Live Sport 1: Irish rugby player
I've always loved watching sport in the flesh. From a young age, I'd be mesmerised by a game of park football, watch my brother playing cricket, whatever I could find. But, funnily enough, I've never been a regular, a day-in day-out fan of one team, be it Spurs, Brentford, Middlesex, whatever.
The nearest to that I've been was being taken, along with my siblings, to Sunbury to watch London Irish playing rugby in the late 80s. My father was Treasurer of the club and a former player, but I'm not sure I remember seeing him play, maybe once. Thankfully, he stopped when he was 45, when I was 7. When I say he played for London Irish, that really doesn't mean what it means now. He played for the 2nds or 3rds in an old-school funtime amateur set-up. They were all Irish back then, though!
Likewise, the fact that he would nearly always take us on a Sunday meant that we probably weren't seeing the very best of the it. I think they had Saturday and Sunday teams, and the better stuff was on a Saturday.
It's a pretty vivid (I hate the word vivid, sorry) childhood memory, the smell of sports bar, sweat and booze and cigarettes and cigars, lots of "Is this your boy, Paddy?" and "You look like you'll be a scrum-half" and assorted jolly Irishman cliches. I loved it.
The play was generally pretty woeful, lots of fat hairy men forlornly chasing a bobbling ball about. I remember my delight at seeing my unpleasant, bullying, PE teacher exposed as a very average flank forward before my very eyes, playing, I think, for Ewell RFC. My PE teacher who ranks pretty highly, with his disinterest in my abilities, in my long list of excuses for not becoming a top class sportsman. I'll not forget the time he shouted at me in front of the whole team as a member of the Under 10 cricket team (yes, I was 9, but this was how he treated 9 year olds). "You were going to open the batting, David McGaughey [don't you just hate that full name shit], but not after a disgraceful bowling performance like that. You're going Number 11, boy". I'd just taken 4 for 15, by the way, and it was only when a player's mother he clearly fancied walked past and said "I thought David was particularly good today" that he relented and agreed I could bat 5.
I also remember, at school, the Monday after I'd seen him playing at Sunbury, when I enthusiastically mentioned it to him, as I walked away down the corridor, him chatting to another teacher and saying something disparaging about "the Micks". The dick.
Anyway, enough of that shitbag. That's actually not the story. No. The point is amidst all that Sunday pub team mediocrity, I remember seeing a blond young winger who rather stood out from the morass, who made the trips down to Sunbury all the more worthwhile. A chaotic sidestep, electric speed, he was clearly a class above and the old boys in the bar were clearly pretty excited about him. It's not one particular thrilling moment I recall, it's several where he would suddenly scythe through a whole team, make the rest of the players on the pitch look like statues.
I actually found his car keys once, and was only slightly disappointed, when I heard him speak, that he was only as Irish as me, in fact less so, as he qualified through his grandfather. He has an Irish name though: Simon Geoghegan.
If you're a rugby fan, you'll know the name. If not, then you probably won't. It's not an exaggeration to say that he was one of the most exciting wingers the game has seen, but in terms of the development of rugby, he couldn't have been much more unlucky.
He quickly made it into the full Irish team and stood out equally as much as on those cold afternoons in Sunbury. But that was a shitty Irish team back then, and he seemed to literally only touch the ball about three times a game. I remember one particularly useless centre called Danaher who always seemed to dummy the pass, cut back in and get swallowed up. If Geoghegan had played in the Irish team of O'Driscoll and Darcy, O'Gara and Kearney, goodness knows how many tries he'd have scored. As it is, I think he managed 11 in 38 matches, a few memorable ones at that.
But his heyday was the (just) pre-professional era (he had another career as a solicitor) and, while still in his mid-to-late 20s, after a move to Bath, his career was curtailed by a persistent toe injury.
Otherwise, I might be looking back and talking about seeing the very early days of one of the greats of the game.
I saw him once playing for Ireland, in 1992 when my dad took me to Twickenham to see Ireland play the juggernaut that England was back then. It was a pretty conclusively victory for England, and my main memory of the game is pretty bittersweet - having the opportunity to buy either an England or Ireland hat and choosing an England one. Poor call.
