Apart from a similar football style, Brazil and Norn Iron are nothing alike.
So why do we continually have to point out that we're not Brazil, except to
help an old Italian guy watching the Norn Iron v Brazil game on his fuzzy
black-and-white know that we're NOT the team in yellow?
Cos hey - we're like
that!
So aside from the football, why should we ever be confused with Brazil? The answer is we do not know for
reasons far beyond the publishing constraints of this magazine. That said, it may surprise people to know
that not only were the three things most associated with Brazil actually invented in Norn Iron, but that we
invented Brazil itself.*
So aside from sun and harlots in bikinis, which we can't claim to have invented for obvious reasons, we are
left with the three Brazilian staples - football, rainforests and the Brazilian wax.
* This could indeed be bollocks
Rainforests
Despite Brazil having the largest rainforest on the planet,
rain does not actually come from Brazil. In fact, rain
was invented right here in Norn Iron. Our wee country
makes more rain per annum than Brazil, despite being
0.25% of its size. And that's scientific fact.
Football and the Brazilian Wax
Bizarrely, the source of interest in both these precious
commodities stems from Norn Iron.
Let's take a wee jump back to
the year 1500, where we find
Royal Explorer Pedro Alvares
Cabral setting off from Portugal
to find Brazil. One day
in the mid-Atlantic, with
no clear idea where he's
heading and only the
scurvied moans of his
crew for company,
Pedro is delighted
to see his
mate and fellow
conqueror Chris
Colombus heading
the other way. Pedro hails Colombus
and they have an evening on the sauce
and and playing Scrabulous.
Colombus was, at the time, understandably cocka-
hoop following his recent discovery of India
in the Bahamas, and wasn't taking any shit
about what's where. With the navigational maestro's directions firmly in hand, Cabral headed off
northwards to continue his search for Brazil. When he
was one day told by a drunk fisherman from Cork that
he was, indeed, headed in the right direction, Cabral felt
sure that he was soon to be flavour-of-the-month with
the King. Better yet, he may even be in with a shout of
having a wee go at his daughter.
So turning up on Portstewart Strand two days later, Pedro
Cabral was a happy camper. He had found Brazil.
Football
Now Brazil may be five times world champions and synonymous
with beautiful football but, somewhat ironically,
football was actually invented right here in Norn
Iron.
Way back in 1005 AD, Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster
and founder of the GAWA, would return from his latest
foray of severe barbarism with so many severed
heads that they eventually just littered the beaches of
Bangor. It wasn't long before drunken hallions started
kicking them about the place, and that was how football
started.
When Cabral arrived, head kicking hadn't
really moved on much in 500 years, although
an early form of what would
become the IFA had been suggested
in some of the more secular rural
villages.
Cabral was impressed
with the head kicking
game though, and made a note to try to get this Brazilian game going in
Portugal.
As an historical footnote, many years later Cabral insisted
that the home team in the inaugural Brazil v Argentina
fixture wore the now-famous gold top with blue shorts
in honour of Bangor HFC, who he'd cheered on in an Irish
Head Cup pre-qualifier he'd watched in Bellaghy in 1501.
The Brazilian
Although it's named after, and invariably conjures up images
of, as-good-as-naked Brazilian harlots reflecting the
Ipanema sun off their coconut-oiled flesh, the erstwhile
mini-strip of pubic foliage was, in fact, invented right here
in Norn Iron. In November 1500, even as Cabral was taking his first illadvised
steps amongst the head kickers on the sands of
Portstewart, a particularly frightening warrior princess from
Orangefield named Maisie The Unwashed was making her
final battle preparations for the latest sortie against the
'oul enemy from Ballycastle. Maisie was infamous for her
preferred method of entry into the arena of combat, which
primarily comprised of exposing her fearsomely orange privates
as she galloped toward the enemy. This year though,
Maisie thought of a new twist. Having recently read a prepublication
edition of the classic 'Last of the Mohicans', a
legend was born. Five minutes with a razor fashioned from
a broken Smithwicks bottle, and the new look was complete.
