I measure out my life in World Cups - Part 3

I last updated my World Cup odyssey in 2010, when I was living in Australia and France were embarrassing themselves in South Africa (karma, huh?). I wrote two installments of this tale in that long Melbourne Winter and it’s time to update the story now. Twelve years and three world cups have come and gone.

2010 became Annus Horribulis. By the time I’d written the second part of this story, I’d already had a bike accident that broke an arm, an eye socket and my cycling confidence. My Mother died two weeks after the World Cup final that year. I can’t remember where I watched that game.  I’m guessing at home but the shadow of my Mother’s impending demise hung over it.  I flew back to Ireland to say goodbye to her then flew back again a week later for the funeral. Those were carbon-unfriendly times.

Later that year, I had a visit from the Big C and paid the ransom of my left testicle to get it to go away.

By the time the World Cup in 2014 rolled around another seismic event in my life was taking place. I was made redundant in April of that year and my departure from Australia was put in train. By the time of the final in July, we were in a hotel in Abu Dhabi on our way to Edinburgh. I watched the match at 1pm in the morning in the courtyard of the hotel. It was Ramadan and while Abu Dhabi is not a big drinking place at the best of times, during Ramadan it is like a Presbyterian wake.  They set up a ‘bar’ in the courtyard for which you had to pre-purchase tokens. I bought $50 worth of vouchers and that entitled me to four small cans of Seven Up. That was the strongest drink you could buy and made me realise that ‘bar’ has a different meaning in the Islamic world than where I grew up.

If nothing else, it convinced me that I would never attend a World Cup in the Middle East. Thankfully, with the controversy that is going on in Qatar right now, that is never likely to happen again in my lifetime.

2018 took place in Russia. Another country I have no intention of visiting. I was living in New Zealand at this stage, but cunningly booked a month-long visit to Ireland that allowed me to watch games in real-time, or at least at times of the day when drinking is socially acceptable. International sport is tailored for the European market. That means that games are usually on in the middle of the night or early morning here. That’s made me realise that I enjoy sport much more when I have a beer in my hand.

I watched the England v Croatia Semi-final with my Dad and we took guilty pleasure in England’s defeat. I was in Glenbeigh, County Kerry the following weekend when the final took place. It was a beautiful summer’s day, made better by the fact that I was in a pub.

Eight days later my Dad was dead. He passed away in the early hours of the 24^th July. Eight years to the day since my Mother’s death. My father was a very thoughtful man and I’m sure that he hung on past midnight so that we’d only have to pay for one anniversary mass each year that would cover both of them.

I’m now onto my 15^th world cup. Don’t remember the first one (thankfully, as England won). But I reckon I’ve watched all of the others, in six different countries.

This year, the games are in Qatar. I’m glad Ireland didn’t qualify. We’re rubbish at the moment and would only embarrass ourselves. But the thought of thousands of Irish fans unable to get a drink of beer is unimaginable. It also means we are not faced with the moral dilemma of playing in a tournament mired in corruption and played in a country that fails to respect gay people or migrant workers.

I read about this a lot in the woke European media that fill my newsfeed. It reeks of hypocrisy of course. Take England for example. As Irish people would know, they don’t have a proud record of treating their own migrant workers well. No professional footballer in England has felt comfortable enough to come out while still playing. This is because of the negative culture towards LBGT culture within British sport.

The underlying problem is that the whole world is not moving at the same pace when it comes to what we define as human rights. In fact, some of the world is moving backwards. America has recently allowed for abortion to be made illegal in many states. It also allows for armed militia to shut down gay bars.

Africa, Asia and South America are well behind Europe when it comes to liberalising reproductive and sexual rights. There seems to be an assumption that the World Cup should only be held in countries that match the social and moral structures of Western Europe. This is the same message that 19th-century colonialists gave. Only white men should be in government because they are the ones with the education and culture to manage the task.

It’s a great danger to say that we’re better than everyone else, that we exist on a higher plane. By all means campaign for changes around the world, but if we boycott countries we don’t like, then we’re at risk of excluding most of the world.

Anyway, I’m boycotting much of this world cup because the games are on in the middle of the night here. I will get up early to watch the final though. It’s a 4am start here. But I have to keep up the tradition of watching every final. I just hope that no seismic event in my life happens at the same time. There is a lot to be said for a quiet life.