MALLEYMAN

‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off (hoo-hoo-hoo)’
– ‘Shake it Off’ by Taylor Swift

As anyone who knows me knows, I was a Taylor Swift fan before anyone, going right back to her early country music phase. But what does this modern cultural phenomenon have to do with the 2024 Touch World Cup? Have faith. It’ll all become clear.

THE GREAT FALL

‘Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.’ – Victor Hugo

The dust settles and the arena empties, the protagonists shuffle off, each with their own narrative, no two the same and yet all the same; as the wind of the outside world gathers us up and spirits us away, each winking out of existence. It all goes quiet. The descent begins. 

I lost a European final once in a drop off in the early evening, went out late, got up in the early morning dark to fly back home and went straight into work. ‘How did your Tag games go?’ my manager asked brusquely. ‘It was Touch not Ta…’ ‘OK, whatever, this morning I need you to…’

The integration back to a less brightly-coloured reality.

They Shall Not Grow Old is a haunting documentary. It uses original footage from World War I, which has been restored and colourised and overlaid with recordings of veterans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrabKK9Bhds&t=3s

The last moments of the film deal with how the soldiers were treated when they returned home from the war and the general indifference of people to the horrors they’d gone through. The experience of the very last speaker is familiar.

We’re coming home from a sports tournament. We either won or lost, achieved or didn’t and whichever it was, nobody died and we’ve played in a World Cup. We have a lot to be grateful for.

But if post-tournament blues is a real thing, how best to deal with it?
Just shake it off.
Or write a blog.

SURFING NIAGARA

‘The macro-economic impact of the Eras tour is staggering. Each city she stops at is granted an economic jackpot, not trickle-down economics but Niagara economics. Analysts have projected that Swift’s tour could generate close to $5bn in consumer spending.’ Fortune Magazine

At my first world cup in Edinburgh in 2011, there were eighty-five teams in seven different categories. This year, there were over one hundred and ninety teams from thirty-nine different countries, playing across thirteen different categories. It felt huge and yet still intimate.

I don’t know the extent of the economic benefits hosting the Touch World Cup had for Nottingham but I hope they were considerable.

I do know the corner shops in Beeston, Nottingham will have been hit hard this week by the sudden lack of my purchases of 5-litre bottles of water, bananas and tubs of Muller rice. The Beeston Costa where I escaped to each day for a break from the fields of play, will have missed my daily order of a cappuccino for me and one for my mam and a baby-smoothie for Kaja my daughter.

Maybe the economic scale of the Touch World Cup is not comparable to a Taylor Swift concert but one thing is comparable.

‘I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels my inner child healing – to paraphrase Swift herself, it gives me back my girlhood.’ Eras Tour, Guardian review.

Playing in the World Cup has given women and men, from their teens to their sixties, their girlhood or boyhood back too. It is vivid, tribal, buoyant and daunting. That whistle blows and it rises inside us with a roar, our everything, boundless, desperate, loud hopes, hearts beating, faces turned in effort and expectation.

THE SMX BOMB SQUAD

I’m grateful for my teammates. Kind, welcoming, interesting and good craic. I think I was a good teammate back. I wish I could have given more on the pitch. I gave everything that I had to offer, I just wish it was better.

I needed, and need, to be playing much more high level touch. I didn’t have nearly enough recent reps, of attacking especially. You need to do it over and over and over at speed, to get that vision and the confidence that comes from the hard work done. I do anyway.

I get away with it at lower levels, or higher age groups where I have a speed and reaction advantage over players my own age but in less good condition. At this level, where I’m largely at a disadvantage, I was OK but not as good as I hoped.

This world cup feels like the first consistently high-level Touch I’ve played since 2019. You can’t cheat some things in sport, there are no short cuts, and that’s a good thing. I’m already looking forward now to how I can be better. I want more.

I’m grateful to our coaches and manager. They created an excellent culture, caring on a person level and exacting on a performance level. You couldn’t ask for better.

To my pod during the tournament of Gareth, James, Paul and Risa. Our private WhatsApp group was called the ‘Bomb Squad Pod’. No one else ever called us that but that’s OK.

SHUTTLES & DRONES

Grateful as we are, we should still be critical. The tournament itself was extremely well run. You usually know something is good when you don’t notice anything. There were only two disappointments for me.

1. The lack of a shuttle bus or organised transport between the two venues. My mother had to get taxis between the two to watch me or my sister play. I rented an electric bike one day and cycled in the rain to the other venue to watch one of my sister’s matches. There was very little crossover at all between the two venues.

