Compiled by MARY HANNIGAN
Meehan's come a long way
AH, WHERE does the time go? It’s over a decade since a 12-year-old Dubliner, Linda Meehan, had a chat with this very paper about her passion for football, and how she hoped that, one day, she’d be able to play at a high level for a club, even if that seemed a little unrealistic for Irish women’s footballers at the time.
“When I first started playing football with a boys team, when I was eight, I suppose it was fairly unusual,” she said.
“All the boys were slagging me and they wouldn’t mark me . . . but then I scored.”
Did they mark you then?
“Yeah,” she grinned.
Fast forward to last Wednesday night when Peamount United, who were only founded in 1983 and are run by volunteers, made history by becoming the first Irish side to play in the knockout stages of the Champions League after qualifying from a four-team tournament in Slovenia in August.
In front of a crowd of 2,109 in Tallaght they kept Paris St Germain – a professional side - scoreless until 18 minutes to go, conceding a second in injury-time. From the match report:
“An encounter with the French side was always going to be a tall order and Linda Meehan had to be at her very best to deny Caroline Pizzaza’s strike from the edge of the box 12 minutes in.”
Yep, the one and the same Linda Meehan, now a goalkeeper, having tired of scoring goals.
Next month Meehan and Peamount will take their bow in the new Women’s National League, the Dublin club one of seven – the others are Bray Wanderers/St Joseph’s, Castlebar Celtic, Cork Women’s FC, Raheny United, Shamrock Rovers and Wexford Youths Women’s AFC – invited to participate. Bus Éireann was announced as the title sponsor earlier this week.
The 12-year-old and Irish women’s football have come a long way.
Adidas chip in for Messi reboot
AS IF Lionel Messi didn’t have enough of an advantage over his mere mortal opponents, come November he’ll be wearing a highly revolutionary, upgraded version of his adiZero F50 boots. And by the sounds of the bumpf advertising them, the fella won’t just score bucketloads more goals, he’ll be able to fly.
Not only, according to Adidas, do the boots provide “incredible ball-feeling and reduced weight” and “stability during high speed movements” (Ronaldo should try them, he might stay on his feet), in a development likely to leave John Giles concluding there’s no hope for mankind, they also feature a “Data Capture Chip”.
The chip will record and store a player’s movement, average speed, maximum speed, number of sprints, distance covered, distance at high intensity levels, as well as steps and stride rates.
This information can then be wirelessly transmitted to a computer where it will be analysed using “miCoach technology”. This will produce a personalised coaching program that will provide the player with “the ultimate gaming experience”.
In fairness, it’s not only Messi who’ll have access to this revolution, for in or around €230 you can have these boots too. And if you pay another €60 you’ll get a bundle that includes the boots, a speed sensor and a smart device dongle.
Is there a guarantee that they’ll help you play football like Messi?
Not quite. In fact that old expression comes to mind: “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”
Keys turns up on Warren's boxing channel
YESTERDAY saw the first live bouts broadcast by BoxNation – the main event being a Commonwealth super- featherweight title fight – Britain’s first channel dedicated to boxing and the brainchild of promoter Frank Warren. You can find it on channel 456 on the Sky platform.
Much of its focus is, naturally enough, on fighters from Warren’s own stable, but other bouts, documentaries, discussion shows and famous fights from the past - featuring Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard, among others – all promised.
Warren’s venture could challenge Sky’s dominance, depending, of course, on how it fares.
It will be free-to-air at first, but before the end of the year will become a subscription channel, costing €12 per month.
Among the presenters are familiar faces, including Jim Rosenthal, Paul Dempsey, Steve Bunce and John Rawling.
None will be more familiar, though, than Richard Keys, the man who parted ways with Sky Sports back in January after being caught on tape making rather unpleasant comments about lineswoman Sian Massey.
Olympic status will be too late for Perry anyway
BACK IN April, Madeline Perry, the professional squash player from Banbridge who is ranked four in the world, expressed her frustrations with her sport’s efforts to gain Olympic status, having failed to win inclusion for the 2012 and 2016 Games.
Initially, she said, the powers-that-be asked the sport’s leading players to “be quiet and not to say that much” as the campaign for inclusion was under way, but once again squash missed out so “they told us we can say whatever we want – keeping quiet didn’t do us any favours then.”
Perry’s chief gripe was that rugby sevens (“That isn’t a sport”) and golf (“What’s that got to do with the Olympic ideal?”) were allowed in, while squash, largely because of the view that it isn’t “television friendly”, was once again rejected.
“Ninety per cent of people I speak to think squash is already in the Olympics. They can’t believe it. Table tennis is in there, badminton is in there, so what’s the difference? And I know a lot more people who play squash than table tennis.”
“But our bid was poor, it was badly run, it was too late, it should have started 10 years before,” she said. “A watery campaign is not going to get you in.”
Ironically for Perry, then, squash has hired the very man who successfully led the campaign to win rugby sevens Olympic status to run its campaign for inclusion in the 2020 programme of sports.
Mike Lee, a former Uefa director of communications, has an impressive track record on the “bidding” front having been involved in the successful London 2012 and Rio 2016 campaigns, as well as Qatar’s ultimately triumphant effort to win the hosting rights to the 2022 World Cup.
In July, squash made it on to the shortlist of sports that will be considered for 2020 inclusion, the others being baseball, karate, roller sports, softball, sports climbing (a form of rock climbing), wakeboard and martial arts’ wushu.
Among those sports that missed the cut were netball, surfing, bowling and dance. The final decision will be made at the IOC Session in Buenos Aires in September 2013.
It’s not just the simple prestige of Olympic status that is so critical to squash. As Lee noted, since rugby sevens made it through, it has become part of the curriculum in schools in several countries, including Russia, and has now “gained access to vital public funding”.
“Many emerging nations also make their sporting curriculums “Olympic” in the hope of cultivating the gold medallists of the future,” he told sportbusiness.com.
“Squash is a mature, established, global sport,” he said. “It has two professional tours that are very successful for men and women.
“So there are lot of things already in place there, but obviously Olympic inclusion can be a great boost.”
Squash and softball are the early favourites to win the IOC’s backing, chiefly because of an IOC desire for more women competitors in the Olympics.
That, allied to Lee’s involvement in the campaign, has given the sport more hope than it ever had of earning Olympic status.
Should the campaign prove successful, though, it will be too late for Perry (34) and most other current stars of the sport, among them world number one Nicol David (28), the Malaysian who is regarded as the finest female squash player of all time.
And to think synchronised swimming has been an Olympic “sport” since 1984.
Death spares Shuller more Bengals blues
BY ALL accounts Cincinnati resident Saul Shuller was a remarkable man, living the fullest of lives before he died aged 95 earlier this month.
A quirky man too – according to cincinnati.com, when the great-grandfather couldn’t sleep he didn’t count sheep, instead “he counted Russian composers”.
You know, like you do.
“He swore by Vitamin E, never showed a bad attitude and believed crossword puzzles kept his mind fresh. He was in his 80s when he taught himself to use a computer, which he then used to teach himself to play bridge. He loaded classical music onto his iPad.
“He complained almost never – except about traffic on Interstate 75.” (Much to his family’s amusement, his funeral cortege was held up in traffic . . . on Interstate 75.)
Shuller was a big sports fan, basketball his primary passion, but he was also a supporter of the Bengals, the city’s football team.
On the morning of the day he died, with his family gathered around him, Shuller tried to raise their spirits.
There was, he told them, actually a positive side to his impending death: “At least I won’t have to watch another Bengals loss.”
That’s one positive way of looking at it. Rest in Bengals-free peace, Mr Shuller.
