The Last Straw/Frank McNally: For many people, the end of the European soccer season is an annual crisis. Among sporting ecumenists, the void it leaves is filled by the start of the GAA championships and the hope - now springing up everywhere, like giant hogweed - that this could be your county's year.
But if you're from Monaghan, like some of us, the void is not normally filled for long.
In a particularly cruel coincidence, the English Premiership season ends tomorrow at around 5 p.m.; and half and hour later, barring an act of god or freak atmospheric conditions in Clones, Monaghan will have been knocked out of the Ulster Championship by Armagh. Yes, there'll still be the "back-door" system to keep interest alive. But it would need a side-door system, French windows, and a cat-flap to get Monaghan into Croke Park this summer.
The soccer won't be completely finished tomorrow, of course. The closing chapters of the Champions League are still unfolding, and its switch to summer means the Irish soccer season is a newly-opened book (albeit one that some of us have already put down, and will have to force ourselves to pick up again). Yet by next Saturday, many football fans will take on a sad, moping appearance, as they flick to the teletext results from habit, and find nothing.
At times like this, you have to ask how your life depends for any of its meaning on a game that, viewed in a certain light, is absurd. The light was particularly vivid during Wednesday's Champions League semi-final, as AC Milan strove to press their home advantage at the San Siro, while Inter Milan sought a crucial "away" goal. Unfortunately, they share the stadium; so next week's second leg will be on the exact same pitch, only this time Inter will be at home and AC will be seeking the away goal, which counts double in a draw.
The absurdities of football are not confined to Milan. There was a thought-provoking letter in the Daily Telegraph recently about David Beckham's free-kick technique, regarded as a British national treasure, and the main reason he earns £95,000 a week. The writer asked why (oh why), faced with a Beckham free-kick, defenders persist in forming "walls" and then clutching their more vulnerable body parts, despite the fact that he invariably lifts the ball over their heads en route to goal. The only purpose served by the wall is to prevent the goalkeeper getting an early sight of the ball, which he sees for the first time just as the defenders, relieved to have been missed yet again, are relaxing the grip on their crotches. The letter writer suggested that if managers ordered defenders to stand on the goal-line instead, Beckham would never again score. Then (I'm embellishing the writer's point a little here) maybe he'd retire and stop annoying us.
While I'm on the subject of absurd free-kicks, defenders facing one from Real Madrid's Roberto Carlos have good reason to clutch their crotches, and maybe take out crotch insurance as well. Several years ago, Carlos bent a long-distance effort around a wall to score what, with the understatement for which football is famous, was dubbed the "free-kick of the century". Unfortunately, he's never managed to repeat it.
Great player that he is, his technique has the subtlety of a speeding truck. He takes a run-up like he's going for the world long-jump record and then hits the ball straight and very hard, rarely threatening anything other than the parenting potential of defenders in the wall. Yet his team-mates at Real Madrid, the most talented footballers on the planet, invariably let him take the long-distance free-kicks, a mystery on a par with how he ever bent the first one.
I'm tempted to say Einstein couldn't have explained that curve. But that would sound as ridiculous as a claim made after last weekend's West Ham-Chelsea match, when the home team's Steve Lomas said: "Shakespeare couldn't have written that script." He was referring to the winning goal by Paulo di Canio, who had just returned from internal exile, and who celebrated with a display of emotion that would have seemed excessive at the Palermo opera house.
Developing the theme of why Shakespeare could not have scripted the finish, Lomas said: "Paulo came on, had five touches, gave it away five times, and then gets the winner. What can you say?" On reflection, he's probably right: Shakespeare would have had Di Canio substituted after he gave the ball away five times. But I can't give a definitive opinion without reading all 37 plays. It'll give me something meaningful to do for the next three months.