2. The relative lack of streaming. We had one match streamed in this tournament, which was a walloping against New Zealand that it was hard to get excited about sharing with friends back home to watch. In the last World Cup, we had four games streamed, three of them with drones. That ability of people back home to watch you play, and of players to watch back their own games, has an outsized impact on the experience of the tournament. If you’re cutting back anywhere, don’t cut back there.

DR. MIKE & THE THREE STOOGES

I played every game of the tournament, I wasn’t rested, which I’m proud of. Physically the last game was the best I felt. I could have kept playing for another week. I’ve never felt like that at the end of a tournament before. For my good conditioning, I thank a short, Jewish bodybuilder and Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.

1. Three Stooges Syndrome

I came into the tournament struggling through the last few weeks with a problem around my knee, which had come out of nowhere. Five weeks out I was barely able to walk to the shop. Four weeks out I got through half the weekend’s training camp before hobbling off. A week later in Glasgow, I just about got through a blitz without the knee completely seizing up. I worked on the problem incessantly with massage, mobilisation and strengthening without really understanding what the underlying issue was.

Arriving at the tournament, I was nervous. I’d done a lot of deep tissue massage, and then had to give the leg time to heal, so it was all still untested. In our final pre-tournament session in Nottingham, it half seized-up a couple of times just warming up. But then it seemed largely ok in the session itself. For the first two days of the tournament, like clockwork it half seized-up at least once in every warm-up but then during the game I didn’t really notice it. By day three, I just ignored it. Something was going on down there but I wasn’t touching it.

When the Three Stooges all try to walk through a door at the same time, they get stuck, and none of them can get through. I reckon something similar was happening around my knee. All the various pains and tightness were somehow balancing each other out.

The Simpsons explain it well.

I’m indestructible.

2. Dr. Mike’s Workouts

I was doing weights sessions in the gym, safely but under stress forcing myself into deep squat positions that I find extremely uncomfortable and unnatural, but are natural. This is thanks to YouTube videos I started watching of a hairy, five-feet-four inch professional body builder and academic called Dr. Mike Israetel who has an odd sense of humour.

I’ve no interest in looking like a body builder but doing those sessions is the best thing I’ve done for my back in the last decade. The difference in my energy levels on and off the pitch was significant.

BEST FRIENDS

‘Hell is other people.’ – Jean Paul Sartre

I don’t think I’ve ever complained about referees in this blog and I’m not about to start. I did have one intriguing experience though.

I’m pretty ok with referees generally. I’m very fired up when I play and I occasionally react in the moment but calm down immediately. And sometimes my face looks angrier than I actually am. We all have our burdens in life, that’s one of mine.

A few times during this tournament as I subbed off into the box and was doubled over trying to catch my breath, my teammate Risa would say to me sternly ‘They’re your best friend Ian, remember!’ I’m not going to lie, short of oxygen to my brain, it took me a few games to figure out she meant the referees. OK, best friend is a bit strong but I’ve no problem with referees. I live with one, which I think is very open-minded of me.

‘You put your right leg in, your left hand out. You do the hokey pokey and you turn around. And that’s what it’s all about.’
‘Ref, can we just get on with the game?’
‘No more backchat from you, player, or you’ll be going in the sin-bin.’
‘Sorry, ref. You’re right. Take your time.’

What you don’t want if you do react in the heat of the game, with your heartbeat racing and straining every part of your body to defend for your team, is for the referee to immediately escalate things and wind it up further.

In our last game against Cayman islands, the referee took some issue with me. It was a weird experience. I questioned a decision, not with any bad language. I did it on the run as I was getting back into the defensive line. I don’t think most referees would even register it or pay any attention. It’s just more noise in a game, players are shouting constantly. I’m back onside ready to go and the referee then came at me, ‘Do not speak to me like that again. And you pushed me. Don’t you ever touch a referee again.’

‘Did I push her?’ I was thinking. I genuinely couldn’t remember doing it and it certainly wasn’t intentional if I did, it was just an attempt to get up quickly off the line as I ran past her.

A few minutes later, defending on our line again, the same referee turned to me. ‘That’s the second time. If you touch me in any way again, you’re going in the sin-bin.’ I’m bewildered now. ‘I’m genuinely sorry,’ I say, hands up in a gesture of remorse. ‘I’m not sure what I did.’ Maybe I ran near her but I’m sure I haven’t made any contact with her. Why would I? There’s no benefit to it. I’m busy concentrating on stopping the opposition. The referee waves away my apology angrily.

