A kick in the grass

THE jingoism was like a gathering storm last week across the English media, as the country's soccer team gave England a rare taste of success.

The flushed commentaries on England's own Euro 96 matches were predictable enough, of course. More intriguing was hearing the creeping ethnic stereotypes and derision for foreign players - playing styles, dress sense haircuts - in other games, a shift from the awed admiration deemed appropriate when they were all playing better than England.

Mostly, the xenophobia was simply risible, like this spot of visual referencing from the BBC Radio 5 Live commentator on Wednesday's Portugal Croatia match: "Oceano is every bit as exotic looking as his name suggests. He's a sort of Marvin Hagler look alike." Marvin Hagler? Exotic? Oh, I see, Oceano is black - "exotic", of course. Like Marvin Hagler, right.

But if all this was leaving a bad taste in your mouth, a spoonful of sugar was available with Colm Keane's In Profile: Stanley Matthews (RTE Radio 1, Monday), a gorgeous little tale from a possibly - more innocent era in football, and an interview with an Englishman who says with matter of fact sincerity "My, I count me blessings."

The material is familiar though presumably not to many RTE listeners - but the programme's warm presentation more than made up for that. Keane evoked the image which is perhaps a close second - to that of Pele dribbling a stuffed sock through a favela - in the football romanticism charts: young Matthews kicking a tennis ball against a wall in the faltering light in his home town of Stoke-on-Trent, c. 1920s. By age 14 he was earning £1 a week - "that was a lot of money" - at Stoke City. After a few more years a protest meeting packed out Stoke's town hall at the prospect of Matthews being transferred. (Would it happen in Blackburn?)

Incredibly this clean living gent, who would abstain from food every Monday, led Stoke to promotion at age 48, then retired at 50. "I could have gone on another two or three years - that was the worst mistake ever," he told Keane, then complained bitterly: "The press used to write me off when I was 36!" But he never knew the bitterness of a really serious injury until he damaged his knee cartilage - playing in Brazil at the age of 70.

Not everything in this story was tinged with innocence. Matthews told Keane how the British ambassador instructed England's players to give the Nazi salute at a game in Berlin in 1937 - and how the FA secretary promised them each a set of cutlery if they won the same match!

The Fat Kenny Show (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday) spent two days live in Amsterdam during the week (it got out thankfully, before England hammered Holland). If the stated pretext was rather dodgy, the shows were exciting and instructive.

The pretext was something about where the "liberal agenda" might lead us. In fact and sadly, the Irish liberal agenda has little time for the Dutch treats enumerated by Kenny and Co. On issues such as censorship, prostitution and drugs, Ireland is home to a repressive brand of "liberalism" (look how they ganged up on Niall Stokes on the heroin issue) now being matched abroad by the likes of Clinton and Blair.

Anyway, as a portrait of what a real liberal agenda is - i.e. one genuinely committed to personal liberty along with the common good - might look like, the shows were sharp. Emer Woodfull - whither this brilliant journalist in the revamped autumn line up? - offered especially strong reports on the "methadone bus" that helps keep Amsterdam's heroin problem to a minimum and on the reality of euthanasia for one Dutch family.

The thorny issue of drugs and musical creativity is being tackled over on FM3. The drug, in this case, is caffeine, and the programme is Michael Dungan's lovely Cafe Concert (Monday), a six part series that dwells in the murky depths of the European coffee houses and cabarets when classical and popular musical forms have met and, perhaps, mingled. The silky bilingual tones of the Irish Canadian presenter/explainer are perfect accompaniment to the music.

That's my lot for the next several weeks. In the meantime, watch this space for John Waters on radio, and may all your summer listening be sunny.