I
THE 1960 US presidential election shaped the popular impression of a new era in American life.
Richard Nixon, the incumbent Vice President, had won the Republican nomination and appeared the safe bet for a successful run. The Democratic primaries had thrown up a junior senator from Massachusetts as his opponent, John F Kennedy.
Although both men would hold the office of president in the decade that had just begun, the image of Kennedy as a young, charismatic and handsome politician resonated with the country’s new idea of itself.
And image, crucially, could not be underplayed as the exciting, somewhat underqualified 43-year-old Kennedy ascended to the presidency. In the aftermath of his defeat, the simplest indication of Nixon’s shortcomings was in his handling of a televised debate with Kennedy – the first of its kind in a presidential campaign.
“As the day of the debate approached,” wrote the historian Rick Perlstein, “Nixon was swallowing drowsy-making antibiotics, but still losing sleep; fortifying himself against weight loss with several chocolate milk shakes a day, but still losing weight; losing color; adding choler.
“He looked pale, awful.”
A consequence of how poorly he was feeling, Nixon, a formidable speaker at his best, appeared incapable of keeping up with his opponent as Kennedy dictated the terms of engagement. What’s worse, Nixon’s face betrayed the true nature of his feeling. He had started to visibly sweat.
“I felt so sorry for Nixon’s mother tonight,” Kennedy’s mother Rose later remarked.
“On television, in retrospect,” noted Perlstein, “it looked as if John F. Kennedy had won in a landslide.”
In reality, the election would be decided on the most razor-thin of margins.
II
Gaelic football has an image problem.
Where we sit beyond the midway point of a championship that has never had as many scheduled games, the general feeling among columnists, journalists and ex-players alike is of discontent.
One mark against the new competition is its lack of jeopardy. More games are great, but why are three rounds of the group stages only going to result in four counties from 16 being eliminated? Yes, a strong performance in the group stages should make for a more straight forward run down the line, but look at what it also allows in terms of a county like Kildare, for instance.
Back in April they defeated Wicklow in a Leinster quarter-final. Since then they have lost to Dublin, drawn with Sligo and lost to Dublin again. If they lose to Roscommon as will be expected, and Sligo lose to Dublin, a better negative scoring difference will be enough to qualify Kildare for the All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final stage. Due to take place on the last weekend of June, two months might have passed between Kildare’s only championship win and perhaps their ultimate exit from the competition.
Furthermore, while elements of the GAA media have made their thoughts clear on the matter, GAA supporters have not been unanimous in their approval either with attendances hardly suggesting an insatiable appetite for these games.
At the beginning of what promised to be an exciting new era for Gaelic football, significant changes to the championship structure have mostly led to the consensus outlook that more change is yet required.
That’s one of the perceived problems, anyway.
III
“It can be boring at times to watch as a neutral. I was in Nowlan Park yesterday and it wasn’t a great spectacle to watch because I wasn’t invested in it, I was watching different bits and pieces going on. When I am on the sideline here, I find it intriguing. I love it. But if I was in the stand, it probably wouldn’t be brilliant but when I am on the line I don’t care.”
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Roscommon manager Davy Burke, Irish Examiner
IV
The other problem has been Davy Burke’s Roscommon.
Purveyors of Gaelic football’s “six minute crisis” as journalist Maurice Brosnan termed it (without actually subscribing to the hysteria himself), Burke’s Roscommon have grown to embody what a portion of the watching public detest about the modern game as a spectacle.
Their most egregious crime has been well documented by now; calmly passing the ball between themselves 77 times across almost six minutes of play, Roscommon displayed complete control of the football up until Ciaráin Murtagh’s eventual score to give them a four-point lead against Dublin in Croke Park.
While a true and lasting outrage at Roscommon will only come if they proceed to leave a lasting mark on the championship in the knockout rounds, their evident lack of concern for style has engineered plenty of response for where the game of Gaelic football stands generally.
“I get it, it’s part and parcel of the game,” remarked Peter Canavan in conversation with RTÉ, careful not to directly blame Roscommon. “It’s a tactic that managers are using, but it’s terrible to watch and spoiling our game as a spectacle.”
Pat Spillane was similarly reluctant to target Roscommon in his Sunday World column, but nevertheless insisted that Burke’s team ought to ignite “a national discussion about the kind of game we want.”
Although Paddy Andrews sincerely credited Roscommon’s diligence and skill, he admitted that the match had been “diabolical to watch” on The Football Pod. Whereas James O’Donoghue’s shared lack of enthusiasm for the spectacle did not quite stretch to praise for Roscommon: “[That] isn’t great play or anything, its just a case of sapping the will to live out of Dublin.”
The most important question in all this was then raised by the podcast’s host Tommy Rooney: “What do you want Roscommon to do?”
On this point, O’Donoghue’s answer highlighted the impossible position Gaelic football finds itself in.
