a sucker-punch as a well-worked move down the left flank isn’t dealt with and as I have forgotten to tell him his goalkeeper control is behind the goal, I dispatch a crisp centre to the penalty box area. Get in.

Though he hasn’t packed any games – Liam Lawrence admitted this week that he and his Stoke team-mates play online war simulations nightly – Duff folded away a few DVDs and an iPod for the trip to Dublin, then Cyprus before hitting the base in Tipperary ahead of last night’s Thomond Park fixture.

And despite perceptions of Premier League footballers, his taste in music, I reckon, is good. “I pack an iPod, like everyone else, and yeah it’s important to prepare for these stints away but we’re all well used to it now I suppose. What have I got on the mp3? I’m into this band at the moment – Florence and the Machine? Well, I think they’re the big thing at the moment aren’t they.”

When I tell him I’ll be forgoing watching him take on Cyprus to attend the Electric Picnic, when Florene Welsh and her band will draw as big a crowd as Nicossia’s GSP Stadium, he admits it’d be nice to one day be able to get to gigs and festivals. “They’ll be good at the Picnic, I’d say; I’ve never been. The music scene in London is obviously amazing and I like to take advantage but I wouldn’t say it was exactly a motive for a move back there, no,” he deadpans when I ask, distractedly.

Duff controversially grabs equaliser to set up dramatic finale
As the play stretches a bit and chances start to materialise for both teams, Duff paints a picture of life in the team hotel. Now one of senior members of the panel, he rooms on his own these days. “I bring a few DVDs too on these trips and it’s good to have a bit of your own time during the week,” says the former Chelsea player, who was encouraged to sleep as much as possible by then-boss Jose Mourinho.

“I’m into this American series, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, Entourage?” Have you seen the newest season (currently running on HBO stateside)? “Like a pirates version you mean? I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

As I’m pondering the similarities between World Cup Qualifying Group 8 and a tale of firendship in the cut-throat Hollywood world, Duff takes advantage of some confusion when the spare ball, sensationally, gets on the pitch and he cruelly equalises late on. “Next goal wins!” we both half-shout.

Last-gasp winner brings curtain down on inaugural tournament. Stop press.
The clock ticks down and the pace is frentetic. Any hopes of an in-depth interview are abandoned as we both sit in silence – apart from the industrial burr of the game – and play with furrowed brows, hunched over a 20-year old Japanese toy. I get the feeling Duff might hit the hay after this epic battle.

“The sleep thing is funny, I’m not the worst by a long shot really,” argues the 30-year-old, “I’ll name names; Andy O’Brien, for one. He’s not about at the moment but when he was in the sqaud he was a lot, lot worse than me for the sleep.”

And then, as I hit the snooze button in defence, Duff latches onto a loose ball in midfield and hits a specualtive drive that I let reach his forward who tucks it in the corner. Game over. Duff sits back smiling, despite himself. I collapse onto the game like a widow on a coffin. Gutted.

But there’s not many can say they experienced Duff smack-talk. “You’d better put that back in your press for another 10 years,” comes the cruel sledge as a slide the machine away. We had agreed I’d play as Italy beforehad, whereas he, of course, was Ireland. Let’s hope it’s an omen.

And then I leave, head bowed, box tucked under my arm, to prepare for my game of Hungry Hippos with Mr Trapattoni.

This column first appeared in the Irish Examiner in Spetember 2009.
Love the column? Hate the column? Have a suggestion? Contact: Adrian.Russell@examiner.ie or Twitter: @adrianrussell

I sadly enough watched some of the anemic NBA All-Star game last weekend where one of the highlights of the celebrities’ court performances was the tigerish defending from hip-hop heavyweight Common.

I missed, however, the undisputed high-point, above, as it occured during a time-out and wasn’t televised.

In short, Benny the Bull – Chicago’s outgoing mascot – decided, quite reasonably, to perform the Single Ladies dance in front of Beyonce’s husband Jay-Z who was sitting court-side with his pal, P Diddy. They weren’t amused. Check it out from 40 seconds in.

The Irish Examiner and The Sunday Business Post newsrooms will at last unite for a game versus Independent Media this Saturday for the victims of Haiti’s recent earthquake.

It’s 2pm kick-off at the famous Tolka Park (after Bohs boss Pat Fenlon scuppered our plans for the more famous Dalymount Park earlier this week).

All welcome, details here.

UPDATE: Hold the back page: the game ended 2-2, with well over €4000 raised for Haven’s efforts in Haiti. The Examiner lot one the dance off however.