If you've ever driven through Naas on your way to, well, anywhere else, chances are you've passed a giant ball that's covered in traffic markings and looks like - as our Head of Content Development called it - "a big ball of road".
The piece in question is called 'Perpetual Motion' and was designed by artists Remco de Fouw and Rachael Joynt, and was completed in 1996 and subsequently retouched in 2009. Of course, the irony is that most people only encounter the ball thing when they're stuck in traffic, no doubt daydreaming about what kind of giant would be able to kick the thing as if it were a football.
Sure, you can do up the maths roughly in your head or even take guesses as to comparable size, but the work has been done for you by @simondoho on Twitter. Over the course of numerous tweets, he worked out that by utilising Steve Staunton as the example footballer, old Stan would need to be 73.65 metres and would most likely flatten the village of Clane and with it the fabled Manzors pub, where the publican is said to have thrown Slash Hudson of Guns 'N Roses and Rod Stewart out for trying to getting a session going.
Given the sheer size of this giant Steve Staunton, one has to raise the question of the national response to all of this. Luckily, Stan's rampaging near the ball thing is in close proximity to the Curragh where the Irish Defence Forces has a sizeable contingent of military paraphernalia that could do battle with the enormous Drogheda native.
Anyway, you can read the whole thread here.
