Great Irish Soccer Quotations

Part 1- Damien Richardson

This is the start of a little series I intend to put up, full of the most sublime and cringeworthy quotes from the good and the bad of Irish soccer. Over the series I intent to cover Eamon Dunphy, Johnny Giles and George Hamilton among others but to start off its Cork City manager Damien Richardson. To know Damien is to love him, he is a massive cult figure between me and a few of my mates. Why you may ask? Well its simple, he’s not near the literary giant he thinks he is. When Rico opens his gob or puts pen to paper, overly ambitious, ludicrously ornate sentences crash about him like the walls of a house built without foundations.

Sentences beginning with the word “whether” are a particular danger. Here, Rico looks to the future:

“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.”

He can be philosophical when his team loses the top spot in the league – too philosophical for his own good:

“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.”

And where did he get this Cervantes-esque gift you may ask:

“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.’”

He hates the return journey after playing in the Brandywell:

“The last miles home on a long journey appear unending at the best of times, but traffic congestion when in sight of the homeland only serves to test further the resolve of those concerned.”

Particularly troubling is Rico’s desire to speak the same way he writes – whatever vestige of editing he applies to his writing is of course completely absent from his TV punditry. Below is a mere taste of Rico’s oral crimes against the English language.

“I felt there was a lack of definable objectivity about both teams.”

“The Waterford player’s shot was on target, which is an important aspect of a players shot.”

With thanks to dangerhere.com