Though I detested it (and all who played it) when I was a wimpy, long-haired, pretensions teen – I have, in recent years, tried (manfully) to set aside my prejudices and look on it more kindly. This is not always easy.

TV must take its share of the blame. Big scowly men glaring fiercely into the camera as Carmina Burana turns the pomp-o-meter up past 11. Oooh, scary! They're like warriors of the ancient world. Steely muscles hewn in the battle-fires of…er…Mordor or somewhere. Brawny arms folded, broadswords absent but implied. Grrrr! They're out there rolling around in the muck, slaughtering the unrighteous and defending us from the combined threats of quiches and poetry and feminism and stuff. Grrrr!

I know, I know – that's all part and parcel of the ludicrous, Sky Sports-inspired, over-hyping style that's become the ubiquitous contemporary default. Easily digested with a spoonful of healthy cynicism. Shit like this, however, is harder to swallow.

Fisherman (Grrr!) and Firefighters (Snarl!) – unreformed totems of trad-masculinity. They totes love rugby. But, so do, like, the working-classes. Cleaners (grrr?) and Supermarket Check-Out people (snarl?), they're all over it too. And not a sign of a besuited jock entrepreneur-type anywhere. I thought they were the backbone of the game? Apparently not. We're all rugby fans now.

And we all recognise that what sets rugby apart, of course, is its pride, its integrity, its total fucking superiority to all other sports. "Patience and humility coarse through the veins", we're breathlessly told. For "patience and humility" read "spectacular smugness and puke-inducing self-regard". This is rugby telling itself how brilliant it is. How it heroically values "honesty of effort" above all else. How it is characterised by its "camaraderie" and its rugged "determination to succeed". In other words, what it's projecting (like projectile vomit) is a reactionary vision of all that is good in men.¹

They're soldiers, they're leaders, they're bastions of fair-play and decency. With big jaws. Goal-driven, success-driven, not wimpy fag losers like you and me. This is Rugby C(o)untry. This is OUR LAND. Let's all give ourselves big man-slaps on the backs (Grrr!).

Tony Robbins must be jizzing himself into a frenzy if he's watching.

1. You can ignore the token women. They're just there to show the lads how much they admire them. [back]

The licking clean of the cue ball. The snarling and tearing off of the obligatory (detested) bow-tie. The glorious shirts. The fedora.

Memories of the late Alex Higgins are numerous and vivid. But the one that I've found hardest to shake, over the last few days, is the aftermath of his 1990 first round defeat at The Crucible to Steve James. Higgins sitting alone (downing a vodka and orange) in an emptying arena, as referee John Williams ceremoniously packs away the balls. A new (more ruthlessly professional) decade was beginning and Higgins' sporting life was effectively over. He was 41.

Minutes later he was to punch a press officer in the stomach before delivering a trademark drunken monologue that mixed theatre, pathos, self-pity, paranoia, fury and melancholy into one intoxicating brew.

"This game is the most corrupt game in the world. And you get absolute tossers doing jobs for exorbitant money. Well, I don't really want to be part of that. So you can shove your snooker up your jacksie, cos I ain't playing it no more".

It was captivating (car-crash) stuff. Horrible and thrilling and desperately sad all at once.¹ It was typically Higgins. Buried under the layers of hurt and self-delusion there were, of course, truths. Many of those running snooker were (incompetent) tossers. And many of them loathed Alex. Clive Everton's deliciously angry Black Farce and Cue Ball Wizards: The Inside Story of the Snooker World eloquently testifies to this (in unflinching detail).

Separating the disputed facts from the embellished fictions of Higgins' public life is no easy task, for he was an (unrivalled) anecdote-generating machine. From the whimsical tales painting him as mischievous rascal (pissing in potted plant arrangements), to the many less forgiving accounts of his cruelness, and aggression, and consuming self-centredness. But truths didn't matter all that much, for to the zealously faithful he was a character. In the most literal (and literary) sense. He never felt entirely real. Possibly because he'd long since bought into the "doomed maverick genius" narrative of his life that he himself had helped to create. It was always hard to imagine that when the lights were dimmed and the crowd had dispersed that he left to rejoin the sort of quotidian existence most of us enjoy. Far easier to think of him just sort of hovering there, in the arena, in stasis, till the lights came back on again and he could return to being whatever it was he'd made himself into.

