Summer in the city is wicket
On pitches, greens, clubs and on TVs across Cork sport is everywhere. Why do we get so wrapped up in it all?
On my way to Fitzgerald's Park earlier this week, I cycled past a young woman on the North Mall who bears a striking resemblance to the Norwegian actor Liv Ullmann. As often happens in a small city like Cork, I have seen her once or twice before, but still, on each occasion I am always taken aback by the similarity between her facial expressions and that of one of the major stars of European cinema.
After this sighting, I continued cycling along the Lee Walkway, thinking of things that appear to be the same, but are intrinsically different. By the time I had reached the skate park, filled with a large group of teenagers busy trying to break an unbroken bone in their body, I was fully immersed in that famous scene from Ingmar Bergman’s Persona; the one where the doctor tells Ullmann’s character, as she sits in silence cutting an apple, “You think I don’t understand, the hopeless dream of being…conscious every moment...the gulf between what you are for others and for yourself.”
The sun had now broken out and as I made my way past the cricket club at the Mardyke, I decided to stop in to watch some of the match that was taking place between the Under 15 boys of Northern Cricket Union and their counterparts from Leinster, which formed part of the interprovincial series being held today and tomorrow in the city.
Cricket is one of the few sports I don’t fully understand the rules of and although it will probably always remain so, I did get a little crash course in runs and wickets, while talking with the owners of one of the most famous dogs in Ireland, Jonothan and Patricia Fisher.
A couple of years ago, their cocker spaniel Dazzle was caught on camera running onto the field of play at one of their daughter Aoife’s cricket matches in Co. Tyrone, and this footage was subsequently seen by millions of viewers worldwide, doing more for the promotion of cricket in Ireland than a year’s worth of marketing ever could.
The Fishers had driven four hours from Co. Down to see their son Luke play in today’s match and even though his team were being well beaten by Leinster, they were still very happy with his performance, and that N.C.U. were managing to keep the score under 100 runs. Whatever that might mean.
Jonothan, Patricia and their other youngest son Jude, enjoyed their day out and were among a healthy crowd of onlookers scattered all around the field, sitting in picnic chairs, eating and drinking and chatting amongst themselves.
“It’s hard work sitting on your arse all day,” I heard one of the other parents say and seeing as how this cricket match had been going on for nearly seven hours, this comment could only be deemed as half a joke.
The night before I sat on my arse in a pub in Wilton to watch Portugal play out a drab 120 minutes of football against the lowest-ranked team in the European Championships, Slovenia. It was only the second game of the Euros I had seen in its entirety and the truth is, it was only made bearable by seeing Cristiano Ronaldo make a bit of an eejit of himself.
This once great player, unable to accept the passage of time and diminishment of his physical powers, walked around the pitch throwing strop after strop, as his numerous shots on and off target, failed to yield a goal for his team. Most embarrassingly of all, he even burst into tears mid-match after he had missed a penalty in extra time.
While it was amusing to see this one man spectacle unfold, I couldn’t help but also feel some sympathy for Ronaldo, as his life’s work is coming to an end and he probably has no idea of what he will do with himself after football. Because football has been his entire life. And it hasn’t always been an easy life for the boy from Madeira.
His father was a severe alcoholic who died at the age of fifty-two and while Ronaldo has three siblings and an adoring mother, his only brother Hugo, like his father, also enjoyed a drink. When Ronaldo caught wind of this, he banished Hugo from the family, only permitting his return on the strict and non-negotiable condition that he give up the booze.
With great difficulty, Hugo managed to stop drinking and when he did so, Cristiano welcomed him back into the family and rewarded him by giving him a job managing the museum on his home island of Madeira, dedicated to the trophies he has won in football.
While this might be one of the most perverse acts of brotherly love imaginable, Ronaldo remains an icon in Portugal. He is the single biggest symbol of success in his home country and the statue of him at the airport in Madeira, is not unlike the sculpture of the hurlers at Blackpool bypass, which welcomes you as you enter Cork from the northside of the city, in that it gives the people of both communities a vital sense of identity and belonging.
Cork is after all, a sporting mad city. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I go around kissing the streets every day. Not only is the cricket being held in Richard Beamish grounds and out at Farmer’s Cross this week, there is also the tantalising prospect of Sunday’s All-Ireland hurling semi-final between Cork and Limerick to look forward to.
Cork hurling supporters would dearly love a victory this weekend and a bit like the English soccer fans currently consuming their own body weight in beer and schnitzel in cities all across Germany, they have unfortunately in recent years been starved of success. For both sets of supporters, living in a fallen empire, aghast at the new world order, brings its own existential doubts and anxieties.
It must be difficult to have to constantly dwell on past conquests, especially when you haven’t done anything lately to back it up, but being delusional is probably a necessary defence mechanism against the truth, for both Cork and English fans alike.
And make no mistake, they are in many ways very similar to one another and no doubt if the Cork public were given the chance to vote in an Irish equivalent of Brexit, it would pass with flying colours. We’ve all seen the Cork, and not Cork, maps. The sense of separateness and superiority is part of the genetic makeup in the people living by the banks of the river Lee and across the pond.
On Sunday next however, this innate confidence will face its sternest challenge in Croke Park as this young and up and coming Cork team face up to the four in a row All-Ireland champions of Limerick. To have any chance of victory Cork will need to play the game of their lives, while the Treaty men will probably need to underperform.
Meanwhile, England will play Switzerland in Düsseldorf in what should be a much easier task. Perhaps there’ll be a red and white double and at long last both groups can then set their sights on some long overdue silverware.
As things stand however, there is a more than gulf between what they are for themselves and what they are for others. Whether this gap can be closed, remains to be seen.
Cork County Cricket club celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. For more information on cricket in Ireland see here. The writer is from not Cork.
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