Eurovision Omens are good every witch way...
AS APPALLING acts of cultural vandalism go it’s up there with the worst.
A national treasure shuttered. A piece of our finest heritage blockaded. The viewing pleasure of the masses thwarted by makeshift barricades and walls.
The Book of Kells you ask? No, no — the outrage that is the GAA’s hurling TV fixture list.
The past few weeks have witnessed some of the summer’s most titanic clashes of the ash between Cork, Clare, Tipp and Waterford.
Tribes going to war.
The force of nature that is Davy Fitzgerald running the spectrum of all human emotion on the sideline as his side won a game they were meant to lose and drew a game they should have won.
But all the thrills and spills and drama went largely unnoticed among most of the population.
That’s because some of the GAA’s biggest assets now lurk in the TV wilderness behind pay walls on its GAA GO service.
Ghosted
Add a championship schedule that is shorter than an Irish summer barbecue season and Croke Park mandarins have effectively ghosted their own games.
Leinster Rugby and Bruce Springsteen will be the only people to fill the GAA’s flagship stadium this side of this year’s AllIreland finals.
In August, Coldplay and AC/DC will get more minutes on the pitch than Cian Lynch or Con O’Callaghan.
There’s only one thing for it. GAA fans need to take a leaf from those revolting Trinity College students who are holding the Book of Kells hostage.
It’s time they rose up and joined the age of rage. There’s no use just ringing Joe Duffy when every other self-respecting cause is taking to the streets.
The biggest business in Dublin last weekend was protest. Whoever you were there was a march for you. Pro-life or far right? Anti-fascist or pacifist? Pro-Palestine or anti-Putin?
These days, all of God’s creatures have taken a place in the great Irish protest choir.
Some think it’s OK to blockade children’s bedtime stories if they are being read by a dad who happens to be a politician. Others are outraged at privileged students disrupting people’s plans for a nice day out.
There was almost a rugby sit-in to be allowed drink pints on the hallowed bleachers of Jones Road.
If it’s confusing that everyone rallies to the same-coloured flag, well at least they are all trying to be heard.
Having reached today years of age without visiting my native city’s greatest cultural asset, typically I had a booking to go see the Book of Kells last weekend. I was happy to let it go to waste to see people standing for a just cause that they believe in.
In a time of crisis and collapse, “business as usual” shouldn’t be an option.
Whether your cause is the dying natural world or dying children, the status quo of a quiet life is a luxury you can’t afford to let other people have.
Even if you get your kicks marching with the other ‘Little Irelanders’, well that’s your fortunate right in the democracy you probably hate, so long as you’re not looting shoe shops and burning trams.
There’s still time for GAA fans to get in on the act. And don’t worry if you haven’t found the protest for you yet, you can always start your own movement and cut out the middleman.
I might even join you, if I’m not chained to St James’s Gate on my ‘No to €7 Pints’ crusade.
WHISPER it, but the Eurovision Omens seem to be aligning towards the unthinkable – another Irish victory.
The non-binary (nonmusical) phenomenon that is Bambie Thug seems to have done a deal with the dark side. A demonic, witchcraftinspired routine finally saw Ireland escape the dreaded semi-final group of death for the first time in years.
The nation held its breath, Marty Whelan was nearly hospitalised and Johnny Logan was declared King of Eurovision by our arch rivals Sweden.
In a nervous RTE they may have to get the band who brought you Toy Show the Musical and the Barter account back together to foot the bill for it all.
Even a bout of food poisoning from a dodgy shellfish couldn’t derail the Bambie Bandwagon. The singer said: “It was gross, horrible. I was
‘both ends’…”
Sounds like it was nearly their Waterloo.
PS: It’s 30 years since Michael Flatley exploded onto the interval stage at Eurovision.
He is marking the occasion by releasing his own brand ‘Flatley’s Irish Whiskey’.
We will never forgive him for not labelling it ‘Liverdance.’
NASA has unveiled plans to build a railway on the moon to service a future lunar base.
That may sound impressive, but could they construct a Metro in Dublin in under 30 years for less than €2 billion?
Now that really would be one giant Leap (card) for Tramkind.