The Lost Gold Medal Poem by Matthew Sweeney

Munich Olympics 1972: there should have been
an Irish gold medal to go with Ronnie's
from Melbourne in 1956, my birth-year, give
or take four. The sport? Push-penny, or
push-halfpenny, as it had to be then, with a
2p banging a ½ p on a draughtsman's board,
the coins pinged by steel combs towards goals
marked in black pen. These decimal coins
were new in, and each wore a bird in a Celtic
knot design, stolen from the Book of Kells.
Zoom in to UCD in 1971, the testing ground.
Those old Georgian buildings on Earlsfort Tce.
The pride of the Engineering Faculty at battle
in private, till a university-wide championship
was flagged up all over the sprawling campus,
with entries coming in from Classics, English, Law,
you name it, all of them plonkers, using plastic
combs, credit cards, nailfiles, sawnoff rulers . . .
They entered like non-league clubs in the FA Cup
and unlike those, none of them prospered.

Cut to the semi-finals on a hot Friday in May,
not long after L'Escargot's second Gold Cup.
Three of the players were Engineering, one
Architecture, all men, the bulk of the fans women.
One match ended goalless, went to penalties,
the other ended 3:0, and that was me in the final
where I met my longhaired, moustachioed friend
who bet he'd beat me. Some chance! I scored early,
then sat back, catenaccio, warding off all attacks
till I scored again, with a viciously spinning

free-kick, after which my goalmouth had a wall.
Hoisted up, and carried, with cheers, to the pub
where a letter was drafted to the Irish Olympic Committee, insisting it get push-penny added to the Games so Ireland would win another gold.
As Google and History show, it didn't happen
but I'm still here, if in need of practice,
I have two mad, green shirts and green shoes,
draughtsman's boards must be cheap on eBay,
and I think the Mexicans still make steel combs.