SHANE McGRATH: A DAY TO REMIND US WHY WE LOVE GAELIC GAMES
No matter what issues plague the GAA, All-Ireland finals remind us why we love our national games
BY WEDNESDAY afternoon, all 20,000 tickets for access to a big-screen viewing of the hurling final in the Gaelic Grounds were booked out. On Thursday, a Sinn Féin TD in Limerick was complaining about the number of match tickets allocated to clubs in the county, deciding that 15,000 is ‘just not good enough’.
The GAA warned that if they are aware of tickets that have been sold for in excess of their value, the holders will not be admitted to Croke Park today.
The first All-Ireland final of the year comes accompanied by the usual gripes and low-level controversies, most, as ever, centring on tickets.
But the modest psychodramas are a tiny price to pay for one of the most magnificent occasions in an Irish calendar, an event that this year has particular reason to be treasured.
It has been a wearying summer for the GAA, with the association facing criticism that was unprecedented in its concentration and perhaps in its level of vitriol, too.
Some of the complaints were warranted, with the ‘Newbridge or Nowhere’ saga both avoidable and dreadfully unfair on Kildare.
Many of the attacks on the association over the Liam Miller tribute match were misguided, though, with a hysteria stoked by social media leading to days of sometimes plainly idiotic allegations.
A hurling final is not a corrective for every problem in the GAA, but it is a mesmerising reminder of why it matters. Thousands have boarded planes and ferries over the course of recent days, compelled to come home by the unique attraction of seeing their county close in on glory.
One of the most powerful examples of the pull of the GAA came before the 2012 football final when Donegal played Mayo.
There are few counties in Ireland who have lost as many to emigration as these two, and a plane left Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in the days before the match, filled by returning emigrants.
A hundred different needs and wants had forced them to go, many through the dismal years of the 1980s when the western seaboard was harrowed by the loss of a generation. But a shared dream lured them back.
That story has been repeated, if not on such a dramatic scale, all through this week. Think of the supporters who have paid a fortune for airline tickets and accommodation, heedless of the cost and consumed by a hope that very little else in life can stir.
Today is one of the great days of the year, its sense of grandness and anticipation mirrored in the football final.
The hurling decider is treasured in particular after a summer of terrific action, but also because of an instinctive preference in many for a game of such speed and skill.
Its virtues have, of course, been loudly celebrated over the past three weeks thanks to ‘The Game’, a production that elevated the sport to near-divine status. It has been lapped up by hurling’s constituency, and was excellent in parts, but today’s game is about blood and bone, about anxieties and desires, about some men playing the game of their lives and others shrinking in the glare.
Hurling is no different to any other sport in suffering its bad days and being prey to cynicism and misfortune and all the other intangibles that can spoil a final.
Yet there are plenty of reasons to hope that this afternoon’s meeting will be a tremendous one, contested by two teams as physically well prepared as any that have competed for the Liam MacCarthy Cup. It has been a hot and gruelling summer for counties obliged to play more games than in any other hurling campaign. Galway have the fatigue of two replays in their legs as well. When they won the Championship last September, it was credited as much to their excellent conditioning as to their hurling skills. They will need that physical resolve to resist a Limerick side manned by big, powerful athletes, and with substitutes proven in changing the course of a game. The controversies earlier in the summer are not forgotten, and nor should they be. This, though, is the point of it all. It is why players train hard, why mentors give up dozens of man hours a week and, most importantly of all, it is why the supporters care. They and their fervour for the game and the teams make everything else possible. There will be women and men in Croke Park this afternoon preparing for a game that will be a part of the rest of their lives. There is nothing like it.