Kea-no thanks

I do hope Roy Keane doesn’t join Celtic. Not because of his ability– it’s always a good laugh when injury-plagued has-beens join the Old Firm and sap their resources while doing nothing more than lying on the treatment table. But if nothing else, it would be bound to encourage even more people to flock over to Glasgow from Dublin Airport every weekend, and there’s already more than enough vileness in the air when Rangers and Celtic fans come to town, without high profile Irish signings and a stadium full of tricolours to provide certain elements with even more targets for their sad vitriol.

Yes, Celtic FC was founded by an Irish priest. Ancient history, get over it everyone. Irish sports fans who actually care about football more than history would do well to direct their air fares and gate money towards their local league teams instead for a while, to improve the quality of the grass-roots Irish game instead of glory-hunting in Glasgow. And more importantly, to give the West of Scotland a bit of space to sort out its nasty sectarian problems, rather than (innocently or otherwise) adding to them.

Winners and losers

Oh, it’s the “England and Wales” team now is it, Bastien? 🙂 (Actually that’s another reason the whole thing annoys the rest of us… there have been plenty Welsh and yes, even the odd Scot turning out for the Podgy XI over the years, but it’s funny how they’re all “English” when they win…)

As for hoping Motherwell lose… that’s more of a racing certainty than a flight of fancy I would wager! But that’s one thing I do have in common with England fans– when you lose most of the time, it turns winning into an occasion that the glory-hunting Rangers/Celtic/Man Utd/Chelsea/big-club-of-your-choice types can never truly appreciate 🙂

Blianna mhath ur

A pretty uneventful Christmas and New Year was had by all, in my household– mostly because I live alone! I did a lot of gadding around, though… England the weekend before Chrimbo, back in Dublin for Christmas Day, Scotland on the 26th, and back in the Emerald Isle for Hogmanay. All for under 100 quid, thanks to Mr. Ryan.

New Year’s Eve in Dublin is crap, though– half the pubs are shut and the only free ‘event’ involves hanging around outside a dingy cathedral waiting for the midnight chimes, then going home!

The dressing room bust-up down Fir Park way seems to have done the trick, though… the ‘Well are back to their winning ways, with fine victories over Dundee and Dundee Utd in the space of a week.

Another week dawns

Hardly any email waiting for me at all, this morning… always a bad sign, means I’ll have to do some work instead. (One of the few was to inform me my actress friend in England has started seeing a new bloke she doesn’t fancy– if I’d known that was her type I’d have asked her out years ago!)

The first public draft of the HIG will apparently be released for review later today. Fortunately I’ve only just picked up my flameproof suit from the dry cleaners.

Bought my first Christmas present at the weekend, as it has to go to America– I promise not to think about Christmas again until about December 17th. Saturday also saw Scotland soundly thrashed by the All Blacks, and Motherwell winning again. The latter is becoming a worrying habit.