Now, I’m of Irish/English ancestry on my mother’s side, and I have a soft spot for the Irish, especially after the suffering they have endured, largely created by the Poms in the 19th century, especially the famine of the 1840s.
It was with great sadness, then, that I saw the Irish Government turn on Israel recently, leading to the breaking of diplomatic relations.
I was disgusted to see the Irish soccer team refuse to shake hands with the Israeli soccer team the other day and not give any respect to the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah”, in my view one of the most beautiful in the world.
Now, I would be less annoyed if the Irish team had also refused to shake hands with the Iranian, Russian, North Korean and Sudanese soccer teams, as those states are truly dreadful oppressors of their people, but it seems it’s only Israel who they have targeted.
The bastardisation of the word genocide by Hamas and their fellow travellers in the West is deeply worrying. As I have said before, the only party in the Gaza war who wants to commit genocide is Hamas, who wants to kill all the Jews in Israel.
It was churlish behaviour. Whatever you may think of a country’s politics, it should not be taken out on innocent athletes.
Which brings me to our brilliant final series.
In the NRL, one brilliant athlete who suffered last weekend from a dirty tackle was star Penrith halfback Nathan Cleary, who suffered a broken ankle in the preliminary final against Newcastle Knights as a result of deliberate foul play. The Knights won a hard match 22 to 14 with 12 men in a very tough game. The victory was sullied, however, by dirty play.
I’d pick Easts to win the GF as 1. they have had a brilliant season and 2. the Knights may well have played their GF one week early.
In the AFL, I must say I did like the idea of the Fremantle Dockers winning their first ever GF, but alas, it was not to be. The Dockers Wharfie Time crowd chant, unleashed with less than five minutes to go, instead of urging the team, at that stage 17 points up, to get that extra surge, seemed to spur on the Brisbane Lions to kick an amazing four goals in four minutes, thus winning their third premiership in a row.
A brilliant effort, and I must admit I do like the Lions team song, based on that most stirring of all national anthems, “La Marseillaise”.
Finally, the Wallabies, under new coach Les Kiss (five out of five wins as coach), won a thriller against world champions the South African Springboks in Perth, 42 to 38, having led 42 to 17 with only 13 minutes left. The French referee then seemed to have a brain snap and sent four Wallabies to the sin bin, so that at one stage in the last five minutes there were only 11 on the field.
Despite this, they won. I especially liked the way they attacked the ball and contested every bit of set play. Who knows? We may yet win the World Cup, and speaking of anthems, the South African one is a beauty too.
