Jerzey Dudek- Save of the century?

Why Me, Lance?

There he is, on the telly staring right back at me as I lay panned out on the couch watching the news for about the fourth time that day. Lance is sitting in a news conference looking sombre and serious as ever talking about Jim Stynes and fighting cancer. I feel a tinge of guilt but I keep watching. The soccer is coming up and watching Lance with all his determination might even motivate me to do something later (it didn't, unless you call watching back to back episodes of "Dexter" something).

Lance doesn't look too happy but then it cuts to a clip of him being asked about Paul Kimmage and I can see why. I know I would be annoyed if people followed me all over the world asking me if I was taking performance-debilitating drugs ("PDD's").

Lance is big box office. For the cycling press, he's their ticket to the news pages. He is American, outspoken, he's won the Tour de France, what, a million times and he's even beaten cancer. Before Lance came along, most Tour de France winners didn't speak a word of the Queen's.

Lance has never been found guilty of taking performance enhancing drugs ("PED's" not to be confused with PDD's above). If Lance was tried in a Kangaroo court, he would probably be convicted because it looks like he takes PED's, he walks like he takes PED's and he quacks like he takes PED's.

There are countless testimonies from ex-teammates, spurned business partners, officials, you name it, all lining up to confirm that Lance openly talked about using drugs, that he carried around syringes and unprescribed packets of drugs. There are positive A-samples (but no B samples). Circumstantially it doesn't look good.

Other Tour winners of Lance's generation, Jan Ulrich, Floyd Landis and now Alberto Condator have all been suspended for the use of PED's (although in Condator's case, he claims it was cough medicine- not terribly original, which means it could possibly be true or maybe the greasy Spaniard is just trying to outwit us). Armstrong's former mechanic Mike Anderson says that Lance simply said that "everyone does it".

Michelle Smith taught us simple Irish folk that if it looks too good to be true then it probably is. So if Lance is knee deep in PED's, then why hasn't he been caught and if he's not, then why won't the stories go away?

The press love him for one thing. He brings millions into the sport in sponsorship. Livelihoods depend on the Lance Armstrong phenomenon. Even now, in the twilight of his career, he's given a heroes welcome in Australia. The drugs question is asked, Lance has no comment and the hero-worship can continue unabated. He is celebrated in newspapers and magazines, while thousands of riders turn out to support him on a charity cycle.

As the English speaking press go, it really only seems to be my compatriots David Walsh and Kimmage who are up on their high horse about Lance.

The testers can't catch everyone. If they did, there would be no one left. It's possible to avoid being tested. One thing that struck me while reading 'It's Not About The Bike' was how Lance would prepare for the Tour by avoiding competition and people, just training in seclusion in the mountains somewhere a la Smith.

It's always been the case that the PED industry being relatively sparsely populated, the testers and dealers are often the same people or at least, design is more lucrative than enforcement helping the athletes keep one step ahead of the testers.

Could it be that no one (Walsh and Kimmage aside) really cares about the integrity of sport or whether Lance did or didn't take anything?

It sure as shit looks like it based on the reception he has received in Australia from the press and public alike. It's one thing to cheat or break the rules (if everyone else is doing it, then can it really be called cheating?) but it's another to lie about it. Again, not totally Lance's fault. If he doesn't lie, he will be called a cheat and hung out to dry by the very same people who fall at his feet today.

Yet if all the cyclists were on PED's, then it's not really cheating is it? It's not like he took a dive in the penalty box or messed with a competitor's breaks. He was just trying to level the playing field. The problem is if you abhor cheating, then you shouldn't play along. You should quit like Paul Kimmage did (though whether he would have quit if he'd been a contender is another story).

Lance didn't. He saw that the sport was dirty and he jumped into the mud. Cycling is a great sport because it is visually so spectacular and it will always have an audience. Where there is a market, there will always be those looking to exploit it. It's human nature. In a sense it's not the riders fault, it just the nature of the game.

The career of a sportsman is short, there are no second chances. People like Lance Armstrong don't have time to be crusaders for cycling. He is an athlete with a burning desire to win, not a martyr. Why don't you just do what you do best Lance and win races? Let other people deal with morality and regulations. That's what Lance did, hell it's what we'd all do if we had the talent and commitment to the sport like he did. Cancer he can fight for the rest of his days.

It's just when you see so many other people complicit in protecting him, parading him as a champion of humanity, it makes me think that if those same otherwise good people can turn a blind eye to cheating as obvious as Lance Armstrong's, what other lies are we capable of embracing?

On the other hand, there is always Jim Stynes.

‘Galvinised’ – an Intimate Portrait of a Kerry Rebel in Search of a Cause

He probably wouldn’t appreciate the title given his lengthy rap sheet of Cork sourced woes but it scratches at the heart of this fascinating, if at times aimless, documentary on the GAA’s foremost ‘pantomine villain’. Paul Galvin the fashionista. Paul Galvin the radio dj, the bored teacher, the victimised footballer, the troubled soul, the redemption man. Paul Galvin the outsider in the kingdom GAA fishbowl in search of his destiny.

