COVERAGE?
WHAT COVERAGE?

by Kevin Burke

Being drunk as I was in Tolka during the Shels-UCD game, and also wanting to read of our great win again, I opened the Irish Times the next morning looking to see what had happened. I turned to the soccer pages looking for the familiar “Students teach ⟨insert team name here⟩ lesson”, and was hit by a barrage of British football reports telling me that Ipswich and Fulham had drawn, that Crawford has scrored four times for Dunfermline in the league so far this season, that Reinier Moor has made two substitute appearances for Exeter this year. However, the Shels report was nowhere to be seen. I searched the entire sports section twice before I found the report – two paragraphs next to the Under 5s Leitrim club hurling final report and under the Leinster Rounders league results. The match report itself was even less encouraging – “If you have managed to find this report, you are very sad indeed. Go to a pub and watch some proper football”. The second paragraph just fleshed out what was on Aertel, typos and all.

Now I’m a laid back person, but even I have my limits. So I rang up the Irish Times to complain. When I asked to talk to someone about the eircom League, a confused voice told me that this was a newspaper, and that if I’d bought shares, they couldn’t do anything to help me, and promptly hung up.

So I went into D’Olier Street to pursue the matter further. Learning from my earlier mistake, I asked for Emmet Malone. I managed to chat with him for a few minutes. He explained to me that he had a feeling his recent promotion to Chief Soccer Correspondent had something to do with his continuous attempts to promote the league – by giving him more work, his ability to write about the eL had consequently diminished. “I can only give you three letters – TER. Seek that, and you will be nearer your answer.”

But what was TER? Three, perhaps? Three goals against Longford? Three-all in Europe? Three minutes to realise that Paul Byrne had actually missed that header in Dalyer which won Shels the league and got us nearer Europe? Then it hit me – RTE...

So I went to Donnybrook and asked again after someone in charge of Irish soccer. I was met with a blank stare from the receptionist – one of those stares which tells you your not going to get any further (the first time I’ve seen it outside of a nightclub, incidentally). Through habit, I turned and left, but as I was walking out onto the main road, I was roused by a man calling after me. Quickly, he told me that he knew of my quest, and explained that he had been fighting the same fight for the past couple of years. He went on to tell me that he went around eL games with a camcorder, recording highlights of eL games and showing them late at night on the RTE band. “They’re onto me – they might be watching now. All I can do is point you towards the answer – GAAAAHHH!!!!” Shocked by such a bloodcurdling yell, I turned and ran.

I am writing this a couple of weeks after the events I have narrated in the hope that I might make the answer to the mystery known. I know I have not long to live – in my search for the truth, I have brought them onto me. The answer I sought was revealed to me when I chanced to see my friend at RTE walking in a crowd in town. In a flash, I realised that his scream when last we met was not his untimely death, but rather the answer. Since then, I have uncovered the whole mystery behind the subjugation of the eL in the media. Funded by the money received by ill-gotten Championship replays, the GAA, seeing soccer as “one of dem foren games”, are attempting to rid these isles of the beautiful game for once and for all. They are determined to waste anything in their past – even sending undercover agents to pose as Rovers fans to encourage riots and the destruction of league grounds (why do you think Rovers still have fans after 15 years of wandering?). If they catch me, they will make me watch videos of Liverpool in Europe until I convert, or drop dead of boredom.

Don’t let them win...

This article originally appeared in print in STIG Volume I, Issue VII