Anyway, here's Geoghegan's most famous try, a couple of years later (which I do remember cheering to the rafters) and a wise old Irishman talking about why he should be in the all time Irish XV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ_jvFHNbmU
The nearest to that I've been was being taken, along with my siblings, to Sunbury to watch London Irish playing rugby in the late 80s. My father was Treasurer of the club and a former player, but I'm not sure I remember seeing him play, maybe once. Thankfully, he stopped when he was 45, when I was 7. When I say he played for London Irish, that really doesn't mean what it means now. He played for the 2nds or 3rds in an old-school funtime amateur set-up. They were all Irish back then, though!
Likewise, the fact that he would nearly always take us on a Sunday meant that we probably weren't seeing the very best of the it. I think they had Saturday and Sunday teams, and the better stuff was on a Saturday.
It's a pretty vivid (I hate the word vivid, sorry) childhood memory, the smell of sports bar, sweat and booze and cigarettes and cigars, lots of "Is this your boy, Paddy?" and "You look like you'll be a scrum-half" and assorted jolly Irishman cliches. I loved it.
The play was generally pretty woeful, lots of fat hairy men forlornly chasing a bobbling ball about. I remember my delight at seeing my unpleasant, bullying, PE teacher exposed as a very average flank forward before my very eyes, playing, I think, for Ewell RFC. My PE teacher who ranks pretty highly, with his disinterest in my abilities, in my long list of excuses for not becoming a top class sportsman. I'll not forget the time he shouted at me in front of the whole team as a member of the Under 10 cricket team (yes, I was 9, but this was how he treated 9 year olds). "You were going to open the batting, David McGaughey [don't you just hate that full name shit], but not after a disgraceful bowling performance like that. You're going Number 11, boy". I'd just taken 4 for 15, by the way, and it was only when a player's mother he clearly fancied walked past and said "I thought David was particularly good today" that he relented and agreed I could bat 5.
I also remember, at school, the Monday after I'd seen him playing at Sunbury, when I enthusiastically mentioned it to him, as I walked away down the corridor, him chatting to another teacher and saying something disparaging about "the Micks". The dick.
Anyway, enough of that shitbag. That's actually not the story. No. The point is amidst all that Sunday pub team mediocrity, I remember seeing a blond young winger who rather stood out from the morass, who made the trips down to Sunbury all the more worthwhile. A chaotic sidestep, electric speed, he was clearly a class above and the old boys in the bar were clearly pretty excited about him. It's not one particular thrilling moment I recall, it's several where he would suddenly scythe through a whole team, make the rest of the players on the pitch look like statues.
I actually found his car keys once, and was only slightly disappointed, when I heard him speak, that he was only as Irish as me, in fact less so, as he qualified through his grandfather. He has an Irish name though: Simon Geoghegan.
If you're a rugby fan, you'll know the name. If not, then you probably won't. It's not an exaggeration to say that he was one of the most exciting wingers the game has seen, but in terms of the development of rugby, he couldn't have been much more unlucky.
He quickly made it into the full Irish team and stood out equally as much as on those cold afternoons in Sunbury. But that was a shitty Irish team back then, and he seemed to literally only touch the ball about three times a game. I remember one particularly useless centre called Danaher who always seemed to dummy the pass, cut back in and get swallowed up. If Geoghegan had played in the Irish team of O'Driscoll and Darcy, O'Gara and Kearney, goodness knows how many tries he'd have scored. As it is, I think he managed 11 in 38 matches, a few memorable ones at that.
But his heyday was the (just) pre-professional era (he had another career as a solicitor) and, while still in his mid-to-late 20s, after a move to Bath, his career was curtailed by a persistent toe injury.
Otherwise, I might be looking back and talking about seeing the very early days of one of the greats of the game.
I saw him once playing for Ireland, in 1992 when my dad took me to Twickenham to see Ireland play the juggernaut that England was back then. It was a pretty conclusively victory for England, and my main memory of the game is pretty bittersweet - having the opportunity to buy either an England or Ireland hat and choosing an England one. Poor call.
Anyway, here's Geoghegan's most famous try, a couple of years later (which I do remember cheering to the rafters) and a wise old Irishman talking about why he should be in the all time Irish XV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ_jvFHNbmU
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