The power of words and why Tipperary is the end point of all journeys

It was sometime in the late 1980s in Templemore, Co. Tipperary.

I had been making a small name for myself as captain of the town’s local underage soccer team. I was mentioned in the football club's notes in the local paper regularly enough and I probably never stopped talking about football.

Teachers had begun to take notice and to comment.

It was the end of 5th Year and time for the annual students v teachers football game.

That the school blocked Leaving Cert students from taking part, presumably for fear of sustaining injuries, provides an insight into the sort of game this tended to be.

This was a school that was one of the major nurseries of Tipperary hurling.

There was no room for shrinking violets on sporting pitches. And that was before you even came near the teachers.

I remember one of the teachers, from a GAA background, spotting me in the corridor a day or two before the match and remarking: “We'll see what all this paper talk is about tomorrow Carey.”

It was all the extra motivation I needed.

He was the first to put a physical challenge in my direction during the game. It wasn't the only 'tackle' I had to hurdle that day. Suffice to say the teachers were outplayed!

It was one my first insights into how words, as anybody who has ever sat in a dressing room in any sport, knows, are powerful motivating tools.

In the wrong hands, though, words can also have the opposite, detrimental effect.

It was the 2002 World Cup quarter final. England faced Brazil, having finally exorcised the curse of Argentina with David Beckham banishing the trauma of being sent off against the South Americans in the previous World Cup by scoring the match-winning penalty when the sides met in the final group stage match.

Managed by a taciturn Swede, Sven Goran Eriksson, England had taken the lead in the quarter final against Brazil through Michael Owen but had been pegged back just before the interval when Rivaldo equalised.

Journalist Joe Lovejoy in his book ‘Sven Goran Eriksson’ picks up the story. “Some uplifting oratory was needed at half-time," wrote Lovejoy. “Unfortunately, the inspirational stuff is not Eriksson’s forte, and the players were disappointed when he let his assistant, Steve McClaren, do most of the talking.”

Remarking on Eriksson’s failure to rise to the occasion, and to imbue his players with the necessary belief, one of the English defenders, who was unnamed in Lovejoy’s book but who was subsequently revealed to be none other than current manager Gareth Southgate, uttered the memorable line: “We needed Churchill but we got Iain Duncan-Smith.”

For Southgate and England, 16 years on from that half-time dressing room, words again played a part in ending another World Cup dream.

This time, though, it was not what the manager said or didn't say, but what the sporting media expressed that appeared to have provided sporting motivation to opponents.

‘Football’s Coming Home’ was a phrase even the most ardent football-denier must have encountered over recent weeks.

It’s a line from the song ‘Three Lions’ written and performed by pop band Lightning Seeds along with Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, ahead of the 1996 European Championship in England.

It went straight to number one in the UK charts during the 1996 tournament.

The chorus line ‘Football’s Coming Home' was everywhere in recent weeks. It featured as a tagline across social media and made front and back pages of British media.

To some it was a playful take on England’s minor success in Russia, uttered with a self-deprecating, ironic touch; simply the sound of a nation excited.

However, to others, it came to symbolise English football’s intrinsic jingoism. Rule Britannia with pop lyrics.

This view was perhaps most starkly illustrated by Croatia captain Luka Modric after their semi-final defeat of England.

Modric, who spent a number of years with Tottenham Hotspur in

London, told ITV in an interview after the semi-final: "We proved everything differently that people were talking. Especially English journalists, pundits from television, they underestimated Croatia tonight and that was a huge mistake.

"All these words from them we take, we were reading and we were saying 'OK, today we will see who will be tired.' As I said, they should be more humble, and respect opponents more. That's it."

That, in part, he may have been referring to the song was underlined by his team mate Vedran Corluka who was more direct. Asked for a comment by waiting British journalists after the semi-final, he simply smiled and said: "It's not coming home."

The English press pack bayed that the Croatians had completely misread the English mood.

Personally, I was baffled by the English media’s surprise at Modric’s comments.

Surely, journalists, of all people, implicitly understand the latent power of words… how a seemingly-innocuous line can unwind in different ways.

I could easily see Modric's point.

‘Football’s Coming Home’ started to grow in usage after the group stage in Russia when the ‘easy’ side of the draw became apparent to the English.

Whatever about the original meaning of the song, it was clearly used this time to reflect a growing sense of confidence of winning, or, at least, reaching the final.

The reality is that, from a nation with a dismal record in major tournaments, 'Football’s coming home', after beating Tunisia (injury time goal) and Panama, strikes the rest of the world as an overinflated sense of self.

Not irony, not excitement, just arrogance.

No one could blame Croatia for using the perceived slight as extra incentive to defeat England.

While we are on the subject of words used by footballers, surely it’s time RTE advised all broadcast pundits and co-commentators that it will no longer permit the use of the phrase ‘alluded to’.

Among sport broadcasters, it’s apparently become a more posh alternative to 'previously mentioned'.

My dictionary though tells me 'allude' means 'referring to something in an indirect fashion'.

Language, of course, is a living, breathing thing that evolves and mutates. And maybe in years to come, 'alluded to' will have assumed

the new meaning RTE pundits are so determined to confer on it.

Meaning can change through years of misuse. Just as 'fulsome' now simply means 'large' rather than 'excessively flattering' or 'presently' has become accepted as a synonym for 'currently' rather than 'soon'.

That words have often unimaginable power is no great surprise to anyone who has studied history, media or current affairs.

The pen is mightier than the sword may be one well-known expression of this phenomenon.

Or as Donald Trump put it in his inimitably inarticulate fashion: "I have words… I have the best words.”

Trump’s ability to merge truth with lies, to switch seamlessly between the two, and to apparently be unaware of the process, is one of the hallmarks of his presidency.

This trait reached a sort of highpoint during his recent visit to the UK when he ended up deriding some of the content of his own tape-recorded interview in The Sun as 'fake news' in a subsequent press conference.

Lewis Carroll’s character Humpty Dumpty captured this wilful disregard for the little inconveniences of meaning and truth in the novel 'Through the Looking Glass' when he remarked: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”

This tendency to use alternative facts to wield political power prompted George Orwell to write 1984, his classic tale depicting a totalitarian regime of the future, spearheaded by Big Brother, the leader of an all-powerful ruling party.

Among the ministries which make up the apparatus of Orwell’s fictional state is the Ministry of Truth.

Of course, like all ministries in the novel, it is a misnomer. It is in fact responsible for rewriting history, for creating alternative truths and for disseminating propaganda.

It also created a new language called Newspeak in which, for example, a statement like ‘2+2 =5’ is true.

It’s the type of alternative reality that allows Trump to blur the lines between truth and lies.

Some believe that the Big Brother character who symbolises the regime was based on Brendan Bracken (each share the same initials), the Minister for Information during the wartime Government of Winston Churchill.

And bringing us neatly back to the start of this piece, Bracken was born in Templemore, Co. Tipperary, son of JK Bracken, a former IRB man and who was one of the founders of the GAA in Thurles in 1884.

It all goes to show you that it may be a long way to Tipperary, but, nonetheless, all roads lead there!