Compiled by MARY HANNIGAN
Taylor gears up wrongly for photo shoot
ON WEDNESDAY there was a gathering of several of Ireland’s London 2012 hopefuls in Dublin for the announcement by Pat Hickey, president of the Olympic Council of Ireland, that the ESB had come on board as a sponsor for the 2012 team.
As is usually the case, an agency sent photos from the event to the media, featuring several of the familiar sporting faces at the launch.
On this occasion, though, there followed a note from Wilson Hartnell Public Relations, the OCI’s PR company, announcing that the photos were being reissued, this time without the ones showing Katie Taylor doing a little shadow boxing.
The problem?
Taylor was wearing her own Adidas gear in those particular snaps, and the Irish Olympic team clothing is provided by rival sportswear firm, Asics.
This, inevitably, brought to mind that incident at the 1996 Games in Atlanta when Sonia O’Sullivan was forced to change her kit in the tunnel minutes before her 5,000 metres heat, because she was wearing Reebok gear instead of Asics.
This led to the mother of all rows, with Hickey declaring: “As far as I’m concerned, she can wear what she likes – even her grandmother’s pyjamas, if that makes her comfortable.”
If Taylor can pick up a medal in London – and she has to qualify for the Games first – you can’t imagine too many would mind either if she did so in her Granny’s pjs. Well, apart perhaps from Team Ireland’s sponsors.
Comedian goes too far
IT WAS only last month that Tony Cascarino got into a whole heap of bother for informing Sky Sports News viewers that Arsenal’s Armand Traore was “having a holocaust” of a game against Manchester United, the channel promptly apologising “for any offence caused”.
Cascarino, of course, is a useful poker player, but earlier this week, you might have read, Samoa centre Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu raised him, quite spectacularly, by describing on Twitter the team’s treatment by the Rugby World Cup organisers as “like slavery, like the holocaust, like apartheid”.
His complaint was about the World Cup scheduling that led to Samoa playing twice in four days, while most of the big boys had a week between their pool games.
“Who’s the genius behind this s**t,” he asked, before dismissing objections to his “slavery, holocaust, apartheid” comparison.
“It’s not like I was throwing dwarfs around lol,” he replied, dragging Mike Tindall into it all – as if he hadn’t enough trouble with the mother-in-law, never mind the wife.
Fuimaono-Sapolu apologised in the end, but stood by his complaint.
“C’mon guys, obviously rugby does not even come close to what Hitler did! There still is injustice and exploitation in this instance. Delete the analogies. Apologies. Issues of injustice remain.”
So, no more rugby World Cup/holocaust analogies?
Well, comedian Raybon Kan clearly didn’t get the memo.
"The Kiwi was under fire last night for linking the holocaust to All Black sponsor Adidas and Auckland's Rugby World Cup travel woes," reported the New Zealand Herald.
“Kan said online: ‘Maybe Adidas should run Auckland public transport. Nice German company. They should know how to load thousands on to trains’.”
No apologies this time, though.
“Oh, it’s just a joke about World War II. Well, you know, it’s just a Nazi joke. It’s a joke in the context of all the transport issues that were happening,” he said. “You’re looking for offence that hasn’t happened.”
The Heraldasked Adidas for their thoughts on the matter. "I don't think we need to dignify it with a response," said public relations manager Sherryl Arneil.
Sensible enough.
McCarthy's dedicated Twitter fan barking up the wrong tree
MICK McCARTHY – and this won’t come as a major surprise – is not a fan of Twitter.
In fact, he’d most probably agree with Gordon Strachan’s rather harsh assessment of those who pass their time tweeting: “F***ing cowards who cannae speak to people. Keyboard cowboys”.
There is, actually, a ‘Big Mick McCarthy’ on Twitter, a fella who invariably describes those with whom he disagrees as ‘massive twats’ and shares news like this: “Woke up to hear reports 3 members of my squad were caught up in a bar fight. That’s my boys”.
He also uses Twitter to attempt to persuade players to join Wolves, recently targeting Manchester City’s Yaya Toure.
“Offer your village rice and clean drinking water for a year if you sign for us. 10K a week. Interested?”
Surprisingly, Toure, currently on €230,000 a week at City, is yet to reply.
