BALLROOM WITHOUT ROMANCE

By ignoring requests to play in Aughrim, Leinster Council have confined Wicklow and Dublin to a...

THIS column knows a thing or two about how not to promote a gig. Many moons ago in the early flushes of youth when we thought Cork city’s streets were paved with student grant gold, we nearly lost the pot we were renting to urinate in.

It was Freshers week in college, the entertainment centre-piece of which was the Thursday night ball which was always a sell-out.

So we reckoned that with students flush, both with summer holiday savings and raging hormones, it was a foolproof business plan to have a fresher’s festival with live bands at a city centre venue every night of the week building up to the main event.

And so we got a band down from Dublin. It wasn’t difficult as this was at the peak of the recessionravaged Eighties when the demand for Monday night bookings was less than hectic, which might explain their manager’s coughing seizure which sounded suspiciously like muffled laughter when we struck the deal.

We plastered the college with posters and then sat back at the door of De Lacy House and waited for the money to roll in. We’re still waiting. That venue is long gone from Cork’s night scene, most likely because it never recovered from the shame of that evening; a fate which also befell the student union entertainment budget.

Just two punters – a couple – creased our palm but even then could not avail of the kind of evening which scripted wedding speeches are made of. I mean how often does a teenage couple get a band, a whole dance-floor and three idle bar staff all to themselves for the whole night?

But nah, without a romantic bone in their bodies they slithered back out and demanded their money back. All that was left for us, as the band packed up early, was to watch them drink at the free bar we had organised – arranged in the belief that it would hardly take a nibble out of our profit – before we took our painful leave of the music promotion industry.

We share this with you both to murder white space – it is the very least the trauma owes us – and to empathise with Wicklow, who a couple of weeks ago organised a ‘meet and greet’ night for their supporters with their senior footballers where, like us all those years ago, just two turned up.

Thing is, though, they bounced back from that shame last weekend against Offaly to set up the kind of gig which needs no selling.

Even we could have filled De Lacy House had U2 been lobbed into our naïve lap, but Wicklow’s dream gig is gone by the wayside because selling out a fringe venue holds no appeal to the Leinster Council.

No, they are big stadium promoters happiest when they have a headline act in Croke Park. In recent summers, having been shamed into it, they have on occasions show- their star attraction in a couple of mid-sized provincial grounds.

Wicklow, alas, don’t even have one of those; instead they have just a little ballroom of romance down Aughrim way, which has offered up the odd seductive yarn in its time. It is known as a dangerous place to dance in. Laois famously in 1986, six weeks after being crowned National League winners, hot-stepped their way out of the Championship there.

Diarmuid Connolly’s St Vincent’s even found the place a tango too far last winter so its infamy as a place where the most unlikely love yarns begin lives on.

There is no music that it could magic up, though, which would make Dublin bend its knee next weekend, but that is not the point.

If there is one positive from Dublin’s domination of Leinster it is that they bring the kind of star quality that can illuminate the darkest of corners and right now Wicklow is need of all the light it can get

Park that win – and the chaos which has infected Offaly provides some context – and you are talking about the best team in the last 40 years playing the one that finished in 32nd place in the recent National League.

And that is only the half of their troubles, as the GAA’s battle in the county continues to be an uphill one. Earlier this year Feargal Og’s, the second club in Bray – a town which has a population in excess of 32,000 – announced it was withdrawing from adult competitions as it did not have the numbers to field a team.

Two other clubs, Lackan and Kilcased

They are just big stadium promoters who are happy with a headline act

bride, amalgamated in recent times because they could not go it alone. Stories of teams giving walkovers in league games are so common they are no longer met with raised eyebrows

So when Wicklow pleaded for the fixture to be played in Aughrim, which in the words of their chairman Martin Fitzgerald, would have ‘assisted the hard work in promotion of the GAA’ they should have been listened to. But instead the Leinster Council turned a deaf ear, deeming Aughrim’s 8,000 capacity simply too small and instead it remains scheduled for O’Moore Park.

That is the same O’Moore Park which, two years ago, was not deemed fit for Laois to host their opening round game against Dublin, which was instead moved to a less-than-sold-out Nowlan Park.

It must have grown seats in the interim, given that last year, when Carlow’s Cullen Park was not allowed host their quarter-final against Dublin, the Portlaoise venue was deemed fit for purpose.

The cornerstone of the Leinster council’s argument is the terms and conditions of the GAA’s season ticket scheme which gifts all holders free admission to their county’s opening Championship match. Those terms and conditions should state that it applies only where possible, on this occasion it isn’t.

Alternatively, they could offer up to the estimated 3,000 Dublin season ticket holders a waiver, reserving that free ticket for their next match in Croke Park.

If there was a will, a way would be easily found, but instead Leinster is happy to torch a little bit of rare romance for a few euros more.

The music died long ago for them.