Damien Richardson
Former Irish international footballer who was the manager of Cork City F C before leaving in 2007.
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Modern football is akin to a turbulent sea. Changes come fast and furious. One may be riding the crest of great waves before being engulfed in enormous crescendos of confusion. Sometimes is can be like surfboarding in the South Atlantic. You do the best you can to stay afloat while all the time fully understanding the fact that things can come crashing down around you. If you worry about the consequences you miss the thrill of the ride.
It takes two to tango, but for a tango to show its exhilaration, you need two people performing it. There was only one team tangoing tonight.
Football ... is a ballet of wondrous beauty choreographed by highly skilled performers, dramatising the conflict between good and evil that takes place in every heart. And, at the same time it reflects the impatient immediacy of modern society in that success breeds immortality, while the procurement of second place begets anonymity.
Whether one possesses the stoical stature of an empirical philosopher or a more mundane propensity for self-gratification, the cataclysmic effect of one’s removal from pole-position in the most senior league in the country could be most injurious.
Whether one is blessed with a prodigious flair for articulacy or merely entrusted with a basic monosyllabic uttering of contentment, the relevance of this coming season will stimulate in every green and white heart at least a temporary escalation in embellished eloquence, so as to allow all an opportunity to express the most wondrous sense of anticipation and excitement that lies within.
It's always the same, sometimes.
There is inherent in every true football supporter a reservoir of natural optimism. This inner holding pond of hope springs eternal, and is the safety valve that regulates the emotional turbulence synonymous with professional football. It mollifies the annual agitation and soothes the savage beast of frustration. Without this optimistic dimension the personality of the authentic fan is incomplete.
I felt there was a lack of definable objectivity about both teams.
My first manager's page for Shamrock Rovers, and my, shall I say, reasonably extensive vocabulary is still too confined to express how delighted I feel.
If the remnants of my classical education at the sometimes not-so tender hands of the Christian Brothers of Donore Avenue and Drimnagh Castle serve me correctly, it was that Greek playmaker of old, Epicurus, who stated that ‘the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.
The fundamental inability to grasp the fact that real leadership is accepting that you are merely another cog in the wheel has derailed many careers and deranged many managers.
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