A night with The Thoroughbreds in County Kildare

There are more studs than a pair of Stanley Matthews football boots, more bloodstock sales than Count Dracula's Christmas bazaar, more betting shops than bakers' shops, all Paddy Powers and Powers that be.

It was for altogether more salacious reasons, however, that the former barrack town used to feature in Encyclopaedia Britannica - under "p" - and we shall return diffidently to that matter ere long,

Newbridge is also the base for Kildare County FC, at home on the night that the Republic beat Cyprus - a team with as much backbone as a shoal of pre-pubescent jellyfish - to Limerick in the Eircom League first division. The first division is, of course, the second.

The Irish Independent had listed the kick off at 7.30pm, half an hour prematurely. In the clubhouse they watched Irish Mastermind (honest) on mute (ditto); outside, several similarly misinformed souls wandered around forlornly, as if still searching for Shergar.

Kildare are known as the Thoroughbreds, though the logo appears at best to be a hybrid and at worst to be a seahorse, a breed not generally recognised under the rules of racing. Their squad included Garth Cronin and Sean Harte, who'd had high hopes - and youth contracts - at Sunderland.

Limerick were bottom, out on a limerick, though holiday attempts to compose five lines of doggerel to mark their predicament have been unsuccessful. Readers may fare better, or verse.

The match was pretty decent, good Albany Northern League standard, the crowd of around 400 might have been higher but for the "Festive greyhound night" at the dog track out the back. Attractions included "shaveathon and gents' waxing" and "tattoo artist and face painting for the children."

The referee was Hilda McDermott. Whatever else they called her, it wasn't very often Hilda.

Kildare won 2-0, maintaining their promotion hopes but unlikely to win the old town the same immortality as that dishonourable mention in Britannica.

Not only was Newbridge supposed to have had more whores per head than anywhere else in what was then still Britain, not only earned that bit on the side beneath the emboldened entry for "prostitution", but is said to have been the place where the future King Edward VII carelessly lost his virginity.

Several reports suggested that the shock of it killed Prince Albert, his father, but typhoid and the Victorian drains were more likely to have been responsible.

Whatever. As one of the guide books almost observes, having joined the runners and riders at Newbridge, Edward the conqueror seldom looked back thereafter.

Kildare County's programme carried a piece about a 21-year-old disabled fan who'd also become an ardent Sunderland supporter since meeting Niall Quinn, former Squire of Sedgefield and Baron of Bishop Middleham.

The blessed Niall, it later transpired, has been extending his portfolio since leaving the Stadium of Light and returning to his homeland.

Last week, he and his wife Gillian (she who advertises Surf) not only had a share in the 11-1 Portland Stakes winner at Doncaster, but Niall - playing off five - won the Captain's Prize in the Heritage Golf Cup and scored for Eddestown Juniors in their victory over Sallins in their Kildare Junior Football League (North) Cup final.

"The big feller caught the ball for fun in the second half and scored a goal to be proud of," reported one of the Irish broadsheets. "At the end of the game, he shook hands with everyone he'd played against."

Gaelic football, junior or otherwise, must not be confused with soccer and neither of them with hurling - a hurl new ball game, if ever.

Like football, hurling is played with 15 a side on a pitch half the size of Newcastle Town Moor and with an incomprehensible scoring system. Unlike football, participants are armed with sticks.

The Guinness All Ireland Hurling Final between Cork and Kilkenny was played on Sunday, 78,000 at Croke Park, Dublin and the Irish papers no less greatly overflowing with FA Cup final-type stories of unfair ticket allocation, rip-off merchants and profiteering publicans.

Cork and nicknamed the Rebels, Kilkenny the Cats - a breed not to be confused with the meretricious, manufactured, miaowt nor summat felines at a well known Championship club in the North-East of England.

Readers may even recall the phrase "Fighting like Kilkenny cats". Its origin, said the bright eyed colleen at the Kilkenny tourist information office, was in the legend that long gone locals would tie their cats' tails together as a way to amuse themselves during the long winter evenings, waiting (but not for long) to see what happened next.

"I don't believe it myself," she added, and nor does the Oxford English.

Kilkenny was festooned yellow and black, hornets as well as cats. Perhaps they're twinned with Rochdale; the Irish love their reciprocal arrangements.

The red and white folk of Cork, self-styled "drinking city with a hurling problem", seemed oddly subdued for Rebels. They also claim Roy Keane and Sonia O'Sullivan, a leg of Jonjo O'Neill and a pre-war world boxing champion called Jack Doyle, nicknamed the Gorgeous Gael and thus unlikely to be confused with her in Coronation Street.

The dog wearing a T-shirt announcing that there was more than one way to kill a Cat had a certain attraction, too.

Roy Buckle, who until recently ran the Weigh House, a Cork pub and Sunderland FC shrine, has now retired, however. These days he pays homage to Charlie Hurley in the garden shed instead.

Since Wearside's all time hero is himself a Corkonian, and since the fearsome stick is called a hurl, we wondered if he might be Charlie hurler, as well. By Friday, with luck, we shall know.

The final, between sides who each had 28 All Ireland victories, ended Cork 0-17 Kilkenny 0-9. The Cats get the cream (probably.)

"In a Newcastle United dressing room, where a player was said to have delayed his appearance until the effect of the Viagra taken the night before had become less apparent, Sir Bobby Robson was a romantic man alone" - first paragraph of an outstanding (Irish) Sunday Independent piece on the departed St James' Park manager.

Magpies' goalkeeper Shay Given was named "Sports star of the week" in last Friday's Irish Independent. "Just as the Welsh valleys used to produce outstanding rugby out-halves, so the hills of Donegal churn out world class goalkeepers," said the citation. Packie Bonner was the other.

Given only made the sports section, however. Briefly displaced from the favoured first XI, Alan Shearer hit the front page the same day after flying into Dublin on singer Ronan Keating's private jet for a £7,000 a table charity dinner on Thursday evening also attended by Princess Anne. By Saturday afternoon, it was business as usual.

One of mercifully few holiday jobs, we have been writing a foreword to John Wotherspoon's new book, due in November, on how West Auckland twice won the "World Cup".

That the invitation was intended for Woolwich Arsenal is fairly well known. Wotherspoon explains, however, how millionaire businessman and philanthropist Sir Thomas Lipton came to lose the WA.

"Sir Thomas, with his pragmatic approach, believed that Britain should be represented in the competition....Typically, he left it to his secretary."

Saluting Sir Bobby Robson in the last column, we recalled an incident during a two and a half hour talk-in at Tow Law FC's clubhouse in which the Newcastle United chief scout had fielded a telephone call from Bobby's wife.

The chief scout, we said, was former Ipswich Town winger Clive Woods. It's not, it's former Ipswich Town inside forward Charlie Woods, 63, whose own professional career started at St James Park.

Jack Watson in Shildon, a scout master if ever, was first to earn his spotters' badge - "Charlie's too small to have been a goalkeeper, anyway" - followed by Newcastle programme editor Paul Tully, who put his astonishment in verse:

When Bobby went off to Tow Law

To talk to the fans evermore

The Woods who was live

Was Charlie, not Clive

Though both star in Ipswich Town lore.

Apologies, and thanks.

And finally...

What Wycombe Wanderers, Doncaster Rovers and Boston United specifically have in common (Backtrack, September 3) is that each have replaced Halifax Town in the Football League.

Since today's column has been almost all Irish, readers may today care to name the only player to win full international honours while with Hartlepool United.

We return on Friday.

Published: 14/09/2004