Problems with poor quality and, indeed, costly telecommunications in Ireland will be all too familiar to many of our readers, writes An Fear Rua …

This is so, despite the billions of pounds of investment made over the years in telecoms, currently overseen by the Athlone School Marm Herself, Ms Mary O’Rourke TD. In the old days, a bad telephone connection was often said to be caused by ‘a cow on the line’, though that may have been, more often than not, a reference to the local Post Mistress listening in. However, the sheer lack of progress in this regard is underlined by a recent startling episode involving Independent Newspapers and the former Galway hurling ‘great’, now turned Athenry pub owner, Brendan Lynskey.

On the eve of Galway’s All Ireland defeat by Tipperary, Brendan was interviewed by Dr AJF O’Reilly’s Middle Abbey Street Organ, where he gave his usual forthright views on the pressures on young hurlers today compared with his time in the game. Brendan should know. After all, he was on the Galway team that whipped Tipp back in ’88 and he hurled on at inter-county level until the age of thirty eight. He recalled watching videos of the ’80 and ’88 finals and reflected on how slow-moving the players appeared compared with today. But, he also emphasised the need for budding young stars to have the likes of wiser old heads like Declan Ryan around them – words that proved to be prophetic indeed on the day. He also reckoned the financial cost to most players of taking part in an All Ireland series as around five to seven thousand pounds.

But it was when Brendan talked about the really difficult life style choices hurlers have to make that his comments really caught the eye: ’When you go to bed with a whore, there isn’t room in the bed for a woman beside you . I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but the game is the whore. That’s how far it’s gone now. It just takes everything that you have.’

AFR has to admit to being a little surprised and shocked to see the noble and ancient game of hurling mentioned in the same breath as whores, even if they are the oldest profession in the world, and were therefore probably around long before Setanta transmogrified himself into Cú Chulainn while pucking a sliotar on the slopes of Tara. AFR’s ‘read’ on the presence or absence of whores in Ireland may be likened to the story told of a foray by the Irish writer, Brendan Behan, to New York at the height of his fame in the Fifties.

Brendan was walking along Times Square when he was accosted by a small, little buteen of a fella who stood in his way and wouldn’t let him pass. ‘Are you Brendan Behan?’, says he. ‘I am’, says Brendan … ‘Well, ye should be a-shamed a’ yerself writin’ all dem plays about Ireland an’ hoors in dem!’. ‘What part of Ireland are you from?’, drawls Behan. ‘Leitrim!’, answers your man, as proud as Punch. ‘Listen my dear man’, says Behan, ‘Sure, everyone knows there isn’t a living in Leitrim for a snipe, let alone a whore!’ Perhaps the prospects are bit better further West in Connacht! And, not having any direct experience in the matter, we will have to accept in theory, at least, that ’When you go to bed with a whore, there isn’t room in the bed for a woman beside you’, though with some of the class of goings-on in the country, even in a place as quiet as Gowlnacalley, nothing would surprise AFR these days. In any event, probably a lot depends anyway on the size of the bed, the whore and/or the woman, or even all three!

The mysterious link between whores and hurling was finally solved this weekend just gone, when the ‘Independent’ published a Correction on its sports pages. It read: ‘Due to an imperfect phone line, former Galway hurler Brendan Lynskey was misquoted in last Saturday’s ‘Irish Independent’. Speaking of the extraordinary commitment given by players at inter-county level, his comment should have read: ‘When you go to bed with a hurl, there isn’t room for a woman in the beside you’, and not as it appeared.’

True for you, Brendan. Then again, maybe it also depends on the size of the ‘hurl’ as well as the size of the bed and/or the woman. Either way, AFR feels sure hurling aficionados in other counties will be touched by the thoughts of leading Galway hurlers going to bed clutching their ‘hurls’ tightly, like little boys holding onto their first Teddy Bear. But it must have been a damn bad phone line to turn ‘hurl’ into whore. Or is the word ‘hurl’ pronounced as hoorl down Athenry way? Hardly, but AFR accepts the bona fides of the ‘Indo’s’ Correction. As one of the Gowlnacalley-John Redmonds’ lads remarked in Ma Molloy’s Back ‘Shnug’ when he read the Correction, 'twas just as well Brendan didn’t use a few other words that might have been mis-reported down the line as well.

Hopefully, all these problems with bad phone lines will disappear – along with ‘Irish Independent’ GAA reporters’ nightmares – when the good Doctor O’Reilly and his Valentia consortium finally get their hands on Eircom. AFR is sure one of the Doc’s first directives to the company will be to make sure all the lines into Independent House, in Dublin’s Middle Abbey Street’ never again have any cows on them…