Yes, Twitter’s ‘Big Mick McCarthy’ is a parody. Need it be said? Well, yes. “Someone said to me: ‘I’m a contact of yours on Twitter’,” the real Mick said back in July. “I said: ‘You aren’t, mate, because I’m not on Twitter.’ He said: ‘Are you not, I’ve been talking to you for the past two years.’ I said: ‘Well, you are cock like the bloke who is doing it.’ Dear oh dear.”
It was also in July that McCarthy admitted he’d love nothing more than to ban his players from using Twitter, after an incident when one of them revealed a transfer target, but conceded that it wouldn’t be possible.
He forecast, with a heavy sigh, that a “disgruntled numpty” in his squad would one day reveal his starting line-up for a game.
So, no, McCarthy’s not fond of the site.
Or of footballers who use it to share their views on, well, everything.
Like QPR’s Joey Barton, who had a go at McCarthy on Twitter after a lively encounter with Wolves recently. McCarthy’s response?
“Opinions are like backsides. We’ve all got one, but it isn’t always wise to air them in the public.”
And you can tweet that, he didn’t add.
Fox add fiction to their Cutler 'agenda'
CHICAGO BEARS quarterback Jay Cutler hasn’t, it’s fair to say, been universally admired in the sport of American football since his professional debut with Denver Broncos five years ago. South Park even had a go at the (animated) fella back in 2007:
Stan: Dude, Dude, that’s Jay Cutler over there, QB for the Denver Broncos!
Kyle: Oh My God!
Cutler: Nice to meet you guys.
Stan: Nice to meet you – I mean you kinda suck, but my dad says that you might be good some day.
Cutler: Thanks.
He was being doubted again after January’s play-off defeat to Green Bay Packers when, having had a largely ineffective game, he went off injured early in the third quarter.
“Cutler said he could not pinpoint the late second-quarter play on which he was hurt, yet after he went to the sideline, Fox’s camera often showed him standing,” reported the New York Times, one of several reports questioning whether Cutler had been injured at all.
The Bears, though, later announced that a scan had revealed Cutler had a medial collateral ligament sprain.
The fella could, then, do with a break, though not a literal one, obviously.
Week one in the new season, and the Bears were playing the Atlanta Falcons. Fox Sports zoomed in on Cutler and began showing newspaper headlines on the screen. “Cutler Leaves With Injury”; “Cutler Lacks Courage”; “Cutler’s No Leader.”
“These are actual headlines from the local papers here in Chicago,” said analyst Daryl Johnston.
A few folk from The Chicago Tribunehappened to be tuned in, and didn't recognise any of the headlines.
“The whole production rang false to us,” they reported, “the headlines didn’t look real. The language used in them was off. And since we knew that most Chicago media had defended Cutler, we looked in to it.
“We searched throughout Illinois newspapers for those headlines – Tribune, Sun-Times, Daily Herald, every other paper in the state. What did we find? Nothing.”
The Tribuneasked Fox, whose parent company is Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, for a response.
When the channel eventually got back to them, they conceded the headlines were fabricated – or “misleading”, as they put it.
“Nobody tries to be more perfect than we do at Fox Sports,” said their Vice President of Communications Dan Bell, denying that this was part of a long-running anti-Cutler ‘agenda’, as Bears fans have alleged.
“We understand that we were wrong. We can assure everybody in Chicago and all football fans that it won’t happen again.”
As Stan might put it, “Dude, dude, it’s just Fox being fair and balanced!”
Federer's reputation serves him well
THE REPUTATION Institute pretty much does what it says on the tin, it’s “a private advisory research firm that specialises in corporate reputation management”.
You’d have to assume they’re snowed under with work this weather.
Recently, they polled 51,055 people in 25 countries, asking them to take a look at a list of “54 of the world’s most visible leaders and public personalities in politics, business, culture, and sports”.
Their task was to measure each personality’s reputation, using a 0-100 point scale, based on four criteria: the degree to which the person is liked, respected, admired and trusted.
Well, take a bow Roger Federer. The tennis legend finished second only to Nelson Mandela, holding off the challenge of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs. There was good news in the poll for Ireland too – Bono, eighth in the list, came in ahead of the Queen, the Dalai Lama and David Beckham. Tiger Woods still hasn’t found what he’s looking for: the public’s love. At 47th, at least he didn’t come last, Robert Mugabe, George W Bush and Kim-Jong Il are in greater need of reputation management.
