SOMETIMES I THINK the GAA don’t realise how important they are. A lot of the problems of the past couple of weeks come down to that.
Just after 1pm last Saturday and Cork city was filling up. I was in town to get a haircut, looking out onto Paul Street. Every few seconds a jersey, red or blue, would move by. Sometimes they were together, middle aged couples hitched for life but with different loyalties for the day.
Stepping out after my fade – I’m still young enough, no comments below the line please – you could just feel the hum across the town. Excited conversations, a shared sense of anticipation, and eventually a mass movement east; lockstep towards the Pairc.
At the final whistle the crescendo of noise stopped and for a moment it was quiet. What have we just seen? None of us were quite sure, but we knew it was magnificent. The type of thing that everyone should get to see.
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If I was to start throwing stones at this point then I wouldn’t be long hitting glass. I worked for Sky Sports on their GAA coverage so cannot make the case that paywalls are bad. Indeed, this article is behind a paywall.
The idea that everything should be free collides with reality quickly. Even games on RTÉ aren’t free, there’s a licence fee that’s more expensive than a season pass on GAAGO.
Yet there are issues. Before you start to roll out a broadcasting service you have to know that the necessary infrastructure is in place. The first potential problem is this is an internet-based service in a country which does not have universally good broadband. There are even blackspots not far from where I live, a few miles outside Cork city. There have to be plenty more across the island.
Getting GAAGO on your TV is not even straightforward for people of any age, and Age Action Ireland were right to raise the matter that older people may not have the technical skills or even access to the online world. My granddad, in his late 80s, is just one example here. He had to go to my uncle’s house to watch the game Saturday night, but that said he had to do the same with games on Sky. There are others of his age who wouldn’t have someone nearby.
Then there’s the coverage itself. I think Sky’s product was more polished, even though it’s early days for GAAGO and they have good people involved. Gráinne McElwain, for example, was at Sky and is a natural and well-informed presenter – a true pro who makes it all look easy when it’s anything but.
At Sky there was a level of investment and preparation for broadcasts. We’d meet more than three hours before the game, having chatted extensively on zoom during the week. Your topics of analysis had to be meticulously prepared. But then come game day it was relaxed, people were well drilled.
Behind the scenes the tone was set by GAA people who got it, Ciarán O’Hara from Mayo for example as producer had all the necessary technical expertise, but he was also a coach for young players at his club in Mayo, so knew what mattered to the audience.
Jamsie O’Connor was a whizz on the analysis which was enhanced by technology, but Sky invested in Jamesie and trained him to the point where his expertise could be brought to bear in this way.
GAAGO’s big game shows haven’t been bad, but I’ve not seen the level of detail in the analysis someone like Jamesie provided. That said, they’re just starting out and I’m sure many would say it took Sky a while to find their feet.
Where Sky could focus their resources on their game for the week, GAAGO has to get around the grounds. Naturally, they are spread thin, which showed in their coverage of Antrim v Kilkenny. It looked a lot like one camera angle to me. There was a sound issue in the first 10 minutes, which led to the picture staying still and not following the ball while someone tried to fix the sound. I ended up switching off, which would be unusual for me.
I know the world is changing and the GAA feel they have to get involved in streaming if they are to thrive financially as the century progresses. But I wonder how much money is really on the table here? There’s no easy bucks in the world, but from what I know of the media it’s a particularly challenging industry.
RTÉ are taxpayer funded, which helps to give them a bigger audience and they can in turn charge a bit more for ads – and yet they still lose money most years.
Streaming may well turn out to be lucrative, but I’m not sure. There’s a fairly big elephant in the room in the shape of all of the people tuning into Sky, BT or GAAGO or whatever you’re having yourself via dodgy boxes.
Then, once you’re a media player you’ve got the constant din of people questioning what you’re at – articles like this for example, plus the entire spectrum of social media. The GAA are well used to this, you might say, but they may find the noise has increased.
They’re in the broadcasting game now, which comes with certain responsibilities.
Dónal Óg Cusack’s impassioned speech has done a few laps of the country by now. One thing I’ll say is RTÉ come out of it well.
Dónal Óg is in full glorious flow. The GAA, RTÉ, everybody gets it. Still, Jacqui Hurley lets him talk, even when he’s bringing up her boss before finally taking aim at the holiest of holies – rugby.
A lesser presenter would have cut him off. A lesser broadcaster would have not clipped the speech and put it out in full on social media. But that’s what RTÉ did. Now, you could say that they had to because to not put it out would have depicted them as running scared, but they still stepped up and I for one was impressed.
Will GAAGO ever let someone give both barrels to the Association over something like that? If they do then I’ll be equally impressed.
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There’s a side to Dónal Og that the public don’t see too much. If you met him for a pint you’d find him good craic; he’s witty and a great conversationalist. I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say he’s lighthearted but there’s a fair distance between the intensity he brings to discussions around hurling and how he is when talking about everything else.
But a switch flicks in him when it comes to hurling, and I think that’s because of what he’s got from the game. He wants others to be able to experience the same thing, especially if they’re in a part of the world where the game hasn’t got a firm foothold – and that’s not just most of the world but most of the country.
You could call him or any of the thousands of us make the case for hurling evangelists, but I think we stop short of that. We haven’t got an old fashioned religious zeal, where you will find the love in your heart to convert – or else!
It’s more about giving people the chance to have what we have. If they don’t want it, that’s all good, but at least help those that might be interested to have a closer look.
People find plenty of reasons to give out about life in this country, the rain, the price of everything, including the most basic need of a place to live.
One thing you’d miss if you were somewhere else is the GAA field on any old night of a summer week. The shout and thud of the game, and scene beyond the sideline: kids in two and threes pucking the ball left and right, hypnotised by the easy rhythm of it, only snapping out when the hubbub around from the field grows and they tune in again knowing they’re about to see something.
There are parts of the country with nothing to do but this. There are parts of the country with loads to do, but people choose to spend their time in this way because life doesn’t get any sweeter, really. Something to watch or play, someone to shoot the breeze with, the knowledge that we’ll all be back in another couple of days as the years roll in. This game has saved a lot of souls.
You can get the same from rugby or football or soccer or any sport, of course, but all we want is for those people who might just prefer life with a hurley in their hand but don’t get the chance to see us on our most vivid days.
Pay per view and streaming services are here to stay, no matter who runs them. They help us see games we couldn’t until recently. But as with everything it’s about balance. Perhaps this should be enforced with legislation to protect more games for free-to-air broadcast. Or maybe it’s a case of working within the current framework and recognising the matches with heightened interest from further out.
The big days, Limerick versus Clare, Cork and Tipp – they are not a market to be served but are something far more important than that. They’re the dazzling pinnacle of this glorious pastime, and should be seen by as many people as may be interested.
