Praca trenera jest jak molo – kiedyś się kończy.

So, tomorrow night, the Republic of Ireland takes on Poland in a European Championships qualifier. 

For as long as I can remember I have actually cared about the fortunes of the Irish international football team.  

Childhood is to blame, obviously.

I remember lying in bed looking at a photographs of Liam Brady in the O’Neill’s Ireland strip shielding the ball in an encounter with a lesser, foreign mortal.

A German; not a Pole, but mutatis mutandis the point is the same: 

Brady was one of the most gifted players in  the world at the time – who’s to say he wasn’t the greatest – all I know is that he was always the best player on the pitch.

I mean he singlehandedly won the 1979 FA Cup Final:

Tomorrow night, when ‘we’ (probably) lose against Poland it will restate the painfully obvious – these days, Ireland doesn't have a player like Brady. Brady was the Lionel Messi of his day. The closest thing to Messi on the pitch tomorrow night will be wearing a white shirt:

My interest in the match tomorrow is based on two extremely tenuous links: firstly, there is the one I've been describing connecting me to Liam Brady’s shirt in that match against the Germans. 

When I started this blog I was thinking about imports and exports. Football has always been exported from Ireland. I’m talking about football here – not Gaelic football – and I refuse to use the ‘S’ word for the game.  

Brady’s shirt tells me that I’m Irish. I guess that’s it (with the exception of Kilkenny hurling). I am Irish to the extent that I deeply, deeply want the Irish football team to do well and Brady’s shirt is the symbol of the only version of Irish nationalism that I am comfortable with.

Brady was a world class genius towering above his peers. He played for Arsenal (scoring this incredible goal):

He played for Juventus becoming one of the greatest ‘foreign’ players in what was then the most skillful league in the world. 

Most importantly, he stood up to the church, the GAA and his teachers and chose to play football instead of Gaelic football even though it meant that he was expelled from his Secondary school.

The fact that Brady had no place in the Jack Charlton era of moronic kick and rush makes me love him even more.

My Hero.

Of course, Liam Brady is the father that I never had. I guess he’d tell me that losing to Poland would be a nightmare.

The truth is, my love for the Irish International football team has faded a bit.  The connection, initially tenuous (Liam Brady’s shirt) and later, all – devouring, has weakened.

The other connection?

Well there are 150, 000 Polish people living in Ireland now. Polish is the second most spoken language on this island.

I meet a lot of them and they're usually friendly.

When (if) Poland wins tomorrow I won’t really care. In fact, there is no other country that I would rather lose to.

There's obviously some kind of connection between the Irish and the Poles. What is it? Countess Markievicz?

I doubt it. It’s probably due to Catholicism.

This is really strange given that I am no more Catholic than my dog. Add to that my admiration for Brady's Gallieo - like two fingers to the church and I'm left wondering still. 

I don't get it.

To dziwna gra!

Eli, Eli, lama Sabachthani?

What is the significance of the crucifixion? I have been thinking about this since I saw a performance of J S Bach’s The Passion of St Matthew last week. The chapters of the Gospel of Matthew on which Bach based his work are so well known that they are invisible, though axiomatic parts of the collective unconscious of probably every literate human being living within any Judeo-Christian culture. Chapters 26 and 27 describe the last supper, the garden of Gethsemane, the ‘trial’ of Jesus, his crucifixion, death and burial in a tomb. 

What is the significance of the crucifixion? In Luke’s Gospel Jesus tells one of his co-crucified: “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise”. What kind of sacrifice is this? I mean if he knows he’s going to heaven then it undermines the worth of what he has submitted himself to. If he knows he’s going to heaven then this is no sacrifice at all.

In truth Jesus does not seem to have any such certainty. The night before, when all around him he is being betrayed he asks God to lift the burden of this death from his shoulders. This moment of doubt is common to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me”.

In Matthew, Jesus seems to know even less about what’s actually taking place. He says only “Eli Eli lama Sabachthani” – My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me? Jesus’ sacrifice is therefore one riven by doubt – there is no certainty at all – it may all come to nothing, it may all be for nothing.

The thought has occurred to me, though that Jesus’ sacrifice would have had even greater value, would have been a truly devastating loss if it had been the act of a confirmed atheist. What if Jesus knew that there was no God, that not only had he been forsaken but that there was no God at all to forsake anyone?

