Get with The Program
THE great Irish sports journalist David Walsh’s single-handed pursuit of Lance Armstrong played a big part in the American cyclist’s downfall.
Unlike Ben Johnson at the 1988 Olympics where there was traces of urine found in the Canadian’s steroid sample, slippy tit Armstrong never failed a drug test. Unperturbed, the thick-headed Walsh hounded Armstrong and the story of the Irish writer’s part in unmasking the seven time Tour De France winner as a drugs cheat has been made into a movie called The Program.
A trip to a Derry cinema has changed in recent years. Gone is the time when you could freely light up a Lambert & Butler and munch away at the sweeties and mineral you had sneaked in from Hughes newsagents over the road. Your feet no longer stick to the 1970s carpet as the smell of the men’s urinals would waft as far as the front ten rows. No, those halcyon days have been consigned to the past. The modern cinema experience is an altogether more comfortable one, with a bag of M&Ms and a litre of Coke only costing £27. Warrior’s Code is whole-heartedly looking forward to a sneaky wee discount Tuesday cinema run to enjoy The Program when it comes out next week.
Whether it squeezes into our list of the top sports movies of all time is a different matter.
Any Given Sunday
Back in the late 1980s when myself and my school friends would anxiously check Teletext every Monday morning for the American Football results like sad wee sports nerds, the great American sport was only just taking off in this country. We loved it immediately but unfortunately no-one else did, and the sport’s fortunes followed the same trajectory as the Commodore 64 computers that we also played at the time.
Oliver Stone’s last great film, Any Given Sunday had my DNA written all over it. Al Pacino plays the world weary head coach; Dennis Quaid the injured, aging quarterback; a then unknown Jamie Foxx stars as the hotshot rookie while Cameron Diaz plays the ruthless team-owner.
Pacino's climactic "Life's just a game of inches" speech to his troops has earned its place as one of the all-time greatest sports movie speeches. It was also repeated before many a City Colt game, to little or no effect.
Escape to Victory
John Huston's potboiler stars Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, and Brazilian superstar Pele as WWII POWs who're going to use a football match against the Germans as an opportunity to escape.
Everything is ready to proceed as planned with the players just about to sneak out of the changing rooms through a tunnel, before Pele blurts out the immortal words – “Hatch, we can win this!” The hairs rose on the back of a young Doherty’s neck as the Allied football team abandoned their plan to escape and go back out onto the pitch and give the Nazis a good whoopin.
Pele clearly couldn’t act, but even an aging magician still has a few tricks, and his legendary overhead kick was often imitated on the pitches of Ballykelly to mixed results. The film also had Rocky Balboa in nets.
When We Were Kings
Michael Mann’s ‘Ali’ is up there with the great cinema let downs in Warrior’s Code history, almost as disappointing as a failed ‘popcorn trick’ at the Jet Centre in Coleraine one forgettable night in 1991.
When We Were Kings is different gravy altogether.
Film maker Leon Gast flew to Zaire in 1974 to shoot the Muhammad Ali/George Foreman ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ fight, then spent over 20 years chasing the money to finish his film. The persistence paid off.
At the time of the fight, Ali was the underdog, taking on a huge, undefeated heavyweight champion in which many predicted would end in a massacre. But when you watch the charismatic fighter running down crowded African streets as children chant “Ali, boomaye!” (Ali, kill him!) you suddenly believe that the people's champ simply can't be broken. The title says it all.
Raging Bull
Raging Bull is such a brutal, unromantic portrait of the sport and life – very much like growing up in Glack in the 1980s.
The film's real-life protagonist — the charmless but utterly compelling Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro).
Less a biopic than a psychological study of what it takes to get in the ring (and what happens when you take that killer instinct home with you), it's the anti-Rocky: There are no moral victories, and our hero certainly doesn't get the girl. We can all relate to that.
Jerry Maguire
Warrior’s Code debated long and hard during the Saturday Night Wine Club as to whether or not to include this one.
In truth, it’s a little too schmaltzy, and the wee lad with the glasses is certainly a candidate for a good kick in the stones. And yet it’s easy to fall for the films many charms.
Hooked-nosed, pint-sized Scientologist Tom Cruise plays the lead – a sports agent, desperate to snag footballer Cuba Gooding Jnr who forces him to blurt out the often copied line "show me the money!"
Ultimately Cameron Crowe's sports-filled romance isn't one about getting the girl or saving the career, it's about caring about your teammates. Very much like working for the Derry News.
Moneyball
Of all the sports that have found a welcoming home in the Doherty household, baseball wasn’t one of them. And yet, Moneyball won me over from the very second I saw it at the Strand Cinema accompanied by a foot long big Sub one wet Wednesday afternoon.
Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s and the guy who has an epiphany - all of baseball’s conventional wisdom is wrong. Forced to reinvent his team on a tight budget, Beane will have to outsmart the richer clubs.
Asked why it was his favourite sports movies, and Derry News Sports Editor Gary Ferry simply remarked “because Brad Pitt is so dreamy.” Quite.
The Karate Kid
The Karate Kid had a big effect in Ballykelly. It spawned the KLKK – the Kings Lane Karate Kids. The KLKK caused havoc around the housing estate the summer that the film came out, with young fellas beating the dung out of each other and running home to their Ma’s to get a further clip round the earhole.
This movie has everything - a kid down on his luck, terrorized by local jerks then schooled in the ways of martial arts by a mysterious guru – we’ve all been there.
The film’s hero, Daniel Larusso is sharpened into a fighting machine via the foolproof technique of a musical montage. Who could forget your man out of Cagney and Lacey encouraging the blond baddie “sweep the leg, Jonny!”?
Very much part of the American sports movie canon, right down to the notorious crane kick which we used to practice on an old tramp that used to live by Ballykelly burn.
Baby-faced actor Ralf Machio played the eponymous hero, a teenage karate champion, despite being 52 years of age at the time.
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