Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Given that this blog has in the past celebrated the achievements of Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell, the European Ryder Cup team and Padraig Harrington it’s shockingly remiss that I’ve not yet managed a post about Darren Clarke.   The big Dungannon man’s Open triumph was the pick of the bunch when it came to defying the odds.   At 42 most experts had written off his prospects of picking up a major title. Last night, though, the BBC got to screen its now traditional documentary, charting the home-coming of yet another major champion.   It was a bit of a tear-jerker, capturing emotional scenes as Darren brought the claret jug back to his family in Portrush and to his two sons. Now Clarke is a nice guy, but he’s not one of the generation of non-descript, clean-cut, identikit sports stars.   The documentary captured an awful lot of drinking, alongside the formal celebrations and (let’s be honest) a little on screen inebriation.   Some pompous asses h...

A picture tells a thousand words ! Let's hope the week can continue in this vein for Northern Ireland 's sportsmen ( and women ).

An unedited version of an opinion piece from yesterday's Belfast Telegraph (articles published on a Saturday rarely make it online). In Northern Ireland we can celebrate Graeme McDowell’s heroics at Pebble Beach without  ambivalence.  However, his achievements have been accompanied elsewhere by a degree of confusion as to whether the Portrush golfer should be considered British or Irish. Indeed the Belfast Telegraph’s southern sister paper, the Irish Independent, rather ungraciously accused the UK media of claiming the new US Open champion, under false pretences.  McDowell’s coach, it pointed out, like the man himself, says that he is Irish.  So that, it would seem, is that.   Except, of course, that it isn‘t. National identities are not so impermeable or easily reducible. Possession of one does not exclude holding another.  In this part of the world we have a head start in understanding how complex a concept nationality can be.  McDowell, like ma...