It seems to me that if Jesus knew that he was dying for nothing the sacrifice would be much greater. He would then be sacrificing the only life he had, the only one he’d ever have, for what? So that others might learn, might benefit from his sacrifice in some uncertain, metaphorical way?

That would be a sacrifice worth celebrating.

I think Bach would be horrified that his music should trigger off such a line of reasoning. What's more I am sure that Bach had no intention of upstaging JC but he has come close!

The music itself was impressive. Betrayal, despair, lies in act one (Chapter 26) followed by a show trial, torture, crucifixion and agonising death in act two (Chapter 27). Bach does not go on to describe the resurrection. He stops at the point where “they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch”.

Bach doesn’t bother bringing Jesus back to life but with music as uplifting as this who needs a resurrection?

House of Cards? Bum Deal

I know it’s just light entertainment but the third series of House of Cards is heavy going. What I wanted to see was Kevin Spacey’s acting. And to be fair it’s there; Spacey’s Frank Underwood is evil, hilarious, vulnerable, cynical, scheming. He brings the character to incredibly vivid life.

But two pieces of ballast really weigh the whole thing down.

First: the storyline that sets up a clumsy caricature of Vladimir Putin (President Petrov) as Underwood’s geopolitical nemesis is little more than an exercise in anti-Russian propaganda.

Petrov is portrayed as insanely petty and irrational. As a condition for cooperating with the Americans in the Middle East he demands the resignation of the First Lady as US Ambassador to the UN.

Petrov’s reasoning? It doesn’t matter to him but he knows that it matters to President Underwood. International diplomacy reduced to a squabble between children.

All of the usual Bond-movie stereotypes of Russia get an airing. At a reception in the White House Petrov drinks like a fish. In his dealings with Underwood he is paranoid and irascible – Spacey’s character, in comparison is calm and reasoned.

What’s really going on here is that the writers are playing off the cheap stereotypes of Vladmir Putin that have been represented by the Western Media over the past two years.

Petrov is portrayed as a vain, macho buffoon. He stubs out his cigar on the wall in white house – sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar.

He lifts up his shirt to show off his bullet and bayonet wounds to Spacey and describes killing a man in Afghanistan with his bare hands. It would be funny if it wasn’t already being done, day in day out on every infotainment report about Putin from BBC to Fox to Sky News.  

My problem is not that there may be some truth in these portrayals; rather it is that with a character as interesting as Frank Underwood and an actor as gifted as Kevin Spacey at their disposal it is a just not good enough for the writers to resort to this species of crappy hack journalism.

The episode where the actual members of Pussy Riot appear (as themselves) in the White House to protest against president ‘Petrov’ is only the most obvious and insultingly stupid moment in this lazy excuse for plotting.  

Playing to the contemporary American gallery’s desire for geopolitical success in some real/imagined confrontation with Russia in this way is basically propaganda and as such is a completely wasted opportunity.

Second: far too much ponderous soul searching takes place.

The sub plot involving Doug, the President’s assistant’s convalescence, grieving and eventual hunt for and murder of an ex-girlfriend, drags along at a snail’s pace. He spends the entire 13 episodes in one state of pain or another and this is a problem for me because I had stopped caring at the outset.

It would have been far more economical to have had the threat posed to Spacey by the ex-girlfriend and the assistant snuffed out at the end of the 2^nd series. 

A scheming, psychopathic genius like Frank Underwood would have sorted that out in a heartbeat before moving to invade North Korea.

The disintegration of the president’s relationship with the first lady is similarly drawn out and signposted. Of course the sheer brilliance of Spacey’s acting – particularly at moments such as the scene in the oval office in the final episode where he tells his wife “without me you are nothing!” – salvages something of value but the fact remains: the primary focus of what is supposed to be a political drama is nothing more than a private melodrama.

This is disappointing because the premise of House of Cards – a President halfway between Faust and Machiavelli married to a cross between Lady Macbeth and Medea – could go in any direction. I mean, they don’t have to invade North Korea but this is supposed to be a show about politics.

This is the dilemma: I would watch/listen to Kevin Spacey reading the shipping report. But season three of House of Cards is nothing more than a hybrid of anti – Russian propaganda and soap opera. 

If another season of House of Cards is made I think I’ll pass. I can always go back to Se7en and Beyond the Sea.