LOOK, THERE ARE MORE important things going on, but we feel that somebody has to start calling out how management teams are dressing on the sidelines. It cannot wait a second longer.
How is it that, say, a Mickey Harte, has to wear skinny tracksuit bottoms? What kind of world are we in that makes that right?
Why should various middle-aged men, younger than Harte, who have let themselves go (no judgement) try to cram a large body into a medium half-zip with their initials on it?
Who needs the words MAOR UISCE on their clothing to confirm the raging embarrassment that must come with being a man in your 40s, all glowering frowning and serious in manner, but still a water boy?
BAINISTEOIR? Scrawled on your back? Unbecoming. An affront. Bibs? Ah come on. Was it for this the clay grew tall?
The dress code of GAA management teams – the bland uniformity, the crushing conformity – has to be tackled.
Every single manager, water carrier, hurley/hurl carrier, physio, ball-pumper must look the exact same. Is this not meant to be an era where individuality flourishes?
Aren’t managers and backroom gurus the lateral thinkers and arch problem solvers of our time? Yet how can we trust them to decide tactics when they struggle to dress themselves in anything that hasn’t come from the club shop?
Being honest, a lot of this GAA gear is naff enough. There’s a serious opening for more retro styles, and some of the throwback jerseys are established terrace fashion wear.
But every couple of years, the kit manufacturers unfailingly manage to make county jerseys a little more cluttered. A squiggle here and a line there. A motif where it’s not needed.
The truly terrifying thing is how GAA fashion has become widespread into every parish with some seemingly dressing in club gear morning, noon and night.
It’s all terribly undignified.
When people talk of how the Kerry and Dublin rivalry of the ’70s modernised Gaelic football, not enough is made of the seething sideline rivalry between Mick O’Dwyer and Kevin Heffernan, and who might out-Farah each other.
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As a Dub, Heffernan clearly had the edge on access to the men’s draperies of the time. Yet Dwyer wouldn’t let the Kerry side down either. Look back at any of the old pictures – he has style.
Mick O'Dwyer in 1985. Billy Stickland / INPHO
Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO
A bit like how he would fetch up at all the latest coaching conferences in Ulster and make a point of not bringing a pen or notepad along, Dwyer kept up with the latest trends. Mail order must have been a Godsend in Waterville.
Only when we turn our back on the nightmare of dri-fit can we heal again as a people.
Perhaps the wheel has already begun to turn . . .
In all the excitement of Clare’s All-Ireland hurling final last year, the glory went to Tony Kelly and the way he might score the greatest ever goal in Croke Park.
And yet, I felt that took away from the glory of Brian Lohan’s trousers.
They were of the Snickers brand. Solid, durable, building site wear, with facility to insert kneepads: for when you are managing Clare in the Liam MacCarthy Cup final at 4pm, but still need to pull cable through ceiling joists before the day is out. This is a level of individuality one can get behind.
Workmanlike: Brian Lohan's trousers were the real star of the All-Ireland hurling final. Morgan Treacy / INPHO
Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO
Even if you still bow down to the great God of nylon tracksuits, maintaining a certain old school elan is still key to unlocking success.
Take Kieran McGeeney. Big unit, is Kieran. Being frank about it, there’s nobody tests these skimpy GAA garments like Geezer’s Guns.
Still and all, while he complies with the modern trends, he at least accessorises with a programme rolled up tight in his hand throughout games. Even in the All-Ireland final, after the final whistle, McGeeney held on tight to his booklet, making a mental note to mark down that final wide at a later time.
Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
County players, though, are completely swallowed up in this culture. At the ever-dwindling number of events where players and management will speak to the media, they will be dressed in county gear.
As if that’s what they – teachers, accountants, students – would be wearing at 10am on a Tuesday. The reality though is that nowadays, yes, they might well be.
Some players have gone against the grain. In 2003, then Laois player Colm Parkinson was doing a sit-down interview with The Sunday Times. As part of the arrangements, Lorraine O’Sullivan landed down to take some pictures.
She brought a prop: her own sunglasses. Convinced him to lie back on the grass. Wear the sunglasses. Show off your ear ring. And she stood up on a set of steps to gain some elevation.
Colm Parkinson, 2003. INPHO
INPHO
“Sure I was pure green, I just let her do whatever,” he said this week. And a few days later, he went out with his Laois team and they beat Armagh in the league semi-final.
All good.
A year later, he sat down with Kevin Kimmage of The Sunday Independent. The interview was grand, but they used the same pic. It ran the day of the 2004 Leinster final against Westmeath. Going up that day on the bus, somebody passed down the paper to Parkinson.
“And I’d say John Keane (his assigned Westmeath marker) was only mad to eat me,” he said. From then on, he avoided interviews that might appear on match day.
Seven years ago, I spent an enjoyable day on Darren Hughes’ dairy farm in Scotstown, north Monaghan. He tended to his cattle, fed the calves, showed me the automated milking system and cut some samples of grass for testing.
Then he got up on the silo pit for some photographs, wearing his old International Rules kit, smeared in cow dung. Such precious momentos. If GAA clothing must be worn away from the pitch, then this is the setting.
Feeling tyred: Darren Hughes. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
Until we get back to those times, every trophy and competition is marred and sullied.
The line ‘clothing maketh the man’ is Shakespearean, as those of certain Leaving Cert vintages will know. In Hamlet, Polonius tells son Laertes to dress well because ‘apparel oft proclaims the man’.
