IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:While boys remember the finer statistics of pitch sports, girls just seem to love ponies, writes ADAM BROPHY.
IF I WERE NINE I’d have put away my tennis racket post Wimbledon, be kicking a ball against a wall post Leinster final, and all the time I’d be anticipating pitching golf balls along a beach in advance of the Open. I’d meet my friends. We’d discuss who was buying who cross-Channel.
I can only imagine the incendiary, pre-pubescent boy conversations with regard to Ferguson’s dive for Michael Owen. From, “What was he thinking? The bulbous buffoon”, to “The man’s a genius, he sees into the future. Owen will have the season of his life.”
Every sports commentary written this summer will have been preceded by the thoughts of small boys playing “Curbs” with grimy footballs throughout estates in every county in Ireland. If you need to know anything about sport, ask an average boy aged between nine and 11. Forget The Sunday Game panel, Peter Alliss, John McEnroe, Ronnie Whelan and Kenny Cunningham. Keep Giles and Dunphy for their looks alone.
But I have girls and they don’t have the same drive for amassing statistics and examining a professional football player’s genuine instinct for success. They tend not to care about newly launched, re-styled boots, racquets or clubs. Instead, they like ponies. Now, the elder really, really likes ponies. She has the younger practising rising trot on the back of the couch a year in advance of the time she will actually set arse on one. This week, because we were travelling on the day the elder would usually have her lesson, we had to schedule an extra class to appease her tragic disappointment. I fight the constant requests for one of her own yet still encourage her interest, lying that she’ll get one when she’s older. Yes, lying. It’s not going to happen because of the expense, because of the care involved, because of the potential hazards for child and beast.
Mainly, though, it’s not going to happen because I don’t get it. Equestrian sports? Come on, they’re not really sports at all, bouncing around on snorting, carrot-munching, pooing- while-walking creatures. Just doesn’t have the same panache as hitting a ball into a net with a stick or running aimlessly for miles at a time a lot slower than everybody else. Silly horses. They cost a lot of money and will some day kick you in the head. When Cian O’Connor had his Olympic medal stripped away, did anyone really care? It wasn’t like it was for anything important.
I tread carefully in dismissing horseriding, having a sibling so involved in equestrian endeavours she would, if granted one wish, transmogrify into a horse. She loves her mare like a baby, and the intensity of her feelings for these former farm animals has passed on to her niece. I would not want to offend either, but I don’t get it. If I have to travel on something that uncomfortable, I want to arrive somewhere spectacular. Not back in the stable yard I just left. No, don’t get it.
We nearly had a breakthrough to a real sport with Wimbledon. The elder, for the first time, showed a level of interest in competition on the telly box. She got quite into the ladies’ final, roaring on Serena against Venus. But, after a while, she and the younger, distracted from the action, entered into sport word games. Despite my descriptions of the delicacy of a floated backhand, their predilections for all things bum-related shone through and they preferred to chant “Venus and Anus” at the screen and roll on the floor laughing. Then along came Federer and Roddick with the longest match in history that cared not a jot for the juniors’ diminished concentration span. By 12-12 in the fifth the kids were dragging us doorwards for an unheard-of walk in the drizzle. Strike potential tennis pros from the family future.
The elder does go to football every Monday night at the brand new, shining, sparkling local home of the GAA. No sign of pecuniary difficulties there. I watch sometimes. She has mastered predicting which path the ball will take in their practice games, and moving lithely elsewhere. She likes to pull on the synthetic jersey, shorts and socks and appreciates the look of her Puma boots. But engage in the game? No. Not yet. Still, she goes every week. I think to practise her cartwheels with a blonde girl while the action takes place at the far end of the pitch. The blonde girl is apparently “very good at cartwheels” and is teaching the elder to up her rotation speed.
Ponies and cartwheels on football pitches. Can’t see much silverware there. Will have to get the younger in the gym, the elder is beyond help.