I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE SAW DOCTORS-If This Is Rock’n’Roll, I Want My Old Job Back (1991).

A line from a Saw Doctors song is quoted in this book, so why not review the whole disc,yeah?

I’d first heard of The Saw Doctors in college.  My friend Jaime brought this very disc over to a party (although I prefer the title of their second disc: All the Way from Tuam, better).  I din’t really give them much thought after that.  But then, several years later I saw them live at the Guinness Fleadh Festival and they were fantastic.  I saw them at another show elsewhere (details are sketchy now) and they were excellent then too.

This is their first disc and it’s a bit more subdued and folky than their later releases.  The fun part, of course, is the singer’s greatly Irish-accented singing and so many of the regional references.  I mentioned earlier that there’s a song quoted in this book, and that song is “N17” one of the great anthem songs of all time (even if you’ve never been on the N17, which indeed, I have not, I’ll still happily sing “I wish I was on the N SEVENTEEN, stone walls and the grass is green”).

In general, but even moreso on their later discs, they sing anthemic folk rock (the kind of songs that work very well live).  But they mix elements of trad, punk and just good old rock in as well.  In many ways they’re like a clean cut version of the Pogues (I mean, just look at them on the cover of their greatest hits).  And their Greatest Hits is a good place to check them out.  You get a lot of singles (and they are definitely a singles band), for a good oul’ Oirish rocking time.

I recently learned that they are one of the highest selling Irish artists of all time (although I can think of maybe one other band that has outsold them, yeah?).

[READ: January 31, 2010] These Green fields

Full disclosure right up front.  The author of this book is the boyfriend of one of my friend’s sisters.  Of course, I’ve never met him, and I’ve only met her once or twice, so it’s not like they’re any conflict of interest, but I know how the internet likes to gossip, so I’ll be straight witcha.

I ordered the book from his site, and when it arrived, I was a little concerned because the back cover and the prologue were rather confusing.  Confusing not because they’re about hurling (a lot more on that later) but confusing because the writing wasn’t that sharp.  The back cover just didn’t really grab me, and the prologue, while in retrospect makes a lot of sense, it just wasn’t all that exciting.  But that problem was cleared up once the book proper started,  so I had my guard up for naught.

But so what’s this about hurling?  Well, hurling is an Irish sport (and I’m going to mangle this, so my apologies to those who know the game better than me).  Okay, so basically, you’re on a big field with goals at either end (like soccer, say).  But each goal, in addition to having a net (which has a goalkeeper) also has uprights (like American football, say).  Points are scored in two ways: Hit the ball through the uprights and you get one point.  Hit the ball past the goalie and you get 3 points.  But just to confuse matters, the scoring delineates between the two forms of scoring: Goals-Points, so you see scores like 2-16 to 3-19.  I believe that it’s the total point tally that picks the winner, but it’s amazing how quickly fans can look at these tallies and tell who won.

And what a bout the ball?  Well, I’ll back a up a little and say that thee are two sports that are played on this field.  (Both sports are sponsored by the GAA, the Gaelic Athletic Association): Gaelic Football and Hurling.  Gaelic Football uses a ball like a soccer ball (forgive me, Gaelic Footballers for that simplification).  But hurling, glorious hurling, goes in another route altogether.  The ball is similar to a baseball and the bat–yes they use a bat–is like a field hockey stick, except the base is flat.  (I have a sliotar (the ball) and a hurley (the bat) at home, although I’ve never really gotten to use them.

So the men (women play a similar game called camogie) run up and down the field with these hurleys scooping up the ball and running with the ball balanced on the end of the hurley (you can only use your hands to catch a ball in the air or to throw it to yourself for self-hitting purposes).   And when you get close enough, as you might imagine, you whack the ball at the goal.  I’ll repeat.  You run with the bat and ball, stop and whack the ball down the field with your stick.  Is there any doubt what sport real men play?  By the way helmets became compulsory on Jan 1, 2010.  American Football, you’re a bunch of nancy-boys compared to this.

Oh, and the players are all volunteers!  My friend Louise told me that her teachers used to play on the weekend and they would routinely come into class with black eyes or busted teeth.

For an official explanation of this awesome game, check out these videos (#2 has some great footage and playing rules):

But hey we’re here for a book, right?

So, the premise of this book is that Con was a star hurler for his local County Mayo team.  Then he took a ball (or a stick, i don’t recall now) to the cheek, which shattered.  He was out for several months but promised to come back.  The problem was that his team, fearing for his safety, felt that he shouldn’t come back.  And so, he raised holy hell and alienated a few people while he was out.

Then, his old coach comes for a visit.  He hopes that Con will come back and play (!) but he also hopes that he will help to arrange a championship match against local champs Galway.

From here, a plot summary is very tough.  For one, because i don’t entirely understand the intricacies of GAA playoffs myself, but for two, because it is based on reality (I believe) and I don’t know the reality enough to describe it.  But suffice it to say that Galway are the regions’ big championship team.  So big, that they stopped having regional tourney because Galway won something like 50 in a row.  Galway is about to leave the region for a different region (again, it’s explained in the book, but I can’t do it justice) and Mayo would like one more crack at them in a regional tournament before they go.

And from there you get an underdog sports story.

It must be tough writing as sports novel. I mean really there’s only two stories you can write: underdog team fights against insurmountable odds and wins, or underdog team fights insurmountable odds and loses.  There’s not much more to it.  And of course, for dramatic effect everything has to be dependent upon the last (insert sports thing: minute, inning, down, play) before the end. So, once you’ve got these rules in place, the question is what do you do with it.

Shaw does some fun things with the premise.  He goes in one of those directions, and he builds an incredible amount of suspense.  (There’s a series of personal setbacks that really spur on the Mayo team). And the book is only 169 pages, so it never gets dull.

If I had a complaint about the book it is this: the audience for a book on hurling is pretty limited (I would guess).  And I expect he knew this, so he basically writes for that audience. Meaning, there’s not a lot of explaining going on.  He throws around the word bainisteoir without ever defining it, and he uses the hurling terms and game playing as if every reader would know what he’s talking about.

Of course, at the same time, the audience for a book about hurling is pretty limited.  Are there really people who are going to pick this up if they don’t know what hurling is about?  As far as all that goes, he probably made the right decision in catering to his audience, and not the novice.  However, as a service to his readers, he may have wanted to include a glossary or something.  Maybe?  I’m still not sure what a bainisteoir is (okay, wait a lot of  Google work suggests Manager).  I know that the real fans for the book don’t need a glossary, but hey it couldn’t hurt.

I don’t read sports books in general, so I can’t really say how this compares.  However, I thought it was really enjoyable.  It’s hard not to get swept up in the narrative, and the characters are well developed.  But I think I found it even more enjoyable because it was about a sport and a culture that I know just a wee bit about, so it allowed me to get a peek at something new.

P.S.  Hi Martina!