Sport

Kicking Out: People are the greatest asset the GAA has

Cahair O'Kane

Cahair O'Kane

Cahair is a sports reporter and columnist with the Irish News specialising in Gaelic Games.

Shane Corr helps Coalisland captain Stephen McNally lift the silverware after their Tyrone SFC victory in 2018. Moments like these are what makes the GAA special. Picture by Philip Walsh
Shane Corr helps Coalisland captain Stephen McNally lift the silverware after their Tyrone SFC victory in 2018. Moments like these are what makes the GAA special. Picture by Philip Walsh Shane Corr helps Coalisland captain Stephen McNally lift the silverware after their Tyrone SFC victory in 2018. Moments like these are what makes the GAA special. Picture by Philip Walsh

WHEN it comes to interviewing GAA players, there is one rule I try my best to abide by: Talk about anything other than the game itself.

There are times when that rule naturally gets broken. And there are even times when a conversation around the game can be interesting, open and enlightening.

Once in a generation, you’ll get a Dinny Cahill moment.

It doesn’t seem like 17 years since he said prior to Antrim’s All-Ireland quarter-final with Cork that Brian Corcoran was “finished” and Niall McCarthy was “a dreadful centre-forward”.

Cork beat Antrim by 22 points. Brian Corcoran scored their two goals.

Exhibit B: In 2013, the growing rivalry between Donegal and Mayo was set for its latest instalment in the All-Ireland quarter-final.

The Tuesday before the game, The Irish News’ back page was emblazoned with the headline: ‘RORY LETS RIP’.

Rory Gallagher, then Donegal assistant, accused Mayo of colluding with Monaghan ahead of the Ulster final, with reference to big hits planted on Mark McHugh by both teams.

He also laid out a couple of other digs at James Horan.

The final score that Sunday was Mayo 4-17 Donegal 1-10.

Those are two of the finest examples of why teams so rarely stir the pot before a big game, particularly in recent years.

If there is stirring to be done, they do it internally.

Talking about the games has become, therefore, increasingly dull.

The games themselves, with the obsession with possession, have a much inferior capacity to capture the imagination than in previous generations.

Debate around them is repetitive and yet endless.

It seems as though 80 per cent of all analysis now revolves around kickouts.

God knows I love a good kickout, but there’s only so much talking you can do about them.

I have had this discussion with many players and managers off the record.

Naturally, off-the-record conversations are far more revealing. There’s a good reason that the recorder stops and they don’t go out on, say, a podcast…

Ordinarily, the interviewee doesn’t really want to be asked about the game coming up at the weekend. Why would they?

There are only two options for them: appear bland, or tread accidentally on a landmine.

They will, of course, oblige if they’re asked the questions. They will deliver the platitudes on their opponents, talk them up, and routinely refer to themselves as underdogs.

I don’t want to talk about the game at the weekend either.

This is because I know what the players will say before they say it.

Discovering that such-and-such is expecting “a tough test” at the weekend is akin to discovering trees are made of wood.

You, the reader, already know what they’ll say and, most importantly, you don’t really want to read about it.

Yet players, while bored by it, are happy enough. As long as there’s nothing the opposition can pin to their wall on Sunday, nothing they’ll get in their ear all game, it’s all good.

Where the GAA should, and has been in the past, able to escape the mundanity of the games themselves is in its people.

The GAA’s brightest people are our brightest people.

They are not multimillionaires some club has splashed £50m for and is handing over £250,000 a week to live in a gated mansion on the hill, away from a society they don’t know or care about.

That those at the coalface work in our schools and our shops and our banks is one of the greatest assets the GAA has.

It is their normality, and how achievable their sporting brilliance is for any U10 kicking the ball off the gable wall, that allows us to feel part of what they represent on the field.

We’ve lost that a touch. The insulation of county players away from their clubs, the absolute veil of secrecy that discourages conversation with even loved ones outside the camp, the closure of training sessions to the public.

These are all hallmarks of professionalism, but also of dislocation. It creates a fracture in the bond between inter-county games and those that watch them.

The GAA survives not because of money or TV.

While the central association deals with crippling financial losses, the clubhouses will look and feel the exact same when they reopen as they did when they closed.

It is all built on people.

That’s why the weekend decision to outlaw joint-captains for future presentations sparked such emotion.

It’s about the heartbreaking visibility of James McGarry’s tearful son Darragh standing on the plinth in Croke Park, weeks after they’d lost their wife and mother in a tragic car accident.

It’s allowing Shane Corr to be up the steps, one hand on the O’Neill Cup, one arm around Stephen McNally as they celebrate Coalisland’s success.

It’s going against the grain of allowing for a winning team to be used as a crutch in times of grief or hardship, or to give joy to those that appreciate it most greatly.

Imagining what such a gesture, one that does no-one any harm, means to those people is just not possible. 

Those moments are the most important ones the GAA has to offer. They are what create the sense of togetherness and community.

The games themselves, with all the tactical nuances and the blandness of the commentary around them, aren’t all that interesting to many people.

Only a small fraction of the people care how many times Ryan O’Donoghue touched the ball in the All-Ireland final, or whether Raymond Galligan hit his target more often than Stephen Cluxton.

But we all care about people.

We care how Ronan McNamee is getting on, or Domhnall Nugent, or Andy McCann, or Patrick Morrison, or Oran Sludden, or Ciaran McCloy.

To have them open up and tell their stories is the best part of this job, bar none.

The games are only an accessory through which we get to know the lives of these people.

They are our people, and amid the battle for hearts and minds in a technological era that is taking young people away from sport, our people are the greatest asset the GAA has.