DONAL Og Cusack knows how to rain on someone’s parade. As the Antrim hurlers celebrated their first-ever Joe McDonagh Cup win in Croke Park last weekend – a huge achievement for the county – the RTE pundit was a bit mean-spirited in his post-match summation.
He didn’t think Antrim would be up to the job for top flight hurling next season and effectively wrote them off.
Standing on the outdoor gantry, host Joanne Cantwell invited Henry Shefflin to counter, or perhaps agree with Donal Og’s assessment that Antrim could expect a fair few beatings in 2021.
With a touch more thought about the efforts Antrim has made in recent seasons, Shefflin said: “I think we should probably enjoy this…”
And off the Kilkenny legend went with an analysis that was doused in hard research. He spoke of the fund-raising energy of the Saffron Business Forum, the “visionary plan” espoused by Gaelfast and name-checked Antrim’s Director of Hurling Neal Peden.
What Shefflin offered the viewer was a bit more of a narrative, a bit more context as to where Antrim has come from. Donal Og, on the other hand, didn’t give any context or offer any insight, dismissing Antrim on the basis of that one scratchy performance that yielded silverware last Sunday. And it was doubtlessly scratchy.
It wasn’t that long ago Donal Og was telling the northern hurling fraternity that a ‘Team Ulster’ would be good for them.
But if he’d cared to scrape the surface, Team Ulster would have done nothing for the small-ball game in the province.
It wouldn’t grow the game one bit. Had some of the GAA’s top brass at the time embraced the idea in any meaningful way it would have damaged county teams – and if you damage county teams, you damage the pathway to county teams - all to sate the appetite of the southern elites wanting some kind of hurling entity from the north putting on a show once a year in Croke Park.
A team that would fail to nurture any meaningful support and would go against the very ethos of the Association.
Imagine the manager in the middle of the changing room telling his players to 'do it for Ulster'. There wouldn't be a goose-bump raised in the house.
It was desperately blithe notion from Donal Og, as blithe as his comments about Antrim last Sunday.
Had there been a Team Ulster created, there would be no Saffron Business Forum to fund-raise for its county teams because all their best players would have migrated to the provincial squad.
Donal Og speaks from afar but doesn’t really get it, unlike Shefflin.
It’s a bit like the time when he juxtaposed criticism of the sweeper system with the “last remnants of British culture on these islands”.
It was a bit of a stretch.
Of course, RTE deserve credit for screening last Sunday's Joe McDonagh final 'live' - a competition that normally doesn't get a look-in.
Maybe if it did there would be more consideration given over to the analysis of the second tier competition, rather than trite sound-bites, where new stories of the game could be discovered and told to a wider audience.
Keeping the Joe McDonagh and indeed the Christy Ring on the broadcasting sidelines is something the GAA needs to address in a more forceful manner going forward because the current state of play merely strengthens hurling's glass ceiling that only has room for a half dozen teams.
Antrim GAA marketed itself exceptionally well in the build-up to last weekend's final. They broadcast an 'Up For the Final' Facebook programme and produced a glossy 72-page commemorative booklet.
Some of the hurlers did school visits.
My eight-year-old nephew, who has never held a hurl in his hand, was really taken by the visit of Antrim hurler Gerard Walsh to his school last week.
He went home later that day and added a hurl and a sloithar to his Christmas list.
Hurling below the top six teams gets very little exposure. While many Gaels bemoan the fact that The Sunday Game rarely gives out the results of the lower-tier hurling Championships, Antrim helped themselves during the build-up, using every platform available to them.
But the GAA at the top level needs to do more when it comes to negotiating new TV deals with the big players instead of acting like they are the subservient junior partner and the RTE and Sky executives are the senior partners.
All this hard-ball talk and grandstanding over fighting the corner of the lower Championship tiers has been exactly that. As we look ahead to 2021, there is one irrefutable truth: if the Tailteann Cup (the new second tier Championship in football) is to succeed it needs more broadcast exposure.
If the GAA can't guarantee a fixed number of 'live' Tailteann Cup games, it'll flounder.
BBCNI could bat a bit harder too - and if they can't secure a slice of the 'live' broadcasting pie there is nothing stopping them from putting together a weekly magazine programme profiling the best of the province's hurlers, footballers, camogs and handballers and debating the burning issues of the day.
One of the most enthralling stories of 2020 was undoubtedly the Antrim hurlers' journey. There was so much to admire and so much to tell, but beyond its own provincial borders they were never delved into in any meaningful way.
In a 13-day period, Antrim's season had every conceivable emotion. From the treacherous Covid trip to Tullamore in mid-October where they clinched promotion at the expense of Kerry to coping with a virus outbreak seven days later but still managing to beat Westmeath in Corrigan Park to Domhnall Nugent's last-gasp equaliser down in Carlow the following week.
You could make a movie out of Nugent's season alone, the defiant one-handed wonder of Dunsilly.
Instead, we were treated to some mean-spiritedness and sound-bites about “passion up in Antrim” and “a packed Casement Park” from Donal Og - until Henry intervened and gave RTE's audience a bit more context to what was actually achieved by Darren Gleeson’s team last Sunday.
