WHEN PASSION MEETS POISON

There’s little point in raging at those with pen and paper, too much time on their hands and too little sense in their heads... that is barren ground to sow seeds of respect

WE REMEMBER it like it was 12 years ago. Kerry were All-Ireland champions yet again and the canister was on tour, this time to Caherciveen. With manager Jack O’Connor, captain Declan O’Sullivan, along with Killian Young and Bryan Sheehan from the one network of surrounding parishes, they had convened in their droves to pay homage.

And even though the procession was late and the sky emptied its bladder, the majority stayed rooted while some of us took shelter from the storm.

In the end, we viewed it from the door of an ale house as it snaked its way up the town, but one local could not be lured from the counter to the doorway in order to acknowledge the guests of honour. ‘I will in my h**e,’ he spat. ‘Will you look at them there now and they marching up the street and not a word about the All-Ireland they f***ed away last year.’

Ah yeah, welcome to Páidí Ó Sé’s animal Kingdom.

The suggestion that Kerry folk form football’s most demanding constituency is now hard-wired in many minds as fact.

It is not representative, but there is a flourishing and damaging minority.

The bar-stool pilot that evening is the original of the species. It was not enough to have Sam back in the here and now, he was still waiting for an apology – most likely a personal one – for the fact that it has spent the previous 12 months touring Tyrone.

How do you get inside the head of that? And do you really want to?

It was obviously an affront to his standing as a Kerryman. Defeat had visited great shame upon him and his family, diminishing his standing in Gaeldom’s beer hall.

The only blessing was that he had a pint, rather than a pen, in his hand as literature’s loss was undoubtedly Jack O’Connor’s gain.

Éamonn Fitzmaurice went and opened a can of worms last weekend with the revelation that he was in receipt of a ‘boxful of anonymous letters’.

He never actually referred to it as ‘hate mail’, but that is what it was transformed into in tabloid mindsets – and it became the GAA’s dark theme of the week.

That might seem a trifling observation, but it is an important one.

Hate is a powerful four-letter word and we are not quite sure if it is appropriate.

After all, there was evidence of real hate last week on this island.

Willie Frazer sells himself as an advocate for the victims of the Troubles in the North. However, his approach would make him – in the words of Fitzmaurice – a ‘lightning rod’ for attracting the ire of the nationalist community, and he, quite literally, lit a spark.

A bonfire, which was constructed in Newry, enquired of Frazer, whose father was killed by the IRA, ‘have you found your daddy yet?’ That is undiluted hate, folks. The deranged scrawling of the eternally disaffected, raging about how a double sweeper is not the Kerry way is something else entirely.

Fitzmaurice did not leave because of the lunatic fringe, but because he possessed the self-awareness to know that the Kerry public could not see this as the new beginning that had been promised.

Indeed, many viewed the Finuge man – ridiculous as it may sound, given his record – as coming from a failed past.

His decision to walk away was not bowing to anonymous letters, just the inescapable reality that confronted him.

Whether that reality is sourced in reason, well that is another matter.

Passion and reason among fans go as well together as Shane Ross and timing.

The Premier League circus across the water got underway this weekend and, by the end of next month, there will be a public clamour for the head of someone like Neil Warnock because Cardiff City’s journeymen are not playing like Brazil.

We are no different here. The GAA does entitlement like nothing else and that is both a blessing and a curse.

That old line is always thrown out about how football is a religion in Kerry.

If it is, then it is an a la carte doctrine. You have some who would not be unduly bothered about attending the weekly 10 o’clock Mass; but when the Pope is in town, they are in danger of drowning in holy water.

But, then again, there are many like them.

All week, one after another, John Kiely, Micheál Donoghue and James Horan have stepped forward to announce they have been on the other end of toxic mail.

Of course, just because it is a pervasive culture does not make it right and we are now living in far more toxic times where poisonous words are only the swipe of a smartphone away.

The abuse and downright lies spread by social media is a fact of life and one which is likely to reach inside the door of every house, not to mind every dressing room in this land.

Last year, then Donegal chairman Seán Dunnion was moved to label the social media abuse directed at former county manager Rory Gallagher as ‘disgusting’, but that has become an unavoidable reality and there is absolutely nothing that the GAA can do about it.

This is a societal issue and it is one that can only be dealt with by legislation – something that has been far too slow in coming.

But in an age where controlling the controllables has become the mantra of sports management, there is little point in raging over those with too much time and paper on their hands and too little sense in their heads.

That is barren ground to sow seeds of respect.

You don’t reason with fools, you ignore them.

The only blessing was that he had a pint rather than a pen in his hand as literature’s loss was undoubtedly Jack O’Connor’s gain