MICHEAL CLIFFORD ON THE GAA’S SELF-DEFEATING SILENCE

The GAA needs to be promoted from within and preventing its stars saying anything of interest (or anything at all) makes fools of everyone...

YOU just know that social discourse took a hammering when Séamus Callanan bit hard on his lip and advised a media pack that he was not in a position to talk this week. Callanan was attending a press launch in Dublin for a start-up hurley manufacturing company along with Kilkenny’s Richie Hogan last Wednesday, when it was announced that neither were in a position to speak to the convened print journalists beyond expressing their admiration for the product they were promoting.

Neil McManus, the Antrim player who as ever was obliging by nature, did his best manfully to fill the silent room but by then the journalists’ heads were caught up in a conspiratorial whirl.

Tipperary play Offaly in today’s Allianz League’s quarterfinal, a game which they are 1/100 to win so what was at the tip of Callanan’s tongue that was so inflammatory that would have diminished those odds.

What was he afraid of saying that would have had Kevin Ryan wall-papering the home dressing room wall today with newspaper spreads that would light such an inferno inside Offaly stomachs? Was he about to proffer a damning critique of Brian Cowan’s role in the economic meltdown of this country? Was he going to lament the disappointing standard of Charley bulls at last year’s Tullamore show? Or was he just going to let Offaly in on a national secret in that he too doesn’t find Neil Delemere to be very funny? We just don’t know and now we never will. Of course, he might just have said something that went along the lines of “Offaly have a great hurling tradition, they are a very proud county and it’s going to be all out on the day.” Yeah, he could have said that but we don’t want to be putting words into a fellow’s mouth, like.

The thing is, there is not a day that passes when we don’t marvel at the pulling power of the GAA’s top players off as well as on the pitch.

We know we should hold no fear for them on that account given that they are strapping lads and all but if they peddle the same line of chat to the opposite sex in Coppers that they give to us in Croker, well every night would be a cold one.

I mean telling a lady that you are “only taking it one night at a time,” might hint at commitment issues that could be unappealing to some, or promising a good time but only on the proviso “that it will depend on the performance we can bring on the day” might invite the kind of doubts that could leave a man alone at the end of the night with only a carton of curried chips for company.

Seriously, though, the irony that players are not allowed or can’t find their voice for games of such modest importance in March can only fill you with despair (enquires as to whether Tipperary and Kilkenny are currently operating media bans were not met with a definitive response).

It also makes a mockery of those in the hurling community who bellyache that the introduction of the Super 8s round in football next year and the moving forward of the All-Ireland finals by three weeks is shrinking the game’s shop window.

Of course, the most powerful marketing tool is the game itself but it needs a little colour to its cheeks to engage us from Monday to Friday as well.

It does not offer that; most of the top counties – and this applies equally to football – have some form of media ban in place for most of the season and what little available access there is rarely illuminates.

It is often limited to press gigs like the one last Wednesday, where the atmosphere is hardly conducive to a healthy interaction – and it is hard to blame players for clamming up in an environment where they are quite literally press-ganged

So in the main they take their money and run while the press try and piece together copy out of crumbs.

But in the main it is because players are also being coached into how best to bore the outside world in the belief that revealing one’s personality is to reveal a flaw.

It is not everyone’s way; Waterford are the notable exception, led by a manager in Derek McGrath who is never less than engaging, honest and interesting.

Perhaps it is the educator in him that he also allows his players to find their voice, without the sense that they have been brow-beaten into eating a book of clichés which are to be puked up the next time they are confronted by a microphone.

They are operating in an environment where their manager knows that there is a contradiction in telling a player that you trust him in battle but not when they opens their mouth.

Thing is, they have no idea how rarefied that environment is.

McGrath is the notable exception, he’s never less than engaging and interesting