We don't know if the intended effect was to stop 1,220
Ballycastlians in their tracks, where they were summarily
slaughtered but what we do know is that as Cabral wended
his way back north after the Bellaghy v Bangor game, he
had rested in a shuck to contemplate his naval and the Bangor
8-1-1 formation over a good flask of Buckfast.
Life in Brazil was good, Cabral thought. But something
didn't seem right. This wasn't really the tropical utopia he
had envisioned. Despite all the rain, there didn't seem to be any rainforest - just some 'oul woods that he didn't think the
King would be that impressed with. Men kicked the heads
of their enemies around, playing a game whose rules he
didn't fully understand. And why was it so cold?
It was during this quiet cogitation that Maisie The Unwashed's
battle charging steed galloped overhead, it's
rider's flaming stripe in angry view and casting a beacon
of impending death. It was at this moment that the penny
dropped for Pedro Alvares Cabral. He'd made a dreadful,
horrifying mistake.
This wasn't Brazil. It was Norn Iron.
And with that, Pedro Alvares Cabral set off to discover the
real Brazil, his head filled with thoughts of rain, football and
the latest thing in bikini hairwear. Maybe his improbably
hirsute wife back in Portugal, known locally as Hairy Mary,
might consider the 'Maisie' look.
Note: Weirdly, the only people not to refer to this follicular
fashion as a 'Brazilian' are the Brazilians themselves. Even
to this day, the harlot denizens of Copacabana refer to their
pantal topiary as a 'Nornironian', although they pronounce
it in a way that we find unintelligible.
So, what, you might ask, could be described as even remotely
Brazilian about Norn Iron? Not a lot, you might conclude.
Yeah, but we've got beaches and stuff - right?
Well yes, there's Ballyholme beach and some dunes up
north where you can still play commandos even as a grown
man. But any beach in Norn Iron is rendered pointless by
rain.
But surely, we have festivals, street-parties, that kind of
thing? Well, actually no. OK, the middle of July does involve a
period of activity involving colourful parades, repetitive
drumming and acrobatic urchins which, to the uninformed
eye of an American tourist, could be construed as being a
'religious fiesta' of sorts, albeit one comprising of glowering
contingents of bowler-hatted men and a conspicuous
absence of the sort of scantily-clad Brazilian harlotry one
might reasonably expect to see at such an shindig.
And no, a scantily clad harlot from Orangefield with a Brazilian
is not a fair compromise.
So you see, we're NOT Brazil. We're Norn Iron.
Anyway, I'm off for a Buckfast Caipirinha at O'Pele's.
FHOH
Dusseldorf
 |
Happy Days Issue 9
Sex, Drugs & Football: The Jeff Whitley Story |
It's not often Northern Ireland can boast a Zambian born professional footballer but Jeff Whitley is probably remembered more for his career ending as a N Ireland international than he can be for it starting. Obviously, his goal against Wales in Cardiff will be one of our fondest memories but most notable was his spat with Sanchez in 2004, which saw him expelled from the big boys camp and never don a Northern Ireland shirt again. HD caught up with Whitley to discuss some of his career misdemeanours.
HD: Would you agree that the 2004/2005 season at Sunderland has been the high point of your career?
Jeff: It was good, it was a good period in my career and I had a good time at Sunderland, it was fantastic. Mick McCarthy gave me my chance when I left Manchester City due to the situation with Kevin Keegan and so I'm grateful to him for giving me the chance.
HD: What was the craic with Keegan like?
Jeff: We didn't get on and it was all part and parcel of my drinking to be honest, he didn't want drinking in the team and he made that very clear, which was one of the reasons that he got rid of me.
HD: Were you disappointed not to get a new contract at Sunderland seeing as you had just helped them win the league?
Jeff: Mick was pretty straightforward with me, which is something that I prefer. I prefer it when people are very direct with me as opposed to goinground the houses and everything, which Mick never did. I respected that even though I was a bitgutted that I didn't get to play with Sunderland in the Premier League. I had to take the positives out of it and look at it as a new challenge when Dave Jones showed me the plans for Cardiff City and I wanted to be involved in it.
