He talks a better game of rugby than George Hook, knows the nuances of the offside rule like no other, and shouts “ahh c’mon ref!” on a regular basis.
Sound familiar? Here are ten clues that you might be a sports widow:
1. No sport is left unwatched: F1, hurling, golf, rugby, handball, darts (yep, even darts!). He is an expert on all of them, and each one requires his undivided attention. In your house, Sky Sports = tv trance, do not disturb.
2. You are pretty sure that the birth of your child and Leicester City winning the Premier League, moved him in equal measures.
3. Weekends are dead to you if he plays golf. He spends all morning muttering about rain, is gone ALL afternoon and spends the evening trying to stay awake on the sofa #resentment.
4. You find yourself banished from the room when you say things like “that Wexford purple and gold is not an easy colour combo to wear.”
5. Oh, the drama! All manner of whooping, an ongoing chorus of yessss and loud clapping can be heard from the room with the big telly. There is also a lot of nervous shuffling around, faux nail biting, exaggerated fist pumping and an occasional dramatic drop to the knees.
6. Sometimes bad sport happens to good people. If the team loses, the whole family knows about it. He still can’t talk about the Brazilian Grand Prix for fear of welling up. Words like travesty, robbed, and disaster get inappropriately bandied around as he stomps round the house in a mood.
7. He bonds with complete strangers when discussing gear box ratios, scrums, 147’s, bogeys, nutmegs, ducks, and beamers. But, he simply can’t find common ground with non-sports addicts. He actually pities them and their empty GAA-free lives.
8. His knowledge of maths is selective. At homework time he has no idea how many edges are on a triangular prism, and he is useless at splitting restaurant bills (with three other couples and two pregnant ladies who didn’t drink) but he can subtract treble 16 from 501 in a heartbeat and tell you what time it is in Malaysia, Singapore or Canada at any given time, thanks to his F1 alternative education.
9. All the major milestones in his life are punctuated by sporting events:
“Yes, we met on the final Sunday of the Ryder Cup and moved in together just before the 2006 World Cup”
“My mother’s birthday? Not a clue.”
10. On the plus side, he will always be your phone a friend (i.e. surreptitiously text a friend) during any table quiz and birthday presents are a no-brainer.
