MICHAEL CUSACK WASN’T around long enough to see Sigmund Freud cherry-pick all the odds and ends of psychoanalysis and package them for the mass market.
Imagine if Cusack had lived long enough, thumbing through a 1917 copy of ‘The Taboo of Virginity.’
After wading through hours of phallus-based conjecture and theories, things would pick up when he came to ‘The Narcissism of Small Differences.’
‘This is the shit. This is the shit right here’, goes the Cusackian review in this fantasy construct.
The entire premise of the philosophical viewpoint is what props up the GAA. Every last bit of it.
The theory is that we are all so similar, that we cannot hack it.
It insults our ego, because we refuse to believe that we have anything in common with the schmuck next door with the ride-on lawnmower and the crease ironed into his jeans.
Or what could you possibly have in common with yer wan across the way with her overshare habit in What’s App?
No. Instead we nurture our perceived differences. In the modern era that can manifest itself in fairly harmless ways; dress sense, musical and artistic preferences, mild political divergences and so on.
Throughout history, wars were declared off the back of such issues. The English and Scots is a good example. Or even the English and everyone else.
Far-left and far-right political factions can exhaust themselves by bitching and back-stabbing among their own groups, rather than fighting for their own perceived causes.
Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, neighbouring tribes in the western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The Hatfields and McCoys. Your own family even. You know this.
Which is where the GAA, and the upcoming football championships, come in.
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What difference is there, in all honesty, between someone from Benburb at the outer reaches of south-east Tyrone, and somebody from less than two miles down the road in Blackwatertown, north-west Armagh? On the face of it, nothing. But go to this Sunday evening in the Athletic Grounds and they belong to two very distinct warring factions.
The narcissism of small differences, taken to its’ logical extremes, can even split people WITHIN a parish. For further reading, look into Ciaran, Errigal.
It works. And here’s one thing that might take a bit of swallowing – while the Brits are never not at it, this thing of ours might never have caught on only for them starting to carve the country into counties.
Work that started in the late 12th century and took over 500 years to complete. While the express target of aiding their administration and milking the asset for all it was worth, they planted a seed of county zealotry.
If you were forming a GAA now, and this is something the demographics committee have wrestled with, you wouldn’t have things the way they are.
There might be too many people in Dublin, with 8,414 registered male GAA players and 84 GAA clubs.
There might be too little in Fermanagh, with 954 male players and 23 clubs.
Such numbers are naturally reflected through success on the field. Dublin have riches beyond the wildest imagination, whereas Fermanagh have never won so much as a national league final at any level, never mind a provincial title.
All the same, there’s not a soul in Fermanagh that would change a thing. When success comes, if it should ever, it will be rinsed in the purest Lough Erne waters.
In the meantime, we console ourselves that we are the county of The Maguires; the ruling clan of the county who commissioned local scholars to compile the Annals of Ulster.
Thereafter, the family were generous patrons of the arts, particularly poets and writers.
They weren’t all powdered faces and lace sleeves either. When the goons belonging to Queen Elizabeth I conquered Ireland and demanded rent from the chieftains, along with their obeyance of English law, the first man out for the row was King Hugh Maguire who walloped the Hun.
To win just once: Fermanagh fans. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
We are the county of Pagan rituals and Celtic monuments of Janus Figures. The county that educated Sam Beckett and Oscar Wilde.
If you were really asking, and by this stage I’m speaking for an entire county and very comfortable with that, we are the ones that look down our noses at everyone else. Everyone else are the savages, still shitting in the ditches.
This – THIS! Is the secret sauce of the GAA. It works at all levels and it’s so subliminal that you never thought of it until you started reading this.
Apologies if you stumbled onto this page looking for another piece on kickouts.
The passing of time has left us counting the years and it turns out that this Sunday will mark a quarter-century of covering the All-Ireland championship, give or take a few years here and there for acting the jackass purposes.
Back in 2002, I left my billeting, crossed the Great Cambridge roundabout to get a tube to Ruislip and cover the Connacht championship opener between hosts London, and Leitrim.