HD: I have to ask you about the mad tackle that got you sent off against Preston North End.
Jeff: I remember the tackle very well because someone had hurt Paul Thirlwell and then the ball broke. The way I am, I don't like seeing any of my team getting hurt so I back them up 100%. That annoyed me so when all I saw was three of them in front of me I thought 'I'm going in full steam ahead'. It really was a bad tackle, I had to go to the FA and everything for that. I did see the lad afterwards
and he was like 'Jeff, Jesus, you nearly broke both my legs.' But I just lost it. Even Mick said that he couldn't defend me for that tackle. It was a moment of madness.
HD: After working hard all pre-season to be involved with the team when you first arrived, you slept in for the Nottingham Forest game at the start of the season, what was the reason behind that?
Jeff: I just slept in! It wasn't drinking or anything like that. And we got punished for it, it's as simple as that, we got punished for it. After that I had to wait for my chance again as the boys were doing well.
HD: Sean Thornton also slept in for that game, he had something of a reputation as being a 'lad about the town,' there was a lot of speculation that two you had been out drinking before the match.
Jeff: Not at all. We were in a hotel. There was nothing to do with drinking, if we had left the hotel to go out we would have been caught, without any shadow of a doubt.
HD: With the problems that you have had you must have wanted a drink from time to time, did you ever sneak out of a hotel the night before a game?
Jeff: No, we never snuck out on a Friday if we were playing away or whatever because we know straight away that if we ever got caught they would send us home. Never mind the management, the lads would be on your case if you were letting the team down like that. You know yourself as well that you would be letting yourself down.
HD: Where does alcohol and drug abuse stop being a laugh and a big night out and start being a part of your life, is it something that happens slowly?
Jeff: For me it started off at a young age and it gradually got worse. With the football, I wasn't taking any drugs initially, I was just drinking. Over the years the drinking progressively got worse. I can't pinpoint it to the exact year or when it became a problem. I was just thinking about drinking even before I was even thinking about playing. During the last few years it started to be that I wasn't even thinking about the game itself, I was thinking about my next night out.
HD: Did the drug abuse follow on from that?
Jeff: Once I stopped playing after I missed the last game at Wrexham the drugs all kicked in. It was every
day, I literally went on a seven month bender. It reached a point where for me the world was against me, everybody was against me. I didn't want to listen to people when they told me I had a problem. Whenever they told me I was an alcoholic
or that I had a problem and I should do this or do that I would do the opposite.
HD: What made you realise you were in trouble?
Jeff: It had been happening so long that I had got to the end. It was simple, I had had enough. Something
clicked in my head and just told me that I was full and that I couldn't take anymore. I was drinking to kill the pain inside and with the drugs I got a sense of paranoia. It was a dreadful place to be mate, I can tell you.
HD: Well done for facing up to it.
Jeff: It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life and the best thing I've ever done in my life. I had a daft question the other day 'would I change anything from my past?Ó The answer was no because I might never have found the person that I am today.
HD: Phil Mulryne and yourself were sent home from international duty just a few days before Northern Ireland beat England 1-0 in September 2005, what happened?
Jeff: Yeah, we got sent home for going out on the Monday night. At the time I thought it was a bit harsh as we went on the Monday and the game was on the Saturday. We didn't get arrested or anything like that. But at the end of the day it was just about the biggest game of Northern Ireland's bloody history and I didn't even take that into consideration and look after myself after missing such a big game. And now when I look at it I think that, yeah I deserved to get sent home.
HD: Did you watch the victory and think 'shit I could've been there, I've just missed the most amazing win in Northern Ireland's history'?
Jeff: I made it clear to everybody not to speak to me because I was so angry with myself and beating myself up. I was just so upset that I had let all my family down because they could have been there watching it and being proud of me. Obviously I would have loved to have played in that game and I was hurting badly watching it.
HD: Thank you for your time and we hope that your recovery goes as well as it can.
Jeff: We this is a lifelong thing for me now, this is it, me for the rest of my life recovering. I've got to make it a part of my life or I may end up dead.
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