Have you ever experienced when someone initiates something with you where you feel like it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them? The smart move is just to get away from them as quietly and quickly as you can.

When it’s a referee on a Touch pitch, you can’t go anywhere. It’s hovering there in the background and the pitch can feel pretty small. For the rest of the game, apart from everything else to manage, I’m trying to manage this situation. I’m staying as far away as I can from the referee on the field and saying the right things from a safe distance, ‘Find the ref,’ I tell my teammates. ‘Get back onside.’ I’m just hoping we have no other interaction. It is very weird.

Anyway, I got through it. And that was my best game. Apart from the crap pass I gave to Gareth, which was my very last contribution of the tournament.

THE JERSEY SWAP

‘I’ve asked one player to swap a jersey, which I regret. When I played Germany with Ireland, pre-94 World Cup. It was the sweeper, Sammer. He said, ‘No’ and I went, ‘f***’. I honestly didn’t really want it anyway.’ Roy Keane

Exchanging kit is a big part of the end of tournaments. My teammate Darren went into overdrive and got the impressive haul below.

I was much more modest. And as I’ll come back to below, I had very little kit to swap anyway. At one point, I was passing by one of the Lebanon team. We both had kit in our hands and I asked if he wanted to exchange for an Irish shorts. ‘Not really,’ he said dismissively and kept walking. Oh yes, I forgot you’re not Lebanon, are you? You’re a made-up Australian team. I can’t stand rudeness. Learn some manners and stop reinforcing my prejudices. I got China shorts instead and the person I swapped with was very polite and friendly.

THE COURT

Our team had the gentlest of post-tournament court sessions. Lots of present giving and appreciation, which fit the character of the team. I liked it.

That being said, it did turn.

I got the ‘D’ dunce hat for ‘Stupidest Play of the Tournament’ for running over the sideline with the ball. There were five other nominees for that award but the vote was rigged. I was voted on first and the other five nominees immediately block-voted against me to protect themselves, mob mentality took over and the rest of the squad unanimously voted against me too. It was an outrage against justice and I take back some the nice things I said about them earlier.

T’was a good night out too.

CLOTHE YOURSELF IN THE ARMOUR OF VIRTUE

Here I am at the opening ceremony without my off-field kit because I don’t have any. I couldn’t buy it because the online shop closed before the final squads were named. I had to borrow an off-field shirt from someone in Swiss Touch who’d swapped for it at the Euros last year. (Thanks Matt C.). No one said anything to me about it at the opening ceremony. There was no point at which anyone in Irish Touch brought us all together as an Irish delegation and made us feel as one group. No one spoke to us about our responsibilities representing Ireland, what it meant, what it requires. We did sign a couple of documents before the tournament. It felt a bit like most people are too tired to care about that stuff at this stage. I remember my first world cup wasn’t like this at all.

Last year at the Euros in Vichy, I looked on from a non-playing distance at the shirts the Irish teams were wearing and thought they were really cheap-looking. Maybe it was a down-year and they were cost-cutting. Or maybe the supplier let them down somehow. It can happen. You learn for the following year obviously.

When I received my world cup playing kit, it was the same as last year, someone can correct me if I’m wrong on that, but if not the same, it was equally as bad. When I tried the playing shirts on, I thought the material was flimsy, cheap and shapeless. Penneys knockoff quality.

Once I’d gotten into the tournament and I’d covered those shirts with sweat and dirt and honest effort, I warmed to them and thought maybe I’d overreacted.

Then at the end of the tournament, my American teammate pointed out their bad quality. ‘Somebody got a sweetheart deal there,’ he said and hearing it from someone with no historical trauma associated with the Irish Touch Association, and in his dulcet American tones, it had greater legitimacy. As I looked again at the threads already beginning to run in my playing shirt after one week, I concluded my first instinct was correct. It’s not the ITA’s money that’s being spent here. It’s individual players paying for everything themselves and relying on the ITA to make sure that the best is being done for them.

Here’s a question. The Football Association of Ireland have managed to be inept as an organisation for decades, regardless of changes in individual personnel, regardless of all the various decent, capable people who’ve come and gone.

As I heard someone comment about John Delaney during the pomp of his grotesque governance of the FAI. ‘It’s easy to soar like an eagle when you’re flying with turkeys.’

How does the Irish Touch Association manage?

