Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
YOU’RE WINNING
‘Billy Morgan basically used to run us up this hill until we puked’
There was another football crossover as one company used to employ terrace hardmen to police the counterfeiters outside the shows.
“Back then bootlegging was a serious problem, even more serious than it is now. They basically employed West Ham football hooligans as their security,” he says.
“You didn’t want to meet them outside the venue if you were selling illegal shirts that’s for sure!
“It’s a little bit more civilised now with the police and documentation and things like that.”
Big things were expected for one of the bands on the merchandise front and a quirk in the old Irish driving licence sent Mccarthy on another adventure.
“They said, ‘There’s a new group called Oasis, do you fancy driving the truck on the tour?’”he recalls.
“Back then, with the old Irish drivers’ licence you automatically got a truck licence. So they said, ‘Can you drive a truck?’ I said, ‘Of course I can,’ but I’d never actually sat in a truck in my life.
“I kind of bluffed my way onto the tour and learned how to drive a truck on the way up the M6.
Break
“I actually delivered the equipment for the recording of the first Oasis album, not that I realised it was such a big thing.”
Within 18 months he was in Knebworth with Oasis and then on to Páirc Uí Chaoimh for two sold-out shows.
But the Britpop explosion was bad news for The Sultans and they took a break in 1997.
The band’s rise and fall is brilliantly told in Paul Mcdermott’s RTE radio documentary Dancing In Disco.
“The music press was only interested in Britpop. That was probably one of the main reasons behind the slow decline of The Sultans in the ’90s unfortunately,” Mccarthy says now.
“We were flavour of the month for about a year with the first record, but then the reviews afterwards were quite vicious.”
He’s still involved in merch and spoke on Philip O’connor’s Our Man In Stockholm podcast about how he couldn’t convince Garth Brooks to sell stetson hats at his Croke Park shows.
Mccarthy will be in Dublin on Thursday night looking after the merch stand for Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s band The Smile at the 3Arena, before getting behind the drum kit with The Sultans on Saturday at Vicar Street.
The connection between the two bands goes back a long way.
“Radiohead actually did eight or nine shows supporting Sultans,” he says.
Wow
“It was Middlesbrough the first time they supported us and I remember they had their own sound engineer and roadies, which we didn’t even have. I was like, ‘Wow I better watch this band’.
“The first night they played Creep I was like ‘This is something else’. Sure enough a year later they took off.
“It was funny when I went to do the interview about getting the job for them, they were like, ‘Eh… we know you, you’re the drummer from Sultans of Ping!’
“We still have a good laugh about that.”
At 54 he’s still playing football in a veterans’ league in Stockholm and has a season ticket for Swedish topflight side Hammarby.
He missed a unique European clash between Hammarby and Cork City in 2007 due to a Radiohead tour, but he still gets to as many games at Turner’s Cross as he can when he’s home.
‘With Give Him A Ball the inspiration for the bassline was This Charming Man’
And he will be wearing the City jersey in Vicar Street next Saturday.
“I sure will. Even if we’re in the First Division I’m not ashamed,” he says, laughing.
The Sultans have been gigging intermittently since reforming in 2005 and their popularity continues to grow.
Dynamics
“Nothing has changed in terms of dynamics of the band. They are the same as when the band started,” says Mccarthy.
“The band are still more interested in talking about football and music in the pub than actually getting down to some hard practice.
“It always seems to come together on the night of the show.
“There’s a certain level of chaos involved and people seem to enjoy that part of it as well.” Time to put it to the testo. The Sultans of Ping play Vicar Street on March 9.
A 31-point defeat in Gaelic football goes beyond the usual superlatives.
Antrim’s 4-27 to 0-8 loss in Mullingar at the hands of Westmeath was, by some distance, the biggest defeat suffered by any team across the four divisions in last year’s Allianz Football League.
Put simply, it was unprecedented, but sport should always be kept in perspective.
On the same weekend that
Antrim’s footballers lost to Westmeath, one of their own was saying goodbye to his sister.
Marie Mcbride was described as a “much-loved” teacher by De La Salle College in West Belfast where was taught for 17 years.
Tributes poured in for the mother of two last March when news emerged that she had taken her own life, aged 39. Her one-year anniversary is today — with Antrim’s rematch against Westmeath tomorrow at Corrigan Park, home of St John’s, Paddy Mcbride’s club.
It will be a difficult weekend for the Antrim stalwart, but he knows his elder sister wouldn’t want him to miss such a vital game as the Saffrons seek to return to winning ways after back-to-back defeats.
“You have to try and separate it a bit. Because the anniversary is this weekend, it is a bit fresher in the mind,” said Paddy Mcbride.
Free
“When you go to play a match, it is somewhere you get to be free from everything. It is what I enjoy doing.
“Marie would have gone to matches and would always have been supportive. It is normal to go and play a game because Marie would want you to enjoy yourself.
“If I decided not to play this weekend because my mind was elsewhere, knowing the type of person Marie was, she’d tell me to wise up!
“Obviously she’ll be in my thoughts, but on Sunday I have to go out and maybe I have to try and use it to work a bit harder.”
The bouncebackability of this Antrim squad isn’t in doubt. Mcbride turned in a Man-of-the-match performance on his return to county duty in round six of the Allianz Football League last season as the Saffrons shocked promotion favourites Cavan in Corrigan.
Two weeks after a 31-point hammering by Westmeath, Antrim took a huge step to securing their safety with a two-point win.
Nobody would have questioned Mcbride if he’d taken some time away from football under the circumstances, but he was only too happy to answer the call at Antrim’s time of need.
“I wouldn’t have played against Westmeath anyway as I broke my fingers last season. I played the first League game and missed the next few games and was only back for the Cavan game,” added Mcbride.
“I’m sure Andy (Mcentee) would have been fine if I said I didn’t want to be around for a while, but I was looking forward to playing again as I’d missed so many games.
“We’d two games to save our campaign. I love doing what I do and I love representing Antrim and playing for my county.
“I was looking forward to getting back playing. If I can do anything to help my county, I’ll do it. I was glad to get back and it was great to have that type of game against Cavan and we were able to stay up last year.”
Spoof
Staying in Division Three is a minimum requirement for Mcentee’s side this season. If they secure a hat-trick of wins against Westmeath, Clare and Wicklow, they’ll put themselves back in the promotion picture.
Mcbride, honest as ever, claims it is a “spoof” when the worn-out cliché of ‘one game at a time’ is spouted by managers in relation to promotion and relegation permutations.
However, the St John’s ace knows that their ability to challenge for promotion will be determined by Sunday’s result against Westmeath as they bid to overturn what he labels as “a freak result” against Dessie Dolan’s men.
“That result happened to us and we went out the next day and beat Cavan. It shows it was just a freak result,” added Mcbride.
“I’d like to think it wouldn’t happen again, especially after the two defeats we’ve just had.
“You usually say the old cliche
‘one game at a time’ and stuff. It is a spoof — you are always looking at other games and wondering who is playing who and what can happen. Everyone has an eye on the table, everyone has an eye on other results.
“We are hoping to have a bit of luck on our side. We probably need Down to go on and win the rest of their games and, if we can beat Westmeath, we are back in the hunt.”