The GAA has solved the encroachment problem at Croke Park — present the Liam McCarthy Cup to the Kilkenny captain before next Sunday’s game, reveals Dr Garrett FitzGerald
The Drive-for-Five is nearly over, to be replaced by Okay-for-Sé. T-shirts are being stencilled as we speak. Kilkenny travel to Croke Park on Sunday with abundance of the humble virtue known as certainty. The GAA have responded to the sense of occasion by making some last-minute adjustments to the pageantry of the big day.
The Liam McCarthy Cup will be presented to the Kilkenny captain before the game. This will reflect the rightful pecking order and will also solve the problem of encroachment onto the field after the match. Henry Shefflin will make a grand entrance with ten minutes to go when his men are eighteen points up and score a sixty-five with a walking stick, property of the HSE. The Tipp captain has agreed to present him with his eighth All-Ireland medal. Arguments abound as to whether he should give him the ninth while he has him.
Tipperary supporters in the crowd will be asked to leave their seats at half-time to free them up for Kat fans who don’t have tickets, so that the whole of the Kilkenny nation will get to partake of the occasion. Anxious to contribute to the great sense of history, the Tipp team has agreed to take part in the parade before the minor match rather than dilute the rapturous acclaim for the Kats in the big one. The would-be challengers made this generous gesture despite their own last-chance request having been rejected; that the game would be played without helmets.
Man the sidelines
Instead of taking part in the parade, the Tipp management team, doctor, bottle-carriers, masseuses, and the full panel of players will man the sidelines, one every six yards on the whole circumference of the pitch, to applaud the champions on their pre-match lap of honour.
In a reciprocal hands-across-the-border and false-hope-stimulating move reaching into the heart of Mullinahone, Brian Cody has announced that fifty-eight senior and legendary figures of the KK panel are carrying grievous injuries into the game, many of them life-threatening. Eight of the team are to play from wheelchairs. Tipp seem to have taken the bait and are to turn up after all, grasping at straws. Cody has declared that he may well have to tog out himself, the ultimate dangled carrot, but has both anterior cruciate ligaments in slings, which he dismisses as ‘a thing of nothing, no different to the rest of the boys in that regard’.
The choreography doesn’t end there. Eddie Brennan has been instructed to score his two goals early on and Martin Comerford is under strict orders to bag another two or three before half-time. Disputed penalties for Kilkenny are to be confined to the first ten minutes; this with the full agreement of the referee. Tipp have also kindly agreed to allow all forty-four of Kilkenny’s household-name substitutes to be used, instead of the usual five.
Paddy Power’s odds are a very generous 1/3 – Kilkenny. Tipp are 11/4 against, or a ticket to Lourdes. No sane man would turn up for such a fiasco, but I have never claimed sanity.
Bag of cats
On the topic of cats, The New York Times is running a high-level discussion on cat allergens. Until recently, it has been accepted that dark cats are more allergenic than light-coloured ones, but a study done by New York asthma supremo Dr Clifford W. Bassett (hardly a cat friendly name) now questions whether this is true. In a study of 300 asthmatic patients, he found no difference in symptoms between light and dark cat owners. There is, however, a difference between male cats and female; you are more likely to itch, splutter and choke if Tabby has cojones.
Bypassing all of this after-the-fact science, biotech company Allerca of San Diego, California has bred mutant cats which produce very little allergens. You can buy one of these for four thousand dollars, provided Allerca’s inspection team find you to be a suitable recipient. Their screening of potential owners would put baby adoption into the halfpenny place.
Again, the cat’s colour is of no significance. Atopic types easily make back the money within a couple of years by saving a fortune on cat sprays and anti-allergy medications. But imagine the severe blow to your self-esteem were you to be found unsuitable to own a mutated cat. Be careful what you wish for.
There is one rarely mentioned population that doesn’t suffer a great deal from cat allergies, whose antihistamine, steroid and bronchodilator medication needs are minimal. This is the group of people which doesn’t keep cats. They are almost in a majority in a country which has 30 million pet pussycats. They generally feel no great compulsion to purchase a four-grand mutant who mightn’t last the week.
Bye bye birdie
There has been no discussion whatever of the cat of mixed background; striped, tabby, or even black and amber. Nor is it known how many people die from keeping a cat; perhaps a few hundred. What is certain is the vast number of birds who die by cat – said to be approximately 1 billion in the US alone annually, a conservative estimate of one dead bird to every cat every twelve days. Since the Second World War, 55 billion American birds have had a feline end, preventing them from re-evolving into dinosaurs at the expected rate.
So the discussion goes: cats, you can’t live with them or without them. My autumnal preference would be the latter.
Did the man say 11 to four?
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