October 31, 2004
The fueds of Athenry
Portumna and Athenry meet in the Galway Club Hurling final today. If Athenry win (and they are favourites), don't expect to hear too much coverage on Galway Bay FM. The Athenry club are 'refusing to co-operate' with the station in protest at their coverage of their semi-final clash with Loughrea - clash being the operative word. Football and hurling as sports emerged from the faction fights between neighbouring villages centuries ago, and that connection is faithfully commemorated every year in club championship matches around the country.
Anyway, St. Mary's in Athenry took extreme umbrage to the coverage (I.e. Loughrea people ringing the station and slagging them off) so none of the players or officials will do interviews for the station. There's an element of cutting their noses off to spite their faces here - it's not like people from Athenry maintained radio silence either. The real pity is that local finals such as this are the sort of events that local radio do so well - capturing the local flavour and rivalries, particularly for people who won't be able to make it to the match. The radio station didn't exactly hold out an olive branch on Friday - they read out a letter from the Athenry COM-AH-TEE which was hilariously formal and threatening followed by the letter that the station's director sent back to them (telling them to stick it, basically). While the presenter was reading the letters, a particularly maudlin version of The Field's of Athenry was playing in the background. Appeasement, my ass!
This is exactly the sort of scenario that you would expect to be lampooned in Killnascully, the new comedy series by Pat Shortt showing on RTE1 on Sunday evenings. Or rather, it would be, if Killnascully was any good. I really wanted to like Killnascully, but after watching three episodes, I can't pretend any more. God, it's terrible. It's such a pity because, as D'Unbelievables, Shortt and Jon Kenny exploited an area of comedy that no one else in Ireland even bothered about - countryside humour, inter-parish rivalries and most famously, the passion of local GAA. And they were brilliant at it. Their partnership broke up when Kenny got cancer (since recovered), but on the strength of Killnascully, they need to get back together again. The first half of the pilot episode of Killnascully was the funniest 15 minute of Irish comedy I have seen in a long time. But it was downhill from there. What the series requires is a ruthless editor and better writing - last weeks episode was a spoof of The Field, a joke that was tired after the first few minutes. It's still funnier than every single minute of The Panel, mind. But that's not saying much.
P.S. Athenry won by two points.
Posted by Monasette at October 31, 2004 07:59 PM