The Lost Shoe Diaries - Part II

I’m often asked what is the most difficult part about being a world class football administrator and I always give the same answer. It’s the boredom. You’d be driven cross-eyed with it.

In saying that, I realise, I’m paying myself a bit of a compliment. I have the association running like a V8 engine these days.

As a member of the officer board said to me only yesterday afternoon: “God be with the days when we lurched from one catastrophe after the next. Least there was something to do, even if it was just denying responsibility for things and pointing the finger at each other. This new era of organisational competence that you’ve ushered in – I’m not knocking you for it – but it’d nearly make you feel like you were only along for the jolly.”

We were sitting in the lobby of the Fota Island Hotel – myself, this officer and a member of staff of the association, trying to think of something to do to fill the time.

“It’s definitely too early for a drink,” the officer said, speculatively.

It was twelve o’clock. Not at night. The other one.

“What about golf?” he said.

“No golf,” I replied.

“We can’t let people see us enjoying ourselves. The very minute a football bursts or Roy’s baked beans are cold, people will be saying, ‘Sure, they were all off playing 18 holes yesterday – having a grand old time!’”

Treacherous times

We live in treacherous times, in which everyone with a smart phone is a potential paparazzo. You could be innocently letting your hair down, lamenting the loss of the Fourth Green Field in song, or watching a fella drink tequila out of one of your George Webbs, and suddenly you’re all over social media and the newspapers are trying to make a story out of it.

“No,” I said, “we’re staying off the golf course.”

“And it’s definitely too early for a drink, is it?” the officer wondered – just throwing it out there again.

“Lookit,” I said, “we’re not on our holidays. We’re here to work.”

So we sat there silently for another ten minutes. I suggested we visit the wildlife park. The officer rolled his eyes. “If I wanted to watch a bunch of feral animals running around aimlessly,” he huffed, “I’d take myself up to Croke Park to watch the Gaelic football.”

“Hey,” the staff member said, opening his A4 pad, “let’s play a game. Who would win a European Championship of Beers?”

The officer visibly brightened at the mention of a game – or maybe it was the mention of alcohol. “A European Championship of Beers?” he said.

“Yeah,” the staff member said, “you go through the groups and you pick a beer from each country. The best two go through to the second round and then of course the four best third-placed beers, then you play them off against each other until there’s only a beer left. So in Group A, you’ve got France, Switzerland, Romania and Albania. Well, the French have got Kronenbourg and the Swiss do some of the best pilsners in the world. I don’t know anything about Romania and Albania.”

The glitch

I was already beginning to see the glitch in the game.

“So we’re going to spend a f**king fortnight at this just to eliminate some old rubbish from Eastern Europe.”

“Here,” the officer said, “it’s a little bit like Platini’s tournament, isn’t it?”

Oh, we had a good laugh at that.

“Group B,” the staff member said, scribbling in his pad. “England, Russia, Slovakia, Wales…”

I interrupted him.

“It’s all a waste of time,” I said. “Because no matter who comes out of the groups, Guinness is going to win the European Championship of Beer, on account of the fact that it’s the best beer ever brewed and it would beat anyone in the knockout stages.”

“I’m not sure is Guinness even a beer,” the officer said. “I’d class that now as a porter.”

“And porter is a f**king beer,” I said, surprising myself with the passion of my argument. “It’s a dark f**king beer.”

Quiet word

“I’m talking about within the context of competition. I think we’re talking about mostly lagers.”

The staff member piped up then: “Here, maybe we could let it into the competition as a 25th team!”

Well, even I had to laugh at that one – although I’ll have a quiet word with him later on about undermining me in front of one of the officers. I might even get the legal department to give him something in writing.

“Anyway,” he said, “I wouldn’t be one hundred per cent sure that Guinness would get out of the group. Belgium has some of the best beers in the world. And of course Italy has Peroni. It’s definitely the Group of Death in beer terms.”

It was at that precise moment that I saw Roy walking across the lobby in our general direction.

“Er, logistics,” I quickly said, at the same time shooting the two fellas a warning with my eyes. “Systems . . . Accountability . . . Models of corporate governance going forward.”

He walked past us and out to the team bus, which was heading to training. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Are we all really that scared of him?" the officer said, "to the point where we can't even talk about enjoying ourselves?"

Blood-curdling scream

We laughed, realising how ludicrous we were being, then we returned to the game. We managed to drag the group stages out for an hour. The round of 16 and the quarter finals killed another hour for us, then we ordered a pot of tea before the semi-finals.

And that’s when we heard what could only be described as a blood-curdling scream coming from outside the hotel. Everyone in the lobby froze.

“It’s Roy,” the officer speculated. “Either the bibs are the wrong colour or there’s Goji berries in the energy bars.”

The girl bringing the tea laughed. “It came from the wildlife park,” she assured us. “You hear it all the time here.”

"Thank f**k it's only some mad, murderous carnivore on the prowl," I said, "and not something worse. Okay, Guinness versus Erdinger – do we even need to have this argument?" - Paul Howard