This Week In The League Of Ireland

The big story in the League of Ireland this week has been the sacking of Dundalk defender Dave Rogers in the wake of ‘Arse Gate.’ Rogers was left not too jolly with the decision by the Louth club to terminate his contract for ‘gross misconduct’ after he mooned the travelling Pats support at Oriel Park on Friday night. Unsurprisingly, many in the media were quick to have a bit of craic (or is that crack?) with this one. In fact, the only thing faster than the ‘bum’s rush’ given to Rogers was the rush of hacks and journo’s across the land as they tried to ‘out-pun’ each other.






There were plenty of ‘witty’ headlines in our tabloids about the Rogers’ sacking (‘Moon Walk’ was one of my personal favourites) but the pun-tastic headlines weren’t limited to the red-tops. ‘rogers calls foul play over bum rap’ and ‘hoping shirty conduct will end is asking for the moon’ are both the work of Aiden O’Hara in the Indo. The lack of capitals in these very cheesy headlines may be a mistake, or it may be an attempt at understating the descent into cheddar-ville.


The incident provoked an intense debate on RTE’s Monday Night Soccerball. Eoin “I’m not a prude” Hand says that if he had brought his daughter to the game, and he’d seen Rogers’ actions, that he “would have reacted.” Goodness only knows how... Meanwhile Rico had the counter-argument on the matter, standing up for Scouser. An MNS caption informed us that he once ‘played the bodhrán on an album by Tundra, a folk music group from Kent’ so it’s probably appropriate that it was he who was banging the drum in Rogers’ defence. He mused about possible conspiracy theories (“It makes me think that there’s something else in the background”) before analyzing the incident in detail, telling us that it wasn’t too bad because Rogers “had his briefs on underneath.” Thanks for saving us the bother to take such a close look Rico. “Have we all lost our sense of humour?” he wondered. Well, the journo’s certainly haven’t...


I’ll leave the last word to Neil O’ Riordan. The Irish Sun writer keeps a blog called The Big O in which he recalled an incident involving current Dundalk boss Sean Connor while he was boss at Bohs. According to O’ Riordan, in their preparation for the 2007 League Cup Final, Connor mooned his players as they practiced potentially crucial penalty kicks ‘in a bid to recreate the atmosphere they would face in a shoot-out at The Brandywell.’ ‘It’s worth remembering’ says Statto, ‘that Dalymount is overlooked by a primary school.’ Now that this scandal is in the public domain, should we expect the Dundalk board to sack Connor as swiftly as they booted Rogers out the door? Or will he stay, adding more fuel to the theories of the multi-talented Rico? Only time will tell.

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This article was originally written for and can be seen at the fine website, http://www.extratime.ie

Me Tarzan, You Jane

Does sexism still prevail in the world of sport?

The inspiration for this topic comes from an article in this week's Sunday Independent (no, I personally didn't buy it). Written by Eamonn Sweeney, it argues that Padraig Harrington is Ireland's greatest ever sportsman. A valid argument, perhaps, and most certainly a topical one. It's even one I proposed last Monday morning in work. Yet, I was struck by one line in the article.

Ronnie Delany's Olympic gold medal over 1,500m in 1956 marks him down as one of our very greatest as does John Tracey's silver medal in the 1984 marathon in a time which would have won any Olympics before or since. Eamonn Coghlan and Sonia O' Sullivan were world champions in their day and world class for many years....

Three of the athletes in this sentence have won Olympic Medals - only two of them are mentioned. Why did Mr. Sweeney omit O' Sullivan's silver medal in the 5000m in Sydney? He goes on

Harrington's current number three position (in the World Golf Rankings) is...uniquely impressive in Irish sport.

Yet this is not unique. In 1995, O' Sullivan was named Women's Track and Field Athlete of the Year and as recently as May of this year, Jessica Kuerten was also ranked Number 2 in the world in show jumping. (She may have been higher at one point but I can't prove this, yet I think she was. She is Number 7 for the month of July.)

Now, I'm not accusing Mister Sweeney of sexism here. I read his articles every week. Opinion pieces on sport are designed to provoke discussion and that is all that I am doing here, albeit not on the topic he proposed. However, I do wonder whether there is sexism in the coverage of sports and if this is justified?





Studies show that men's sport gets the lion's share of coverage. This is a broad statement but is generally true for almost all sports and almost all countries. A quick trip to an academic library will show bias both in the amount of coverage, and in the way women athletes are personified. Galleries such as this one are often devoted to women athletes, but rarely to men (not that I'd be looking!). This is an issue which has been discussed in other blogs by people far more qualified than I.

Yet, I regard this as fair. I recently discussed this with a friend of mine where I (successfully... I think) argued that men are superior to women. I don't mean better, but I mean of higher rank or importance. It's a controversial argument, and I'm not saying that men are better than the fairer sex. However, I do argue that due to historic and social reasons, men are the prevailing sex in society.

The same is true in sport. Women's sport has always been second best. It was 1984 before women were deemed capable of running an Olympic marathon. While men's finals in football, rugby, GAA and basketball were given prominent TV coverage in markets across the world for years, only recently have women's finals come close to this. Even then, viewing figures and attendances are rarely comparable.

This does not mean that the accomplishments of female athletes should be devalued. O' Sullivans medal should be mentioned and journalists in particular should ensure that they are not discriminatory. My mum was angered by this article. She emailed Eamonn Sweeney who kindly replied admitting his mistake. A small victory for feminism!

So what do you think? I'm quite happy with the status quo, because I think it reflects what audiences want. Journalism should not be sexist, but the coverage of sports should reflect the wants of it's audience. However, I am a man, and would love to know if any of the gals out there disagree and think they're under-represented. Leave me a comment.