As I type this I should really be at the final of a youth football tournament held in this area called the Milk Cup. I go every year - Its a kind of bonding thing with my father - we don't talk to each other in words of more than one syllable all year until this week - when we go and have one syllable conversations while watching football. Unfortunately this year I have family issues and a friends wants me to go with him to visit a recently married mutual school friend. This whole married friends thing is something I will probably talk about many times in the future - so I'll leave it for now and return to the good old Northern Ireland Milk Cup.
Its an odd kind of a set up with competitions in three age groups and a mix of international and club teams playing each other. Where else could you watch County Antrim battling it out with Man Utd for a chance to play Chile? And what's more, even when a team gets beaten they don't have to fly home shamefaced (like England after Portugal so cruelly conspired to rile the utterly innocent young Liverpudlian into, justifiably, trying to perform a foot vasectomy on an opponent - thus denying the rightful Cup Winners a place in the semifinal) where was I? Oh, when a team get knocked out of one of the tournaments they simply start competing in another one at a slightly lower level. How wonderfully politically correct! I love it!
Could politics not work in a similar way? Take the US where, some people might believe, they can't run a peanut poll let alone a free and just Presidential Election. Say some Republican guy wins the overall election by three votes in a retirement state by the coast - the Democrat candidate wouldn't lose as such; he'd simply enter another Presidential Contest in some other country, say Australia. It could work! We could have John Kerry taking on David Davis for First Minister of the Northern Irish Assembly. No, that's ridiculous! As if we could actually have an assembly!
So while I'm not at the showgrounds watching the USA take on Paraguay in the elites, Spartak Moscow taking on Rapid Vienna in the seniors and Swindon taking on Crumlin Town (who?) in the juniors, I am there in spirit. I am there willing on the underdog. I am there with a lump in my throat for these, the best 6 youth teams in the world right now, three of whom will lift the milk cup (cups?)... but more than that I am there for the teams contesting the Dunluce Trophies, the BT Trophies, and all those teams who aren't the best six in the world but still have their own personal trophies. May we all lift our cups with pride.
update:
Just to keep you informed (I know how worried you all were) it turns out the matches were all broadcast live on BBC TV. So I got to see them after all. If you're interested Paraguay beat the US in the elite final, Swindon won the Juniors and those crafty Spartakians took the senior cup back to Moscow.
Its an odd kind of a set up with competitions in three age groups and a mix of international and club teams playing each other. Where else could you watch County Antrim battling it out with Man Utd for a chance to play Chile? And what's more, even when a team gets beaten they don't have to fly home shamefaced (like England after Portugal so cruelly conspired to rile the utterly innocent young Liverpudlian into, justifiably, trying to perform a foot vasectomy on an opponent - thus denying the rightful Cup Winners a place in the semifinal) where was I? Oh, when a team get knocked out of one of the tournaments they simply start competing in another one at a slightly lower level. How wonderfully politically correct! I love it!
Could politics not work in a similar way? Take the US where, some people might believe, they can't run a peanut poll let alone a free and just Presidential Election. Say some Republican guy wins the overall election by three votes in a retirement state by the coast - the Democrat candidate wouldn't lose as such; he'd simply enter another Presidential Contest in some other country, say Australia. It could work! We could have John Kerry taking on David Davis for First Minister of the Northern Irish Assembly. No, that's ridiculous! As if we could actually have an assembly!
So while I'm not at the showgrounds watching the USA take on Paraguay in the elites, Spartak Moscow taking on Rapid Vienna in the seniors and Swindon taking on Crumlin Town (who?) in the juniors, I am there in spirit. I am there willing on the underdog. I am there with a lump in my throat for these, the best 6 youth teams in the world right now, three of whom will lift the milk cup (cups?)... but more than that I am there for the teams contesting the Dunluce Trophies, the BT Trophies, and all those teams who aren't the best six in the world but still have their own personal trophies. May we all lift our cups with pride.
update:
Just to keep you informed (I know how worried you all were) it turns out the matches were all broadcast live on BBC TV. So I got to see them after all. If you're interested Paraguay beat the US in the elite final, Swindon won the Juniors and those crafty Spartakians took the senior cup back to Moscow.
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