The scoreline at the end was London 0-10 Leitrim 0-15. But it didn’t tell of the terror in the ground for the visiting supporters when London came back to within a point midway through the second half.
It was the same weekend when Saipan was figuratively blowing up and all that was in my head was Paul Coggins and his loping ball-carrying.
Afterwards, we stood chatting on the pitch with Leitrim manager Declan Rowley. You could do things like that then.
Declan Rowley. INPHO
INPHO
25 championships later and you can look at the absence of wintering well, the coming and going of the Death of Gaelic Football, seven different iterations of the football championship, the All-Ireland B, the Tommy Murphy Cup and now the Tailteann Cup.
In general, the sport bears just a passing resemblance to that game in Ruislip, 2002. For the better, after a few years of extreme pain when the same game was playing itself out week after week, the only things changing were the colour of the jerseys.
In the meantime though, a process began where a great number of people around the inter-county architecture decided they were hugely important.
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A new imagining of what a GAA manager was, gave rise to some individuals who take themselves very seriously indeed. Worse still, these are tolerated.
Character and colour have been eroded from television and radio punditry. It’s taking a nosedive in GAA writing.
The great American sportswriter Red Smith held that people went to the ball game to have fun. Then they read about it, because they wanted to have fun again. There’s less of that about now.
But, the games survive. The games thrive. Locked into a provincial system in perpetuity, you could say this is how tradition is baked in, or just the same crap served up year after year.
Either way, we are looking at a revived Gaelic football championship. Leinster has levelled out and promises us a series of entertaining and close games.
There’s still plenty of spite to go around in Ulster. Blame the Saw Doctors, but there’s still an enduring fascination if Galway will bate Mayo – not to write off the Rossies or Sligo.
What fun it would be to see Cork take Kerry down the stretch, just as they did last year?
There will be Kobe, Clifford and Canavan. There will be skill and two-pointers and dirty blows and all the things that infuriate us and delight us.
Mayo fans issue a warning to the AFL about their Kobe. James Lawlor / INPHO
James Lawlor / INPHO / INPHO
For all this and more, stayed tuned for the next 15 weeks.
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The games survive and thrive because of the secret sauce of championship
MICHAEL CUSACK WASN’T around long enough to see Sigmund Freud cherry-pick all the odds and ends of psychoanalysis and package them for the mass market.
Imagine if Cusack had lived long enough, thumbing through a 1917 copy of ‘The Taboo of Virginity.’
After wading through hours of phallus-based conjecture and theories, things would pick up when he came to ‘The Narcissism of Small Differences.’
‘This is the shit. This is the shit right here’, goes the Cusackian review in this fantasy construct.
The entire premise of the philosophical viewpoint is what props up the GAA. Every last bit of it.
The theory is that we are all so similar, that we cannot hack it.
Or what could you possibly have in common with yer wan across the way with her overshare habit in What’s App?
No. Instead we nurture our perceived differences. In the modern era that can manifest itself in fairly harmless ways; dress sense, musical and artistic preferences, mild political divergences and so on.
Throughout history, wars were declared off the back of such issues. The English and Scots is a good example. Or even the English and everyone else.
Far-left and far-right political factions can exhaust themselves by bitching and back-stabbing among their own groups, rather than fighting for their own perceived causes.
Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, neighbouring tribes in the western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The Hatfields and McCoys. Your own family even. You know this.
Which is where the GAA, and the upcoming football championships, come in.
What difference is there, in all honesty, between someone from Benburb at the outer reaches of south-east Tyrone, and somebody from less than two miles down the road in Blackwatertown, north-west Armagh? On the face of it, nothing. But go to this Sunday evening in the Athletic Grounds and they belong to two very distinct warring factions.
The narcissism of small differences, taken to its’ logical extremes, can even split people WITHIN a parish. For further reading, look into Ciaran, Errigal.
It works. And here’s one thing that might take a bit of swallowing – while the Brits are never not at it, this thing of ours might never have caught on only for them starting to carve the country into counties.
