Common ‘cents’ prevails as festivities get the thumbs-up

Against the Breeze
By Paddy Heaney

First Published 03/02/09

WHILE driving through north Dublin on Sunday morning, I spotted two hurling teams waiting for the sliotar to be tossed in. It was 11am. I wasn’t envious. There was a biting wind. The car was warm. Not a day for short trousers. The scene reminded me of my school days. Saturday mornings on the loughshore. Poached eggs and toast for breakfast. The right fuel for football in Derrylaughan and Brocagh.

Later on Sunday afternoon, I tuned in to watch some of TG4’s coverage of the National Football League. Again, the scenes weren’t particularly inviting. The game in Pairc Ui Chaoimh had a certain Siberian resonance. Grey, empty, windswept terraces. All that was missing were some soldiers and snow.

But we cannot dismiss or be ashamed of these things. The GAA is about long, boring and unproductive committee meetings. It is about poor games played in front of sparse crowds. For much of the time, it is about the mundane tasks of washing jerseys, selling tickets and driving to another training session.

We keep doing these things safe in the knowledge that we are part of a unique and magnificent sporting organisation. And, at times, we need to remind ourselves of what we have, and how far we have come.

Anyone who had the privilege of being in Croke Park on Saturday night was given that reminder in some style. The message was rammed home with champagne football, bright lights, and glittering explosions. Forceful, convincing and persuasive arguments had been made to criticise the GAA’s decision to spend e500,000 on a fireworks display.

Rather than enter the debate, I decided to wait and see what Jarlath Burns and his committee were going to give us for our money. I think it’s safe to say that anyone who was in Croke Park will not be complaining about the cost.

And let’s not forget, it was the five extra euro added to the admission fee which paid for the visual feast. Besides, not too long ago, half-a-million euro wouldn’t have bought you a bedsit in Ranelagh. Admittedly, the football match was the highlight of the night. In the first half, we were treated to an exhibition from the All-Ireland champions.

Stephen O’Neill has a sublime talent that deserves a bigger audience than club games in Tyrone. It was uplifting to see him strutting his stuff on the stage that befits his majestic left boot. The same can be said of ‘Mugsy’. His goal was great. But the puffed chest, raised chin, and dramatic stare into the throat of Hill 16 was even better. More of the same, please, Mugsy.

What followed after the parade of the teams in 19th century kits and the superb match was a radical departure from the Artane Boys Band. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Yes, it cost a few quid. Yes, the money could have been used to serve other purposes. But that argument can always be made. An obsession with purpose and with function created places like communist Russia.

The trains ran on time, but no-one was in any rush to leave their grey concrete tower blocks. Why waste money on paint when it could buy new staplers and paper clips for the civil service?

Communism fell because democracy painted better pictures. Potato dumplings might be good for you, but Big Macs and bottles of Coke look good. And people crave colour in their lives. We want a bit of razzamatazz.

The GAA is celebrating 125 years of existence and on Saturday night they presented the Association to the country in a cacophony of colour and strobe lighting. Like any great party, anyone who got off their backside and went to it was glad they made the effort.

But would the men who gathered in the billiards room of the Hayes Hotel in 1884 have approved of spending e500,000 on a fireworks display? Don’t leap to any conclusions. The objective of the GAA’s founding fathers was to promote Ireland’s indigenous games and to stop the country from being colonised by the pastimes of the British Empire.

For much of the past 125 years, the GAA has invested much of its energy in securing the property on which the games would be played. The men in the clubs and counties who realised this vision were not small-minded penny-pinchers. More often than not, they borrowed big in lean times.

Men like Peter Quinn, who forged ahead with redeveloping Croke Park while the IRFU and FAI dithered and waited on Bertie to take them by hand. Nowadays, the battleground has changed, but the threat posed by soccer and rugby remains as large as ever.

So how can the GAA compete with Sky TV’s manic marketing for another Super Sunday? How can young Irishmen resist the allure of mimicking Ronaldo’s gleaming tan and his eye-catching goals?
The answer was given to us at the weekend when the GAA staged its own propaganda show.

Like the citizens of Rome, we gathered at the amphitheatre to watch the games and rejoice at our own magnificence. The spectacle will have had a positive effect on the thousands of impressionable young minds who were brought to the colosseum in north Dublin. Pictures were painted for these future gladiators of the GAA.

And it needs to be so. Because if the GAA is to succeed and prosper for another 125 years, then we need children to grow up wanting to emulate Stevie O’Neill rather than Stevie Gerrard, to score goals like Owen Mulligan rather than Michael Owen.

To achieve that aim, the GAA must provide occasions that will inspire and fire the ambition of the nation’s youth. Given the competition from the Premiership and the Champions League, a couple of big Sundays in September are not enough.
There were 79,161 at Croke Park. Smaller crowds filed into Anfield and the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa for the Super Bowl.

In Croke Park, we were entertained, we were thrilled, we were made to feel proud. The stars of the future were given stars to watch and enough pomp and pageantry to rival any other sport. Some of them just might need to know that there is more to the GAA than shivery Sunday mornings.

€500,000. And it was raised by charging an extra €5 on every seat.
Bah. For propaganda like that, it was a pittance.