Let’s take a little example. At the last world cup, I listened to five different people make allegations that a certain individual was misappropriating funds left, right and centre. Surely the ITA did a full follow-up investigation into this, right? Because, if not true, it’s terrible that this person’s good reputation was being sullied in that way (muffled guffaw at the back). And if, heaven forbid, there was some truth in those allegations, surely the ITA would not continue working with this person?

I have no idea if this person was involved with the Irish gear this year but if they were, surely due diligence has been done. Right?

Let’s take another example.

Kaja (namesake of my daughter) Kallas, who has just resigned as Prime Minister of Estonia to become Foreign Policy Chief of the EU was the first European leader to be put on a Russian criminal wanted list. ‘Then, I know I’m doing the right thing,’ she said. ‘Don’t be afraid to offend Putin. He’s very good at sowing fear in Western societies, but he’s afraid. He’s afraid of finding himself at war with NATO.’ Exactly, when you’re dealing with a bully, don’t expect to deal with them normally. You don’t appease them, you don’t appeal to their better nature, you stand up to them.

I’ve stood up to one of our own little pet bullies in Irish Touch, and got attacked from fifty different directions, but stand your ground and eventually, the cowardice that made them a bully in the first place begins to show. And it showed.

What happened to me was not OK and what has interest for me is the responsibilities of the ITA to look after its members. If you stand up, you should be protected. And I don’t just mean me, I’m thinking of specific other people in Irish Touch who have been targeted. There has to be governance and codes of conduct and consequences. Bumbling along as an organisation and pleading ignorance and allowing any individual to run amok is not acceptable.

There are lots of good people in the ITA, just as there are in the FAI, but that doesn’t change the quality of the actual experience. The ITA as an organisation has a responsibility of care to its members, which it has consistently failed. And there are far more vulnerable, younger members to think about than me. I’ve seen behaviour being turned a blind eye to that’s not OK.

THE ELIGIBILITY QUESTION

This is something I had no involvement with at all, so why bring it up? Why not? I’m on a roll. Everybody in Irish Touch knows what happened so it won’t be news to you here.

The Irish M30s knowingly played an ineligible player in their final game of the World Cup. I’ve spoken to some people involved with the team who were disgusted by this.

I knew the ITA were officially aware of what happened because I talked to a member of the board about it. I was happy to hear that the ITA did report it straightaway to the world body FIT.

The ITA does not necessarily need to tell the likes of me what action is being taken on this. That’s between the organisation and those involved. I think they do need to address it officially and inform Irish players that there are codes of behaviour, or even just establish what those codes of behaviour are, because, not just in this instance, it has seemed like we can all just do whatever we want at times.

DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY

Right, if you hear that I’ve been put on a criminal wanted list, well, you’ll know I’m doing something right. So, since I may be living this next while in exile, maybe a neutral, Third World country like Switzerland will give me sanctuary.

Ah yes, I have bored many, many people at dinner parties with this ‘interesting fact’. Yes, Switzerland, and indeed Ireland, are both Third World countries. By the original definition after World War II, First World countries were all the allies, Second World was the Communist Block, and Third World was everybody else. So, Ireland and Switzerland being neutral countries and non-members of NATO, officially… OK, I know the definition has completely changed since then, and fine, maybe it’s not that interesting.

Anyway, I really enjoyed working with the Swiss Mens 30s, helping them in their build-up to the world cup.

At the tournament itself, I was able to be in their box for three of their games and I think I had a positive impact in two of those. I arrived to their Luxembourg game when they were 3-2 down late in the first half and I think I was able to give some good, solid technical advice at half-time. ‘You’ve got to stop their drives. They’re upright, giving you their chest every time, get in and make hard touches, hold them up in the touch every time.’ That worked. Luxembourg stopped getting up to the line to challenge for scores. ‘Coming on from the box, get at their middles, middle-middle scoops or quickies if you’re close to the line. Their defensive organisation will let them down.’ It did and scores came. Interestingly, one of the players said to me afterwards that me telling them they were clearly the better team really gave him a jolt of confidence. That was a good coaching reminder for me that sometimes players also need to hear what they’re doing well.

One of the coaches on the Luxembourg side is from my home town of Carlow. He’s the son of one of my teachers in primary school, Mr. Corcoran. I remember one day in June 1984 his dad, and two other teachers, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Ellis, involving me after class in their conversation about a great debate of the day.

