Hugo McNeill, with characteristic understatement, claimed on RTE recently that the RWC 2023 could, oops, would be ‘The GREATEST event to take place in this country EVER’.
Bar none, like.
This is Hugo McNeill, former rugger international and current main tree-hugger involved in the hugger mugger necessary for Ireland’s bid to host the Rugby World Cup (for it is it!) in 2023.
Hugo the Restrained also reiterated the low-key claim that the RWC is the (gulp) THIRD largest sports event in the world, in the bronze medal posish after only the Footie World Cup and the Olympic Games theyselves.
Hmmmm.
Now, The Perkin’s meagre Louth-sized aquaintance with the dizzy intriciacies of artithmetic makes him loath to query this algorithmical assessment.
After all, Hugo McNeill is one who has scaled the summit of sums (without digital recourse to his fingers and thumbs !) as is evidenced by his being the boss of the biz known as the Goldman Sachs Investment Banking in Baile Átha Cliath. Not only that but regarding the leather furniture of that august body, The Ireland Funds, Hugo’s tailored fundament has fitted its chair, snugly. So then, a clubable chap, with a global outreach, that sorta thingy.
Nonetheless, one’s trusty abacus, though tacky and Supermac-stained, begs to differ, humbly. Thus, time to grip that old bamboo frame, and time to start sliding these beads along those wires, backwards and forth.
Lemme see, as they say in Lemybrien.
There are ……one, two, three, four………..208 countires in the world aka Planet Earth, give or take. (The take is dependent of just how avaricious the impish Imperialists are feeling).
Now, leaving aside the 200 countries who wouldn’t know the similarity between the shape of a rugby ball and a certain office in 1600 Pennyslvania Avunue, nevermind the difference between a Garryowen going north and the Garyowen of Sean South or indeed the distinction between a hooker who throws oval shapes and a hooker who throws shapes, that leaves……….lemme see….one, two, three, four………EIGHT !
So, there are eight countries in the W.O.R.L.D. which play rugby the way, say, they play wife-carrying in Finland, ostrich-racing in Arizona or mud-wrestling in Madagascar.
Still and all, as the man called Hamlet once crooned to the toon of the Hairy Bach’s air on a G-string:
“I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”
(Spoiler alert: see ‘bad dreams’ below).
Curiously, eight is the same number of stadia which the (gulp) GAA will be contributing to the (gasp) dozen stadia which will house the games of RWC 2023 on Oirish Soil.
This may well go some way towards explaining the current IRFU policy which eschews the last two letters and is enshrined in the phrase:
– Let’s not be beastly to the Bogballers.
At least not until the Bid for Paddyland has been, erm, converted successfully.
(Not that there is any dearth of GAH-dissers at any given moment in t., going forward. The ranks of the GAH itself are rank with them and the artfully crafty maul-and-scrum media are always happy to nobly oblige. By affording these hissers at their fellow citizenry of the CLG a platform, a mike and oceans of airtime not to keep schtum on the drawbacks of the Hairy Back amateur organisaiton).
Hugo McNeil, despite being famed for his deft handling of the oval-shaped ball, is nonethless a very rounded fellow. Having studied, which he likes to remind his listernship, Anglo-Irish Literature for a year and a Bloomsday under Dr. David Norris in TCD.
Hmmmm.
Now, as the same Dr. Norris was the original proselyteser for the Prose Masterpiece of Paddyland, this raises a rather sticky point. We could even be looking at an , erm, oval ball in a round hole sorta situation here.
Considering that the chapter in Ulysses (for it is it!) which the Unpspeakables of the Upspeak who take The Unionist Times are most apt to namecheck with c. and verse is the chapter in which Leopold Bloom lowers the boom on the caricature known as the Citizen.
The identical same chapter in which James Joyce (for he is really L.B. !) turns the spigot which controls the flow of bigotry which gushes out all over Michael Cusack (for he is really The C. !). Cusack, it was, sans doute, who founded the GAA, whose games the Paddy Stinks and Mickey Mudds of the cro-magnon CBS favour, and the Baluba clutches of whom J. Joyce just managed, luckily, to elude, in the nick and tup of Time..
Joyce Major ensruing that his delicate offspring was educated in the refined environs of the rugby fields of Belvo and the democratic Clongo. Sic transit, glorious mud.
(Cassandras of the CLG have already sounded a tocsin of doom – it’s what they do ! And are forecasting there could well be a is a real Cold Shoulder to Shoulder answering of Ireland’s Call by the Citizenry in 2023 at Croke Park. When the Irony will truly enter the Soul of Oirland under the Cusack Stand)
Dispationate observers have noted the almost Messianic note which the modulated tone of Old Rock Boy, Hugo McNeill has sounded in his BOD-assisted Bid to get the RWC 2023 over the gainline for Paddyland.
And well, they might: for rugby is on something of a religious roll at the mo in the R. O. Y. oops, R.O.I. We know this from listening, f’rinstance, to the dulcet tones of Fergal Keane on the Dame Dosh Finucance Show this very morning. FG, of course, is the stellar global correspondent of the BBC and whose buttermilk baritone provides such a charming Celtic contrast to the Margarita mezzo soproanos and the deep Daquiri double basses we are more used to hearing from Bush House.
-If I had a religion, Marian, it would be rugby – specifically Munster Rugby, about which I am SO passionate.
Munster’s Thomond Park, of course, will be one of the solemn Temples where the rugby faithful will reverentially mcneill, oops, kneel during the RWC 2023-to-be.
Other observers of an equally dispassionate disposition have also opined that rugby is like the Church of Ireland at play, and never more so than when the Hibernian team is making the hard yards.
June, of course is when Dr. David Norrissyses, is blooming out all over. And the Citizen gets his right good guaranteed annual root and branch up the whole grain bread.
Dr. David is also a devout attender of services on the Sabbath in his favourite Cathedral as he is never slow to remind his (vast) listnership on radioland. That would be, ar ndóigh, St. Patrick’s Cathedral rather than the Pro-Cathedral, even though pro-rugby has been Established for a score or more years now.
(Mysterious thing, this religiosity).
Will The Chapter (see above) , one wonders, be Sin Binned next month, just as the Bloomsday makes way once more from Bloomsweek?
One, perhaps, for the T.M.O.
(T.M.O. of course is an acronymn for Television Match Offiical and he is affectionataly known as Uncle T.M.O.).
TweeT, TweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeT !
The referee’s whistle announces the end of the effin first half.
Half-time !
Time to barf, time to massage that troubled calf, half time, time to wrap the Old School Scarf around the neck, half time, time to predict the sales graph for the RWC 2023 !
HALF TIME
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