A new year wish list

Marionette of the sporting gods, new years' lists and cliché, please fill our boots as follows over the next 12 months:

For the World Cup, give us the chance to see Wayne Rooney versus Ronaldinho in their own version of celebrity death match. Both are approaching the kind of form that can carry an entire team through seven games and into immortality and both could deserve it.

Ronaldinho may be handicapped by playing in a team with too many good attacking players, while Rooney may be handicapped by not having enough. Either way, a shoot-out in Germany between the two players would make the entire month memorable.

Please also see to it that the rest of the European teams get knocked out as early as possible.

For the Irish rugby team – this is tricky because it's possible the team may outperform their coach and end up caking him in glory.

So much depends on Brian O'Driscoll's shoulder. If it's ok and he plays, then the back line looks incredible and the forwards have an auxiliary flanker to turn ball over and put them into space. If it's not ok, we're in trouble, but either way you get the impression that Eddie O'Sullivan needs some better ideas than he had in November with no idea where they're going to come from.

Give Paul O'Connell back his aura of invincibility – it was uncalled for that you took it away last year.

For the Ryder Cup, give us a scandal of some sort, otherwise it could turn into just another golf tournament. It's also in North Kildare and you know how they like their scandals there – preferably over-funding or political in-fighting – but frankly we want something bigger this time. A bitter feud developing between one of our favoured sons and Tiger Woods with both being paired in the final match on the last day would suffice. So long as Europe wins of course, unless the US pummel Europe and this means they're interested in the competition again. Such a conflict...

For Gaelic Football give us Armagh versus Kerry when it counts in the semi-final this year. That way we can be spared the notion that Kerry are close to Armagh and Tyrone.

Spare us too the tra-deeshun-alists who bemoan how Tyrone and Armagh are ruining the game. If by "ruining" you mean "making it better" then I apologise. The football Tyrone played last season was muscular, athletic and edgy, some of the best in the last 20 years. The footballer of the year had kicked eight wides in the game against Dublin before kicking his last point of the day from near the endline. These were men. Let either Armagh or Tyrone reproduce their form from last year and after that the game will be happy.

For the hurling championship, one of two things needs to happen. If Cork are going to win three in a row let them do it imperiously so we can crown their greatness. But if they win games undeservedly just because they're Cork then we can't love them. Although they have real balls for sticking to their game-plan when it wasn't working and abandoning it when it was, which is close enough to greatness already. They have the coolest, hippiest manager of any hurling team ever and a true icon in the half-back line. They're hard to dislike but three in a row is just ridiculous. Let Clare or Galway stop them – preferably both – with a meeting in the final that we should have seen last year.

For the GAA let the creeping professionalism continue until it strangles the amateurism and amateur attitude. This time let the Irish team match the Australians in the International Rules without the attendant isolationism from the hard-core apparatchiks.

For the FAI let them blunder darkly across a manager they don't deserve, one who can talk to the dilettante millionaires and fans alike and who accepts that other people have opinions. Just make sure it's not Davo, Manager Mick, Aldo, Venables etc...

It's not much to ask Queen Santa, marionette of cliché, is it?