TG4's rugby punt proves a winner

HOLD THE BACK PAGE:BOSSES AT TG4 might have spluttered into their coffee mugs last Sunday morning if they happened across Neil Francis's views in the Sunday Independent about the station's right to broadcast such in-demand contests as the Leinster-Munster match in the Pro12 League.

The former Irish international had a real cut at the station, writing: “I just think it is ridiculous that a match of such importance is broadcast live only in Irish. I have no idea what the commentators or the analysts are saying and I have no idea whether they are any good or not and I suspect 99.5 per cent of the people who had to watch the match on that channel didn’t either.”

The rant continued “If it was a case of TG4 having the money to pay for the rights, well why not sell them to Al Jazeera who would have been able to come up with far more money for the Celtic League-Pro12 coffers – at least there would be more people in Ireland who would understand what was being said in Arabic.”

Well, the TG4 chiefs definitely had the last laugh on Francis. The match pulled in TG4’s highest audience for a rugby match with the official Nielsen figures showing 635,000 people tuned in at some stage, with the audience peaking at 338,000 viewers towards the end of the game.

And given that TG4’s expanding rugby coverage includes a three-year deal with the ERC to exclusively broadcast highlights of the Heineken Cup and Amlin Challenge Cup – outmanoeuvring RTÉ to the rights – Francis might just have to brush up on the cúpla focal.

Marketing making mugs of most golfers

HAVE WE all been duped? Is it a cod? Should we be investing our hard-earned money on top-of-the-range golf balls when the harder, cheaper ones would do just as well?

According to renowned scientist Dr Alastair Cochran, it doesn’t matter what golf ball is used by most players . . . and that the golf equipment industry is driven by marketing, not technology.

Cochran – who has been involved in the study of golf science for over 40 years and was the technical advisor to the Royal and Ancient for 15 years – gave his views in a lecture at the University of Ulster during the week, where he also made the point that “the increased distances tour pros hit the ball compared with 20 years ago is mainly due to improvements in the players rather than in balls and clubs”.

Back in 1980, when the US Tour first gathered statistics, Dan Pohl – averaging 274 yards – was the longest hitter on the circuit. When John Daly burst onto the scene in 1995, his drives of 289 were marvelled at. This season, JB Holmes averaged over 318 yards.

Cochran is well-qualified to make his observations, given that he was co-writer of the seminal book, The Search for the Perfect Swing. He also served as director of the first comprehensive study of golf, held in the 1960s.

No doubt the University of Ulster will be working on Cochran’s theory: the college has a specialist state-of-the-art golf biomechanics research lab.

Formula One riding out the recession in style

IT SAYS something about the pulling power of Formula One that, even in these cash-straitened times, the 2012 season will expand to a record 20 races (to take place in Australia, south-east Asia, the Middle East, North America, South America, the Asia-Pacific rim, India and Europe) that will provide very little respite for pit crews or drivers.

Apart from the increase in the number of races – with some teams expected to develop alternate pit crews to help meet the tough new schedule – the FIA has confirmed that three F1 teams will change their names: Lotus will become Caterham, Renault will become Lotus and Virgin will become Marussia. All this name-changing is nothing new in the world of F1. Remember Jordan? After team founder Eddie Jordan (right) was bought out in 2005, the team was renamed Midland which in turn became Spyker and today operates as Force India.

Spitting leaves a bad taste in the mouth

SOMETIMES YOU need a good, old outcry to get a message home. In a question of sport, how many – truthfully – would have been able to name Wigan’s captain as Antolin Alcaraz before the infamous spitting incident? Who would have thought that he would be the one, unwittingly, to hammer that message into everyone’s psyche?

Now, post-spit, Alcaraz’s name, for all the wrong reasons, is being spat out (excuse the pun) as an example of how disgusting and unacceptable spitting is in society, not just in sport.

Alcaraz’s decision – for whatever reason – to let loose with a dollop of saliva at Wolves’ Richard Stearman in their English Premier League match at the start of this week highlighted one of sport’s no-nos. Unfortunately, the action of Alcaraz wasn’t an isolated one: Lee Dixon, visibly recoiling in his chair on Sunday night’s Match of the Day 2 on BBC television, related a personal experience of getting a mouthful of spit into his face from a San Marino player whilst on international duty.

Indeed, there is history when it comes to spitting incidents in soccer. The list of transgressors includes Cristiano Ronaldo – who was caught on camera spitting in the direction of a camera man after Portugal’s exit from last year’s World Cup – and the Neterlands’ Frank Rijkaard, who famously spat into Germany’s Rudi Voller’s hair during an altercation during Italia ’90.

The disgusting habit isn’t the sole preserve of soccer. Romanian tennis player Victor Hansecu was fined €12,000 for spitting at a heckler in the crowd during a match with Daniel Brands at Wimbledon last year, while Charles Barkley – one of basketball’s greatest players – remarked on his retirement from the sport that his only regret, in a somewhat controversial career, was to spit into the crowd during a match.

In 1991, Barkley had been the subject of verbal abuse from an opposing fan and, having had enough of the insults, turned to spit at his heckler. He missed his target, and instead hit a young girl with his spit. He apologised to the girl and her family, provided them with tickets to future games and kept in touch with the family. He was also suspended and fined.

After his career was over, Barkley commented on the issue: “I was fairly controversial, I guess, but I regret only one thing – the spitting incident! But you know what? It taught me a valuable lesson. It taught me that I was getting way too intense during the game. It let me know I wanted to win way too bad. I had to calm down. I wanted to win at all costs. Instead of playing the game the right way and respecting the game, I only thought about winning.”

Spitting is, indeed, a disgusting habit. And golf, too, has had a number of rather high-profile culprits. In 2007, Sergio Garcia was caught spitting into a hole – leaving a water hazard of the unsavoury kind facing the next player to pick his ball out of the tin cup – during a WGC tournament in Florida, and Tiger Woods was caught in the act and fined by the European Tour for spitting during the Dubai Desert Classic earlier this season.

Interestingly, there is a field of thought – amongst medical researchers – that spitting (discreetly we assume) can benefit athletes.

According to findings published in the July 2010 volume of Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care in the United States, endurance athletes can garner positive results by swishing and spitting out sports drinks rather than actually ingesting them.

Researchers at the University of Alabama found that exposure to the sports drink in the mouth stimulated the reward-related regions of the brain, meaning that the parts of the brain responsible for reward and motor control are activated by the sports drink solution before it is swallowed. All of which infers that swishing and spitting rather than actually swallowing the sports drink might be sufficient for the body . . . but, let’s face it, the act of spitting leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. It should be a no-no in every sports arena.

Idea of London hosting Féile na nGael still a worthwhile one

THE IDEA to stage the Féile na Peil in London in the run-up to the Olympics next year was first mooted a number of years ago, albeit at a time when purse strings in clubs and the economy generally was rather healthier than it is now.

It was a good idea, though. It would give the GAA an opportunity to showcase its games in England’s capital – with the national U-14 competition considered a significant stepping stone in the development of players – and, at the same time, recognise the input of those abroad striving to develop Gaelic games.

The financial costs involved and the problem of facilitating so many visiting teams proved to be too much however and the competition in 2012 will now be staged jointly by Offaly and Laois, with the hurling equivalent –  Féile na nGael – returning to Dublin for the first time in 30 years.

The London project shouldn’t be dismissed altogether. There is merit in returning to the idea at some stage in the future.