SHANE McGRATH
Sport has an essential role to play in our recovery and that cannot be ignored
BETWEEN 2008 and 2013, funding for Irish sport shrunk by a quarter.
During the years of the last recession – a time that could, in the coming months and years of inevitably brutal cutbacks, seem like a sundappled idyll – the language surrounding the Government’s budget befitted a cheap crime novel.
Words like slashed and pain, agonising and ruthless dotted the coverage.
When the financial chaos meant the old age pension was threatened, the Garda Training College was closed because there was no money to train new recruits, and the health services were cut to the bone, carping about the impact felt by sport could have sounded misplaced.
It wasn’t, though – and it won’t be when advocates for funding in Irish sport resist the inevitable squeeze on funding that will occur whenever this dreadful time passes.
The societal importance of sport has, of course, never been more apparent than in these bewildering days.
Hundreds of thousands hanker for it as entertainment.
March should be the busiest month for the sports desk in a newspaper.
The Premier League is reaching its decisive stages, and the Champions League knock-out phases narrow contenders down to a high-level few.
The Leagues in hurling and football inch towards their concluding rounds and, more importantly, the Championships, drawing ever closer, start to shape conversations and stir quickening excitement.
The Six Nations and Cheltenham make the weeks around St Patrick’s Day hectic.
The Masters is imminent.
What should be a glorious time is now, instead, blank and quietly terrifying.
Sport serves society as more than an entertainment, even if in many of our lives it is a major source of diversion.
Sport is also a lived passion. It is the way millions in this country get exercise, between team sport, jogging, dawn swims, and sweaty weekend cycles that try to keep middle-aged spread in check with each turn of the pedals.
It is in the absence of these precious activities that the current restrictions are sharply felt.
Of course this is in service of a greater good, but it is reasonable to suppose that there are many Irish people who crave the fresh air more than they do a trip to the pub.
That is why sports funding is a topic of which people should be aware, and why when the cuts are made – and that will happen as soon as some notion of normal life is restored, with the strong prospect of an emergency budget – the importance of sport has to be highlighted.
There is a lot of talk about the shape our lives will take when this rotten fog lifts.
It is said that our understanding of normal will have to bend and accommodate changes implemented in days, that might have taken years in other circumstances.
In this future, one after which every soul in the country now longs, there is certainly a need for a reordering of priorities.
The applause given to healthworkers was heartening, but they and the places they work need more tangible, longer-lasting support.
As part of a greater commitment to public services – which must include an acceptance that this is a cause to which all must contribute – sport must be valued.
This means treating it as more than a photo-opp, or a glorified babysitting service.
Sport can be central to supporting physical and mental health in this State, but only if it is protected.
It is, traditionally, a budgetary item that can be easily targeted. The savings are not great, but they are easily made because politicians understand it will not lose them votes the way spending reductions in health and education will.
Now it is daft to think there will be a line of spending in the State that will not be scrutinised given the cost that must be borne in trying to save the country from the worst effects of Covid-19.
Savings will be sought absolutely everywhere.
But it would be wonderful if there was a pause while the red biro is poised over sports expenditure.
It is not a frivolous expense for any country, especially when we start to emerge from a time that could last months, and which could take a serious toll on the physical and mental health of many citizens.
It could, rather, prove to be a vital part of Ireland’s recovery.
And we will need to recover.
The economic cost is one major consideration, but individuals will need time to get over this, too.
The entire country is frightened and living within unfamiliarly tight confines.
We dream of open space and bracing fresh air.
We dream of precious old sport.