Sport

Who's Fawlt is it anyway? Readers take aim over sodden season ticket seats

'Declan, lifelong Tyrone fan' has given the Ulster Council a damn good thrashing over his allocated seat during Sunday's Ulster Championship clash between Cavan and Tyrone
'Declan, lifelong Tyrone fan' has given the Ulster Council a damn good thrashing over his allocated seat during Sunday's Ulster Championship clash between Cavan and Tyrone 'Declan, lifelong Tyrone fan' has given the Ulster Council a damn good thrashing over his allocated seat during Sunday's Ulster Championship clash between Cavan and Tyrone

AT last. After six games, 13 goals, 144 points, 479 mentions of the word transition, 107 shimmies, 106 by Sean Cavanagh, a fair few hidings and a handful of noteworthy slaps, the Ulster Championship is finally – finally – up and running.

Played in driving rain, it may not have been pretty, but at least Tyrone versus Cavan was competitive beyond the first 35 minutes. At least it went some way to living up to its billing. Three cheers – hip, hip…

Having waited so long for Ulster – The Only Provincial Championship ™ - to catch fire, the Off The Fence phoneline was unsurprisingly buzzing off the hook, though not with punters queuing up to lavish praise on both sides for their endeavours.

Maybe they will come after the real business has been taken care of – wet season ticket holders.

Our most entertaining call this week came from ‘Declan, lifelong Tyrone fan’ who – while admirably staying clear of mentioning the war – compared the GAA to a shoddily-run hotel on England’s south coast.

Ooooh matron! Sorry, got the wrong end of the stick there.

Carry on ‘Declan’…

“I want to congratulate Tyrone and Cavan, and the referee for an excellent game of football. I wish I could say the same for the GAA and their season ticket team,” said ‘Declan’.

“For all the good things the GAA do, they behave like Basil Fawlty of Fawlty Towers. Basil is all over his guests, giving them the best seat in the dining room overlooking the lawn (Chris?), until someone more important arrives, then they’re dumped in the nearest corner.

“Same as the season ticket holder is treated. They’re treated like royalty when no-one else wants to go to a game but, come the big occasion when someone more important arrives like clergy or local government, we’re the first to be dumped in the worst seats in the ground.”

“My season ticket gave me a front row seat alright,” continued ‘Declan’, eyeing up a loose branch on the ground beside a clapped out Austin 1100.

“There wasn’t much to see with being soaked, I wasn’t fit to see past advertising hoardings or the Cavan bench. So come on GAA, don’t treat us like Mr Fawlty, we deserve better.

“By the way, Clones didn’t cover themselves in glory either, we couldn’t even get a cup of tea, never mind a Waldorf salad.”

Killer line to finish off there ‘Declan’ – Basil would be proud. You’ve set the bar pretty high this week. 

‘DECLAN’ wasn’t the only sodden, Waldorf saladless caller on this issue, with another voicing his disappointment.

“I’m just wondering who issues season tickets for Clones, and how they’re issued?” he said.

“Season ticket holders don’t get seats out of the rain. I’m aware that there’s four counties involved, but I don’t think there’d be 20,000 season ticket holders there – people who have paid for their tickets in December should be first come, first served. A lot of them are sitting out in the rain.

“So I’d like to know who gives out the tickets, what’s the criteria for the tickets and why is it always in Clones that you seem to get bad seats?”

To answer your question, it’s the Ulster Council who are responsible for season tickets but they have told us it’s not their Fawlt (sorry) if some supporters get left out in the cold – and wet. A combination of the unrelenting rain and larger-than-expected crowd given the conditions apparently led to some season ticket holders sitting outside the cover, with a spokesman remarking that “you can’t legislate for the weather”.

AS for the game itself, the much-anticipated praise-lavishing correspondence never materialised, with one emailer enjoying Tyrone’s performance so much he has written off their chances of doing anything this year.

“All the hype about Tyrone is rubbish,” he wrote. “Tyrone will not go anywhere with a defence that lets in three goals. They have not got a decent free-taker. They cannot take scores under pressure.”

Take note, Mickey. No doubt Tyrone’s defence struggled with David Givney on Sunday but, while they conceded three goals (the second of which had more than a touch of good luck), Cavan only managed seven points over 70 minutes. And don’t forget the match was played in awful conditions, you have to cut a bit of slack for that.

FINALLY, moving away from Clones to the comfy surrounds of RTE’s Donnybrook studio, ‘Martin from Armagh’ has taken aim at the comments of former county stalwart Jarlath Burns on The Sunday Game.

Burns suggested that, given the county’s current struggles, Orchard supporters need to adopt a patient approach and be realistic with their expectations.

In a lengthy email, which has had to be radically truncated due to the pressures of space, ‘Martin’ took exception.

“I don’t believe this is how the majority of people will see it in Armagh nor will they wish to have our county portrayed in this way, and in public.

“Armagh is a very proud footballing county with a great history of competing in Gaelic games. I have young children myself playing Gaelic games in Armagh and certainly will not be telling them they/our county is only capable of winning one All-Ireland every 100 years.

“Jarlath should be leading by example and take a bit more pride in his county and believe a bit more. This type of talk is not confidence-building and would worry me that our younger players are listening in on it.”

Jarlath Burns is a fiercely passionate Armagh man who would no doubt love to see the Orchard County challenging for Ulster and All-Ireland titles every year. However, history shows us that this has not been the case. Far from running the county down, my reading of it was that Burns was providing a historical context relative to expectations within the county when – as has been the case in recent times, and for plenty of Jarlath Burns’s own playing career – Armagh are not dining at the top table.