On The Sidelines

The fact that Israeli athletes were not allowed to compete at the recent World Cross-Country Championships in Morocco should take little from the double win of Ireland's Sonia O'Sullivan. It does, however, set a precedent that could have implications further down the line.

Morocco breached their promise to the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) to provide visas by witholding them from the Israeli athletes, thus excluding them from the event. This will hardly act in their favour in their planned bid to host the World Cup soccer finals in 2006. Soccer mad King Hassan, who has kept a very low profile during the scandal, will now have a difficult job convincing FIFA that it won't happen again.

It also highlights the difficulties that can arise when one nation decides to take such a naked political stance. Imagine if Kenyan distance runners or American sprinters were prohibited from competing in a major event because of a prevailing political climate. Such policy decisions were responsible for the phoney Olympics in Los Angeles and Moscow.

The worrying thing is the measures the IAAF took against the Moroccan federation for lying to them over the visas - "extremely disappointed." Toothless is the word that comes to mind.

Shocked reader Colm O Caomhanaigh from Dublin was momentarily puzzled when he heard the radio sports bulletin on the Friday of Grand National week. "One Man Was Put Down At Aintree," began the news reader. A bad bet no doubt.

Wee Barry's boy, Wee Blane, is causing quite a sensation up North. The former featherweight boxing champion of the world, who now lives in England, is enthusiastic about his 14-year-old flying to Ulster to play his hockey . . . yes hockey, for Newry Olympic.

According to Graham Hamilton, hockey correspondent of the Belfast Telegraph, Blane McGuigan has already lined out for Newry against Instonians in an under-15 game and is set to play against Dublin's Three Rock Rovers in their next match.

A forward by trade, Blane goes to school at Kent College, England, but has the potential to make the grade at a higher representative level. His preference, or Wee Barry's, is that Blane should play for Ulster and Ireland if he gets the chance. Another link seems to be that Blane was born in Newry and . . . well . . . has a gra for the place.

Former coach and athlete Noel Henry's labour of love has finally been completed with the publication of his book From Sophie to Sonia - a history of women's athletics in Ireland. Not a bad thing at all, as three of our current top world athletes are women, Sonia O'Sullivan, Catherina McKiernan and Susan Smith.

Well worth exploring, the collection is a record of the development and progress of Irish athletes from before the turn of this century until the present. As the author himself puts it on the cover: it is about "those who strode, often in the face of apathy and prejudice to pursue and perfect the sport they loved and believed in."

The book's introduction carries an Irish Times editorial of May 4th, 1928, supporting the views of Pope Pius XI on women in sport and highlighting the author's very point.

"His (the pope's) censure, we may believe, is reserved for certain developments with which Ireland has become familiar through illustrated newspapers. In France, Germany, Italy and even England, many girls are devoting themselves to public sports which demand violent exercise and sometimes, it would seem, a notable scantiness of clothing . . . The performances are done before crowds of male spectators. His holiness is surely in the right when he says that they are irreconcilable with women's reserve and that in this matter Christian Europe ought not to be less modest than pagan Rome."

Lord's, the BBBC and the PFA aside, we've all thankfully moved on.

(The book is available from Noel Henry, 61 Rathdown Park, Greystones, Co Wicklow for £9.95, plus £1 postage.)

Brendan Ingle, the Ringsend-born trainer, who introduced Prince Naseem Hamed to the world, is not only very successful now, but very big. Ingle currently runs the biggest professional boxing gym in Britain, dealing with some 40-odd professionals.

So much in demand is Ingle that he has opened a second gym in The Manor estate, close to where his famous St Thomas Hall is situated in Sheffield. Every day, he turns away people who want to try out his methods. The wiley Dubliner, at one time banned by the Amateur Boxing Association, believes that some people are just coming to the gym to copy his colourful and wonderful techniques and rip off some of Naseem's moves. Ever wondered why Chris Eubank looks like a constipated Hamed in the ring?

Former world women's tennis number one Steffi Graf's father, Peter, failed this week in his appeal for an early release from prison where he is serving a three-year term for fraud. A court turned down the 59-year-old Graf's application.

Graf was sentenced to three years and nine months in jail for failing to pay 12 million Marks (£5 million) in tax from his daughter's earnings in January 1997. As he had already been held for 16 months on remand, he has been able to leave prison since December and return to his cell at night, a system many people believe should now apply to the Capriatis, Pierces and Williams and all of those other interfering fathers of tennis prodigies.

While Ireland is crying out for a national stadium, France have one that nobody seems to want to use. As a result, French taxpayers could be paying an extra £12 million a year until 2025 to pay off additional costs for the new World Cup stadium, La Tribune reported earlier this week.

The extra costs arise because first-division club Paris St Germain refused to play at the Stade de France at St Denis in northern Paris (where this season's Five Nations rugby matches were staged). Under the terms of the building contract, the government now has to pick up the bill for the revenue a resident club would have generated for the stadium operators. PSG preferred to stay at the 45,000-seater Parc des Princes, renovated for the World Cup, rather than move to the 80,000-capacity Stade de France which they said they would never be able to fill.

Denis Hickie, the Irish winger is an exciting player. But before Ireland's game against Wales in the Five Nations Championship, RTE had Hickie do a "turn" in the prematch discussions. The piece had clearly been prerecorded and in truth, Hickie looked a little bit uncomfortable hyping himself as the exciting pretty-boy, try-scoring sensation. One of the lines fed to him was: "I can run the 100 metres in under 11 seconds."

At the Barcelona Games in 1992 and at Seoul 1988, Hickie would have come around sixth in the 100 metres final with a run of just under 11 seconds. The most recent 11-second placing in an Olympic men's event was Robert Kerr, who picked up the bronze medal for Canada in London in 1908. Maybe Denis should be offered better sound bites.