A Different View with Dave O’Connell

One of the Armenian players to suffer heartbreak against Ireland recently nearly didn’t make it to Lansdowne Road at all because, according to the commentator, he ‘had a problem with a calf’.

And you immediately thought it was one of those romantic sporting stories where the plucky part-timers and massive underdogs have postmen and milkmen and farmers in their ranks.

Then you copped on and realised it was not so much a farm animal that was bothering him as the rear of his leg.

Because the last time a fella missed a match over a problem with an actual calf was probably a Junior B clash on West Clare, a county where they once famously – according to Marty Morrissey anyway – failed to milk a cow for a week after a Munster Football Final win.

We’re all experts on sporting injuries these days – from David Beckham’s broken metatarsal in the run-up to the 2002 World Cup through to Wayne Rooney’s similarly bad break four years later when he suffered a fracture of the fourth Metatarsal as well as one of the Tarsal bones of the foot.

You’d have thought those bones went out with the dinosaurs.

There was a time when a mere broken foot wouldn’t have kept a footballer out of action; think about to the German-born Manchester City goalkeeper of the distant past, Bert Trautmann, who once won the FA Cup after playing most of the game with an actual broken neck.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.