It’s the awards season to be jolly and sickly-sweet, self-congratulatory goodwill has been indulged to bursting point.
So for health's sake, it's no harm to have a South Park-style purge by introducing some roughage to this saccharine diet – a little Christmas pooh-pooh to remind everyone of those smelly Mr Hankeys that'll still be there in the new year.
Like how Gaelic football will still be the same yawn-fest in 2018 it has been since entertainment was binned as unnecessary by sideline Generalissimos fixated on their own tactical twerking.
It’s not necessary to be a throwback to acknowledge how football now is peculiarly joyless. It has advanced to mostly become a fearful, cynical, win-at-all-costs non-spectacle. Only cheerleaders can argue that such advancement is an improvement, for those playing or watching.
As for those fervent hurling missionaries proclaiming the ancient game’s virtues to the world, why not look at home first.
There are 10 sides in the 2018 senior championship and half of them haven’t a chance of winning it. Hurling is Irish sport’s equivalent of reading Ulysses: part of the shtick flogged to foreigners but how many actually get round to seriously trying it. Sell it to Sligo before aiming at America.
Rugby is taking a short break from getting its knickers in a twist over players opting to go abroad.
So it’ll be more indulgent fare for a while, such as eternal clubhouse soul-of-the-game contemplation, or implementing various obscure rule tweaks which everyone affects to understand, maybe even continuing to pretend the provinces are more than just football clubs.
They’re certainly more comfortable topics than the vital existential one firmly in front of the game – what parent can be happy letting their little Johnny or Joanna actually play rugby?
If soccer is getting sweaty about letting kids get long-term brain damage from heading the ball, what sort of health warnings have yet to be fired at a game which increasingly consists of protein-binged behemoths colliding into each other like gym-ripped sea-elephants.
Suffering concussions
Schoolboy players suffering concussions isn’t a rarity anymore. And as more and more evidence emerges of long-term consequences from repeated blows to the head, surely only the most old-school of ties can pretend to ignore the potential consequences.
There’s a lot to like about Irish rugby right now. The national team is genuinely world class. Professionalism is helping break some of the game’s more naff cartoons. It’s just a lot of us are terrified of letting our kids play it. And that’s a pretty basic fear.
There’s no fear for Irish soccer’s self-regard though. We mightn’t be going to Russia in the summer but the World Cup will still be about us.
Certainly if Denmark win a game, it'll provoke wild speculation on how world standards are shot, the quarters are easily reachable and once there it's only a couple of games from the final – we could have won it, for F--- Sake, if it wasn't for O'Neill and his blackguarding of the Blessed Wes.
It’s a narrative as predictable as it is delusional. Only a third-rate soccer power like Ireland, with a fourth division domestic league, can demand first-world results from second-rate players. There’s a certain reassurance in the self-obsession though.
It’s also reassuring that every twitch of Roy Keane’s beard will keep being parsed for meaning in 2018, the meaning of ‘passion’ and ‘legend’ will continue to be gelded to irrelevance by hack merchants, and the fallout from Pat Hickey’s Olympic reign will linger like a bad smell.
We’re going to have to tolerate the MMA for another while too because Conor McGregor – fast becoming the oldest adolescent in town – is shaping like he still hasn’t got enough money or attention.
The vacuous urge to portray sport as some morality test where only the virtuous win will continue to be indulged – hello, Ronaldo? Greyhounds will still supposedly enjoy the taste of pretend plastic bunnies. Track & Field will pretend its winning the fight on drugs. And cycling mightn’t bother.
Public affection for golf will continue to slip-slide away, its tempo out of synch with the frantic pace of life. That its biggest attraction is still a creaky has-been, or that its most identifiable fan is the yellow chancer in the White House, hardly helps its Generation Z credibility.
Stay away
Racing is as secure in enjoying unprecedented levels of success as it is insecure about the lack of public acknowledgement it feels to be its due.
But this is the same game that for the 2017 Derby at the Curragh was so deaf to tone to public opinion it pulled off a sporting first – warning people to stay away.
Because of a rebuild the track could only hold 6,000. But instead of switching its shop-window event up the road to Leopardstown, the Derby stayed at the Curragh, on a building site, with tents for stands, like a point to point with a few extra frills.
It was a stunning display of insularity. So too is the arrogance in wondering why people who’ve been treated as an irrelevance may be wary about queuing up to applaud on cue. And it really is going to happen all over again in 2018.
So will agonising about the lack of attention given to minority sports when the hint is in the word – ‘minority’.
There will be endless coverage of the latest ‘furore’ on social media, supposedly on the basis that its current when the real ‘c’ word is cheap. When no one is able to properly explain the outlandish they’ll fool no one by simply using ‘freak’. And then there’s ‘war’ which should never, ever be used in relation to sport.
It may be the season to be jolly but there’s a still a hell of a hangover lurking. Howdy-Ho everybody!