Work that started in the late 12th century and took over 500 years to complete. While the express target of aiding their administration and milking the asset for all it was worth, they planted a seed of county zealotry.
If you were forming a GAA now, and this is something the demographics committee have wrestled with, you wouldn’t have things the way they are.
There might be too many people in Dublin, with 8,414 registered male GAA players and 84 GAA clubs.
There might be too little in Fermanagh, with 954 male players and 23 clubs.
Such numbers are naturally reflected through success on the field. Dublin have riches beyond the wildest imagination, whereas Fermanagh have never won so much as a national league final at any level, never mind a provincial title.
All the same, there’s not a soul in Fermanagh that would change a thing. When success comes, if it should ever, it will be rinsed in the purest Lough Erne waters.
In the meantime, we console ourselves that we are the county of The Maguires; the ruling clan of the county who commissioned local scholars to compile the Annals of Ulster.
Thereafter, the family were generous patrons of the arts, particularly poets and writers.
They weren’t all powdered faces and lace sleeves either. When the goons belonging to Queen Elizabeth I conquered Ireland and demanded rent from the chieftains, along with their obeyance of English law, the first man out for the row was King Hugh Maguire who walloped the Hun.
We are the county of Pagan rituals and Celtic monuments of Janus Figures. The county that educated Sam Beckett and Oscar Wilde.
If you were really asking, and by this stage I’m speaking for an entire county and very comfortable with that, we are the ones that look down our noses at everyone else. Everyone else are the savages, still shitting in the ditches.
This – THIS! Is the secret sauce of the GAA. It works at all levels and it’s so subliminal that you never thought of it until you started reading this.
Apologies if you stumbled onto this page looking for another piece on kickouts.
The passing of time has left us counting the years and it turns out that this Sunday will mark a quarter-century of covering the All-Ireland championship, give or take a few years here and there for acting the jackass purposes.
Back in 2002, I left my billeting, crossed the Great Cambridge roundabout to get a tube to Ruislip and cover the Connacht championship opener between hosts London, and Leitrim.
The scoreline at the end was London 0-10 Leitrim 0-15. But it didn’t tell of the terror in the ground for the visiting supporters when London came back to within a point midway through the second half.
It was the same weekend when Saipan was figuratively blowing up and all that was in my head was Paul Coggins and his loping ball-carrying.
Afterwards, we stood chatting on the pitch with Leitrim manager Declan Rowley. You could do things like that then.
25 championships later and you can look at the absence of wintering well, the coming and going of the Death of Gaelic Football, seven different iterations of the football championship, the All-Ireland B, the Tommy Murphy Cup and now the Tailteann Cup.
In general, the sport bears just a passing resemblance to that game in Ruislip, 2002. For the better, after a few years of extreme pain when the same game was playing itself out week after week, the only things changing were the colour of the jerseys.
In the meantime though, a process began where a great number of people around the inter-county architecture decided they were hugely important.
A new imagining of what a GAA manager was, gave rise to some individuals who take themselves very seriously indeed. Worse still, these are tolerated.
Character and colour have been eroded from television and radio punditry. It’s taking a nosedive in GAA writing.
The great American sportswriter Red Smith held that people went to the ball game to have fun. Then they read about it, because they wanted to have fun again. There’s less of that about now.
But, the games survive. The games thrive. Locked into a provincial system in perpetuity, you could say this is how tradition is baked in, or just the same crap served up year after year.
Either way, we are looking at a revived Gaelic football championship. Leinster has levelled out and promises us a series of entertaining and close games.
There’s still plenty of spite to go around in Ulster. Blame the Saw Doctors, but there’s still an enduring fascination if Galway will bate Mayo – not to write off the Rossies or Sligo.
What fun it would be to see Cork take Kerry down the stretch, just as they did last year?
There will be Kobe, Clifford and Canavan. There will be skill and two-pointers and dirty blows and all the things that infuriate us and delight us.
For all this and more, stayed tuned for the next 15 weeks.
*****
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All-Ireland column GAA Gaelic Football