FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP ALREADY, and not a child’s face washed in this house. I’m not ready. You’re not ready. We may make the most of it.
Doesn’t it all feel a wee bit hasty, all the same? The hurling final will be played tonight, Kilkenny and Clare going at it without nary a care in the world for John Kiely or that shower in green, flaking into each other and trying to claw back some of the ground that Gaelic football stole on them the week before with the Derry-Dublin epic.
The sulphur of that game will hardly be burned off before the cars tail back out of Clones in the direction of Smithborough and Newtownbutler as Cavan and Monaghan emerge as big dogs getting the football championship off the ground.
(Interesting aside, last year the now-former Monaghan footballer and Clones resident Fintan Kelly explained the increased tailbacks. One of the unintended consequences of championship receding from the edge of harvest season means that farmers have yet to take their first cut of silage, therefore the fields are not available for parking. One for the townies to think about.)
But all the same. Championship! What an institution. You can take all of modern life with the clutter, isolation and complication, and you can simply set aside a day for a celebration of sorts; of what constructed sort of values you feel your county represents.
Break it all down, think too deeply about it and none of it makes sense. The notions of counties in themselves were established by those who commandeered the country. By 1836 they were well bedded in.
50 years later the rawness of that little act of making administrative life handy for themselves was gone. Instead, it made for a sensible device to establish domestic leagues and, later, county teams. There are only two institutions in Ireland that organise themselves on a 32-county basis; the GAA, and the Orange Order.
Simplistic as that all is, it seems that the GAA was just simply destined to happen, or at least a great deal of circumstance fell into their lap. After the initial enthusiasm had faded, it provided a means of cultural expression as the country was picking a path out of a Civil War.
Even when that grisly business was trying to find a suitable ending, you had the example of the Kerry captain and member of the Free State Army, Con Brosnan, guaranteeing safe passage for Anti-Treaty on-the-run IRA commander, John Joe Sheehy to come along, play championship with Kerry and then slip back into the crowd at the final whistle.
All sorts of activities mended families and parishes. The GAA did more than most though.
Planning and foresight were gifts of the early administrators that placed the bigger stadia in strategic locations, near major railway stations. With the concept of leisure time finally gaining a foothold in 1930s Ireland, it went from there and it has never stopped growing.
At times though, you could easily believe that little has changed in the last century.
Players still remain unpaid. A great deal of administrators are paid. Many, many managers have sweetheart deals with companies that reward them very handsomely while they drive players on to seek fine margins of supreme fitness.
As enlightened as many managers and coaches like to portray themselves, the demands and expectations are too great for players. They may – in the main – not milk your cattle in the morning after a game or carry a hod – but even being desk-bound is a disastrous recipe for those that then are asked to perform to a professional output in training and matches.
Don’t take our word for it. Just listen to the chorus of managers complaining about injuries, as if they themselves are oblivious to the cause.
At the back of it all, the players are being abused. Many thrive in that atmosphere but others have their bodies sacrificed at the altar of others’ ambitions.
Right now, we will be charging into championship without a pause for breath. In years gone by, the post-league pause brought a time of reflection before the anticipation began. Chinese whispers of who was going well in training, pitch opening challenge matches and county call-ups were matters of solid gossip that could enliven any social encounter.
In many counties, they would host a press event that generated Gaelic Games would be widely pushed at a time of year when other major sports were winding down.
That’s all gone now. Not that anyone is interested in a Journalist’s Lament, but the provincial councils will host a gig and pray that some managers turn up to take the bad look off it.
Round table interviews ensue, all perfectly lifeless and harmless, hacks laughing on cue to whatever bland observations offered, as if they were the rent-a-giggle crew that stuffed Chris Evans’ studio at the height of his Radio 1 fame.
Beyond that, the new age hasn’t really begun. There are a scattering of podcasts with a wide range of abilities, but surely there is room for a fly on the wall, or even highly-stylised Netflix-type series about a team going through their year?
Maybe some day.
It all starts with a whimper, they say. They say it every year no matter what.
I’d beg to differ.
This is the weekend when the Exiles get the go at it. Anyone who has ever stood on a sideline in The Bronx or Ruislip on the annual day out will appreciate the displaced emotions that can rise up and sit in the chest all day long.
London against Galway. Imagine how that must make some of the forgotten generation who came over as mere children and attached themselves to a Connemara-centric club such as Moindearg. To see Paul Conroy and Seán Kelly in the flesh?
We know just how much it means to our cousins in Amerikay, thanks to their heroics last year in beating Leitrim in a penalty shoot-out.
No sense dressing some of this stuff up though. While Leitrim and Sligo will hold their own fascinations, you have a few other ties; Longford v Meath, Carlow and Wexford, Westmeath v Wicklow, Waterford hosting Tipperary and Limerick going to Cork, that will be of little interest to those outside of the counties.
And then you come to Ulster. Cavan and Monaghan.
Yes, we know the provinces will be played out and there will be varying degrees of interest, and it does seem rather a load of games to reduce groups of four to three survivors in the Super Sixteens.
And of course, we will all be talking about Dublin and Kerry by the end of it. With a slight chance of Derry. But there’s loads of time before we get to that point. We’ll stay with the Drumlins Derby for now.
The recency of the league campaign makes form lines clean and easy; Monaghan dropped out of Division 1 and lost their last six consecutive games. Cavan were well set in Division 2 after five games but their plane fell out of the sky like a dart with a hammering from the bi-polar Armagh and a dispiriting loss to Fermanagh.
But consider this; the All-Ireland championship is in thrall to history and locked into it. The retention of the provincial championships is the bit that gets many people’s goat. But it works on the primal level that it provides the in-built rivalries. Same oul’ shite, or ancient rivalries? That depends on how slick and oily your marketing department is.
Cavan v Wicklow? Big deal.
Monaghan v Sligo? Big swinging mickey.
Cavan v Monaghan? Hold me back, I’ll take the head offa him! I’ll bate any of yiz!
Go back to your ancient history, that is, anything beyond a century ago in the championship.
Up to and including 1924, there were 25 Ulster championships played. Cavan won nine. Monaghan won seven. Antrim took seven and Armagh helped themselves to two.
Take the last five decades. Cavan and Monaghan have faced each other in each of those periods. The most one-sided game was a five-point margin. The majority are one or two-point margins, over twelve meetings.
In GAA championship history, no two teams have drawn more than Cavan and Monaghan. Is that a wide enough sample for ya?
And here’s the thing; Cavan have beaten Monaghan in the last two championship meetings.
Back in 1924, Cavan got the championship started with a 5-6 to 1-6 win over Armagh in Cootehill.
The final wasn’t until 21 September. As coincidence would have it, Monaghan were waiting for them in Belturbet. The game ended in a draw, Cavan 1-3 to Monaghan’s 0-6, and the replay didn’t take place until 2 November.
Cavan prevailed 2-3 to 1-3 in front of a crowd of 4,000 in Ballybay.
Tell me we have our scheduling wrong again?
It’s that history and track record bearing down, overbearing even, on the fixture, that will bring the crowds to the rolling jamboree of Clones on Sunday.
To fret and fidget. To eff and blind. To fume and ferment. For the splash of drink and the raw-throated abandonment of roaring yourself hoarse in the middle of a crowd.
Like it was a century ago.
Will we knock another century out of it?
