How Mccarthy has already set a spiky tone
IT’S all well and good moving fixtures hither and thither, ‘streamlining’ the season and what have you, but you’d miss the All-ireland Club finals on St Patrick’s Day all the same.
You never knew what kind of day it was going to be. It could be like 2009, when the sunshine of noon and the splash of De La Salle of Waterford being defeated by Portumna gave way to a mackerel shade of grey a little while later when Kilmacud Crokes beat Crossmaglen.
Or, heaven forbid, it could be like the 2006 football final when St Gall’s of Antrim fell a point short of Salthill-knocknacarra when entering Croke Park felt like stepping into a fridge.
At least you knew they were there, is what we are saying.
For someone like me, it was the ideal way to spend St Patrick’s Day — working, yes, but at least I avoided pretty much everything else that I have come to detest about the day.
In The Sopranos episode ‘From Where to Eternity’, the mob soldier Christopher Moltisanti is lying in a hospital bed after a near-death experience. He is telling his boss, Tony Soprano, how he saw his father in Hell at the end of the tunnel.
Paulie Walnuts asks him how he knew it was Hell and Christopher answers: “The Emerald Piper. That’s our Hell. It’s an Irish bar where it’s St Patrick’s Day every day forever.”
I get Christopher.
An empty St Patrick’s Day for the GAA is just another hitching post without a horse tethered. And by this stage it’s wearing thin for your faithful correspondents. If Whatsapp should suddenly give up any time soon, I’d say GAA journalists trading numbers for nostalgic interview subjects could account for most of the traffic.
While we are on the subject, Larry Mccarthy’s first address as the new GAA president regarding the chatter around Gaelic games was hugely instructive. The comments bear repeating to get them in their context.
“One of the lessons that we might learn from the recent near collapse of democracy in the United States is that words matter,” he said.
“What one says matters, what one puts in the public domain matters.
“In that regard, I would ask all of us to tone down the tenor of our public commentary.
“Social media has wonderful
‘Larry Mccarthy’s first address as the new GAA president was hugely instructive’
aspects to it, but there is also a dark side.
“... By all means let us express an opinion, but please let’s do it in a manner that is respectful. There is no place for the type of abuse that many of our players, volunteers and officials have been subjected to...
“... Argue the point in a public discussion, but do so in a manner which does justice not only to yourself but to the GAA. If you are one of those keyboard warriors who, in cowardly fashion, hides behind nom de plumes and aliases, and castigates our officials, players or referees, stop.
“Your behaviour not only has a corrosive effect on civility, it has a long-term corrosive effect on the GAA as it discourages people from volunteering as members of our Association.”
I am not sure on the last point.
I’ve never witnessed anyone refusing to help out their local club because a referee might have had a stinker. But it was a spiky note to set and he followed it up, too.
Now, social media is merely a tool by which people amplify their own voices.
Before it, you had silly people saying outlandish things in a social setting and, apart from an eye-roll, that’s as far as it went.
We will return to the theme next week.