Soccer’s slide accelerates as GAA and rugby prosper
AS its legend deepens with every fresh All-Ireland win, one might wonder if the Blue Wave was first published on tablets of stone. Its full title was ‘Unleashing the Blue Wave: A Strategy for Dublin GAA 2011-2017’, and it is now credited with inspiring this age of metropolitan rule.
In decades to come, perhaps some affluent true blue will spend thousands on a first edition, framing it and hanging it in their libraries between an original Bunreacht na hÉireann and the red card shown to Charlie Redmond in the 1995 final.
Important as the Blue Wave was, much of the work supporting Dublin’s current excellence had begun long before 201l and centred on coaching at the granular level of the association.
Teams need players but they also depend on volunteers and the demands of everyday life.
Recognising that simple, elemental fact inspired much of what has followed.
‘In the twenty-first century, it (Dublin GAA) will take a “whole of life” view and facilitate its members in any changes of location or lifestyle due to education, career and family, rather than expecting members to build their lives around existing GAA structures and practices,’ reads one section of the document.
That attitude informs the entire strategy: loyalty or support are not assumed. Once, teams and codes could count on generations of instinctive participation from communities.
That no longer applies, in rural as well as urban settings. GAA clubs in Dublin had to work themselves to the bone to survive in areas not commonly associated with hurling and football. That is why officials react angrily to demands that
HIS club is not much of a refuge for Declan Rice these times. He hasn’t played a Premier League match for West Ham since being taken off at half time in their 4-0 loss to Liverpool on the first day of the season.
And he could be 90 minutes away from more uncertainty.
West Ham visit Everton today facing a side addled by injury and defensive weakness. It is an ideal opportunity to recover from four consecutive defeats.
Lose again, though, and manager Manuel Pellegrini could pay with his job.
central funding for coaches in the capital be reduced in a crude stab at balance.
In his report to the 2016 Dublin convention, secretary John Costello made the point vividly.
‘Bleed that well dry and it won’t be long before soccer and rugby make inroads back into terrain that Dublin GAA has fought, tooth and nail, to colonise in the first place.’
The language was stirring, especially the use of ‘colonise’.
That is how the GAA have viewed the competition for playing numbers – and it’s why they have been so successful. All-Irelands nourish popularity, which drives participation, which deepens the pool in which future stars can be found.
In an environment where competing sporting codes and other distractions proliferate, Dublin’s success has repercussions beyond Gaelic games.
They are one of the most powerful sporting brands in Ireland, along with the Irish rugby team.
Rugby’s appeal is more top-down, with nothing like the numbers at club level that Gaelic games can attract. But Joe Schmidt’s team will, within weeks, be embarking on 12 months that promise to be the most momentous in the history of Irish rugby.
Ireland are the defending Six Nations champions, that title secured with a Grand Slam, while also boasting the best club side in Europe in Leinster.
Rugby stars rival GAA heroes as targets for advertisers — their wholesome images popular with supermarkets trying to sell lifestyles to the nation.
Should Ireland beat New Zealand in November — a stiff but not remote prospect — their popularity will thicken, and their status as the new national team will strengthen.
Between now and the start of the World Cup in 12 months’ time, the hopes, dreams and life stories of the players will proliferate.
There was another national team, once.
There was only one, in fact.
When someone talked about Ireland, they were speaking of the soccer side.
No longer. Soccer long ago went tumbling down the national affections.
This is not all the fault of Martin O’Neill or Roy Keane, but events of the past week have deepened the impression of a haphazard, mediocre group lacking in inspiration and good news.
This should be alarming John Delaney and the governors of Irish soccer.
With the exception of captain Seamus Coleman, there is no Ireland international with a profile to rival Bernard Brogan or Johnny Sexton. Part of this is a practical, unavoidable issue: Ireland’s players make their living in England and are at a physical remove from supporters’ lives.
But it is mostly down to the mediocrity that has been eating into the set up like a fungus for over a year now. The pity is there are stories worth sharing within the squad.
Aiden O’Brien gave interesting interviews when he was called up by O’Neill a year ago, for instance, and offers another take on the complex issue of second and third-generation players representing this country.
Poor results feed the negativity, though, and soccer threatens to slip in the national affections past the point of caring.