Trots, Cavan men and other aliens

I have long been fascinated by the political thought of the Argentinean Trotskyist Juan Posadas. Oh and just before someone sitting in a pub in Camlough drinking a bottle of Buckfast Abbey starts to mutter about what the f… this has to do with sport, Posadas played professional soccer for Estudiantes in the 1930s. As a young fella he also hurled with the Christian Brothers in the La Plata primary schools league under the name Sean Mac an Posada so he was a Gael. Racy of the soil in fact.
Anyway, what makes Posadas interesting in the way that Trotskyists are seldom interesting (unless they are particularly mad in a colourful way rather than crushingly tedious individuals) is that he found a unique solution to the glaring contradictions between the predictions of imminent world revolution and socialism and, well, reality.
Growing fed up of the failure of life to imitate the art of dialectical materialism, Posadas first supported the notion that an oul nuclear war would be just the thing to create a level playing field and hasten the glorious revolution. Campaigning under the slogan of “Nuclear war equals revolutionary war” Posadas failed to entice many workers and youth to flock to his banner. But undeterred he sought to hone his policy  through a series of weekend workshops. The one thing in fact which even today would still convince a chap that a nuclear war might be preferable.
The fruits of this policy formation were published in Posadas’ seminal work Flying Saucers, the Process of Matter and Energy, Science and Socialism. In it he called on  socialist space aliens to intervene on the side of the toiling masses to overthrow capitalism. The proof that the little green persons were socialists was that only an advanced socialist society could have developed the means of production to the level where you could take a spin around the galaxy of a Sunday afternoon to have a pike at the neighbours.
Unfortunately the socialist aliens appeared little interested in hanging around to create a Planet of Equals, a fact which Posadas explained by their disgust at the exploitation of humanity. The key therefore was for the world revolutionary movement to communicate with the space aliens and request their fraternal assistance. How exactly to do that was a puzzle and while attempting to figure that one out Posadas came up with more novel theories including being able to speak to dolphins. Oh, a comical man.  “I’ll have a pint of whatever Juan is drinking, thanks.”
The relevance of this to what I should be writing about but am not because I actually didn’t see any matches at the weekend – other than the one in which we were hockeyed by a shower of alleged civil servants from the bog and you don’t really need to know any more about that – is that Posadism could provide the key to reviving the fortunes of counties currently in the doldrums.
What triggered this thought, apart from growing neurosis, was the imminent reappearance of the Cavan football team in Croke Park next Sunday to take on Roscommon in the semi-final of Division Two. Not only will it be the Breffni men’s first visit to Croke Park since around the time that the Vatican Council let unbaptised children out of Limbo but they will be playing under floodlights.
Once they were reassured that they would not have to pick up the tab for the electric, the Cavan County Board were filled with enthusiasm. There is mighty talk around the likes of Mullagh and Belturbet about a revival of the glory days and lads like Martin McGovern will be trying to get in through the turnstiles with one of their pension books. The last time he was there to see Cavan he would have been lifted over the stiles by his mother. And him 35.
I am convinced that Cavan stand greatly to benefit by the application of the thought of Juan Posadas to the football. If there are socialists in space then by jaysus there must be Cavan men and a planet occupied by the great teams of the past who still do a bit of kicking when they are not studying the great works of socialist alienism.
So all they have to do in that case is to put an ad in the Anglo Celt asking the socialist aliens to send down a space ship of clones of the 1947 side. Captained by the Gunner Brady. And sure even if some of the aliens are a bit strange in appearance and have strange reproductive habits it will be nothing the Roscommon lads haven’t seen in the Coachman’s of a Saturday night.
Of course Cavan would not be the only county to benefit by this and I will be establishing a section of the Fourth International (Posadist) to push forward with a plan to replenish the Dublin football team with similar beings. It’s either that or start picking fellas from out around Glencullen and Saggart.