“I’m not saying they shouldn’t have done that,” he allowed, Roscommon’s plan to upset a stronger opponent ultimately bearing fruit in the draw they achieved, “I just don’t think we should be celebrating as if they’ve cracked the code on this beautiful play, tiki-taka Roscommon hand-passing the ball around the middle of the field and the goalie running the show.
“To me, that’s not great, it’s just effective.”
V
They hadn’t learned what Nixon was learning. Being hated by the right people was no impediment to political success. The unpolished, after all, were everywhere in the majority.
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Rick Perlstein, Nixonland
VI
There is similarity then in Gaelic football’s twin issues of a bloated competition and a tactical imperative to frustrate. The former lacks entertainment by means of its opposition to jeopardy, while the latter lacks it by design.
No more than the increasing resentment directed at The Sunday Game’s coverage of Gaelic football, people are taking less joy from the actual games themselves.
From a personal perspective, my line of thinking broadly falls in line with the naysayers. Gaelic football matches are not something I am currently plotting my weekend watching around, though I suspect this will change once we enter the knockout stages.
Although fleeting moments of brilliance peppered Derry’s defeat of Donegal on Sunday evening, I thought nothing of wandering outside to sit in the sun for long stages of the game while my father dozed in the corner of the room waiting for the senior hurling to return this weekend.
And yet, for all that the likes of Roscommon, Derry and other less fancied counties on an upward curve can turn an interesting group game on paper into something undesirable, I am genuinely excited by the prospect of what is to come in the weeks ahead.
Effectiveness was not reason enough for James O’Donoghue and others to laud Roscommon’s development, but this strikes me as a needlessly limited view of what Gaelic football can be.
The very best teams have generally been those that strike an acceptable balance between efficiency of action and attractiveness of play. But, historically, those same teams have emerged from a relatively small pool of counties and we have seen time and again how mastering the former tends to take other counties further than an overwhelming focus on the latter.
It doesn’t always make for exciting television, but the prioritisation of entertainment over competitiveness would serve Gaelic football no better at all.
VII
“And as I leave the press, all I can say is this: for 16 years… you’ve [had] a lot of fun – a lot of fun – that you’ve had an opportunity to attack me, and I think I’ve given as good as I’ve taken… I leave you gentleman now and you will write it. You will interpret it. That’s your right. But as I leave you I want you to know – just think of how much you’re going to be missing. You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
VIII
Two years after his defeat to John F Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, an embittered Richard Nixon unsuccessfully ran for Governor of California. For a former US Vice President (and very nearly President), his subsequent comments betrayed the inner turmoil of a man who believed his life in public office was over.
“The most disciplined of public servants broke composure,” wrote Rick Perlstein, “and the effect was akin to watching a train wreck.”
Nixon would return, of course, and ultimately claim the presidency eight years after that initial loss to Kennedy. Although his infamous departure following the Watergate scandal was but the iceberg’s tip of his malfeasance, the impression made by his televised debates with Kennedy thereafter shaped the general perception of a man who would nevertheless win an outstandingly conclusive second term in the 1972 election.
Kennedy was “a young Adonis”, while Nixon appeared an ageing relic. That they were born only four years apart from one another seemed no great obstacle to this assessment.
“They weren’t unlike each other,” explained Perlstein. “Both had lost an older brother (the charming one, the one originally destined for greatness). Both were ideologically flexible except when it came to hunting Reds; both had run as World War II veterans.”
And yet, owing in part to his tragically premature death in 1963, the image of John F Kennedy has remained that of “a young Adonis.”
Forever 46-years-old, as America shifted decisively rightward toward a draconian kind of conservatism under Nixon and then Ronald Reagan (after Jimmy Carter’s brief interlude), that same image of Kennedy bore a persistent reminder of what was and what could have been.
US politics and Gaelic football do not quite operate within the same framework of consequences, and Nixon is no more emblematic of the game’s current failings than Kennedy is of a solution.
Television indicated in 1960 that Kennedy was the future while Nixon was decisively the past, however. Where one thrived and the other floundered, a myth quickly emerged that Kennedy’s dominance in this particular forum preceded his runaway success.
In truth, about as many votes (100,000 or so) as Succession’s Kendall and Roman Roy opted to overlook after a vote-counting centre in Milwaukee caught fire were all that separated Kennedy and Nixon in the end.
What’s best for Gaelic football is not necessarily what’s best for television.
Kerry, Dublin or some other semi-regular All-Ireland finalist will probably end up lifting the Sam Maguire Cup again later this year, and those fearful for the game’s demise will breathe a sigh of relief for another year.
Nobody wants every team to play as Roscommon did against Dublin this year, but for the sake of Gaelic football we should welcome this kind of innovation, however. If one of the same few counties are likely to win anyway, isn’t it as well off that they’re truly challenged in a way that brings the very best out of them.