Irish Examiner view: All set for a mesmerising 48 hours of sport

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

Anyone suffering from bloat after watching soccer's Club World Cup and its mind-boggling closing ceremony can return to reality this weekend with today and tomorrow competing to become, in the words of that old Andy Williams/Johnny Mathis standard, 'the most wonderful time of the year'.
This morning the British & Irish Lions — with more than half the players from Ireland — will line up against the Wallabies at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium in Queensland.
While the Lions as a sporting concept is not to everyone's taste — one commentator in this newspaper, iconoclastic tongue firmly in cheek perhaps, recently described it as 'utterly idiotic' — there are more reasons to enjoy than dislike them.
Certainly, they have a cachet, a French word, which is perhaps why la belle France, a shrewd judge of the oval ball game, is keen to secure regular British and Irish Lions tours.
There cannot, given the current unpredictability of political circumstances and the future of the island of Ireland, be anything harmful in witnessing five nations pursuing a common purpose with the emphasis on unity rather than division.
While we take an understandable pride in providing the playing and coaching backbone of this current tour party, we must beware hubris. Another nation was once more powerful than our own.
But Wales have fallen so far from the days of Barry John, Gareth Edwards, and JPR Williams that it has not a single representative in today's Lions selection, the first time this has happened in 129 years.
As serendipity would have it, there is another fabled Irish rugby name at one of this weekend's great sporting occasions — the 153rd Open golf championship at Royal Portrush — where Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry are among those competing for the Claret Jug (almost), confident that Donald Trump won't pitch up tomorrow to take it out of their hands.
Among the marshals at the Co Antrim course is 82-year-old Mike Gibson, for many discerning judges one of the greatest rugby players of all time.
The Tour de France, meanwhile, rolls on through the weekend until July 27. Ben Healy thrilled us by taking the yellow jersey on stage 11 of the iconic race, the first Irishman to wear the maillot jaune since Stephen Roche in 1987. Healy's parents hail originally from Cork and Waterford and moved to London more than 60 years ago.
For many though, all these events will form but an amuse-bouche to Sunday's All-Ireland senior hurling championship final when Cork face Tipperary for the supreme honour for the first time in history.
The Rebels will be seeking their first All-Ireland for 20 years while Tipp were last victorious in 2019 when they roundly defeated Kilkenny.
While we are blessed with a mesmerising 48 hours of sport in which Irish interests are to the fore, it is correct to say the main attraction will be at Croke Park for an occasion which is truly unique.
Let us hope for a fast and robust game which will provide enough talking points to distract us, and keep us entertained, for months to come.
An act that may change the law
In Ireland, we like to think we know a thing or two about 21st century acting, an opinion buttressed by our candidates for the 2025 Emmy awards to be presented in Los Angeles in September.
But well merited as our shortlisted hopefuls are — Colin Farrell, Sharon Horgan, and Ruth Negga for their roles in The Penguin, Bad Sisters, and Presumed Innocent, respectively, — none of them is as eye-catching as the nomination of a young man who was unknown before March.
Even more remarkable, the character of Jamie Miller, who provided hundreds of millions of viewers across the world with a powerful insight into the dangerously insidious effect that internet-driven 'incel' culture can have on young boys, was performed by someone who had never acted previously.
Owen Cooper, a Liverpool-supporting 14-year-old from Warrington in Lancashire, was chosen to play a schoolboy arrested for murder in the Netflix series Adolescence despite no previous experience on stage and possessing none of the 'nepo baby' advantages which are now commonplace in many showbiz breakthroughs. His mother is a carer; his father works in IT, and he is the youngest of three brothers.
His performance was remarkable in that it utilised two difficult skills of stagecraft — shooting episodes in one continuous take and improvisation.
It accelerated a worldwide debate about social media and how parents manage that issue in their families. The series writer, Jack Thorne, said smartphones should be considered as dangerous as cigarettes, and banned until the age of 16. Restrictions in their use of varying degrees of severity are being considered across Irish schools.
Cooper faces stiff competition for his award. He's up against Javier Bardem and Ashley Walters in his category. But his future seems secure. He's set to play young Heathcliff in a Wuthering Heights prequel.
Rather less certainty attaches to whether society has yet formulated the correct responses to corrosive technology foreshortening the timeline of childhood.
That will be an even more important act.
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Data calamity will stoke conspiracy theories
It may be tempting to regard what is taking place next door in the UK, with its calamitous leak of the names of Afghan allies and collaborators to the hard-eyed and flint-hearted Taliban, as a matter of academic interest, one more example of the 2025 truism that you can't trust people nor technology.
Unfortunately, because we are the nearest neighbour with shared borders and an unresolved debate to be pursued on the judicial implications of eventual reunification, this is a serious matter for Ireland and it behoves us to take an acute interest in the dubious legal practices of two successive British governments.
For more than 600 days under the stewardship of two prime ministers — Rishi Sunak of the Conservatives and Keir Starmer of Labour — Whitehall has maintained a 'super-injunction', one of the most draconian legal instruments available to the courts, preventing the discussion of any information relating to what is arguably the worst data breach in the history of any government.
A spreadsheet containing the names of some 25,000 Afghan soldiers, government workers and their family member,s and the identities of British special forces personnel and spies was circulated on email, with excerpts posted on social media platforms between February 2022 and August 2023.
In September 2023 the ministry of defence gained an injunction to prevent dissemination of this fact. And not any old common or garden injunction of the kind normally sought by feckless footballers and bullying corporations attempting to avoid embarrassment. It was far more sinister.
It was, said a judge, the 'first contra mundum super-injunction ever granted'. That Latin phrase meaning 'against the whole world' indicates its scope. Instead of being applied to a named individual or news organisation, anyone with knowledge of the leak was banned from talking about it under threat of imprisonment. Even reference to the court case itself was verboten.
This constraint covered up the fact Britain was relocating thousands of Afghans in a programme, estimated by its current defence secretary John Healey to cost €8.2bn, without recourse to parliament or to media scrutiny. That sum goes some way to explain what Labour described as a €25bn 'black hole' in public finances when it assumed power.
Many might agree with the views of the high court judge, Justice Chamberlain, who asked 'am I going bonkers' when he discovered the extent of the cover-up and it is impossible to underestimate the political consequences when a population which is already hugely disappointed with migration policy assimilates the levels of misdirection from government ministers supported by their senior law officers.
This is the nearest jurisdiction to us, and many of its legal processes overlap with ours. We must be cognisant of the way super-injunctions are used. Last year the Unionist MP and barrister Jim Allister was told, in answer to an Assembly question, that seven such super-injunctions were 'live' in the North. Calculated lack of transparency adds fuel to conspiracy theories which will ultimately undermine democracy. It is already doing so.
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