IN THE ERA of Drive to Survive and tennis, golf, soccer and even the Ireland rugby team signing up for the streaming revolution, what do we have in GAA?
We have the sponsored media event, where a couple of players travel up to Croke Park or a corporate HQ to chat to journalists and in the process do their utmost to give little away. All or Nothing? More like We’ll Say Nothing.
These events are uncomfortable for most players, and I can’t imagine the reporters greatly enjoy them either. You’d almost wonder why they’re sent in the first place because the story could be written the day before . . . Yeah, training has been going well, yeah the opposition are class – the standard bearers, our rivals and inspiration! No, I don’t have a strong view of the controversy of the day. The split season? Sure you dream of wearing the county jersey as a kid and it’s unreal to play with the club too, the lads you grew up with . . .
And on it goes until the tape recorders have enough words in them and the sponsor has got their money’s worth.
Why are these things so boring? Well, because sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes players speak their minds and then other players look at the reaction and think, ‘Jeez, not sure that was worth the hassle. When I’m up I’ll stick with the opposition have been the standard bearers.’
Eugene Branagan outlined last year why he didn’t wish to play for Down and there was a lot of blowback, particularly on social media. It’s almost amusing how quickly the sentiment can go from, ‘Players need to stop being so cagey’ to, ‘He said what!? That fella needs to talk less and concentrate on his game!’
Patrick Horgan had a brush with this duality in January. Asked a straight question, he gave a straight answer and said he felt he was treated unfairly by Cork’s management during the 2021 season. He even qualified that by saying that “anybody who doesn’t play thinks they’re being treated unfairly” but the nuance was lost in the barrage of online comments about how he needs to keep quiet and do his talking on the pitch.
As if he hasn’t done enough talking on the pitch. Even if Horgan was a 20-year-old debutant, he should still be allowed to say his piece without a certain cohort losing their minds.
You often hear that players ought to get off social media. This is unrealistic and a little unfair.
I got to the stage where I avoided Twitter, especially in high season, but younger players now shouldn’t have to do that. Lot’s of them use social media to communicate with their friends. And I value Twitter because I like following GAA, soccer and golf news there. Still it wasn’t worth the headache, particularly if you’d lost a big game recently.
We got turned over by Kilkenny in the second half of the 2019 All-Ireland quarter-final. My puckouts were poor. You wouldn’t dare to tread near your Twitter mentions in the days after.
We had a couple of drinks at the train station on the way home. One fan roared across, cursing me out of it for not driving the puckouts long. It didn’t feel like the time to explain that statistically I had gone longer more often on the day, it’s more that the accuracy was lacking.
Much as these exchanges aren’t pleasant, they don’t sting as much as the written word for some reason, even if it comes from an anonymous account which is a front for an angry and barely informed individual.
I’d like to think I had a good relationship with Cork’s supporters, and appreciated the vocal backing they gave us time and again, and money they put into following the red jersey wherever we went.
Defeats like that one to Kilkenny leave them hurt and probably wondering whether their weekends would be better spent doing something else. Yet they always kept backing us.
The players, though, will always feel the most acute disappointment. They have built their lives around being on the team. Even when they’re not playing or training or travelling, they are thinking about the game and anything little thing they can do to get better.
They do this in a pressure cooker more intense than many other athletes have to deal with, I would argue. It may seem mad to suggest it but a county hurler is under more scrutiny than a Formula 1 driver in some ways. One is a highly paid professional living in Monaco, travelling the world with the show, and insulated somewhat from day-to-day reality as we would understand it.
We lose a big game and go to work in the community whose sense of esteem is tied to our performance. It’d be like Charles Leclerc skidding his Ferrari off the track on Sunday and then having to go behind the counter at the bank on Monday morning – in a town where everybody is Tifosi. And if he went for a glass of red on the walk home he’d be getting daggers from everybody in the place. What’s he doing in here four weeks before his next race? Pass me my phone.
We can’t change the hyper-local element of GAA, nor would we ever want to. Yet you would like to see a more general appreciation of the fact that these are young players living in a goldfish bowl. They’ll make mistakes on the field, sometimes they’ll have plain terrible games. They might even say the odd loose thing, but wouldn’t it be healthier if more people were inclined to let it slide? It is, after all, just a sport in which everyone is doing their best.
Who knows, if there were more in-depth interviews in print and on the airwaves maybe the odd comment by the likes of Horgan and Branagan wouldn’t be seized on.
I do hope GAA teams get in on the streaming act at some point soon, it’s what the public have become used to with other sports and it’s not unreasonable for them to wish for the same with hurling and football teams.
Things like Laochra Gael and A Year ’Til Sunday among others have shown what’s possible. Imagine if there was behind the scenes documentary footage of Brian Cody’s Kilkenny, or if there was a camera crew with Limerick now. You wouldn’t be able to rewatch that enough times.
From my own career, I’d love for the public to be able to fully appreciate Jimmy Barry Murphy’s magnetic presence in the dressing room; the unquestioned authority he had despite his understated way. There were a thousand 10-second conversations he had with players which made them feel a foot taller. Jimmy’s every deliberate action said ‘I’m no big deal’, yet despite himself he was never anything other than revered. How great would it be if that was captured on film?
We have so many marvellous characters like Jimmy in our games and it’d be fantastic to see them go about their business in the here and now.
If players and coaches act in good faith and supporters like you and me do the same by allowing them to speak openly, and not jumping on every inconsequential slip up then there is much to be gained.
The alternative is more of the same. ‘The opposition are class’ may not just be a GAA cliche, but an accurate description of other sports’ ability to engage the public compared to ours.