You can’t beat the grassroots games
BETWEEN WORK and family commitments, it was one of those weekends when I saw very little sport on the box, bar a bit of exciting World Rugby Sevens action on ITV4 late on Sunday night.
However, my labour of love did ensure that I spent some time on the sideline as the local G.A.A. scene kicked back into action in earnest.
Domestic championship action will certainly be coming at us thick and fast over the next few months, so there will be plenty of opportunities for anyone who has even the slightest inclination to get out and about to check out some fervent action.
It never ceases to amaze and intrigue me that there’s people who are more than willing to travel in their droves to follow county teams, but they won’t make the short journey to a local pitch to watch the self-same players lining out for their clubs.
The hurling or football is honest, the competition is as fierce as any, and the language and phrases from die-hard supporters can be as colourful as a tie-die festival and as chock-a-block full of silly gags as a clown convention.
There’s so many well-worn phrases that are peddled out by supporters time and time again that’s it’s as rare as a sighting of a corncrake to hear something new, but in the main it’s all in the delivery.
You know the usual quips like ‘go ahead and throw a saddle on him, be damned’, when somebody is being over-zealously marked by a no-nonsense defender, or ‘you might as well put on their jersey ref’ when a downtrodden fan feels his side is not getting fair treatment from the beleaguered man in the middle.
If only I had a euro for every time I heard some boyo shout out, ‘the right fella has it now anyway’, only to see the said ‘right fella’ blaze a shot off target, as wide as a baboon’s backside.
‘Will ya let it in ta f**k’ is normally the go-to phrase when a team spends an age dawdling on the ball in the backs or midfielders play from side to side crab-like, with the more traditional folk preferring the thrills and spills that a more direct, route one approach brings.
More often than not, like postrace discussions among the more knowledgeable folk about a thoroughbred at the Curragh or Leopardstown, you’ll hear all sort of talk about a player’s lineage.
‘Is that young lad a son of Tommy’s? His auld fella was a dirty fecker too.’
Then when a six foot six, wide-shouldered beast is sprung from the bench with the game in the melting pot with ten minutes remaining, somebody is bound to say, ‘he’s a good man to break up the play’, which in plain English means he has little or no skill, couldn’t hurl snow off a rope, but he’ll definitely step on a few lads’ toes and be a general nuisance to opposition players.
Another substitute will then be introduced and as he emerges from a toxic cloud of cigarette smoke we’ll be informed that ‘he’s flying it in training’, meaning he bothered his arse to turn up for once and even managed to do a couple of laps without getting sick.
It’s a stonewall certainly that you’ll hear loud and vociferous shouts of ‘two hands on the hurl’ and ‘will ya bend over the ball for jaysus sake’ being yelped by a supporter who has spent enough decades on the sideline to know what’s what, as they’re driven apoplectic by some fella with limited ability who has the audacity and downright cheek to try the ‘fancy stuff’.
They’ll shout ‘will ya pull first time’ at the top of their lungs only to then berate the poor, unfortunate sod when the advised firsttime pull scutters harmlessly over the sideline.
Then if it’s a draw at the end of the game it will sportingly be declared that neither team deserved to lose, when our friend is secretly thinking ‘we should have beat that useless shower out the gate’.
Local G.A.A. is the lifeblood of Gaelic games and can serve up contests as thrilling as any inter-county action, but on the occasions that the matches fail to sizzle, the one-liners and banter on the sideline can be more than enough to keep all and sundry entertained.
Never mind your Super 8s, you just can’t beat the grassroots games.