TV VIEW:THAT WAS a bit of a shock last week, learning that it's 30 years this month since John McEnroe's "you cannot be serious" moment. Thirty? That's eight years before Rory McIlroy even appeared on Planet Earth.
Mind you, the phrase was dusted down and given a whole new lease of sporting life by Butch Harmon during the opening rounds of the US Open, the gist of his reaction to Rory’s stroll around the Congressional Country Club: ‘You cannot be serious.’ The problem, though, with witnessing such “awesomeness”, as Butch put it, is where do you go from there with your remote control? How could any sporting spectacle seem more than ditchwater dull in comparison? The dilemma called to mind Paul Newman’s explanation for his long marriage to Joanne Woodward: “Why go out for a burger when I can have steak at home?”
Granted, it’s an analogy that doesn’t really work at all in this context, because switching over to, say, the wrestling once Rory was done for the day was hardly an act of infidelity.
But Rory was, quite obviously, the week’s sporting steak, everything else tasted a little like a gristle-filled burger gone past its sell-by date.
Like the wrestling. And no offence intended at all, especially to Jack Swagger who, at 6ft 6in, isn’t a man whose feathers you’d want to ruffle. This Week In WWE, sadly relegated to the outback that is Sky Sports 3, promised us action from Jack and a host of wrestling stars at sundry events, including ‘Capitol Punishment’ in Washington.
Apparently, it used to be called ’WWE Fatal 4-Way’, so it’s nice to see them move away from puns about grizzly deaths.
The highlight of the programme was the SmackDown clash between a fella called Big Show (what were his parents thinking of?) and Mark Henry, the most unwrestly name we’ve ever come upon. Big Show – and the name isn’t ironic, the lad’s 7ft 1in – seemed quite up for the contest, deciding to assault Mark before the bell actually rang, beating the living daylights out of him (in a professional wrestling kind of way – ie Mark probably feels more pain when he waxes his chest), resulting in Mark leaving the building on a stretcher and in a neck-brace.
So, that was enjoyable, if not quite of Roryesque proportions.
We yearned for greater excitement at the Mersey Masters, an indoor football tournament featuring Liverpool, Everton, Tranmere, Blackpool, Wigan and Bolton represented by retired players, many of whom had the look of fellas who’ve been dining on triple cheeseburgers since they hung up their boots.
“We’ve got Daniel Amokachi up front and it’s a long way around that backside,” as Peter Beagrie said of Everton’s weighty front one. Not that the bulk did them much good, the team eliminated at the group stage of the competition.
There was quite a big crowd in the Liverpool EchoArena, leaving us wondering how many of them would look for their money back, possibly alleging false advertising.
True, the Liverpool squad, which went on to win the event, featured John Barnes, Patrik Berger and Paul Walsh, but honestly, how many times did you hear the Kop sing Bjorn Tore Kvarme’s name? And how is Andy Roscoe a ‘master’? According to Wikipedia Roscoe was only a youth team player at Liverpool, the bulk of his career spent at Rotherham and Exeter. “He now breeds chimpanzees,” the site claims. That might not actually be true, but you kind of hope it is.
Andy, then, it’s fair to say, wasn’t the totally insouciant Huckleberry Finn of Liverpool FC, as Joe Brolly said, after yesterday’s Ulster semi-final, that Eoin Bradley is to Derry football.
“He’s what?” asked Pat Spillane.
“Did you not do any French, Pat?” asked Brolly.
“No, I did Latin instead, Joe . . . but you could use some Latin to describe Bradley: ‘Veni, vidi, vici’, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’.” “Trust you for the cliché, Pat,” said Joe, possibly still peeved by Pat’s earlier inquiry, after a lengthy enough monologue from the Derry man, if he was “being paid by the word today”.
There was a decent amount of beef in that contest, then, but still, not quite of Congressional steak standards. Speaking of which, here we go, it’s time for the final round. Butch is still purring about the awesomeness of days one, two and three, Colin Montgomerie is lost for words. Kidding. No need to look away now if you don’t want to know the result. We don’t know it either. Go on Rory.
