Stale Soccer
I can’t even say that it was a woeful performance. The pundits have monopolised that area of critique. I never watched the game between Ireland and Greece, so feel unable to give a view on it. Despite my life long love affair with soccer, better things to be doing on a Friday evening than getting bored out of my tree by the pedestrian efforts of the Ireland soccer team. If I want to watch soccer on a Friday evening I can make the short journey across town to watch Drogheda if they are playing at home. No one is going to complain that this is the worst Drogheda side in 50 years, a cutting but accurate comment by Liam Brady on the ability of the Irish soccer team.
Brady feels that the manager Stephen Kenny should nevertheless mould them into something. That is really setting the gaffer up to fail, his head on the block when the results of moulding is even more mould and stale soccer.
That Irish soccer still flourishes after the John Delaney scandal is an achievement in itself. Appointing Kenny as manager after his successful tenure with Dundalk was a bold move. He was thrown into the deep end and now faces the complaint that he is out of his depth and it's time to go. But replace him with who?
Kenny has not done the business, but could any manager? The best pilot in the world cannot fly a basket. The pool of players ‘gifted’ to Kenny is a basket case. Nothing to be carved from rotten wood.
Second Class Prisoners
If nationalists in the North now have equality, strange that it has not yet found its way into the jails. A recent report has downgraded Maghaberry Prison from “good” to “not sufficiently good” and deducted two points from its accumulation because of a number of shortcomings, “serious issues that need urgent action”. Five areas were highlighted in the report by the Chief Inspector Of Criminal Justice in the North: how deaths in prison are dealt with, a serious drug problem, poor access to high quality education, a weak preparation for release. Most damning of all has been the finding of “evidence from a number of sources that a number of Catholic prisoners had experienced prejudice.”
For some very explicable reason that comes as no surprise.
Despite the plethora of tribunals investigating historical abuse, the prison service in the North has escaped unscathed, despite it being one of the worst perpetrators of institutional abuse, particularly during the blanket protest of 1976-1981.
The Orange state, seemingly, is not dead. It has just retreated to Maghaberry.
Father’s Day
It started well and long may it continue. As soon as I emerged from my slumber my wife told me she had a restaurant booked. I had been bantering my son last night that Father’s Day in this house should be renamed Forgotten Day. That proved true this morning. I handed him a freshly cooked breakfast as soon as he came down stairs and wished him Happy Ronan’s Day. He laughed, acknowledging that I had called it right last night. To be fair, I would hardly notice it myself were my family not to remind me.
While I shall enjoy it I paused to reflect on those fathers who for the first time since their children were born have not made it to Father’s Day; people I spent time in prison with. Tom Dutch Holland, Rab Kerr, Robbie Laverty. A special thought for another former political prisoner who did make it but whose wife died recently. While I will share a meal this afternoon with my wife, during it I will pause to think of Rab Jackson. It will be a lonely Father’s Day for him, his soul mate, who made him a father, no longer with him.
Despite the plethora of tribunals investigating historical abuse, the prison service in the North has escaped unscathed, despite it being one of the worst perpetrators of institutional abuse, particularly during the blanket protest of 1976-1981.
The Orange state, seemingly, is not dead. It has just retreated to Maghaberry.
Father’s Day
It started well and long may it continue. As soon as I emerged from my slumber my wife told me she had a restaurant booked. I had been bantering my son last night that Father’s Day in this house should be renamed Forgotten Day. That proved true this morning. I handed him a freshly cooked breakfast as soon as he came down stairs and wished him Happy Ronan’s Day. He laughed, acknowledging that I had called it right last night. To be fair, I would hardly notice it myself were my family not to remind me.
While I shall enjoy it I paused to reflect on those fathers who for the first time since their children were born have not made it to Father’s Day; people I spent time in prison with. Tom Dutch Holland, Rab Kerr, Robbie Laverty. A special thought for another former political prisoner who did make it but whose wife died recently. While I will share a meal this afternoon with my wife, during it I will pause to think of Rab Jackson. It will be a lonely Father’s Day for him, his soul mate, who made him a father, no longer with him.
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