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Photograph by Chad Pilster
Celts gather on Murphy Avenue for a dose of Sunday morning satellite TV sports
Blood and Coffee
Fibbar Magee's offers local fans of Celtic sports a satellite fix of action from the home country
By Sam Scott
It's seven o'clock on Sunday morning, the sun is barely up, and Peter Wilson of Dublin, Ireland, is planted at the bar in Fibbar Magee's on Murphy Street.
Despite the early hour, he's got plenty of good company. The main section of the pub is filled to standing-room-only capacity.
All faces are pointing to one of the two televisions, ready to watch Cork play Kilkenny in the All-Ireland Hurling Final, a game like field hockey on steroids.
"In Ireland, there are two big sports matches of the year, and this is one of them," the newly established Sunnyvale resident explains. He plans to fly to Ireland to see the other big game, the Gaelic football championship, in two weeks' time.
Wilson doesn't see anything odd about being in a pub this early on a Sunday morning. "When you're in California, this is what you do," he says simply. Welcome to the world of the expatriate sports fan--where satellites bring the game live, but can't do anything about the time difference.
Between Ireland and California, the gap is eight hours. The folks in Fibbar's can, at least, be thankful they aren't in Hawaii. A 4:30 am start would be even stranger.
"It's surreal to come in here at half seven in the morning and see so many people looking up at you," John Cashman, from Cork, says. He is wearing the red jersey of his home county team. "But it's a good atmosphere."
As a tourist, he says it wasn't hard to find a place to watch the game. Irish software engineers like himself know the lay of Silicon Valley. "This is one of the places you hear about back home," he says during halftime. "We know that if you want to watch a match [in the Bay Area,] come to Sunnyvale."
Ireland looms large in the American imagination as a greener, gentler, friendlier land. This may be because most of have never watched a hurling match, which is a mix of rugby, soccer, and field hockey with some light facial wounds thrown in. Players kick, catch, and, with curled sticks, whack a baseball-sized ball. It's all in an effort to either put the ball in the back of a soccer-like goal for three points or through football-style uprights for one point.
The sticks swing wildly and the ball travels fast, yet only a few of the players wear helmets. Appreciating the skill involved in the sport may be difficult; appreciating the risks is not
A player going for a point, for example, will scoop the ball in the air and let loose with a swing like that of a baseball player. An opposing player, not liking his intentions, will use stick and body to thwart him. It's a wonder any of them have a tooth to chew with.
Few in Fibbar's on this Sunday morning need any explanation of what is going on. Almost to a person, the crowd is Irish. Not in the way that everybody you know with more than two freckles claims to be, but in the born-there, raised there kind of way. Brogues thick and thin are in ample evidence in the yelling that accompanies each score and miss. Many of those yelling are wearing team colors--red for Cork, yellow and amber for Kilkenny. Some grew up with the athletes they're now watching from so far away.
"There are people you know on these teams," bar manager Suzanne O'Toole says. "That's why a lot of people come."
Photograph by Chad Pilster
The black brew that pours at Fibbar Magee's is usually Guiness's, but at 7am last Sunday, as a crew of Irishmen gathered for a live telecast of the World Series of "hurling,"--a violent version of field hockey--most patrons ordered coffee. The world championship of Gaelic football will be broadcast at Fibbar's this Sunday.
Unlike big American sports, hurlers are amateurs who go off to their day jobs in the week. There's even a dentist out there.
Today, it's the lads from Cork who take an early lead, lose it, and then claw back for a victory over the favorites from near Dublin. All agree it was scrappy game made scrappier by the rain. The Kilkenny contingent toward the end of the bar falls momentarily silent.
A victory speech by the Cork Captain is in Irish, which like the rising of everyone in the pub for the national anthem reveals some of the nationalistic tradition deep at the core of hurling. For the non-Irish sports fan, it's the kind of cultural event that arts and wine festivals can never hope to be. Immersion in another tradition with no museums involved.
The bar scene doesn't recreate the experience back home with total precision, however. Between the distinctly Celtic game on TV, the obvious heritage of the fans in the pub, and the Guinness mirrors and patterned carpets, a little Americanization has slipped in.
"It's one of the strange things about this," Cashman, the Cork man, observes. "People are drinking coffee, whereas usually back home for a match, you'd be drunk like."
Indeed, no one is drunk and only a few of the patrons even have pints. Most drink free coffee owner Dez Nolan provides. It's the early hour, he explains.
Nolan, who has been in the States since in the early '80s, has been offering hurling and Gaelic football telecasts, from the season's beginning in May to its conclusion in September, ever since the pub opened in 1994. According to Nolan, the next nearest place to watch the game is Milbrae to the north and Los Angeles to the south. He charges $20 for the game which he buys via satellite--sometimes he makes his money back, sometimes he doesn't, he says. Patrons are happy to throw their money into the tin passing around at halftime.
"It's grand like," John O'Donovan, a tall engineer also originally from Cork says. "Twenty dollars is not that much to watch the game live."
Nolan, who buys a season's worth of games at Fibbar Magee's in one package, says that normal games draw about thirty in contrast to today's crowd,which is three time that size. "This is a big final. Everybody comes out for the final," he says.
He's expecting at least as large a crowd for the football final on September 26th. Cork, also in that match, is going for the ultimate prestige of winning the All-Ireland hurling and football matches, the mighty Double. Irish newspapers already report police being called to protect the home on an official from ticket-hungry fans.
It might, in other words, be wise for fans to get there early.
Fibbar Magee's is located at South Murphy. 408-749-8373
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