The Higgins appeal was never solely about the prodigious and explosive talent. What made him loved, in spite of everything, was the fragility. The ever-present sense of imminent collapse. Commentators frequently lament the progressive squandering of his abilities ("He should have won so much more. He should have dominated"), but in many ways it's a miracle he won as much as he did. With Alex, every single shot – even the most routine ones – became the stuff of high drama. You could never switch off or relax because he could (and would) miss at any moment. It was exhausting to watch (and, no doubt, an exhausting way to play) but, crucially, it encouraged you to will him to win. And in that willing you felt part of the process. As if your thoughts and hopes and prayers (not often answered) could guide a wild and slashed at long pot into the top corner.

I'd like to remember the swashbuckling brilliance. I'd like to remember the time (in 1989) when my friend Keano and I sat with Alex's manager in a Bunratty hotel room filled with ghost-written "autobiographies". Waiting hours and hours for the great man to appear and bless us and sign our programmes ("Alex will be down in a minute", we were repeatedly told). When he finally arrived, well after our scheduled bedtime, he was wired, wearing a white suit and promptly headed straight for the dance floor. We left without exchanging a word, but somehow we still loved him anyway.

I'd like to remember all that and more, but right now it's only the above image I see. Higgins alone, with his vodka and self-pity, in the ruins of his life, as the 80s end and the world changes and he slowly disappears. Into nothing.

1. An alcoholic living out his frustration and rage in full public glare. [back]

Barbara Windsor (paraphrased): ‘Ere! The match is about to start.

Old Vic: Yay! Come on England!

Barbara flicks on BBC 1 and…nothing but static and fuzz. No picture. No match. And you know why? Because what was on BBC 1 at that exact moment was Eastenders itself! So what we should have seen was a pub full of bewildered and blinking and head-fucked Albert Square residents staring at themselves staring at a screen…staring at themselves…ad infintium. It would have been a Truman Show meets The Matrix moment so quantumly postmodern it would have torn the fabric of reality to itty bitty pieces (like CERN the Soap Opera).

I was reminded of how close our universe came to collapsing in on itself by my copy of Titan Books’ Roy of the Rovers: World Cup Special. In the 1978 extracts Roy eases the pain of a (real-life) non-qualified nation by becoming player-manager of a (slightly unreal-life) national team.

Out of his (first) first eleven, six players are from Melchester Rovers (jobs for the boys), three (Nipper Lawrence, Mike Bateson & Johnny Dexter) are from “Blackport” and "Real Granpala" (other fictional teams that existed in the same comic but in parallel footballing dimensions) and two (Malcolm MacDonald and Trevor Francis) are drawings of actual 3-dimensional players who live in our own real universe. I say “our own real universe”…but at this point the inter-textual, worlds-colliding weirdness makes you doubt the (meat 'n' two veg) realness of anything.

I feel terribly lost. Like an Eastender gawping at myself gawping at myself gawping at myself. Following the white rabbit…

I will not be blogging this summer's World Cup. 2006 wore me out (and the 2008 Euros nearly finished me off – thanks to some slack support play from my hand-picked team-mates), so I will be leaving the great work to the young, the baby-less, and the time-rich.

This doesn't mean, of course, that I am not frothing at the eyes with excitement. From the 11th of June to the 11th of July I will think about little else. Food, friends, love, spouse, offspring: all these will be relegated to the backwaters (well, sidewaters) of my mind. I get like this every four years. Single-minded. Obsessed. Sad.

My raging excitement-o-meter was stoked (and stroked) yesterday by the following tweet from Shane Hegarty:

The complete Panini Italia 90 sticker collection. No Quinn. Much hair. http://url.ie/5rcf

Click the link. Spend hours staring at what unfolds before you (i.e. images of pasty-faced, be-mulleted, and strangely melancholic-looking young men). You'll thank me.

Few of my Panini collections have survived – succumbing to various culls and purges of my junk (thanks, Mum…) – but I've managed to exhume an album or two (after a quick attic rummage). The following images come from a battered, torn and cover-less volume. Panini Football '86, perhaps? Football sticker scholars will no doubt correct me.

