SOMETHING THE MAYO player Aidan O’Shea said during the week provoked a little reflection about the existing relationships between those that play the game.
O’Shea, speaking on the Irish Examiner Gaelic football podcast, outlined that because of a lack of social outlets such as the All-Stars Tour, discontinued by the GAA since 2020, and the determination to close off representative action with the International Rules or inter-provincial series, players had no time or opportunity to interact with each other.
Outside of ‘slobbering at each other’ during games, as he memorably described an interaction he had with Damian Comer, before later befriending him, all that was left between teams was ‘contempt.’
It goes a little deeper than that too. With no All-Stars Tours, many national Gaelic Games writers have no ability or time to build convivial relationships with the biggest names that play football and hurling.
And that’s not to create a ‘chummy’ environment that makes for complacent journalism.
Instead, over-zealous management of players has created an environment whereby fees exchange hands in too many cases for access to players. That leads to a lack of insight into modern teams and players in too many instances.
In 2019, your correspondent here was in the company of an All-Star footballer at a medal presentation. At the mention of David Clifford’s name, he instantly went into an animated demonstration about the various ways David Clifford would bounce the ball and utilise his whole body shape to create a shield that made him virtually impossible to dispossess.
From there, the conversation went into the importance of being two-sided and Clifford’s vision.
It plumbed further depths of hard-core nerdiness, but the main thing was this; here was a decorated, winning All-Star footballer in a drooling session over what David Clifford could do with a football.
Clifford might be one of the few that genuinely excite any more in Gaelic football. Hurling still retains the capacity that individual skill will be rewarded. That is clear to be seen when you run your finger down the list of players to have won Hurler of the Year from Aaron Gillane down.
Last year it was a defender in Diarmaid Byrnes that claimed it. But Byrnes was a defender with a few bolt-ons. He hit 0-36 from the dead ball, a scoring rate of 0-5 per game and some of the distances he was clearing with these efforts were, well, ridiculous.
Go back beyond him; Cian Lynch and the way he might as well wear a Wizard’s Cloak in 2021. Gearóid Hegarty and his physical domination of the 2020 akin to a LeBron James season.
2019 belonged to the flying Seamus Callanan and his eight goals from play. 8-17 of 8-18 in total from open play.
Cian Lynch preceding him. Joe Canning the year before. Austin Gleeson, TJ Reid… Are you spotting a pattern here?
When the Hurler of the Year started, there was a democracy of positions. In the first ten seasons, Brian Lohan, Tony Browne, Brian Corcoran, JJ Delaney and Sean Óg Ó hAilpín claimed the honour.
But since then, the only defender to claim it was Tommy Walsh in 2009. What does this say about hurling other than the attack is on top?
Well, it’s a similar story with football. In 28 seasons, the players behind midfield to have taken the honour include Seamus Moynihan (’00), Kieran McGeeney (’02), Tomás Ó Sé in 2004 and his brother Marc three years later.
Five years passed then until Karl Lacey took it in 2012. Jack McCaffrey in 2015 and Lee Keegan a year later were defenders, yes, but very much the modern-type defenders who are coming to a ball that has been shepherded upfield and is waiting for a flying, bull-strong defender to arrive at pace and break defensive lines.
Stephen Cluxton won it in 2019.
What does it all mean?
Do we all carry some latent feeling that the ‘real’ footballers are the score-getters? That you can fashion a back out of anything, really, but attackers are born. Jewels that adorn the game and should be protected?
Oisin McConville never won a Footballer of the Year award but he came pretty damn close. When he takes a training session with a new team, one of his early ice-breaking lines is, ‘Right boys, defenders over there, and footballers over here with me…’
Either way. When RTÉ come to make their super slo-mo action sequences set to some lo-fi Icelandic uplifting chillout vibe, or wherever people gather to talk about Gaelic Games, it’s still the attackers in the game that get all the attention. The ones in whom the most fascination is reserved.
The men and women who get bums on seats, and take them off them also.
And given that the Players of the Year are nominated by the All-Stars committee, but voted on by the players, it’s clear that players feel the same way too.
