An article I wrote about Liverpool’s Overhead Railway and the fate of Everton FC’s home ground Goodison Park is in the Irish Times today here.
Archive for the ‘football’ Category
14
Apr
Last Friday night, I went to see UCD’s football team play Drogheda United in the football/rugby ground on campus. Unlike Wigan’s JJB Stadium, there are no ruts to jump over if you’re a player partial to the beautiful game. Although the game was anything but beautiful. (In the end it was 3-1 to Drogheda, the first time they’ve scored a couple in a league game this season.) It was free in to anyone with a student card, and enlivened no end by the announcer’s hut being located on a hill overlooking the pitch, in full view of the (only) stand. Whenever a goal was scored, or indeed any incident worth reporting occurred, the man in the hut would make his way down to the halfway line, taking anything between one minute and three to get there, and then obviously the same to get back. This meant that, let’s say, any goal scored while he was in between the pitch and his announcer’s hut would drag him back to the halfway line to confer with officials – during the usual timewasting substitutions near the end of the game, this was a particularly infuriating/ribtickling spectacle as he raced up and down in order to announce each team’s latest throw of the dice. Getting free in was nice, though – an unexpected perk of being a student at a university with a League side.