Behold a fresh-faced, pre-punditry John Giles…

…and the copiously-bearded legend that is/was Tony Grealish.

Looking pretty mild and cuddly there, but my memories are of a ferocious warrior-giant. Bestriding the Hawthorns/Landsdowne like a colossus, while petty men walked under his huge legs, peeping about. I genuinely believe him to be an immortal figure. Literally. One of the all-time great football kits there too. The hand-stitched (granny-embroidered) "WBA". The slightly conspicuous "No Smoking" logo. A team of principle – lead by a titan of the ancient world.

My namesake…

A snapshot of a player destined for greater things, a club destined for the conference, and a sponsor (Wang…*snigger*) destined for bankruptcy.

And finally the New Romantic stylings and piercing insolent glare of Pat Nevin (referred to as "Thoughtful", i.e. a bit fruity and "weird", in the his player profile). Also note the beginnings of the stencilling craze that was soon to sweep kit design. Reaching its vomitous nadir in the mid-late 90s.

While her female schoolmates trade smelly rubbers and fancy notepaper, independent Suzi mopes about the playing fields watching the lads stand around a football.

Her presence does not go unnoticed or uncommented on. All those long, solitary hours spent leaning against a wall with her hands thrust firmly in pockets may have paid off.

Or not…¹

While this brutal rebuff isn't quite shocking enough to make Suzi withdraw her empocketed hands (before pressing them to tear-stained eyes), it does cause her to despair of her gender entrapment.

Refusing to surrender to this sense of hopelessness Suzi proceeds to (optimistically and desperately) follow the boys hither and yon – earning the following savage put-down.

Ouch. "If only they'd understand how much I want to play football", she thinks, gazing straight into the camera (and straight into the soul of the moved reader).

A short while later and the (relatively) kindly and sensitive Dave spies our heroine displaying some silky ball skills – hands (once again) glued to pocket interiors.²

As astute observers will have noticed, Dave is male and (by the look of him) in his early teens. Given these facts, we should treat the literalness of the words "Suzi's pretty good with that football" with several pinches of salt. A more accurate translation of that thought bubble might be – "I'd very much like to vigorously kiss and cuddle Suzi".

Says he to her, "Where did you learn to play like that?". Says she in reply, "Oh just by watching you boys play, and I sometimes practise here alone". And why, in case we need reminding, is she forced into this lonely activity?

Yowsers. Just when you're beginning to think that the story's punchline will involve gender reassignment surgery, in steps Dave to offer something pitched halfway between reassurance and condescension.

Skip forward to the day of the big match. Disaster strikes! At the playing field Derek breaks the bad news to distraught teammates – "Jimmy can't come. He's ill in bed". Who will take his place? Dave provides the (obvious) answer – self-loathing Suzi!

In spite of the lads' hostile incredulity (and the absence of pockets in her shorts), Suzi leads the team to glory.

Not a thing of beauty. A goal-mouth scramble; a static (Zombie-like) defence; an unorthodox, straight-legged toe-poke – but (as the fella says) they all count.

Final score? 3-2. "Suzi's the champ!", cries a fickle youngster. The socially constructed barriers that separate and segragate the sexes have been triumphantly demolished. The world is forever changed.

Except, of course, it isn't. Reactionary editorial forces at Debbie HQ have baulked at the possible implications and pressed the reset button.

Phew! With her silly, tom-boyish flirtation out of the way Suzi is free to let her hair down and allow her true self to shine forth. Gone is the "rebellious" leather jacket and out of the pockets (at last) come the hands. The mystical fathers of patriarchy smirk down from their kingdom in the clouds. All is right with the world. Let's boogie.

1. Her brother Derek, it would appear, is an enthusiastic advocate of the "Girls are twittery simpering idiots" school of thought. [back]
2. Recurring motif this. [back]

Over on the west wing, however, severe cases of football fever are already beginning to break out.¹ Our crack team of football experts (i.e. people who've seen Escape to Victory more than once) is growing all the time – with six enthusiastic, highly-caffeinated souls having now signed on the dotted line.² The following video perfectly captures and articulates their/our passion:

So if (over the next few weeks) you're wondering where I am, chances are I'll be mixing drinks and blowing up balloons over at Super Euro Soccer Party HQ.

