Last week I moved house in Dublin and before I left my former home I had to do one final sweep of my old room.
The draws were emptied, the bedsheets were stripped, you make that daring plunge into discovering what could potentially be lying under your bed after months of occupation and you move everything out of the room and onto the next place you will call home.
After I packed my car and swept the room of all my belongings, the final item to come with me was the picture of Muhammad Ali’s first round knockout of Sonny Liston that had been left hanging on the wall.
It’s the enduring image of Ali’s career. A 23-year-old silencing all doubters with a vicious right hand and then standing over the fallen Liston with a menacing stare.
When I drove off I thought about why this moment was the most iconic image of Ali’s career.
Was it the fact that he had stopped Liston in the first round? Was it the fact that it was the first minute of the first round? Was it the fact it was his first fight after changing his name from Cassius Clay? Was it because he was the first man to knock out Sonny Liston? Was it because this was the moment that he had truly ‘shook up the world’, one year after claiming he did in the first fight against Liston?
Maybe it was for a combination of those reasons but Ali inspired people, myself included.
In an interview celebrating his life in 2016, Eoin McDevitt of Second Captains talked to former sports journalist Jerry Izenberg about Ali and one of the topics they broached was how the heavyweight champion inspired people.
Izenberg told the story of how an elderly black gentleman handing out towels in a Las Vegas bathroom bet on Ali for one of the final fights of his career against Larry Holmes, despite the then 38-year-old Ali competing as a shadow of his former self by that stage.
Izenberg said:
“I’m talking to a bookmaker at one of the hotels and he said ‘I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Do you know that guy moved the line? The smart guy money came in, Holmes is going to win, but every cocktail waitress, valet parker, bartender, cleaner, change girl, all of them, in this town, put their $50 on Ali and it moved the line’.”
The man in the bathroom told Izenberg that he bet on Ali because he was the man that had given him his dignity.
Holmes pummeled Ali but he had inspired so many that they were willing to back him anyway.
On these shores we saw something similar happen with the betting line when Conor McGregor fought Floyd Mayweather last year. McGregor was first priced by Boylesports at 12/1 before the fight was announced, before moving into 17/2 when the bout was confirmed in June and then dropping as low as 7/2 just days before the fight.
Industry insiders explained that the dramatic shift in odds was akin to what happens in the market when Ireland play at a major sporting tournament, where punters back Ireland blindly, regardless of the price, as unbridled patriotism quickly trumps all matters of logic and reasoning.
McGregor inspired people, or at least in the case of the Mayweather fight, convinced them to part ways with their wallets.
For many, his subsequent use of homophobic language, his cage invasion, his speeding fines and his dolly throwing, among other examples, has since taken a lot of the gloss of his meteoric rise through MMA, but to others he is still the fighter that made it off the dole and onto the Forbes rich list, and no amount of indiscretions will take that away from him.
Ali and McGregor, for better or worse, were both icons, figures that inspired, and inspiration can often a direct byproduct of sporting success.
People see others that look like them, talk like them, people that may come from similar backgrounds or areas as them, and they then aspire to achieve what they achieved. To do what they have done.
The Irish women’s field hockey team were never a candidate I thought would inspire the masses but I never thought a kid from Crumlin would go on to win a UFC title either so what do I really know?
Ireland's women's hockey team was given a hero's welcome in Dublin city centre after winning a silver medal at the Hockey World Cup. | https://t.co/ghjQTik5pe pic.twitter.com/tFh1CZQfbi
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) August 6, 2018
I know that when I watched RTE News on Monday I couldn’t help but notice how many women there were in the audience of their homecoming.
The news package above cuts to a scene where there are over a dozen girls lining up behind the barriers while the standout image may have been a picture of a young girl holding up a hand crafted sign with the words ‘you’re an inspiration to me’ written onto the sheet.
At a time when figures from the ‘Moving Well – Being Well’ study indicate that up to one-third of Irish children cannot catch a ball with two hands, and barely one-quarter of girls can throw overhand, it’s important that young girls in Ireland have role models in sport. Women that younger women can aspire to be.
Katie Taylor is cited by many Irish athletes as a source of inspiration and maybe the Irish women’s hockey team can fulfill a similar role for girls around the country.
However, the enduring image for many from the Irish team’s reception was Shane Ross swooping in and using the team’s success as an opportunity to gain political points by announcing extra funding at the homecoming in Dublin.
It was a shameless act of PR from the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport and Ross’ grandstanding should not overshadow the potential knock on effects that the hockey team’s success could have for impressionable females around the country.
The Irish women’s team are currently in the limelight for the right reasons, and not for sharing tracksuits or rising against part-time coaches like other women’s sports teams who have come under the spotlight in the last year. Their success should be used a beacon to inspire and not as a platform for political point scoring.
Ross has said that €1.5 million will be added to the Sport Ireland budget for 2018, with hockey set to enjoy a significant share of that particular funding.
Whether that additional funding creates accessible, and more importantly equal pathways for new players is yet to be determined, but for now, pictures speak more than dozens of Ross’ words.
