Did you ever notice yourself changing and not be able to quite figure out why? For example, when I was younger, the mere smell of things like coleslaw, potato salad or beetroot would have me dry reaching in seconds.
Whereas now, any of the above would happily be tore into. With the only slight proviso being avoidance of the bottom of the jar containing the latter due to the proliferation of vinegar therein.
That said, there are foodstuffs which will NEVER come off the black list. Vinegar being absolutely front and central there, but also salad cream, English Mustard and blatantly obvious garlic.
No doubt the following might seem like an odd comparison, but then, if you’re used to ingesting material here probably not. But, like the literal taste buds consenting to different infusions to what was once the case, sports viewing habits can and do change too.
Though in that case, its more of a seasonal thing cross bred with superstition. Allow me to explain – the minute the brighter evenings come in, I get very hard to watch darts.
Which is a bit of a kick in the hole having followed the competition since the first dart was thrown way back in early February. Then, there’s another curious quirk in relation to the World Snooker Championship.
Which manifests as, if I don’t get to see the first day’s action at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, I can’t bring myself to try to catch up. I have no idea why, but, in an effort to head off said eventuality at the pass, I hit ‘Series Link’ prior to the first frame being wracked up…
Or so I thought. Didn’t I only go and set it to record on the HD version of the channel – to which there was no access – so when I went to tune into the ‘recorded’ fare later on, all I got was several hours of a completely blank screen!
One thing that will never be forgotten or messed up when it comes to recording and remembering to hit the Series Link option is the NBA season. All 82 + games of it.
Much to the chagrin of her indoors owing to the amount of recording space my secret obsession consumes on the Sky box!
I know it was either watching the semi finals and finals of the Irish Cup – which were made a very big deal of and broadcast live back in the day. Or being appointed an assistant coach to the school team that hooked me altogether. But, either way, the fast-paced five-a-side fare become an essential part of the routine viewing schedule.
Which in turn plays a huge part in the satisfactory negotiation of a route around this big old ball on a day to day basis.
Not only that, but time has proven that it’s a sport which many others – most notably GAA – could learn plenty from. Some of which they already have in the guise of the countdown clock and the hooter. Not to mention the zonal defencive systems which were all in vogue for a decade or more.
But I feel there are even more nuggets which could be harvested from the hardcourt action. Maybe not going as far as to inculcate interchange players, but, additional referees, the use of video technology, making referee’s communications openly audible and the scrapping of the red card in its current guise and replacing it with a Flagrant Technical Foul is at the very least worth exploring.
Under the latter regime, a player is ejected – sent off – on the day and will serve a service of variable length BUT when the player is put off in a basketball match they can be replaced on the day.
The concept of reducing a team to 14 players is excessive in modern Gaelic football. It was alright when the game was played at a slower pace with the propensity for teams to let the ball do the work.
It seems utterly ironic, then, that at a time when the long ball has gloriously come back into vogue in football – possibly in hurling to a point also – that the punishment of a red card presently very obviously piles insult on top of the ‘injury’ of being down the particular player for whatever time remains.
Never was there a more inglorious example of that than the dismissal of Darragh McCarthy of Tipperary against Cork. Right, so by the letter of the ‘law’ it was a straight red card, but, with a young lad, 19 years of age, would it not have made morse sense give the lad a black card, give him ten minutes in the Bin to cool down and then let him back on, knowing that one wayward glance thereafter would result in a straight red.
For one thing, it doesn’t condemn the player immediately and for another it reduces the effected team to 14 players for what, in the above case, was the entire match. To use a bit of basketball parlance, something akin to a Flagrant 2 sanction – where the infracting player is expelled for the remainder of the game in question and then retrospectively suspended for whatever number of games the transgression is deemed to merit.
How ironic, then, that, having exalted the positive aspects of the disciplinary systems within the NBA, what appear to be blatant curiosities in the said sports’ disciplinary procedures are what brought about production of what you are now reading. You may have seen the basketball piece in this piece earlier https://boylantalkssport.com/2025/01/06/american-contradictions/ in the year relating to the off-court travails of Ja Morrant of the Memphis Grizzles.
Which, without harrowing up the entire content of the above linked article, revolved around the fact that he of the pineapple hairstyle was suspended for the final two months of last season and the first 25 of this one having been found – twice in quick succession – to have violated US gun laws. And, knowing how nutty there are about their guns, gun laws and the right to bear arms in the giant asylum under Trump that it may come as a surprise to some that any action was taken against the player at all.
However, with most fair minded, straight thinking people, the general feeling would’ve been that Morrant would’ve done well to avoid a custodial sentence. Considering the fondness Yanks have for locking people up and throwing away the key, even for the most frivolous of offences. Mind you, it is that very fact which makes the 25-match-ban recently meted out to Bobby Portis of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Portis was found to have trace elements of some banned substance or other in a sample given to testers as part of routine testing. But, as far as can be deciphered, the power forward from where they make the best tools in the world had reasoning and documentation to back up that, whatever the trace elements were of were only in the sample as a by-product of whatever medication the player had taken to treat a routine ailment.
Considering how oblivious American sport can be to doping when it suits, the suspension handed down to Portis looks ridiculously excessive.
But then, you’re dealing with a race of people who elected a convicted criminal scumbag as their President. Twice.
Another great case of do as I say, not as I do.