Ugly sister spoiling view of Cinderella

We don’t need Hurling Man to remind us which of the two native sports is the jewel in the GAA’s crown

Heretical though it might be for someone who grew up in a Gaelic football heartland, but there are moments every summer when you just wish the GAA had concentrated on the hurling from day one.

That back in 1884 Michael Cusack and Maurice Davin and John Wyse Power et al said, lads, we’re going for the small ball and the small ball only. We are going to revive the ancient game of the Gael and the essential tool of our task will be a penknife, the better to burst any football that appears on or near a field of play.

Because honestly, when The Sunday Game highlights show does its hour on the hurling and then says it will be switching to “all the football action” after the ad break, it’s like going from a high-performance BMW to a clapped-out Ford Escort. You have had the most splendid meal already and now, instead of maybe a cheese board and glass of port to wrap things up, they’re bringing you a bowl of porridge. A bowl of cold porridge at that, with a rubbery crust on it, that’s been sitting in the pot all day with flies crapping on it.

No offence to the big ball. It is actually an enjoyable game to play, and much of the time satisfying to watch, until the beauty queen herself comes out onto the catwalk to strut her stuff. Suddenly the big ball is

Quasimodo compared to the model from the Victoria’s Secret catalogue.

And then, when you add in the contemporary fashion for 15 men in defence, and the endless loops of hand-passing, you’d want to jump through the television and burst the damn ball yourself. So, when Jacqui Hurley announced the end of the hurling segment last Sunday night and “all the best from this weekend’s football championship on the way after the break”, this viewer for one hadn’t the slightest appetite for a single spoon of the imminent gruel.

Donegal versus Tyrone, after what Cork and Clare had just served us up in the small ball? It’s like doing a bread-and-water vigil on Lough Derg after a week in Vegas. Hurling is the game that keeps on giving; modern Gaelic football is the game that keeps on taking away. One has maintained its big heart and generosity of spirit, the other is getting meaner and crabbier and uglier by the day.

Now, many’s the time that this observer has had his laugh at Hurling Man and all his snobbery and parochialism. Sometimes the rows between neighbouring counties are so risibly petty that Jonathan Swift’s fable comes to mind: the one in Gulliver’s Travels about the tribes warring over which end of the boiled egg should be broken — the big end or the little end?

That’s what happens, I guess, when an indigenous sport in a tiny country is only played in one region more or less of said tiny country. It can all get a bit incestuous. The miracle maybe is that a sport cultivated by such a small demographic can produce so many amazing players and so many artistic flourishes and so much heart-stopping drama. Hurling routinely serves up banquets using so few natural ingredients.

It is a sort of cultural tragedy, therefore, that a genuinely magnificent sport is confined to one dot of land on the planet and, worse still, that it is only played on a limited number of pixels on that dot of land. The minimum the founding fathers could have done was to have at least ensured that the whole island was fluent in the game.

Ah, but the cuckoo in the nest couldn’t be ignored, one supposes.

Football had already developed various iterations throughout the world over previous centuries. A version of a game played with a pig’s bladder or a sphere of textiles or a leather ball was popular in many parts. By the end of the 19th century, Association Football was spreading across Britain and the continent and indeed into Ireland as well. So the cultural nationalism that birthed the GAA in the first place came up with the customised brand that became known as Gaelic football.

But, in keeping out the game that was regulated and organised by perfidious Albion, Cusack and the boys ended up keeping out the native stick-and-ball game too from large parts of its own territory. Gaelic football was easier to learn, more convenient to play, and presumably easier to organise on rough land. Hurling became stuck in its enclave on the wider, more prosperous pastures of Munster and south Leinster.

It is truly a shame that the game didn’t go coast to coast and pole to pole. But be it cricket, baseball or hurling, stick-and-ball games have always struggled to some degree in any marketplace where a football, round or oval, could be kicked or thrown.

The easier a game is to play, apparently, the more mass appeal that it will ultimately have.

Gaelic football therefore cannibalised hurling to some degree or another, under the aegis of a governing body that wanted to promote both codes but ended up facilitating the former at the expense of the latter. Maybe this was what the market wanted when it was offered both products. And that finally we only have ourselves to blame for choosing more widely the aesthetically inferior option.

But every summer brings without fail a rebuke of our choices. If we are honest with ourselves, we don’t need Hurling Man to remind us which of the two native sports is the jewel in the crown, and which is the cruder stone.

The jewel is overshadowed by the demographics, the economics, the consumer sentiment. But on the field, during its brief perennial season of bloom, it routinely outshines its more popular sibling — and it always will.

And if anything, it is getting better while Gaelic football is getting worse. Once again, we were treated last weekend to the full repertoire of thrills and spills and skills, from Shane O’Donnell and Patrick Horgan in Cork, to Lee Chin in Belfast and Aaron Gillane in Limerick and Conor Whelan and TJ Reid out west.

It is outrageous what these fellas and their teammates can do with a rigid strip of wood and a capricious little ball. They can make it sit up and talk; they can wield the ash like it’s a conductor’s baton; they can dance and jink and shimmy and dummy like artful dodgers; and the next second they can mow you down with a body shot. Artists one minute, hit men the next, they are obliged to be both as often as they can because nothing less than the spirit of the game itself demands it from them. And being demanded of them, they duly give it, on the ground, in the air, any which way the rapids flow.

Meanwhile, Donegal versus Tyrone? Yer having a laugh. It went to extra time. More penance on Lough Derg. We’d have all taken another 20 minutes of Cork-Clare, Antrim-Wexford, even Galway-Kilkenny. A lot of us would have taken more minutes too on The Sunday Game highlights show and fewer from the big ball side of things. Seven or eight minutes is plenty for many modern games of Gaelic football; it’s a travesty for many if not most of their hurling counterparts.

These edited packages simply cannot do justice to the sheer volume of incidents and flashes of skill that these games manage to pack into 75 minutes nowadays. In fact, the programme could leave out all the scores and show just flicks and tricks and sidesteps and tackles and blockdowns and goalkeepers’ heroics — and they still wouldn’t have enough time to show them all, never mind the points and goals.

At least 140 years later, the GAA has managed to increase the number of championship hurling games that are played, thereby expanding its shop window for the casual grazer as well as the devotee. We should count our blessings in this regard, I suppose.

Cusack and his buddies would probably be astonished by the standard of skill and the athletic capacity of the modern hurler. It has evolved into a spectacle that is cosmic light years away from what they knew. It is great that it thrives where it thrives; it is sad that it does not thrive everywhere.