Codes in conflict

The motivation was simple enough: to check out one of these games the result of which you hear on the 6 o’clock news every Sunday night before it fades into obscurity and is never thought of again.
We wanted to interview the entire crowd, to try to find out why they were there? Who were these people supporting those who keep the lesser codes in these counties alive, and continue to foster some semblance of a senior representation.
Family members and close friends made up the majority of those in attendance. A young woman, sitting in a car parked behind a goal, was keeping one eye on the game, another on the Sunday World. She’d come with her boyfriend because he was playing and he’d promised to bring her for a drink on the way home. Hers was a typical tale.
When halftime came, we noticed one of the Cavan subs heading to the dressing room. He emerged fully dressed a few minutes later and, imagining ourselves for a second to be real investigative journalists, we figured he must have a job in a bar and was due in to work at 4 p.m. Half an hour later, we left the ground ourselves and discovered this character thumbing a lift outside.
“Why did you leave at halftime?” we asked.
“I promised the girlfriend I’d be down to her house by 4 and didn’t want to be late,” he replied.
For a pair of Corkmen, fortunate enough to have grown up in a county with, ahem, significant traditions in both codes, for whom the chance of wearing the jersey competitively was the stuff of unfulfilled childhood dreams, his attitude was difficult to comprehend. Either representing Cavan didn’t mean that much to him or his girlfriend must have been some woman.
The Cavan hurler came to mind once or twice during this, the most embarrassing week in recent GAA history. First, a few Dublin fans who probably couldn’t name six of their own team before they entered Croke Park for the game against Westmeath come over all English hooligan on Tommy Lyons at Croke Park. Then, Tipperary and Kerry withdraw from the All-Ireland football and hurling qualifiers, respectively. Two different teams, yet their reasons for pulling out are remarkably similar: clubs getting priority over the county sides.
We realized Kerry hurling was in serious trouble earlier this year when some players opted out after first availing of a free holiday for the whole panel in Lanzarote. No surprises then that the county manager, Maurice Leahy, turned up for training twice in the last fortnight and discovered he had just two and three players to work with. The rest, he was told, were too committed to the local parish to give him any effort ahead of the forthcoming qualifiers. Wasn’t it only 11 years ago that Kerry overturned Waterford in the Munster championship? Little wonder the counties have had such contrasting fortunes since.
“They have lost interest in the county set up,” said Leahy, who’s had his shoulder to the hurling wheel in Kerry as a player, selector and manager for decades. “I think this season needed to be concluded as things just were not working out and it will be different next year. The Under-21s will form the backbone of the team and under a new manager they will be in their own competition and playing teams they can match, I am confident the future is bright for Kerry hurling.”
We wouldn’t be so confident. There’s little chance of the U-21s, who performed so admirably in losing to Limerick last Wednesday night, will ever amounting to anything when the county is treating the senior team with such a cavalier attitude.
Of course, the Tipp footballers need only go back two years to make the point about how unfairly they have been treated by their own bureaucrats. They came mighty close to beating Cork in the Munster final at Semple Stadium in 2002. If Niall Kelly opted to go for goal instead of punching the ball over the bar for the equalizing point that day, Tipperary would have won that game.
Do you think the Mid-Tipperary Divisional Board would have had fixed club matches for a couple of days before this All-Ireland football qualifier if this team had brought home a Munster title then?
“The Tipperary County Board’s decision to schedule club hurling championship fixtures just two days prior to the qualifier against Fermanagh is utterly disgraceful,” said Dessie Farrell, the chief executive of the GPA. “Just weeks after the Kildare hurlers experienced a similar attitude from officialdom, the plight of the less prolific squad in a county dominant in one code has been thrust into the spotlight yet again. Once again the question arises: when and to whom shall county boards become accountable for such outrageous actions?”
This is the point of the whole debacle. Every club in Ireland has its share of hurling and football snobs, the kind who look down their noses at the other game, and regard it as a threat to the sport they love. It only takes one of these jobsworths to schedule games in their favored code to create untold havoc in the other. As a result, at a time when the entire country is about to be transfixed by televised soccer for the next three weeks, the GAA is reduced to internecine squabbling.
That serious action is required here goes without saying. Somebody suggested earlier in the week that every county should be required to enter a team in the minor, U-21 and senior championships in both codes. Moreover, failing to fulfill a game in any of those competitions should be punishable by being expelled from all of them. A drastic step? Exactly the sort that’s required.