Make sure to pop in many times and oft. I'll even make Rice Krispie buns.

1. Hence the reason for our Super Euro Soccer Party being quarantined – safely cut off from the main house. [back]
2. Further signings may follow – I just need to free up some transfer funds. [back]

One of the most enjoyable (if exhausting) blogging side projects I've taken on since this site's inception was the alliterative World of World Cup Wonders – a solid month of daily thoughts and reflections on the planet's greatest sporting event.

Two years on and another major footy competition begins to appear over the horizon. I'd idly toyed with the idea of hosting a "blog within a blog" on fustar.info to mark the event, but the thought of another sustained period of solitary toil made me feel a bit sleepy.

At just that moment, however, in stepped the lovely Fergal Crehan (of Tuppenceworth fame) to give the project the kick up the hole it so sorely (ow!) needed. "Let's do it together", says he, "Turning what might be a lonely (masturbatory) act into a giant explosion of group fun".¹

And so, I hereby happily announce the birth of Super Euro Soccer Party – a Euro 2008 group blog that will (we hope) be chock full of whimsical and frivolous football fun. Hoorah!²

Join us.

P.S: I'm currently trying to pad out our small squad by drafting in some crack enthusiasts from around the 'blogosphere' (and beyond). Expect new names and faces as we go merrily along.

P.P.S: To access the blog from the any fustar.info page just click "Euro 2008″ in "Categories" (see sidebar).

1. I should add that these were not his exact words. [back]
2. Many, many thanks to my darling wife Jess for her invaluable help. [back]

Pot the red 'n' screw back, for the yellow, green, brown, blue, pink 'n' black…¹

Near enough to the last minute I know, but I wonder if I might humbly request a Dreadful Thoughts Story Club rescheduling?

One reason is that this Monday (as those who pay attention to calendrical matters will no doubt be aware) is a bank holiday.² Chances are that horror fans might miss the 9 o'clock kick off as they try to squeeze the last few hours out of the weekend in Kilkee, Lahinch, Ballybunion or national/international equivalents.

The more important reason, however, is that Monday night (5th May) sees the conclusion of the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield. Long-time readers will possibly be aware of my love of clunking balls and green baize, but if anyone needs (or wants) reminding then have a quick rummage through these.

1) Chess With Balls

2) More Chess With Balls

3) Triple-X Crucible Hardcore

4) Rockets vs. Grinders

5) Wo kann ich ein kühlschrank magnet kaufen?

6) Manky Toy Monday: Super Pedestal Ball

Getting to the point – the long and the short of it is that I'd like to keep this coming Monday free. If there are no major objections could we switch our "Monkey's Paw" meeting to Tuesday, 6th May, at 9 pm instead? Let me know whadya think.

Story: "The Monkey's Paw"

Meeting: Tuesday, May 6th, 9 p.m.

1. Snooker Loopy [back]
2. In Ireland at least. [back]

First up we have this rather ferocious looking grappler and his pet lizard (and pet bin):

So far, so bog-standard beefcake? Wait till you see the packaging:

Now I haven't watched professional wrestling for a number of years, mainly because (as Debbie Reynolds says in Singin' in the Rain) "the personalities on the screen just don't impress me". If, however, the WWE was to change its name (once again) to Powered Maniac Bellow, and if the combatants had names like "Superior Wrestle King" (and entered the 'squared circle' accompanied by salamanders & iguanas)¹ then I might be persuaded to revive my youthful enthusiasm for "sports entertainment".

Next on the agenda is a tasty slice of mashing-up and crossing-over. Since the chiddlers love Spider-Man (Marvel), Batman (DC) and Mr. Incredible (er…Pixar), why not happily ignore the fact that they appear to exist in different universes and bang them all into the same 2 Euro package? Something for everyone.

Keen eyes may have noticed that while Spidey appears fairly accurate (two spiders on his chest and a Power-Rangers-ish look notwithstanding), there's something ever so slightly off about the other lads.

Let's start with Bats. He appears to be wearing a pair of very tight blue jeans (Mike Donovan eat your heart out), he's stripped to the waist, he's green, his mask seems to be part of his face/head and he has apples as hands & feet. Other than that, they nailed the character superbly.

