Sandra Harris Writes

  MISSING YOU ALREADY, WORLD CUP 2022…! BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Aw. I feel bereft today. The 2022 World Cup ended yesterday, the eighteenth of December, and now all I have to look forward to is Christmas with its tons of great presents, the FATHER TED Christmas special on telly and more delicious grub than you could shake a stick at. As I said, aw…! The four weeks of exciting football and football excitement really took my mind off the pelting rain, the freezing cold, all the talk of future gas shortages and the sight of people on the News stocking up on little primus/camping stoves from the ‘outdoors’ and camping shops, just in case we’re facing into a new, Putin-led Armageddon. 2022 hasn’t exactly been the greatest year ever for good news, has it? It was the year Russia declared war on Ukraine, and we here in Ireland should know this because we’ve taken in about 65,000 Ukrainian refugees to date. We still have killer virus COVID-19 with us; I presume Monkeypox hasn’t gone awa...

  HE SHOOTS… HE SCORES!!! ANOTHER ACE-IN-THE-HOLE FOR CR7. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Ah, Jaysis, Ireland, what are yiz like? Losing at football again. Last night, we lost to Portugal in a World Cup qualifier. Two-one. But all our pundits said that that was the best we’d been at losing in ages, so it’s all G. Meaning, we’re edging ever closer to, maybe, someday, actually nearly winning a game, or, at least, losing so well that it’s almost the same as winning. That’s hilarious and so typically Irish. We sometimes beat really piddly teams like, say, the Faroe Islands or Gibraltar, where the footballers’ main job is not footy at all but farming or bee-keeping or being a fisherman or something. Then we act all big and important for a bit but put us up against virtually any country with a decent team and we fall apart. Remember Italia ’90, our proudest footy moment ever? The song clearly said that we were going to ‘inflict our game’ on the opponents, and how many goals did we score? Two. Two? ...