Meet Championship Man
Your anytime-of-the-year present problems solved
Who is Championship Man?
“He’s you, he’s me, he’s your brother, he’s your father,
he’s your sister, he’s your mother, he’s your second cousin once removed.”
he’s your sister, he’s your mother, he’s your second cousin once removed.”
Championship Man* lives:
- A couple of miles outside the town
- With his wife and four children
- A bit in off the road
- In the shadow of a medium-sized hill
- In the house he built himself in the ’70s
- Beside the home place
- On the land he farms part-time
- Two miles from the school where he serves as caretaker, part-time too
- A simple existence where his children want for nothing, but get nothing over and above either
- With a permanent dream of seeing his own crowd win the All-Ireland
Championship Man is:
- A true Gael
- The owner of a 1992 Toyota Carina he keeps in immaculate condition
- Thinking about Sunday
- Thinking about spreading their backs out wide
- An ordinary, decent pilgrim
- Excitable
- A small bit star-struck, but not too shy all the same to put talk on a county player if he happened to meet him leaning on the wire at a club match
- A collector of match programmes, many of them autographed by the referees
- Getting the car washed and the oil checked Saturday
- Commentating to himself right now as he drives home the short-cut from the school where he works as the part-time caretaker
- Prone to believing too much of what he sees in tournament matches
- Going early Sunday to get in ahead of the crowd
- Delighted that he finally got to fill in the Wallchart last Sunday, though he felt sorry for New York
Championship Man is not:
- Going to give up on the dream
- Likely to sleep from now until Sunday, and maybe not for a few days after that either
- One for the after-match banquets in Dublin
- Sure where he’ll park the car on Sunday, but thinks he won’t go in too close
Championship Man was:
- A virgin when he got married, and for a good while afterwards too
- Not much of a player himself, but stood in goal when the club were stuck
- Cranky as a cut cat the evening they lose in the championship
- Easily convinced they will come back aain
- The first man out on the field to hug the manager
Championship Man will be:
- At all the league games again next year, regardless of how this year goes
- At the Kilmacud Sevens
- Watching for omens at the Kilmacud Sevens
- Inconsolable until Christmas whether they lose a 4-19 to 4-18 thriller, or a drab 0-1 to 0-0 affair
- Home early enough Sunday night because cows don’t milk themselves
- Praying the new SkyPlus yoke gets the whole match
Championship Man believes:
- Kilkenny are not as good as people say
- The economy was bunched before the last election and Bertie knew it
- In buying a raffle ticket to support the county board
- He’ll die happy if they could just win it once