Oh! Revolution!
By Sean O Donaile
It's great to be a Daddy but when there's canvassing to be done
and the baby needs changing, Daddy has to stay at home, make the
bottles and watch Eastenders. One has to limit one's
revolutionary activities to reading Ivor Callely's election
leaflets and writing about cricket for An Phoblacht.
My revolutionary ambitions were further stunted, indeed
shattered, when I came across these pictures of Che Guevera and
Fidel Castro playing golf!! After all these years I discover
these icons of revolutionary socialism committed the ultimate
heresy and were really Fuzzy Zoeller and Dougal Dimblearse in
disguise - my black beret with the red star, my bumfluff beard
and combat trousers and my bedroom posters will have to go -
Where now for us 90s misguided beerbellies?
Monaghan, sure where else? They haven't won much in a long time
but they're famous for `Wee' Barry, Fr Dougal, Monaghan Champion
Milk, CIE bus stations with sweaty egg sandwiches and sticky
buns, ``bowerdur'' roads, Monaghan United, Sinn Féin TDs, the Oasis
night club which has the longest bar in Western Europe and
topless mud wrestlers, mushrooms, pig smugglers and Duffys.
There's Duffy's Circus which doesn't have any wrestlers but
plenty of mud, General Eoin with the geansai gorm, there's
`Donkey' Duffy who collects frogs for a living and claims to be
Ireland's champion bareknuckle fighter and then there's ``Peter
the Great'' who almost singlehandedly destroyed many people's tip
(yet again) for the All Ireland, Derry.
In the end Monaghan had to settle for a draw and if Peter hadn't
duffed the first minute penalty they could have been out of
Derry's reach by the interval. That was the only foot he put
wrong as he repeatedly tore through the Derry defence, most
spectacularly in the eighteenth minute smashing home a terrific
goal, followed five minutes later by another green flag from Noel
Marron which put them 2-4 to 0-3 up.
The two Joes, Cassidy and Brolly, pointed Derry back into
contention by the break and when Brolly goaled early in the
second half it looked like curtains for the mushroom men. From
there to the finish the game resembled an episode of ER with
sendings off, poleaxing of forwards, the by now obligatory
``schmozzles'' and a referee who took himself too seriously handing
out numerous bookings, two sendings off, 86 frees and nearly
running out of paper by the finish.
The last twenty minutes went like this: thump, free, kick, wide,
kick, thump, wallop, tweet, free, thump, tweet tweet, kick,
wallop, wide...
In between this Monaghan hung on with Duffy and Mark Daly leading
the charge, only for the referee to disgracefully throw in the
ball in the dying minutes when Monaghan should have been awarded
a potentially match winning free. Derry almost scored a cruel
goal from the decision but for the reflexes of the goalie and
further fluffed a point in extra time to leave the socre at 2-8
to 1-11, and back to Celtic park in Derry next Sunday where we
might spot Gregory Campbell or Dana!
This was a poor Derry show and they will need to improve all
kinds of everything if they're to defeat Muineachan who after
this moral victory can look forward to doing the double with
Caoimghín!
Meanwhile it's back to the nappies.
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