SHANE McGRATH
No blind loyalty
AGAA enthusiast with a weakness for good books should really not be in their fifth decade before reading Over The Bar. It has, however, only been in recent weeks that Breandán Ó hEithir’s terrific memoir has been savoured.
The book is a long time out of print and intermittent snoops online finally yielded a copy last month.
Ó hEithir was from Inis Mór on the Aran Islands and worked as a broadcaster and writer. He was an influential Irish language journalist, and was a powerful force for the native culture in RTÉ, as well as writing a novel, Lig Sin i gCathú, that had the distinction of being the only one written in Irish to become a bestseller.
It is Over The Bar that is generally considered his best work. It has, in fact, a fair claim on the designation masterpiece.
It was written in 1984, when Ó hEithir was 54 (he died in 1990, having suffered with cancer).
His upbringing was fascinating and despite being born and reared in what one might have supposed was one of the most remote places in Ireland, he actually enjoyed a wide spread of cultural influences.
These included a radio officer based in Kilronan called Roger Hammond, whose brother, Wally, was a famed English cricketer.
This exposure, combined with his talent as a writer, allowed Ó hEithir to put Irish life and, in particular Gaelic games, in a fuller context.
The memoir is subtitled, ‘A Personal Relationship with the GAA’ and it obsessed the author from his early years, as the Atlantic bobbed around him.
That passion was maintained through his life, even if he was able to see the failings and problems in the association with a clarity not always enjoyed by his peers.
There is a sweetness to Ó hEithir’s descriptions of his first visits to Croke Park, for a football semifinal between Mayo and Kerry in 1939, and the hurling final in 1940.
Tickets for the hurling came to his father unexpectedly. ‘It seemed too good to be true,’ writes Ó hEithir, ‘and I spent the night sleeping fitfully, worried that my father would lose the tickets and that the two of us would be left standing outside Croke Park, listening to the roars of the crowd and pleading in vain with stony-faced officials.’
There are small children today who don’t sleep the night before their first visit to a match or a stadium that has enchanted them from afar.
But the fact is that devotion to a sport as described in Over The Bar is not as instinctive or as widespread as it once was.
Two stories this week illustrate as much.
First, there was the pointless handwringing over the nature of support for the Irish team against England at Lansdowne Road. Fans were criticised for being slow in taking their seats for kick-off last weekend, and their passion for the cause thereafter was also queried.
The blame was put on supporters who were there for a day out: the prospect of a match between a vibrant Irish side and this country’s oldest rivals was tantalising, even with some tickets costing well in excess of €100.
They were perhaps not aflame with a burning love for Irish rugby at all its levels, but bemoaning this fails to understand the priorities of modern fans.
All sports still have their die-hards and their lifelong devotees, but people are happy to shift their allegiance between codes now. They want entertainment, and they will only spend their hard-earned money on events that attract them. Critics can carp about this, but Irish rugby wouldn’t function as a successful professional enterprise without them. These transient supporters fill Thomond Park for big matches, but they are as likely to be in Semple Stadium for a Munster hurling final. Or, as the second story about supporters this week showed, they will stay away if the fare on offer doesn’t interest them. The figures produced by Croke Park show how much the GAA now depends on big matches and a handful of teams to maintain football Championship attendances at a high level. And they also show that a game mired in difficulties around standards, cynicism and the rules of play is not attracting support in the way it once did. There is a broader reason, too, one that a young Breandán Ó hEithir daydreaming on Inis Mór could never have imagined. Old loyalties do not exercise the hold they did. Lives are busy and draining. When people go to a match, they want entertainment. Sports can no longer rely on easy assumptions.