GAA ARE DANCING IN THE DARK
It’s time to be like Mike and open a promotional window
IT’S hard not to watch
The Last Dance and think; imagine if the GAA ever properly let the cameras in? The access, the interviews, the press conferences, the footage — it’s as though Michael Jordan knew instinctively that, as far as basketball was concerned, he was the star in his own movie.
Or, at least, the star in a 10-part all-access series focusing on the 1998 Chicago Bulls that is a small screen tour de force, a slice of social, family and sporting history from the season that ended in a second ‘three-peat’ – a second run of three consecutive NBA championships that confirmed his status as the GOAT.
Greatest Of All Time is a phrase that has become hackneyed with overuse, but is the only appropriate one.
As it stands, 1998 was the same year that Galway football’s own collar-up poster boy Pádraic Joyce featured in the ground-breaking Gaelic games documentary A Year
’Til Sunday, one that captured the spirit and emotion of the county’s unscripted Championship breakout season, which, just like The
Last Dance, ended in a gleaming trophy being raised aloft.
An earthy masterpiece that came from the cinematic vision of Pat Comer, who just happened to be the team’s sub goalkeeper. Comer introduced another cast of characters who live on in technicolour, including Joyce, now the current manager.
Just imagine if PJ took his lead from MJ and let the cameras in — what an audience there would be when the earth tilts back on its axis and the games resume. Because this 10-parter showed what a promotional tool the camera can be when it knows where to point.
Episodes nine and 10 of The Last Dance dropped on Netflix yesterday morning to round off a series that used Jordan and the Bulls as a jump-off point in trying to understand greatness in a sporting environment, as much as take in so much else along the way, from the politics of shooting a Nike advert to Jordan’s place in the US political divide.
‘Don’t ever talk trash to Black Jesus,’ was the colourful conclusion from Reggie Miller of the Indiana Pacers when talking through their own on-court running battles, Jordan having recorded every slight.
‘From that point on, he was on my list,’ Jordan admits when rookie Bryon Russell had a pop at him about quitting the game the first time following the murder of his father James.
The famous ‘flu game’ against Utah Jazz when he shook off food poisoning, from a pizza the night before, to produce a sweating, scene-stealing show reminded of Brian Whelahan talking about his own sickbed miracle in the 1998 AllIreland final on the recent
Hurler’s Life podcast. ‘We will win. We will win Game Seven.’ Another proclamation from Jordan going into the pivotal battle with Miller and the Pacers that carried echoes of Ger Loughnane’s piece to camera at half-time in the 1995 All-Ireland when Clare made their own breakthrough.
Here was a lesson too in what made Jordan great. How he didn’t need yoga or mediation or Zen Buddhism to feel at one with himself on the court.
‘Michael’s a mystic. He’s never anywhere else. He was completely present,’ said author Mark Vancil, getting to the heart of the attraction of sport and that capacity to drown out everything else in the moment.
The access, the interviews, the press conference, the footage… and the characters. It’s hard to think of the GAA equivalent of Dennis
Rodman skipping training during the 1998 NBA Finals to join Hulk Hogan in a wrestling circus show where he hits another guy over the head with a chair — before the prodigal son with the dyed head returns to the Bulls. Maybe the free-spirited Diarmuid Connolly nearly skipping town for Boston last year before his own return to the Dublin fold? Steve Kerr’s tragic back story added even more emotional depth — his father murdered, shot in the head during his time in Beirut as president of the American University.
A ALL this came after the telling of how Jordan’s father, too, had been murdered, which prompted the NBA megastar to quit the game and try to make it in baseball.
That the series comes with a Hollywood ending only adds to the sense that truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction.
Jordan grew the game. From 80 countries in 1992 to over 200 now. Just like Tiger Woods did for golf, and before Twitter and Instagram and Facebook took off. There’s a lesson there for the GAA in terms of promotional potential.
It’s a little bit dispiriting to hear that one county team has re-implemented a press ban, in a pandemic, on the back of a player or two deciding to make their voices heard.
What lockdown has shown is that the players have so many different stories to tell, outside of the mundane game talk. Since lockdown, I’ve listened to Brendan Bugler talk about remote teaching at St Flannan’s College and watched TJ Reid channel Joe Wicks to coach the youth in PE and GAA skills.
So many players are throwing themselves into all sorts of activities that capture the essence of the GAA and its community spirit — Aidan O’Shea, Henry Shefflin and Kieran Donaghy appearing on The
Late Late Show to help the ‘Do it for Dan’ campaign on its way to hitting its €2 million target.
Ciarán Kilkenny has been giving online daily tutorials in Gaelic games to the nation — Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was just one of those giving kudos to the Dublin footballer.
Now imagine the response and interest to footage of training from a Dublin senior football session?
Stephen Cluxton has claims to greatness — in terms of goalkeeping and the game. Jim Gavin’s six All-Irelands as manager mirror the six rings of Bulls coach Phil Jackson, but what do we truly know of both?
Imagine the audience if the veil was lifted on another team who defined a decade.
The documented 2005 season under Pillar Caffrey: The Dubs – The Story Of A Season remains as a worthy time capsule; Blues Sisters is a soulful connection with the ladies football team. Westmeath supporters will always have
Marooned and Páidí Ó Sé’s ‘grain of rice’ call to arms. Oh for a grain of footage.
Maybe it’s time for the GAA to prompt teams to release a pre-Championship clip each from training. Write it into the broadcast deal, that, no more than providing Sunday Game walk-ons or headshots, that a certain amount of training footage has to be supplied.
Commission a documentary each season, on a different county.
Let the counties have the final edit in all cases.
Use the State Papers approach and release them at a less sensitive time if needed. It’s not about giving away secrets, just opening a promotional window. It’s about growing the games.
When the action returns, it’s time to let the cameras in.