About six weeks after the 9/11 attacks on the US, one of the news magazines – Time or Newsweek, can't remember which – ran a section headlined "Meanwhile, In The Rest Of The World". The idea was that since all their resources and all those of all the newspeople in the western world had been focused entirely on one thing, it was worth catching everyone up, however latterly, on the stories that hadn't so much slipped through the cracks as simply been ignored in their entirety. Apart from supplying actual news, it was a subtle reminder of the fact that the world keeps spinning even when it feels like it has stopped.
Anyway, at a wedding in Dublin last Friday evening we were milling around having a couple of post-ceremony, pre-dinner looseners when one of our party checked over both shoulders in case delicate ears were listening before venturing, “do you think we’ll get out to see the second half?”
As any sports fan cursed with having to exist in polite society knows, normally that’s as much as you’d have to ask – and definitely as much as you’d chance. Life in amongst the decent people demands a certain amount of coded language always, and my man presumed, not unreasonably, that he’d found a willing co-conspirator in someone who writes about sport for a living. It wasn’t the most complicated code to break either, in fairness – yet to his horror, all he got back in reply was a blank face.
"Second half of what?" I said, possibly an early-evening pint louder than I should have. Suddenly his eyes were wide and his mouth was dry and his face was screaming, "shut up you fool, you'll get us all killed". Luckily for us both the rest of the party were at least a sheet and a half closer to the wind than we were by this stage, and he was able to save us both being garrotted by our good ties by taking me by the elbow into a quiet corner and explaining that Munster were playing Cardiff in the Pro14.
Quiet second half
This was a lapse on my part, no question. What, after all, is the point of being out and child-free on a Friday night if you can’t slip off for a quiet second half of a match along the way? And ordinarily, I’d have been all over it like the sportswriter’s cheap suit I was wearing when the question was put. But these aren’t ordinary times.
It's this September business. That's the problem. Every September since forever September sport has been about the All-Ireland finals in hurling and football. Now that it isn't, I'm thrown for a loop. The ground is shaky underfoot. Every day feels like I'm back reading that (let's say) Newsweek piece in October 2001. Other stuff happens and continues to happen when you're not paying attention. Who knew?
Seriously, who knew they played rugby in September? I had heard rumours before but I presumed they were mostly pre-season friendlies and whatnot. But no, right enough, the hockeying Munster got on Friday night earned Cardiff not just a win but a bonus point. Any way you look at it, if there’s bonus points in the mix that’s actual rugby being played.
Same goes for the NFL. It's back, baby. Turns out, it's always back in early September. I always watched it knowing it was September, but somehow unknowing it at the same time.
The 2018 NFL season is so back that three teams have already fired their kickers. The eternally-cursed Browns are one of them, and on Thursday night they got their first win in two years with their second quarter-back of the season. Three games, two QBs and two kickers and it’s not even October.
When you live your life through sport, everything has a season and every season has its effect. The end of the GAA summer always dovetailed quite pleasingly with the other sports. It held September's attention just long enough for everything else to get up and running properly to ferry us through the autumn and winter. Then it got out of the way while the serious rugby loomed on the horizon and the Champions League kicked in and the jumps horses started appearing again.
Out of the loop
A couple of times in the past fortnight I've picked up the Racing Post in work to flick through it, only to put it down when I've copped that there are no National Hunt snippets in it yet. This isn't anti-flat reverse snobbery – I'm just genuinely so out of the loop on racing during the GAA summer that when I tune back in around this time each year none of the stories that are coming to their end-of-season conclusions ring any bells. Ordinarily plugging into the return of the jumps is one of the grand pleasures of the week after the football final. Not this year.
This is taking a lot of getting used to, is the point. I'm far better acquainted with the middling Premier League teams this year than I usually would be. I could do a good 15 minutes on a barstool on the threat posed by the Watford front three of Deeney, Gray and Hughes and the chances of Wolves finishing in a Europa League spot. Ordinarily, it's close to Halloween by the time I get round to that sort of searing insight.
In the end we didn’t get out to see the second half of Munster on Friday night. Probably best for all concerned, in the circumstances. The key takeaway, however, is that we wanted to. We wanted to watch rugby. In September.
Feels wrong.