What of the pater familias of the Incredible clan? The same apples, the same semi-nakedness, red jeans this time, and…oh yes, he appears to be The Thing.

It's only when you get the boys out of the box, however, that the full extent of their weirdness becomes evident. As the picture below demonstrates, they are the (very cheap) offspring of an unholy union between Stretch Armstrong and Cheestrings:

If you stuck Spidey in the middle it'd be hard not to be reminded of a certain (reasonably well-known) crucifixion scene ("Oh Aunt May! Why have you forsaken me…and let my bedroom out to a lodger for extra cash?").

Continuing in a Christian vein – what unites today's two offerings is their ability to function as funky and affordable Sacred Heart ornaments.

While in Christ's case the light/fire may represent "the transformative power of love", the functions in these manky instances are not as obvious.

"The bewildering power of light"?

"The (handy) paralysing ability of beams?"

"The dependable lure of a cheap gimmick?"

Jesus wept…

1. The lizard is, I imagine, a nod to the legendary Jake "The Snake" Roberts. [back]

As regular readers may have gathered, my enthusiasm for the mighty game of snooker is long-standing. While weak eyes and a total lack of diligent practice have consigned me to life as a bog-standard club player – I once very nearly made a 1/2 century break (with only a rattled-in-the-jaws black denying me this minor milestone).

In other words, I'm not completely useless – a fact borne out by the regular thrashings I used to give all-comers on the extremely cheap (6 x 3 1/2 foot) table that once stood (not quite proudly) in my childhood bedroom. That table, alas, was to meet a nasty end when my grand-uncle Jim (while attempting a tricky pink along a spongy cushion) threw his right leg over one of the rails. A sickening crack was heard as the chipboard supports gave way…

When the bitter tears subsided, my brother (an enterprising sort) quickly realised that the table-top would make the perfect "grassy" plain for his Lego castle and knights. Not, in hindsight, the worst fate for this cherished "toy" I suppose – though at the time all I felt was slightly sick.

Cheap as that ill-fated table was, it must (at the very least) have cost more than 2 Euro. In that it had the edge over the object I present today (in an attempt to reawaken the dormant Manky Toy Monday). Ladies and gents, allow me to present "Super Pedestal Ball" – the snooker equivalent of playing football with an orange.

It's hard to capture, through still images alone, the odd mixture of disappointment and hilarity playing "Super Pedestal Ball" actually produces, so Jess and I have made a short video for your edification. Thoughts on my individual shots (and shot selection) will follow:

Shot 1 (a): Not the most promising of starts. As I try to place the white in the baulk area it sets off rolling 3/4 of the way down the table. I gingerly replace it, albeit somewhat illegally, a few millimetres in front of the baulk line.

Shot 1 (b): Off I go. Keen eyes will notice that I impart some bottom right-hand spin on the cue ball…though this has a more radical effect than anticipated – causing (as it apparently does) the majority of the object balls to congregate in the centre of the table in a tight pack. Hmmm…

Shot 2: After some indecision (caused by uncertainty regarding the precise rules of Super Pedestal Ball) I raise the butt of the plastic cue and try a thin power-cut of the green into the right centre pocket. The results are disastrous – with the white shooting into the right corner pocket and the rest of the balls bunching together, ever closer, by the blue spot. Damn.

It's then I realise that the only way to retrieve the white (for my next shot) is by removing a leg of the table! A not inconsiderable design flaw I'm sure you'll agree. You may also notice some erratic camera-work at this point. This is due to my wife (an inexperienced camera-operator) succumbing to a semi-hysterical bout of laughter.

Shot 3: After replacing the leg and attempting to regain my composure, I opt for a more attacking approach – lots of power and right-hand top-spin. Seconds later and the balls have (with farcical predictability) returned to their favoured formation.

"Is there some strange magnetism at work?", I ponder, as I wipe the tears from my face.

Shot 4: Success! One of the "pockets" is now satisfactorily stuffed with balls…although, maddeningly, the white is among them. Gah!

