I see we’ve been given another 125 reasons why the GAA is the greatest little sporting body in the world.
I just love having how wonderful the GAA is shoved down my throat. Especially in 125 bite size portions.
I have loved the GAA from a young age, though. As with any relationship, we’ve had our ups and downs. I’ve been looked down on by a fundamentalist club official for playing soccer; I’ve been made to feel like a king by a retired army man who took charge of my club’s Féile team. The love for hurling he inculcated in me will never die. Ups and downs.
I have a dirty little secret. I’ve been sleeping with the enemy, fraternising with ‘that’ shower. The soccer crowd.
I was in Inchicore on Saturday night to see my team, Cork City, beat St Pat’s 3-0 and move joint top of the League of Ireland. I like rugby, too. And tennis. The shame. How flighty of me, to jump into bed with the enemy at the slightest flash of an ankle.
Of course, I should have been at home reaffirming the one true faith, sucking in the rarefied air at the local club on misty, dew soaked mornings, where lifelong devotees congregate in the ultimate – indeed only – expression of one’s identity and standing in the parish. The one true faith.
Please. Love your game, love our game, but don’t shove it down my throat. If I wanted over-zealous pontificating, I’d stop hiding under the couch when the Mormons call to the door.
It is true that Croke Park is a special place, and I do happen to think that hurling is one of the greatest field sports in the world. However, if I keep hearing those things, I may just stop believing them.
Why the constant need for affirmation? And in some cases reaffirmation. One-hundred-and-twenty-five times over. And over.
The need for gratification and affirmation betrays a deep-rooted insecurity - a poisonous fear that our games will, somehow, be ruined by the ‘foreign games’. It, the constant comparisons with soccer, is borne of a sense of inferiority that still pervades in a section of our population.
At every All-Ireland final, you will be reminded that there is no need to segregate the fans; that none of the players are being paid; that no dandified millionaire will roll around looking for his opposite number to be sent off. Unlike the soccer.
We will hear tales of foreign sports stars, like Ricky Hatton, who has been a guest of sparring partner Mathew Macklin at Headquarters, and how they have seen the light. How they have been blown away by the greatest sport in the world. And isn’t it great that it’s amateur and we have it all to ourselves.
[I once sat next to Lee Sharpe, the former Manchester United winger, at a Munster football final between Cork and Kerry and he looked mightily unimpressed, especially with two missed penalties, until he had a microphone shoved in his face and he agreed, much to everyone’s delight, that the GAA was indeed the greatest little sporting organisation in the world.]
By reaffirming your faith, you’re simply reaffirming many people’s misguided belief that the GAA is an exclusive rather than inclusive organisation full of bitter reactionaries with too many bugs to bear.
Nothing could be further from the truth.