What does it proclaim about the GAA man, identikit, dressed like a child who has been dragged backwards through the club shop?
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GAA bosses need to ditch the tracksuits and get back to dressing like adults
LOOK, THERE ARE MORE important things going on, but we feel that somebody has to start calling out how management teams are dressing on the sidelines. It cannot wait a second longer.
How is it that, say, a Mickey Harte, has to wear skinny tracksuit bottoms? What kind of world are we in that makes that right?
Why should various middle-aged men, younger than Harte, who have let themselves go (no judgement) try to cram a large body into a medium half-zip with their initials on it?
Who needs the words MAOR UISCE on their clothing to confirm the raging embarrassment that must come with being a man in your 40s, all glowering frowning and serious in manner, but still a water boy?
BAINISTEOIR? Scrawled on your back? Unbecoming. An affront. Bibs? Ah come on. Was it for this the clay grew tall?
The dress code of GAA management teams – the bland uniformity, the crushing conformity – has to be tackled.
Every single manager, water carrier, hurley/hurl carrier, physio, ball-pumper must look the exact same. Is this not meant to be an era where individuality flourishes?
Aren’t managers and backroom gurus the lateral thinkers and arch problem solvers of our time? Yet how can we trust them to decide tactics when they struggle to dress themselves in anything that hasn’t come from the club shop?
Being honest, a lot of this GAA gear is naff enough. There’s a serious opening for more retro styles, and some of the throwback jerseys are established terrace fashion wear.
But every couple of years, the kit manufacturers unfailingly manage to make county jerseys a little more cluttered. A squiggle here and a line there. A motif where it’s not needed.
The truly terrifying thing is how GAA fashion has become widespread into every parish with some seemingly dressing in club gear morning, noon and night.
It’s all terribly undignified.
When people talk of how the Kerry and Dublin rivalry of the ’70s modernised Gaelic football, not enough is made of the seething sideline rivalry between Mick O’Dwyer and Kevin Heffernan, and who might out-Farah each other.
As a Dub, Heffernan clearly had the edge on access to the men’s draperies of the time. Yet Dwyer wouldn’t let the Kerry side down either. Look back at any of the old pictures – he has style.
A bit like how he would fetch up at all the latest coaching conferences in Ulster and make a point of not bringing a pen or notepad along, Dwyer kept up with the latest trends. Mail order must have been a Godsend in Waterville.
Only when we turn our back on the nightmare of dri-fit can we heal again as a people.
Perhaps the wheel has already begun to turn . . .
In all the excitement of Clare’s All-Ireland hurling final last year, the glory went to Tony Kelly and the way he might score the greatest ever goal in Croke Park.
And yet, I felt that took away from the glory of Brian Lohan’s trousers.
They were of the Snickers brand. Solid, durable, building site wear, with facility to insert kneepads: for when you are managing Clare in the Liam MacCarthy Cup final at 4pm, but still need to pull cable through ceiling joists before the day is out. This is a level of individuality one can get behind.
Even if you still bow down to the great God of nylon tracksuits, maintaining a certain old school elan is still key to unlocking success.
Take Kieran McGeeney. Big unit, is Kieran. Being frank about it, there’s nobody tests these skimpy GAA garments like Geezer’s Guns.
Still and all, while he complies with the modern trends, he at least accessorises with a programme rolled up tight in his hand throughout games. Even in the All-Ireland final, after the final whistle, McGeeney held on tight to his booklet, making a mental note to mark down that final wide at a later time.
County players, though, are completely swallowed up in this culture. At the ever-dwindling number of events where players and management will speak to the media, they will be dressed in county gear.
As if that’s what they – teachers, accountants, students – would be wearing at 10am on a Tuesday. The reality though is that nowadays, yes, they might well be.
Some players have gone against the grain. In 2003, then Laois player Colm Parkinson was doing a sit-down interview with The Sunday Times. As part of the arrangements, Lorraine O’Sullivan landed down to take some pictures.
She brought a prop: her own sunglasses. Convinced him to lie back on the grass. Wear the sunglasses. Show off your ear ring. And she stood up on a set of steps to gain some elevation.
“Sure I was pure green, I just let her do whatever,” he said this week. And a few days later, he went out with his Laois team and they beat Armagh in the league semi-final.
All good.
A year later, he sat down with Kevin Kimmage of The Sunday Independent. The interview was grand, but they used the same pic. It ran the day of the 2004 Leinster final against Westmeath. Going up that day on the bus, somebody passed down the paper to Parkinson.
“And I’d say John Keane (his assigned Westmeath marker) was only mad to eat me,” he said. From then on, he avoided interviews that might appear on match day.
Seven years ago, I spent an enjoyable day on Darren Hughes’ dairy farm in Scotstown, north Monaghan. He tended to his cattle, fed the calves, showed me the automated milking system and cut some samples of grass for testing.
Then he got up on the silo pit for some photographs, wearing his old International Rules kit, smeared in cow dung. Such precious momentos. If GAA clothing must be worn away from the pitch, then this is the setting.
Until we get back to those times, every trophy and competition is marred and sullied.
The line ‘clothing maketh the man’ is Shakespearean, as those of certain Leaving Cert vintages will know. In Hamlet, Polonius tells son Laertes to dress well because ‘apparel oft proclaims the man’.
What does it proclaim about the GAA man, identikit, dressed like a child who has been dragged backwards through the club shop?
Sometimes a sport must take a look in the mirror.
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GAA Gaelic Football Hurling No tight fit for old men