EXCLUSIVE Marc Ó Sé on why the rugby failure is a wake-up call
MAKING the best of what they don’t have, the women folk back in Ventry have a GPS system of sorts for tracking their thirsty other halves. The mobile phone signal is so poor in a couple of the ale houses that while you are supping you are also out of contact with the outside world.
Now, while that might sound like a little bit of heaven — if you are in the covert business of sneaking off for a quiet pint — often there is hell to pay for it. They know where we are. The phone without a signal is not your friend; rather it is an ankle monitor for those under house arrest.
Which is why these days, the number of lads who ‘forget’ their phone, by leaving it at home or on top of the nearest hill where it is assured to ring when called, grows by the day.
Suffice to say that constituency was not shaking its heads in disbelief when Ireland’s bid to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup was ranked bottom. Of course we’re disappointed. Not disappointed, just perhaps not as surprised as the rest of the country.
Like every proud Irish man I would have loved for this country to have been able to showcase its many qualities to the world by hosting the tournament in six years.
But we should not be blinded by our pride. There were parts of the World Rugby report which were hard to stomach, such as the damning assessment that Killarney was not fit for purpose to host Romania going head-to-head with Canada.
Seriously, this is a town that has hosted the Irish Open on a couple of occasions and every two years, Cork come across the border for what is uniformly recognised as one of the most atmospheric sporting events in the country.
It’s one of the most popular tourist towns in this country, renowned for its hotels and hospitality and yet somehow it did not meet the requirements of World Rugby.
But the instinct of every native is just to see the beauty of his own shore, and rather than raging against how harshly we were evaluated — and ultimately it was the damning assessment of our bid that sunk us this week when the votes were counted — we need to recognise the harsh truth.
Yes we had much to offer, but we also have much to improve on and we will do our selves no favours if we choose to bury our heads in the sand while raging at the injustice of it all.
Because the reality is that while we are smirking into our pints in our phone-signal free zone pubs, the outside world is laughing at us.
It was interesting, but hardly surprising, to see the poor Wi-Fi service at a number of the proposed stadia referenced in the report. In this technological age, not having a fit-for-purpose broadband service when proposing to stage a global event is a bit like building a seaside hotel but not bothering with indoor lavatories. It doesn’t work.
And that is an issue that goes right to the heart of one of the biggest social and economic challenges facing our society, the neglect and withering death of rural Ireland.
If that regression is to be halted, infrastructure needs to be put in place to ensure that rural communities are in a position to help themselves by attracting investment and jobs to tackle the blight that is depopulation.
Once upon a time infrastructure was another word for roads — and anyone who has ever spent an hour staring out the car window while crawling through Adare on the way south, will argue it still does — now it means communications.
It is an outrage that this has not been addressed, an absolute disgrace that this first-world economy has overseen third-world broadband provision for large swathes of rural Ireland.
This is an issue that goes right to the heart of the GAA; no jobs, no people, no children and eventually no club. This is happening all over rural Ireland and I see it on my own doorstep.
For example, down in south Kerry which once boasted 10 clubs, they played a minor championship a couple of years back where six clubs ended up playing in the final.
On one side, you had two clubs — Renard and Caherciveen — and on the other you had four — Valentia, Portmagee, Derrynane and Sneem.
Let me draw you a road map; to drive from Mick O’Connell’s Valentia to John Egan’s Sneem would take well over an hour and yet that’s the length they had to go to cobble together a team of Under-18 footballers. That is why this week our failed World Cup rugby bid has to be put in context.
It can be argued that we won more than we lost by making it to the start line in the first place.
The GAA once more underlined its generosity of spirit by backing the IRFU’s bid and it has been rewarded by more than just goodwill.
One of the obvious legacies of the bid was the funding received and the fast-tracking redevelopment of Páirc Uí Chaoimh which transformed the GAA’s ugliest stadium to one that is on a par with Croke Park. But the real legacy of this bid will be even greater if the lessons of our failure are heeded.
In highlighting that we have a two-track economy complete with a rich-man, poor-man infrastructural imbalance, World Rugby held up a mirror and we can’t ignore the unattractive reflection.
Huge parts of this country need investment — resources and infrastructure to breathe and thrive as self-sustaining communities. That should be the goal that drives us and not hosting a four-week rugby tournament.
And when the day dawns that we get called home out of the dark, we will happily evacuate our porter bunker.