Ah, what a weekend of sport it was. From Rhashidat Adeleke’s Diamond League win in Monaco, to last gasp drop-goals in Durban, to a gripping endgame in Croke Park, it was one of those weekends you didn’t have to leave the couch and yet you could feel utterly inspired by example after example of the transformative effect of sport can sometimes have on our psychosis. How happy it makes us.
How distracted. How alive. But seriously, no.
I can't do it. Not this Monday. I can't write a back page about sport when I watched, as many of you have, a crowd of human beings play football on a pitch moments before it was bombed.
Seconds before death fell from the sky. You thought this was going to be a column about the potential pain of Galway winning an All Ireland or England and the Euros? I'd say I'm sorry. But I'm not.
If you want a guilt free ride through your Monday morning, go read the New York Times. Yesterday I visited a hospital in Cairo that is caring for babies evacuated from Gaza. They are as small as newborns despite being eight months old.
Many of them have a designation above their cot that reads WCNSF. It stands for ‘Wounded Child No Surviving Family.’ I'm sure, if they grow to be strong enough, they will want to kick a ball, because even orphans kick ball, but I wonder how many of them will do so unafraid of what the sky holds for them, given that it was the conduit that literally ripped their parents from this earth? In two weeks time the Olympics will begin.
Isra.
