TV VIEW:THE Daily Mashprobably had the right idea last week when, under the headline "Tragedy as 21-year-old earns £78,000 for four days work", it reported that "Britain was inconsolable" after Rory McIlroy "was forced to collect the best part of 80 grand for poking a stick around a field". (Ireland, it should be added, was a bit sad too).
It’s certainly one way of looking at it, as opposed to likening McIlroy’s Masters experience to, say, Pompeii’s mishap a few years back, and you’d love to think that he would see it that way too. But if he needs any consolation after the seven days he endured, he can always say to himself: “Well, at least I’m not Emmanuel Eboue.”
McIlroy will recover from his Augusta and Malaysian hiccups, of that we can be sure, but Eboue will probably be turfed out of his home after giving away that penalty to Liverpool in the 36th minute of added time yesterday, or whatever it was.
He will, though, always find a welcome at Old Trafford, where a statue of the fella is being erected.
Hopefully, though, Eboue won’t be hounded by the media. You know, when Sky News took a 30-second break last week from its interminable/riveting (take yer pick) royal pre-match wedding build-up to follow McIlroy through Heathrow on his return from America, such was the tone, you half expected them to blur his face just to save him from the shame of being identified.
He looked bemused by the whole business, as you would, enough to compel us to leave British television and flick over to CNN, just to get a break from the baloney.
Always, though, when we visit CNN, they’re telling us about the latest from the Asian Stock Market, but this time yer man on the screen was howling about “RoooOOOooRy’s MELTDOWN!!”. Jeez, no escape.
The fact he was calling him “Rory”, and not “McIlroy”, was an indication the fella has now moved in to “Tiger” (and not “Woods”) territory, a status he didn’t achieve when he was winning tournaments and proving there was magic in them there club-clutching hands.
That’s the way, though, place yerself at the centre of a sporting “tragedy” and your fame will know no bounds.
And a tragedy, while we’re on the subject, is what “Tony from Emmerdale” suffered at yesterday’s London Marathon.
“I was trying to become the fastest fairy in the world,” he told the BBC, after completing the course in, well, a fairy outfit. “But I’ve just learnt I missed out, I’m only the second fastest fairy in the world.”
It’s hard to know what to say to Tony at a time like that, other than: “Well, at least you’re not Emmanuel Eboue.”
Or Bolton.
“Five-0, it’s a rout, Bolton choke against Stoke,” as ESPN’s Poet Laureate Jon Champion put it yesterday during the a-touch- one-sided FA Cup semi-final.
With four Irish fellas in their line-up – Glenn Whelan, Rory Delap, Jon Walters and Marc Wilson (cripes, five if you include Jermaine O’Pennant) – it was a result that should have had us Ole-ing, and if they see off Manchester City in the final Leo Varadkar should, surely, arrange an open-top bus parade through the highways and byeways of Ireland.
“What a weapon he has,” Steve McManaman had said of Delap’s freakish throw-in before the game, an observation that had Robbie Savage rolling all over the Wembley pitch, while Kevin Keegan and Sam Allardyce exchanged marginally mortified glances.
“If you’ve got it, use it – any arsenal you have, get it out,” Steve continued, leaving Robbie very close to needing medical attention.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Delap’s weapon,” he wept, prompting Kev and Sam to call their agents in the hope there was a managerial vacancy somewhere. Anywhere.
By the time Robbie regained his composure, Delap and Stoke were 5-0 up. No one was happier than Jimmy Greenhoff, who had spoken to ESPN before the game about Stoke’s last FA Cup semi-final appearance in 1972.
He’d scored the opening goal, but Arsenal came back to win it. (God be with the days, you can here the Gooners sigh.)
“But Charlie George was 15 yards offside when he made the winner,” he said. “We were wearing white, and the story goes that the linesman thought an icecream seller in the crowd was one of our players.”
Back at the Emirates and Jamie Redknapp was expressing bewilderment at Arsene Wenger’s refusal to acknowledge that the Liverpool penalty was, indeed, a penalty.
“He’s in denial,” he gasped, after Wenger sort of intimated that Eboue thought Lucas was an icecream seller and, being in the mood for a raspberry ripple, inadvertently – but entirely legally – floored him in his unbridled excitement.
A disaster?
Well, not on the scale of, say, Pompeii, but in sporting terms, well, yes, a bit of a reversal.
But while we might worry about Emmanuel Eboue and Tony from Emmerdale, we’d be fairly sure Rory McIlroy will get over it. It’s called bouncebackability.
