Stuff and Nonsense – John Hogan, Limerick Leader.

Again John returns in the off season alternative to the Hookers diary with the Brilliant piece which he was kind enough to send on to me in it’s entirety.

The PC brigade

I’VE finally been banished from the Leader offices, but not for any of the reasons that may first spring to mind, such as having to obey a restraining order taken out by a female member of staff.

No, I have been victimised by a much more sinister force than a lady who doesn’t know a good thing when she sees it, and that is the PC brigade.

You see, my adoring followers, I’m a soft sort and this softness was never so apparent as at my weekly Tag Rugby game last week, when my girly little ankle decided that it had had enough of supporting my impressive frame and promptly cracked.

Being a mildly moronic sort, I decided I had only suffered a slight sprain and proceeded to dance the night away on my faulty leg.

It first occurred to me that my self-diagnosis may have been a little off the mark next morning when I noticed that my ankle was now larger than my head.

After a predictably horrendous wait in A&E, I emerged with a big fat Wellington boot of a cast, which makes showering a nightmare and does absolutely nothing for my figure.

However, like the trooper that I am, I hobbled back into the office on Monday only to find company policy dictates that broken employees such as myself need a doctor’s cert to go back to work.

Now, for those who have just joined us, I am a journalist. I don’t operate any heavy machinery and I certainly don’t run anywhere. In fact I avoid all unnecessary movements as a matter of principle. So I can’t for the life of me figure out why a pair of crutches prevents me from sitting at my desk writing stuff (and nonsense).

As it stands, I am currently like a modern day James Stewart in Rear Window, trapped in my apartment with nobody but my two pet goldfish for company, rapidly losing my marbles from lack of human company.

I was a few hours into a conversation with the fish today regarding rugby’s new experimental laws – one was in favour of them, the other against – when I realised I may have crossed over on to the wrong side of that thin line they say exists between genius and insanity.

There will be zinc

BROKEN bones and not being allowed to work may become distant memories before long if a little excavation out Ballyneety direction goes my way.

Some strange characters turned up on our farm not so long ago saying they thought we may have zinc underneath our land. My father told them that he was almost certain he had cows on top of his land and as long as the zinc didn’t make them sick, he wasn’t too pushed about it.

But then the miners asked if we minded them having a little mine to see if indeed there was zinc underneath the Hogan turf.

If the ground did produce zinc, they said they would be willing to part with a few pennies in return for permission to extract the metal.

Now I understand this may sound a little like a scene from There Will Be Blood where the shady oil man comes out to the country and convinces the slack-jawed yokels to allow him drain their land for all its worth.

However my family’s jaws are well and truly taut and I for one will be demanding nothing less than top dollar for my share of the zinc should it turn up.

Already I have started dreaming about how I will spend the money, with a Lamborghini, an ignorantly large yacht and my own tropical island figuring pretty highly on the list of things to buy.

However, my number one spend would be on the construction of a stadium with a greater capacity than Lansdowne Road, Croke Park and Thomond Park put together, but situated in Bruff Rugby Club.

That’d really shock all the Dublin bigwigs when they come down to Kilballyowen. Who knows? It may even get me on to the starting team.

Feckin’ Galwegians
LOVERS of immaculately-crafted journalism and fart jokes alike will know that in a previous incarnation I penned a column entitled “The Hooker’s Diary”, a slightly off-centre weekly chronicle of events in Bruff RFC.
Although it had quite modest beginnings, I nourished “The Diary” with regular installments of double-entendrism, personal attacks and the occasional plea for a woman.
Before long I had literally tens of regular readers – some of them from outside my immediate family – and I grew to love the little corner of the paper reserved for my weekly trash talk.
Like all good things however, The Hooker’s Diary had to come to an end as the rugby season drew to a close. I accepted that an article advertising the daily goings-on in the life of a hooker may have been somewhat misleading outside of the regular rugby season and brought the diary to a finish.

But imagine my disgust, nay horror, to find this week that a rag in Galway has copied the style, format and even name of my beloved Hooker’s Diary for their own end of providing a “humorous” look at each week’s tag rugby fixtures.

This really isn’t on, there are probably legions of simpletons up West who think they are reading the original Hooker’s Diary.

I know they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but I would respond to that by saying, come up with your own ideas for a column you good-for-nothing, unoriginal Galwegians!