I wearily reach, once again, for a table leg…

And so it ends. After 18 days of squinting at shifting, swirling, pixellated blobs of colour and light on the lousy bbc.co.uk feed, the World Snooker Championship packs away its balls and white gloves for another year. My eyes may never fully recover.

Incidentally, my better half's suggested technique for rendering clarity to the dizzying vortex was to "unfocus my eyes", thus (presumably) unlocking the wonders of Magic Eye snooker. It didn't work…

It wasn't until mid-way through last night's captivating (and gruelling) final session that I discovered a feed of the crystal-clearest resolution over at eurosport.de. No need to unfocus here. The eyes could do their standard, everyday focusing job, and mighty relieved they were to do it.

The only downside was commentary delivered in German: a language in which I can confidently ask but one question: Wo kann ich ein kühlschrank magnet kaufen? (Where can I buy a fridge magnet?). Sadly, there's no particularly amusing anecdote behind why I learned the above. I was in Düsseldorf and I wanted to buy a fridge magnet. Er…that's it.

Anyway, the rather excitable Eurosport commentator had (from the little I could understand) a couple of enjoyable idiosyncrasies. He insisted on referring to both finalists as "markselby" (all one word) and he made generous use of the (possibly non-existent) word "luftbar". I'm no expert on the language of course, but I assume by this he meant an energy snack of some kind favoured by one (or both) of the "markselbys". Back in the old days a fistful of beta blockers washed down with a skinful of pints was the performance enhancement regime of choice. Times change however, and sipping on a glass of iced water while munching a luftbar may now be the preferred option.

Educational as all this was I soon grew weary of it and tried to get the BBC audio and the Eurosport video to synch. Results were not satisfactory. "What a shot by John Higgins!", Dennis Taylor would prognosticatively cry as the elder, Scottish "markselby" chalked his cue pondering that very, yet to be executed, shot.¹

The whole lagging behind/racing ahead commentary phenomenon left me conflustered, to the point where rational thought started to fail me. I was about to wonder aloud (entirely seriously) as to what might happen if the commentary in the Crucible audience's earpieces actually skipped a few seconds ahead of the live action when I caught myself…realising the temporal impossibilities involved. One can only imagine the freaked out expressions on audience members' faces if it did occur. Voices from a (twilight) zone more live than real life. Aaahhh!

Speaking of all things weird, the BBC's little filler segments (during mid-session intervals) continue to be as tedious and odd as ever. Twelve months ago, you may remember, we were treated to the bemusing sight of a forlorn Graeme Dott revisiting his old secondary school. Last year's me takes up the story:

The school was totally deserted and we got to see Graeme mooch about the empty halls and classrooms before playing basketball (by himself) in an empty gym. It was like a kind of dour, snooker-based episode of The Twilight Zone (co-written by John 'Where's the white going?' Virgo and Richard Matheson) with Mr. Dott the sole survivor of a global apocalypse.

The best bit I saw this year was yesterday afternoon.

Steve Davis sits (in front of a laptop) at a hotel bedroom desk. He delivers a monologue to the camera about the unique pressures of going into the final day with a big lead (as John Higgins had). Upon finishing, he glances casually over his shoulder. The camera follows his gaze to reveal…John Parrott, lying (fully-clothed) on the room's sole double bed.

I know the Beeb have been pushing Parrott and Davis as the ('amusingly' mismatched) snooker equivalent of Laurel & Hardy, but I hadn't expected them to go to the lengths of implying they share the same bed. Hot stuff entirely.

What would "The Lovely Hazel Irvine" say?

1. Or, possibly, thinking about a tasty interval luftbar. [back]

Pictured above is one of Irish sport's most enduring images: Packie Bonner in the act of palming away poor old Daniel Timofte's penalty (Genoa, June 25th, 1990). Not pictured anywhere on this page is the moment (4 years later) when Packie haplessly flapped Wim Jonk's speculative long ranger into his own net (Orlando, June 4th, 1994).

Never mind. Even despite that rare lapse (in the dying moments of his international career) Bonner remains an Irish sporting colossus. The fact that his lively agility between the sticks wasn't matched by his remarkably stiff and rigid TV presentation style is a fact that need not detain us. We'll always have Genoa.

