WIT, WISDOM AND A WITHERING EDGE
Hurling loves to remind us how great it is (despite being an exclusive club reserved for a handful of counties) and football should adopt some small ball self-regard
Football should follow hurling and love itself a little more
THE GAME, which will be coming to a living room near you very soon, could hardly be more timely.
The three-part series promises, with the aid of cinematic production values and over 60 contributors all singing love songs, to deliver what hurling needs right now.
Because, if hurling has one failing it is its endless capacity for selfloathing.
Last week, Ger Loughnane only called a good game great…
The hope, after three weeks of exposure to such a love-in, is that hurling man realises the game he cherishes is so wonderful he megaphones that truth to the rest of the world. We feebly jest, of course. But here’s the thing, if hurling is worthy – and after this summer’s sugar-laced drama who can argue – of cinematic endearment on our flat screens, where does its uglier sibling fit into the TV schedule when it is showcased beyond the Sunday Game studio?
We are torn between either the Ray D’Arcy show – far too much exposure for far too little illumination or entertainment – or a weekly instalment of Prime Time Investigates.
The latter would be fun; a silhouetted figure set against the backdrop of the Sperrin Mountains, whose soft Derry voice quivers traumatically as he outlines the abuse suffered by the game under its current guardians.
Indeed, whereever it stands in the mainstream schedule it won’t fall under Songs of Praise. That’s no bad thing either because celebrating a sport for its untarnished beauty is to peddle a lie. The game of perfect only exists for the deluded.
We were not privy to last week’s private screening of ‘The Game’ but, not for the first time, we are going to take a puck into the dark.
Chances are in this tribute there may be reference made to hurling’s vast wastelands but there will be no agonised discussion as to how the GAA has failed to spread the greatest game in the world barely beyond half a dozen counties.
Or if the massive targeted investment into Dublin hurling has been repaid by a single League and Leinster title in the last decade?
Or are Carlow, despite winning the McDonagh Cup, still only running to stand still?
That’s not a critique of a programme we have not seen, it is a window into a hurling mind-set that is the polar opposite of its football equivalent.
The reason Gaelic football is our national game is not down to the insignificant fact that it is played with serious intent in more nooks and crannies than any other sport on this land, but that its mind-set reflects us a nation. We are a country more at ease with ourselves when we are complaining. Show us sunshine and we will throw sunburn, a water hose ban and dwindling reserves of silage right back in its face. We don’t know perfect. We couldn’t handle perfect. When hurling man sings about the endless glory of its game, all some of us hear is a jingoistic song about how ‘it’s coming home’. It will never be within Gaelic football’s gift to dedicate its universal love of itself to film without people falling out with each other for good.
Joe Brolly would lose respect for Alan Larkin as a man for that high tackle on Mickey Ned, Martin McHugh would start riots in Tralee after calling out Mikey Sheehy as a two-trick pony, Pat Spillane would start fighting with himself after realising that it was his instinct to drop deep for ball that gave the game its upset tummy in the first place.
No good could come from it, I tell you.
Those hurling lads are suffering from what is known as post-colonial traumatic stress disorder, in that they believe, as their one-time conquerors still do, they will always rule the waves if they sing about it loud enough.
Their football brothers are cowed by years of bad weather and worse luck, ‘sure it would be a great game only for...’
The GAA’s greatest achievement is not in its promotion of two indigenous sports but rather in how it has managed to house two alien tribes peacefully under the one roof for this long.
I mean think about it; there has been blue murder all summer in football because eight teams, on merit, will play two extra games over three years. The accusation is that football has become elitist.
There have been barely eight counties playing hurling for well over 100 years and they believe it has so worked out so well they have now made a film out it.
And while hurling has been lauded for the introduction of lower tier competitions, football sees such a concept as the ultimate failure that dare not speak its name.
The wonder are not the games but that we view them there through such different lenses.
Perhaps, if one borrowed a little from the other we would all be richer. Hurling might benefit a little from football’s self-awareness. On a micro level, for example, cynicism is pervasive in both games but only one has sought to address it.
On a macro one, hurling’s beauty is compromised by the reality that for far too many people in this country it is only skin-deep.
It is right that it is celebrated for the visceral feast it is, it is wrong that it is not developed so everyone gets a taste.
And football could do worse than take from hurling and love itself a little bit more. Mind you, it will need help to do that but it is achievable.
A new competition structure – and the best we have seen is the Sean Kelly/Jim McGuinness proposal linking League positions and provincial Championships to feed into a two-tiered Championship – and an acceptance that mass defence football will kill the game as a spectacle until rules are changed would be a great starting point.
Hurling should enjoy its deserved exposure on the big screen. Football should focus on its big possibilities.
Together, one day, they might just make quite the picture.