Christ, but the news is a hard watch these days. If it isn’t our own feckless shower leaving people in rural Ireland without power a full two weeks after the storm, it’s King Orangina in the White House handing down the sort of hourly decrees that shock everybody and surprise no one. “Today US president Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating the deportation of any non-American players signed to NFL rosters ...” (He didn’t – but you had to think about it for a second, didn’t you?)
The world turns and shit happens. In normal times some of us dive into sport for a bit of sanctuary from it all. It’s a grand luxury to have, usually. While the serious folk are arguing it out over housing targets and catfishing and speed limits on the roads we get to tune out and turn our lonely eyes to the good stuff instead.
Doesn’t matter what it is either. Could be Prendergast v Crowley. Could be the goalies coming up under the new rules. Could be worries over fitting Mason Melia and Evan Ferguson into the same Ireland team come 2028 and how we’re going to solve the problem of having too many world-class strikers.
That’s generally the way of it. Whatever your poison is, pick it. Ruminate, cogitate, levitate. Raise yourself above the world of actual news, free your mind and just generally feel better. Granted, it’s a bit of a coward’s way out. But so what? The world has bigger problems than you deciding to concentrate on your fantasy football team rather than watch the news.
Here’s the problem. The escape routes are blocked. The fields are flooded with landmines. You can see the sunlit uplands of simple, easy sport away off in the distance but you have to wade through a sludgy river of Real World to get to it.
Take golf. Sunday night was a treat. Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry battling it out for four hours on one of America’s great golf cathedrals, Pebble Beach. Even now, after all they’ve won and all they’ve banked, there’s still that sweet bit of romance in watching a pair of schoolboy golf team-mates from Down and Offaly spark off each other as they take down scores of the best players in the world.
Since then? Well, PGA Tour chief Jay Monahan popped into the Oval Office on Tuesday and asked Trump to solve the impasse between the Tour and the Saudi-run LIV Golf tour. This was on the same day as Trump unilaterally declared that he intends turning Gaza into an American-owned beach resort. Golf in the morning, ethnic cleansing in the evening. Just another day in the life.
It was a good week for LIV, all in all. They got their 2025 season under way – in Saudi, naturally. They announced a new TV deal in Britain with ITV, meaning the only free-to-air golf it’s possible to watch in the UK is now the LIV Tour. On top of which it was revealed that they’ve done a deal with both the US and British Opens to create guaranteed spots in the field for LIV golfers. It will only be one or two in the beginning but it’s a start.
So, where were we? From Rory and Shane yukking it up on Sunday night to Trump assuming the role of Obi Golf Kenobi (the game’s only hope), to the Saudi stooge vehicle putting down ever deeper roots in the sport. Tough week all around, really. No chance we could just watch a bit of golf, no?
This weekend will be more of it, of course. Because what does the world need now with the most jingoistic, nationalistic, rah-rah American patriot in the big chair? The Super Bowl, obviously. There’ll be jet fighters and star-spangled banners and U-S-A-U-S-A chants to beat the bands.
Plenty of us are excited for the game. We’re dying to find out how the Chiefs go about holding Saquon Barkley and how the Eagles might contain Patrick Mahomes. We’ll stay up late with matchsticks in our eyes to see can Travis Kelce become just the fifth tight end in history to win four Super Bowls. We’ll be wrecked on Monday but it will be worth it.
Won’t it? Or is anything really worth it now? The NFL is pure unadulterated American soft power. They know that, we know that. The Steelers are coming to Croke Park in the autumn and there’ll be such a mad scramble for tickets it will make the Oasis carry-on look like a Tidy Towns meeting. That’s months away – there’s no telling what kind of shameful havoc the Yanks will have wreaked across the globe by then.
So much of sport all across the world is going to be yoked to the real world over the coming years. Trump threw out an offhand remark on Friday morning wherein he said that though he still reckons the 2020 election was rigged, he felt lucky now because it means he’ll be president when the US hosts the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics. This is more of it.
Nobody would pretend that either event is the last bastion of innocence and good in the world. Okay, strike that – Gianni Infantino and Thomas Bach would definitely pretend that was the case. But now that we’ll have Trump’s raddled presence around both of them they will be undeniably greasy and stained.
Already Fifa and the IOC are having to suck up to him in case he bans supporters coming from all over the world. Some Maga weirdos have been warning that anyone who comes will surely stay on illegally and if there’s one thing Trumpworld won’t stand for it’s dirty illegals hanging about. So maybe he takes a notion and bans the lot of them.
It probably won’t come to pass but who knows? Who can be sure of anything?
There’s a bad moon rising. It’s clear already that sport won’t be a haven from it all.