"Dave F" appears (I think) to share our affection for the big fella, if this graffito (spotted on Harvey's Quay) is anything to go by:

The indefinite article does, however, confuse the issue somewhat. It may not be the aforementioned "Bonner" that Dave actually "has" (all the time). It could well be North Carolina general assembly member Bonner Lee Stiller, or 'Russian' human rights activist Yelena Georgevna Bonner, or even the late American bluesman Juke Boy Bonner. The graffito remains elusively non-committal…

Even if we remove the additional 'n' in "Bonner", and get closer to what was (I suspect) the creator's intended message, it's hard to tell if the claim is intended to be pejorative or complimentary. Is priapism something to be hidden or flaunted?

I had such fun writing last year's snooker-related posts that I briefly considered creating a dedicated fustar.info offshoot for the competition this time round (along the lines of my World Cup effort). At the moment, however, my time is being greedily consumed by lots of (what might be termed) "adult stuff", so a handful of observations over the course of the next fortnight will have to suffice.

The first round draw has thrown up numerous intriguing battles: John "Lego man head" Parrott vs. Steve "Dead Soulless Eyes" Davis; Former young Turk Ronnie O'Sullivan vs. New Kid on the Baize Ding Junhui; and (of course) Nigel "Mr. Charisma" Bond vs. Peter "I'll grind your bones to make my bread" Ebdon. Cliff Thorburn may once have gained notoriety as snooker's most relentless "grinder", but Ebdon has long since surpassed the old master in terms of ferocious and life-sapping combativeness. Not only does he "grind", he minces, pulverises and purees. At match's end, what's left of his opponent can usually be scooped up and shovelled into a bin bag.

While Ebdon has become synonymous with steely mental resilience, O'Sullivan has become something of a poster-boy for fragile, fractious genius. His 'paranoid' Higgins-esque cries of "Stitch up!" this year have already set the sports journos' pens a-scribbling, but it's a long time since I've read any piece on Ronnie that has gone beyond the established (and tiresome) mad/bad-boy clichés.

Both players have effectively been reduced to polar-opposed caricatures (in the way Davis and Higgins once were), but this reduction does them a disservice. Ebdon can be a fluent and devastating break-builder while O'Sullivan has enough tactical and safety nous to make him a match for anybody (in that, or any, regard). The way the draw's set up an Ebdon vs. Ronnie final could actually be on the cards. What a titanic, tasty and exhausting battle that could turn out to be. Yum.

One last quick note for now. 12 months ago I mentioned that people had been finding their way here after entering the following amusing search terms:

1) peter ebdon + boring snooker

2) Graeme Dott chess (perhaps a forthcoming PS2 game)

3) The lovely Hazel Irvine (I always thought it was 'The Lovely Debbie McGee'? Hazel has big shoes to fill if she wants to win that crown).

While searches one and two have subsequently fallen away, "The Lovely Hazel Irvine" is still putting an alarming number of bums on this blog's seats. Some strange, strange puppies out there…

On Tuesday night, after an evening spent gulping back bellinis and spritzes, Jess and I managed to find our way back to our hotel in Venice without getting lost. Not much of an anecdote I know, but it was the first time it had happened…the not-getting-lost I mean.

Getting lost in Venice at night is exhilarating, spooky and extremely easy. One minute you're surrounded by tourists and (a few) locals, the next you're eerily alone on narrow, canal-ended streets. It's hard not to imagine that you're about to catch fleeting glimpses of red-raincoated girls/killer midgets out of the corners of your eyes.

While such horrors did not manifest themselves we were briefly stalked/surveilled by a tall trenchcoated guy with a small pocket knife. I tried reassuring Jess that even if he intended killing us it would take several hundred vigorous stabs to do the job with such a modest weapon. Strangely, she didn't appear much comforted by this observation.

I think I mentioned in the comments section of the last graffiti post that Barcelona was the most graffiti-heavy city I'd ever visited. Well, it has nothing on Venice. There's graffiti everywhere. On every street, on every second beautiful, crumbling building. I didn't spot any particularly amusing examples (possibly because it was all in Italian) but it was hard not to be impressed by the sheer volume.

