A golden weekend, that, Tricolours all aflutter, thrice us asked to “be upstanding for the national anthem of Ireland”, Amhrán na bhFiann played as many times as the number of fingernails left on the hands of Arsenal fans come Sunday afternoon.
So, take a bow Rhys McClenaghan, Shannon Sweeney and Aoife O’Rourke. Or “Ife”, “I-fa” and “Eeef” as the announcers in Belgrade dubbed the O’Rourke woman, leaving you fretting for them if we ever send, say, a Meadhbh Ó Muircheartaigh to boxing’s European Championships.
Apart from the odd pay-per-view fight, boxing, outside of the Olympics, can, of course, be a rare enough sight on our telly screens these days. Rowing too, which is all a bit odd seeing as our harvest of medals from these two sports is oft bountiful. And we are, after all, medal junkies.
So it was to YouTube we had to go to see Shannon and Eeef do their gold medal-winning thing, the lack of a commentator in both finals allowing us hear every grunt and groan. And that’s not appreciated on this couch, the preference being for a very excitable, ear-piercing voice that drowns out the sound effects and sanitises the entire viewing experience.
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Our gymnastics commentator Olly Hogben did just that when Rhys was whirling himself about the place in Rimini. Olly also proved to be the king of the most seamless of links. Like when Georgia’s Levan Skhiladze completed his routine.
“They say that the city of Tbilisi exists because of its thermal springs, that King Vakhtang Gorgasali built his capital there after hunting in the fifth century ... and with his score of 14.233 points, Skhiladze is just out of the hunt for a medal.” Quality, that, with a history lesson thrown in.
And when Rhys was done and dusted, that hint of a smile suggesting he was quite content with his day’s work, Olly even recited an ode to him, quoting Rosemary Jenkinson’s poem in his honour, which was written for Poetry Day Ireland.
“He slaps the horse’s hide
Into plumes of white floury chalk
As his hands pirouette on the smallest stage,
His skin patting the leather
Until he grips the pommels, and feet
Pointed like a ballerina in the air,
He spins, scissors, spindles and flares
AND HE HAS GONE INTO THE GOLD MEDAL POSITION!!!”
That seemed like an improbable and rather loud conclusion to such an elegant poem. Olly owned up. “Rosemary didn’t write that last line, but Rhys McClenaghan has just written himself in to the record books again!” See what he did there?
To be honest, the only way here to seamlessly link Rhys in Rimini to Dónal Óg Cusack in the Gaelic Grounds is to suggest that Dónal Óg’s tummy might have been doing Triple Russians, Spindles and Magyars in advance of the Cork hurlers playing Clare.
But there he was, like Anthony Daly on punditry duty far from Páirc Uí Chaoimh. “Loads to look forward to today, great games,” he said, “but have to say, there’s too many of them on – you almost feel like there’s a Cork and a Clare person being held hostage here to watch Galway v Kilkenny when Cork and Clare is on.”
Try watching Donegal v Tyrone and Spurs v Arsenal, as well as the hurling, all at the same time. That’s when you become a hostage to fortune, the channel-hopping guaranteeing you’ll miss every key moment.
Galway and Kilkenny drew, but when Joanne Cantwell asked her pundits to analyse the game, there was a notion that Ursula Jacob was the only one of them who had actually watched the encounter, Dónal Óg and Anthony most probably glued to GAAGO for its duration.
To add to the mayhem: the north London derby. Over on Sky, Paul Merson was all a-tremble after Arsenal held on to beat Spurs, having seen a 3-0 lead reduced to 3-2. “It coulda gone all peared,” said Merse, whose grunts and groans in those final moments would have been heard in the Gaelic Grounds.
Which is where the Limerick hurlers put on a display of the golden kind against Tipp. This time, Dónal Óg was watching. “Any smell of vulnerability is wafted away, on they go, and I tell ya – they’re a pleasure to watch.”
That they are. “With one last swing of the hips ... traces the shape of yet another All-Ireland medal ... and handstands into a land of blind belief.” With sincere apologies to Rosemary Jenkinson for the adaptation.
