Friends of Celine win brief ceasefire

Strange, it's only a few days since I read with, frankly, swooning admiration of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban's decision to postpone a cabinet meeting for three days because it clashed with fourth division football club Felcsut's training camp.

Orban, one of Europe's youngest prime ministers, a snip of lad at just 37, has been a player with Felcsut for years and didn't see why the frivolous, irksome business of running the country should get in the way of the more important part of his life: football. After all, Hungary probably elected him because he had a good engine, so why stop using it now?

"I'd vote for him," I thought to myself. Well, he's evidently a sound man with a damn fine sense of perspective and a splendid ability to get his priorities right. Sadly there aren't many like him. In fact, you could probably count on one finger the number of world leaders who believe lumping a ball around a patch of grass for a fourth division team most of us weren't aware existed to be of more consequence than the overall welfare of a nation. Rise and follow Viktor, that's what I say.

If Bertie "Taoiseach" Ahern postponed a European heads of state meeting because it clashed with, say, a Leinster Senior League game in which he was picked to play libero for Tolka Rovers against Malahide United, his approval rating would - well, should - rise to about 94 per cent in the next opinion poll. (For the sake of balance: Michael Noonan would play at left wing back in the first half, switching to the right in the second, before deciding he was more comfortable in the centre; Mary Harney would be the midfield general and Ruairi Quinn would play in the hole just behind the front two. The team would be managed by Jackie Healy-Rae and coached by Mildred Fox.)

The other six per cent in that poll would be made up of those people who just don't get it. You know the types, the ones who haughtily, proudly even, declare that they've no interest in sport, especially football. I know, I know: say nothing.

I've studied these "people" in my time and spotted a few other objectionable traits they had in common: (a) they never found Cheers funny, (b) they don't like dogs and (c) they don't like decent music either. They're usually cat people (need we say more?) who pretend they like jazz, but, in truth, loathe it and actually have their CD players set to play Celine Dion's Greatest Hits on a loop. They should be rounded up and deported to Rockall. If that's a touch too intolerant for your liking, then maybe we'll let them stay, so long as they sign an agreement never to open their mouths again, forfeit the right to vote and never allow their CD purchases to have a bearing on the charts.

They're also the ones who are protesting most loudly against Bertie's Bowl because they don't want their hard-earned cash blown on a 165,000 all-seater darts stadium. Granted, there is a smidgeon of rationality in their argument, but I'm damned if I'll admit that to them. Anyway, if they're not taxed to the hilt they'll spend that extra disposable income on offensive CDs and luxury cat food - so why not take it off them and blow it on a sporting complex that would have them foaming at the mouth on Questions and Answers? "Sport! Pfff," they'd say, and you'd counter, cogently, "Na, na, na, na, na."

SO, what's my point? God knows, I lost it hours ago, but it touched upon my discomfort at acknowledging this week that sport, in a crisis, doesn't matter too much after all. That hurt. Heaps.

But I want Celine's groupies to know that this is only a temporary concession, a fleeting recognition that occasionally real life matters a bit more than a game of two halves. Normal service will be resumed when this foot-and-mouth crisis is over.

I vaguely remember half-learning about the 1940s epidemic while reading Smash Hits and Shoot under my 50-page Concise History of the World book at the back of the class. I wasn't hugely interested until we were told that the Munster hurling final was postponed because of it. Anything that caused the postponement of the Munster hurling final must have been catastrophic, on a par with the only other events us 14year-olds were aware had forced the postponement of major sporting occasions, the two World Wars.

It was chilling then and chilling now, so for any sporting organisation worried about their insurmountable backlog of fixtures, what harm? You'll all get there in the end. And if you don't there's always next season. For now, then, hostilities are suspended with the Celine/cat lovers. Suspended, though, not cancelled.