“He came, he saw, he went home.”
I, Keano, the hilarious spoof of Ireland’s greatest sporting controversy is back at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin until April 12, and if you haven’t seen it, go. If you have, you may as well go again.
It tells the tale of the fearless and fearsome Roman warrior, Keano, and the burning tension between he and General Macartacus, which comes to boiling point when the legion travel to a far away island in preparation for an upcoming battle.
It’s a production that has perfectly captured the utter ridiculousness of a story which split the entire nation nearly 13 years ago.
With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of the Irish sporting controversies and storylines that we’d love to see get given the I, Keano treatment, and parodied on a stage near us soon.
1. Brian O’Driscoll dropped from the third Lions test in 2013
Picture it; BOD, the leader of the animal kingdom, is lured by his once trusted ally Flora into a stampede of wildebeests and killed. Actually, that’s the Lion King, isn’t it?
Anyway, the hysterical reaction of the Irish when Warren Gatland dropped our Brian O’Driscoll for the final Lions test in 2013 is something that would be a perfect topic to rip the complete piss out of.
The heroic BOD, the ghastly Gatland, and the innocent young Jonathan Davies caught in the middle.
2. Thierry Henry’s handball
We’ll never experience something as controversial as Saipan, but this is the only thing that could have come close.
The entire country lost the plot in November 2009 after the Frenchman’s handball knocked Ireland out of the World Cup playoffs, and the hysteria over the following days and weeks was almost a parody of itself, with Ireland demanding to be the 33rd team at the finals, people looking for a replay to be played, and a man previously loved by Irish Arsenal fans suddenly had the reputation of Kayser Soze.
But the most ridiculous of the many ridiculous storylines to come from the saga was that Irish cleaners were going to launch a boycott of vacuum cleaner manufacturer Henry Hoover.
An interesting take would be to play the events out from the perspective of workers on the production line at one of the company’s factory’s in the English midlands, as dozens of innocent workers face the dole office, all because of Thierry Henry and Irish hysteria.
3. Euro 2012, a complete disaster
While there is one lasting memory from Ireland’s 2002 World Cup campaign, the Euro 2012 disaster was an eight day omnishambles.
From leaving Kevin Foley behind at the camp in Italy, to getting stuffed by Croatia, Spain and then Italy, the Irish public went from quietly confident to audibly depressed in little over a week.
The slow rise and dramatic fall of Giovanni Trapattoni makes for the perfect script, while the Italian’s mannerisms and broken English would provide plenty of laughs.
4. Waterford Crystal
What could be more Irish than winning an Olympic medal, before losing it because the horse was on drugs. That’s what happened to showjumper Cian O’Connor in 2004 when he won an Olympic gold, before his horse, Waterford Crystal, failed test.
The medal was subsequently stripped and although O’Connor found redemption by winning bronze at the London games in 2012, it’s always gone down as one of those sporting controversies we don’t like to talk about.
However, it’s a shoe in to this list, pipping Michelle Smith’s drugs ban for the sheer comedic value of a horse being on drugs.
*Insert Waterford Crystal Meth joke here…*
5. Mayo and Meath’s dust-up in 1996
There have been many, many high-profile GAA fights down the years, but this one, in the glorious sunshine of a Croke Park All-Ireland final Sunday, will probably go down as the best/worst there ever was.
Despite what seems like thousands of punches thrown in the 30 second brawl, just two players saw the line. While it’s difficult to decipher who won that battle, Meath ultimately won the war, taking the title by one point, 2-9 to 1-11.
I’m thinking something similar to I, Keano for this one, just with a battle scene resembling 300.
6. The Seanie Johnston transfer saga
The transfer story of the summr of 2012. No, it wasn’t Robin Van Persie to United, or Eden Hazard to Chelsea, but Seanie Johnston to Kildare.
Rumours about money, false addresses and dodgy dealings were rife throughout the summer, and newspaper inches were filled with opinion and analysis of the great game of Gaelic Football selling out.
There was also the farcical scene of Johnston togging out for the opening seconds of a club hurling game before he could complete his transfer, and the inevitable “fairytale” script that saw him come up against his native county in the qualifiers. It was a controversy that would apparently tear apart the very fiber of our national game, but ultimately never came close to doing so.
I, Keano is showing at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin from March 25th to April 12th. Tickets are available from Ticketmaster.ie
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