I’m one of the latest to flee down under but I had to catch ‘Galvinised’ a week or two after hearing all the fuss from home on the social networks and online paper reports. On first watch, the misplaced focus on his fashion conscious and, to a lesser extent, on his overriding victim complex lend the whole thing a certain cringe factor. Perhaps that comes from my own North Kerry background and the anticipation of what the terrace pundits and streethacks who stand in judgment will have in store in the months to come. But he comes off as thoughtful and self-aware, however considerable the ego that drives him. Galvin will stand tall amidst the abuse. He’s become practised at his own private brand of game focused oblivion on championship Sundays over recent years. The pathetic petty jibes doing the rounds on the web boards merit little consideration. In truth, few with even a passing interest in the GAA would deny that he’s an interesting character who enlightens our games.

I recall a county league match some years back of limited relevance at my own club grounds. We played host to Galvin’s Finuge on a drizzly afternoon in spring, light years away from the glitz of the Big Apple or a September Sunday at Croker. He was out injured at the time but showed up as the consummate clubman and cut a lonely figure on the fringe of the opposition dugout. Isolation. It struck me back then that this guy neither fitted nor embraced the stereotype.

On the one hand, his love for the game and the scene surrounding it is unquestionable. He subscribes to it wholeheartedly and lives for it like many in the Kingdom. To see him speak passionately on his experience of Lixnaw hurling club and on his sense of guilt towards his County teammates underlines this. On the other hand, the GAA culture in Kerry and indeed on a wider scale, is undoubtedly homogenous and narrow-minded. In an environment where you might find yourself labelled gay for having the temerity to take the field displaying more than three months hair growth, the rank and file are loath to accept a skinny jeans clad poser with highfalutin aspirations towards fashin and meeja and the like.

Paul Galvin is an outsider. The label as GAA’s bad boy is something of a self-fulfilling prophesy given his overtly aggressive approach in his formative years on the county scene. Give a dog a bad name and so forth. He appears to, consciously or otherwise, seek out causes. He feels victimised by the powers that be and frustrated at his dependence ‘on the integrity of opponents’. The documentary may well have been aimed partly at changing our perception of him and it probably succeeds, to some extent. The next time the CCC sit in judgment on the selective ramblings of the CSI Sunday Game cast, perhaps they’ll offer our bearded tattoo clad demon the benefit of the doubt. Time will tell.

Another present cause is style and fashion and the minor line in radio work. You get the sense, however, that at heart this is a character in search of something to set him apart. The metrosexual thing is pretty irrelevant. Have a stroll down the CBD in any major city under here in Oz and he’d fall in like a spray-on-jeans soldier. But he feels uncomfortable at the curious stares of staff and students at the Sem in Killarney and on the streets of his home county. He’s dabbled in teaching but it’s no longer for him. He’s torn between a love for his native county’s game and the struggles in rowing against the tide in small town rural Ireland. Galvin is an amateur sports star dealing with the pressures of a distinctly professional brand of fame.

Which brings us to a familiar theme in GAA circles. The big bad P word. There’s a certain irony and hypocrisy in how our subject has on the one hand actively courted the media attentions usually associated with professional athletes and on the other hand rages against the intrusions. But far be it for a career challenged Kerryman to be swanning off to rehab in LA a la messers Rooney or Ben Cousins and the likes at first hint of a personal crisis. While he clearly exhibits traces of the arrogance and self-importance more characteristic of the overpaid overindulged band of millionaires cross channel, there is no getting away from the real world in the GAA. Whether he lives to regret skipping the surefooted teaching post in these tough times remains to be seen.

There are a small number of high profile GAA stars for whom the glare of the media attention quite clearly crosses the line beyond what any play-for-the-love-of-it sportsperson should endure. Galvin clearly falls into that category. There was the tabloid coverage of his classroom duster incident some years back, through the headline news coverage of slaprefgate to the Exposé myth and the phonecalls home and to work. He’s seems genuinely irked by it all. To be fair to the man, it seems more a case of the proverbial horse being dropped in the water rather than lead to the edge to indulge of its own accord. Small scale Irish fame/infamy has sought out Paul Galvin and now he’s seeking to use it to his own end. He’s just not quite sure yet what that end is.

So who are we to sit in judgment on a dedicated amateur star taking his first tentative bambiesque steps in the pool of national celebrity? It could turn out to be a hollow and cruel world but he has the platform and the liathroidi. Give him his dues. Certain sections in our society still scorn our national heritage games as backward bogball and stickball when in reality the GAA is one of the few things we can still be proud of in these depressed times. This is why the association can only gain from such characters, however deluded or self absorbed they might or might not be. As in every facet of life, change is inevitable and should be embraced. Last year we had the wonderful spectrum of Donal Og blazing the trail for homosexual sportsmen from his unpaid vantage in a small island on the Western fringes of Europe, a brave and progressive act way beyond so many of far higher profile and influence overseas.

A proud Kerry footballer need not forever fit the politician style yerra blank blank etc hollow rhetoric seemingly intrinsic since Paidi’s era. The GAA should actively encourage this form of self-promotion where it finds a market. The days of the guaranteed public service or banking job for the County star may be at an end and if pay for play is off the cards why not use the ’professional’ profile for personal gain? He does his share for charity lest the naysayers forget. Best of luck Paul. Before you head off for the big smoke and the bright lights, just give us one more lift off Sam will ya, with a Tyrone scalp in tow? Your final cause on the football field.