Luckily, Limerick continues to yield noteworthy pieces for the archive. While strolling down O'Callaghan Strand today I spotted the following masterwork inscribed in once wet cement:

For those hard of…em…seeing it reads "David Beckham is Beautiful". Did the author realise that such a bold statement of enthusiasm would almost certainly provoke a reaction? Was that why he/she chose such a permanent and unalterable form of graffiti to make this pronouncement?

Earlier in the day I'd seen a typical "Fiona 4 Ever" grafitto where the "4 Ever" had been crossed out and replaced with the pithy "is a slut". While "Fiona" sort of set herself up for this particular fall, the creator of the above has ensured that disputing David Beckham's beauty is no easy task. One would need a chisel or a bucket of wet cement…items one doesn't often have readily at hand.

A declaration of love made concrete. It may outlive the man himself.

[tags]David Beckham, Graffiti, Venice, Bellini[/tags]

Recent talk of crap toys and wrestling has motivated me to have one of my sporadic (YouTube-assisted) dips into the world of professional wrestling (something I retain a guilty affection for). Via the comments section of the Guardian sports blog I came across this "gem" from the golden age of tea-time British wrestling:

The contest features the corpulent Big Daddy (Shirley Crabtree) versus the even more corpulent Giant Haystacks (Martin Ruane – whose family originally hailed from Mayo) and the match is but one of many that formed perhaps British wrestling's most famous feud.

Fans of the more technical and athletic aspects of professional wrestling will probably suffer paroxysms of indignation at the hilarious lack of actual wrestling on display. The match consists of a few bear-hugs, a handful of forearm smashes, and a shoulder-charge or two. After that Haystacks tumbles over the top ropes and that's it – match over! Despite all that, however, the clip actually showcases why for many fans the appeal of professional wrestling has little to do with sporting endeavour and almost everything to do with theatricality.

The build up is interminable – with Big Daddy's family-friendly popularity being milked to the last drop – but, when you have little in the way of end product, anticipation is everything. The completely unambiguous divide between Daddy "The Face" (wrestling-speak for the "good guy") and Haystacks "The Heel" ("bad guy"…obviously) is delicious and driven hone with aplomb.

Daddy smiles and waves, Haystacks snarls and growls. Daddy is led to the ring (to the tune of "We shall not be moved") by a cute little majorette, Haystacks looks like he'd eat said majorette for breakfast. Daddy has his "very personal friend" the Reverend Michael Brooks in his corner (seriously!), Haystacks has two bruisers called Anaconda and Banger Walsh.

I seem to recall, from reading Simon Garfield's enjoyable The Wrestling (now out of print), that some of the old-time British wrestlers considered the Daddy/Haystacks rivalry something of a nadir for the "sport", reducing it to the level of absolute farce and stripping it of any vague veneer of athletic respectability. I also recall that many of those Garfield interviewed had less than fond memories of Daddy, partly (or perhaps largely) due to the clout wielded by his brother – wrestling promoter Max Crabtree. Much the same could be said of his American equivalent in the superstar stakes – Hulk Hogan – who was (apparently) roundly disliked by his WWF colleagues. Joe Poulton's description of Daddy makes explicit the similarities (in terms of limited ability and media-friendliness) between the two:

The Hulk Hogan of British wrestling, he was Big, Blond had roughly 3 moves – Body Check, Splash and Double Elbows. Back stage politics made sure he rarely if ever lost. Sound familiar?

The mainstream appeal of BD was confirmed by his rather terrible Buster comic incarnation – a lame and strained concept that never really went anywhere (unlike the more satisfying and long-lasting "Johnny Cougar"):

Both men have now passed on to the great "squared circle" in the sky (Daddy in 1997, and Haystacks a year later) but their skills at working the crowd (rather than their wrestling abilities) remain fuzzy, warm memories for many. Haystacks eloquently summed up the buzz felt by the best "heels" (and who doesn’t love a good "baddie"?) as follows:

I felt like a conductor of the Halle Orchestra, able to play on people's emotions, making them hate me or love me as I decreed.

Speaking of heels, my copy of Garfield's The Wrestling – which discusses/features Mick "The Man You Love To Hate" McManus at length – was passed from me, to my sister, and on to McManus's niece, where (to the best of my knowledge) it still remains.

A fitting end to its travels.

[tags]Wrestling, Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Mick McManus, Buster[/tags]