Oh my gosh,” as they might say in America. My daughter and her friends would gasp “OMG”. Me? I won’t tell you what I exclaimed when I realised that it is 40 years since Eddie Macken, James Kiernan, Capt Con Power and the late Paul Darragh were the formidable team which won the first of their three-in-a-row Aga Khan trophies at the Dublin Horse Show. Forty years!

It might be hard for younger readers to believe now, but these guys were real sporting heroes back then. Apart from the likes of Eamonn Coghlan, John Treacy, Christy O’Connor Jr and, well, I don’t really know who else, there weren’t many individual international sporting heroes carrying the Irish flag with honour back then. Yes, we had our GAA, soccer and rugby stars, but no individuals were wearing the Irish colours all on their own. Our show jumpers filled the void admirably.

I laughed out loud (LOL, in my daughter’s lingo) when journalist Suzanne Campbell (she of a similarly wonderful young vintage as yours truly) reminded me of those summer days when, in our front garden or the neighbouring field, we would emulate the daring skills of our heroic show jumpers. In July we would all play makey-uppy tennis during Wimbledon, even if that meant substituting a tennis ball with a football, a racket with our feet, and a shovel or a bit of rope as the net.

In August, during the show jumping at the RDS, a course design involved leaping across sweeping brushes, buckets, shrubs and a rockery if you could find one, while pretending to be a galloping horse.

“Dadum, dadum, dadum, FOUR FAULTS, dadum, dadum.” In reality, the action of the human pretending to be the show jumping horse was more akin to a man with a limp in a hurry for the nearest toilet. Admit it. If you are aged between roughly 43 and 48 and you had the space outside the house, you pretended you were Eddie Macken on Boomerang. LMAO!

I was in Croke Park last Saturday evening observing Dean Rock’s exquisite free-taking. It was another throwback to the days when we ran outside and pretended to be what we had just seen on TV. To the days when his dad, Barney, kicked frees the same way. Put the ball on the carpet and swing it over the bar anywhere inside the 45. Simple. Brian Stafford, Ronan Carolan, Mikey Sheehy, Martin McHugh, Matt Connor and Larry Tompkins were all masters of the simple. Can we not reintroduce this basic skill of high remuneration in football terms?

I put my head in my hands now when I see players try to do their best Jonny Wilkinson impression, kicking from the hands or, worse, summoning the keeper with the bull toe. Look at Dean Rock, a chip off the old block. And people wonder why Dublin are so good.

From what I saw last Saturday, yes they have the pick and yes they have the most skilled and best-coached players. But, most importantly in my book, they just do the simple things well. CL

The sectarian

mindset remains

An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, in his speech at Queen’s University Belfast last week, described Brexit as the challenge of our generation. Solving the Troubles was the challenge of the last generation in the North, yet that sectarian mindset remains and is threatening to cause a hard Brexit. Sinn Féin won’t take their seven seats in Westminster, where the nationalist voice is needed. And unionists will not contemplate any sensible border or customs solution, which separates them from the UK or hints at a quasi-united Ireland. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same)!