Against all of our usual instincts, we must now be fiercely rational

TOMORROW, our brave golfers will be among those who are going out there, to do some of the things they used to do. A round of encouraging applause on the part of a grateful nation is surely merited, as players of all handicaps and none, prepare to make what may be the ultimate sacrifice.

In recognition of their service, they will be teeing it up on courses which will be in the most beautiful condition, untouched for months by the hacking and the slashing of the members — yes it is only members who can play, for the moment, and only those who live within 5km of their beloved track.

And while most of these rules are understandable, I couldn’t help noticing one strange restriction which helps to illustrate a broader issue within our institutions. At the start anyway, there will be no officially sanctioned competitions — perhaps due to fears about the handling of scorecards, or the use of computers in clubhouses and the like.

Seemingly it’s been decided that the golfers are lucky to be getting out there at all, so they can’t be seen to be enjoying it too much — even though the “challenge” of organising a competition in a safe way, without the exchanging of scorecards or other such tomfoolery, should not involve anything more wildly creative than the rudimentary use of a smartphone.

No, they won’t be leading with this on Morning Ireland tomorrow, yet within it there is a hint of a larger principle: something is being declined here, not because it can’t be done safely with a bit of imagination — but because someone thought it mightn’t look good.

And if we were to extrapolate further from this, we might find ourselves in trouble in areas that are even more important than the health and happiness of amateur golfers — hard to comprehend, I know, but hey, go with me on this…

At a time when we need to be fiercely rational about every decision, we can’t be doing penance of any kind just for the sake of it.

Yes, I know that as Irish people we have this preexisting condition of guilt about being alive at all, at the best of times. But we can’t be doing that now, we just can’t afford it.

There were shades of this way back in the aweinspiring decision to cancel the Ireland vs Italy rugby match, but to let the Italian supporters come to Dublin anyway — as if, by taking some of the good out of it, the authorities felt they were covering their asses.

Indeed there is this other pre-existing condition in our culture — that of compulsive ass-covering. And it will be coming into play now, in many situations where it should not be needed.

It has already been apparent to some extent in the scrapping of the Leaving Cert, which might have been accepted by the authorities as a defining challenge, but instead was rejected as an unbearable responsibility — even in a culture in which individuals are almost never held responsible for anything, it was considered too much.

So we will never know if the system could have risen to that defining challenge, with all the benefits it could have brought, the psychological victory that might have been.

It had one very important thing going for it, the fact that exams are tightly controlled at any time — they have the advantage of being rituals which are largely predictable in form, and they are conducted in a state of general sobriety.

Which reminds us that recovering alcoholics in the early stages will often find that it is not so hard after all to get through a wedding or a funeral without drinking, because while they are superficially daunting, the basic structures of these events are well known — which makes it easier than you might have imagined to stay in control.

This could be said of the Leaving, a hundred-fold.

In football terms, these are set pieces. And if you can’t organise your defence against them, you won’t have much chance in the chaos of general play.

Which brings us naturally to Project Restart — whereby the Premier League may or may not be returning, ideally in June. Here we have set pieces within a much larger set piece, and we have the question: if this can’t be managed in reasonable safety, if such a challenge can’t at least be attempted, what chance is there for that thing we used to call everyday life?

Clearly the mental health of multitudes would be tremendously improved and in some cases pulled from the wreckage, by this project. And for us in Ireland, it has one other thing going for it, that makes it beautiful — it would be happening in England, with the British government taking responsibility for it, or at least pretending to take responsibility which they can later deny.

So we will get all the benefits of their football on our televisions, and nobody in our government or in the HSE will have to perform even the smallest act of leadership.

They can sit this one out. I guess we’ve been there before, in times of trouble, and here we are again. It’s the kind of challenge we have always fully embraced.

‘Project Restart? We’d get to enjoy their football, and they’d take all the flak’