In the football Euros of that year, RTE TV pundit Eamon Dunphy, you may have heard of him, argued vehemently that the captain of the victorious French team, Michel Platini, despite scoring nine goals, was merely a ‘good’ not a ‘great’ player. As a kid already obsessed with sport, I remember being delighted my teachers were involving me in the discussion and asking my opinion. I loved Michel Platini back then. Years later, I taught English to a French woman who was married to one of the French goalkeepers of that era. She told me in great confidence, ‘Yes, Platini. He’s funny. But you know he likes the women and the men.’ I digress.

In Switzerland’s last game, they were two-down against the Netherlands and being overrun. What I said to them was this, ‘This is not technical. You need to get on top in the energy game and you need to do it NOW.’ I think this was the right thing to say. I hoped it was, because this was at 8am on Sunday morning. My tournament had finished the previous afternoon and I’d gone out that night. I was watching the game now and my ‘tired and emotional’ brain was unable to analyse anything that was going on.

Maybe just by luck, what I said worked. They stopped conceding scores and clawed their way back into the game. Then I said, ‘You keep that intensity. They haven’t scored in ten minutes. Now, you need to get calm on your own attack and run your moves.’ I had no moves to suggest, my mind was a blank but, you know, you’ve got to put trust in the players to problem-solve. And bluff it as a coach. They got back level in the game and cruelly lost to what we’ll kindly refer to as a ‘systems breakdown’ on the last play after the hooter went. It was a tough end but I thought they had a really good tournament.

They invited me to their court session and Peri, the head coach, said something that quite moved me. He commented to the players that the team wouldn’t have happened without me, that I was the one person who fought for the squad when there was talk of cutting it months earlier. ‘Is that true?’ I was thinking. ‘Maybe I did do that a bit but it just seemed like a normal thing to do.’ I appreciated greatly that it was appreciated.

They even presented me with a Swiss shirt. I remember the first gay Carlow man I ever met, Barry who worked in the local clothes store, telling me in the early 90s that it was ‘a complete nonsense that red-heads can’t wear red.’ He’s right.

With Kaja, Ania and Arek. Does it get better than this?

Only when you add this, your mammy and your sister Emer, who played for the Irish W35s.

You have to appreciate these moments.

By the way, is there anything better in the world of sport this week than this photograph? Parents and daughter all playing for Ireland.

There was a measure of sadness for me in that for the first time since I started playing, the ‘originals’, the Tipsters who founded Irish touch, did not have a team. They’d been trying to get a M55s team together but had to pull out in the end. Nothing lasts forever.

I was very happy though about Ireland’s first ever centurion of caps. When the M55s fell through, Frank was drafted into the M45s

And yes, I do think he’s reached Beyonce status. Just Frank. No surname needed.

He got a tunnel to run onto the pitch for his 100th cap that almost reached all the way back to Ireland. It was the M45s last game against Spain. I loved the fact that when the Spanish team heard the reason for the long tunnel, their captain immediately called over all his team to join it. I love that old Spanish sense of civility and honour. Ireland won and Frank scored two tries. He does actually work for the post office. And, yes I say without any irony, he does always deliver.

Another centurion, and another one thoroughly deserved, was Señor Jose Delgado, playing with the Spanish M40s. He Ronaldoed me during the tournament.

The selfie above was taken in the middle of one of our games. He ran over and took it, unsolicited, just after I’ve sprinted off the pitch into the subs box. I’m glad I made his selfie-collection. It’s a good roll of honour to belong to.

MUSIC IN MY MIND

Gazing back into the woods searching for answers. You don’t find them and you do.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep / but I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep / And miles to go before I sleep.
‘Stopping by woods on a snowy evening’ by Robert Frost

I’d love to be back there now in the intensity and striving of competition but time moves on. The pull of the winds is dragging me away. Let it go. Be grateful. Or in other words.

Keep cruisin’ / Can’t stop, won’t stop movin’
It’s like I got this music in my mind / Sayin’ it’s gonna be alright.
‘Shake it off’ by Taylor Swift

Ok, full disclosure. I’m not actually a Taylor Swift fan. I’d no idea of any of her songs before writing this blog. I’ve heard she’s quite popular and I reckoned the blog needed something contemporary. To be fair, when I wrote my blog at the end of the 2019 World Cup, I wove in a whole narrative connected to the last season of Game of Thrones. I’d never watched an episode of it in my life. So, I have previous.

Thinking about it now, we’ve had an Estonian prime minister, a French nihilistic philosopher and footballing legend of the 1980s, the Simpsons and Beyonce, Carlow’s first gay man, and the obligatory Roy Keane reference. I’m not sure we really needed Taylor, but too late now.

Anyway, I found another way to lift my spirits. Post-world cup life isn’t all bad.