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From Anticipation to Zany, we bring you the A-Z of the National League
Anticipation. Maybe the O’Byrne and Walsh Cups
of this world have dulled it a little recently but previously the League
was the first chance to see how the county was shaping up. Hence there’s
always a comparatively large crowd on ‘day waan’. The rate
this crowd will dwindle over the following weeks will be related directly
to the results attained. Lose and the attendance will collapse a lot like
the PD vote last May. Win and around 80 per cent will stick around for
day two. The only chance of an increase in gate receipts will be if there’s
the sniff of one of the following....
Brawls. The League wouldn’t be the League without
a good old ruck at some point. The great thing about league fisticuffs
is the underlying resentment involved. In the Championship, a row can
be explained away as “passions boiling over”. You know, lads
have trained forever, the crowd is baying, it’s do or die and sometimes
things get a bit heated. In the League there are no such easy explanations.
To throw a dig at the low-stakes time of year there really does need to
be some degree of hatred involved, hence you always get the best rumbles
in the League. Of course we don’t condone this kind of thing. Neither
do the patrons of the GAA. OK, Croker was sold out for the Dublin-Tyrone
game this time last year. But that was nothing to do with the simmering
malice involved. Oh no. Everyone went to watch a new set of giant bulbs
get switched on.
Cold. It really is you know. Something the 82,000 fans
at HQ last year — some of whom are rumoured to be infrequent League
attendees — will have discovered, especially those in the upper
tiers. Jaysus, just pray there isn’t a northerly wind this time
Dub folk because then you will freeze like Mayo in September. Or Dublin
in August. Boom boom.
Death of hurling. Expect the usual slew of obits for
The Fastest, Greatest Field Game In The World Ever once Kilkenny put out
their Junior camogie team who duly tear a new one for a “once proud
force” like Offaly or Clare. Amazingly, and against all the odds,
hurling will still continue to be played well in the usual places and
55,000 people will pack Semple for the Munster Final, more often than
not the most memorable sporting event of the year.
Excuses. “All things considered/at the end of
the day/ultimately/when all is said and done/it’s only February/March/April
and our bigger battles are ahead of us.” There it is folks, the
concluding line to every manager’s post-match interview for the
next three months. Who needs a tape recorder?
Freaking out and going on strike. A relatively new development
this and Cork supporters hope their football team clocks in again for
the first time since the All-Ireland semi-final.
Getting carried away. It only takes one decent win,
even if it’s against barely interested opposition, for everyone
to believe that “this is our year, so long as we stay injury free
and the manager doesn’t play lads out of position”. Of course
this can all change in a week’s time when, on a slow drive back
from Ulster, supporters conclude that they are “10 years behind
the times and seriously, we can’t have ever been worse!”
Home town decisions. Why does the free count always
favour the hosts? Fair enough in Wicklow, no-one wants to leave the ground
in the boot of a car. Time the refs evened things up elsewhere.
It may only be February but.... Expect to see this introduction
in quite a few match reports for the next 28 days. OK, it’s not
exactly imaginative but it separates the journo from the ‘getting
carried away’ crowd. It’s a professional v amateur thing.
And the pros are multiplying....
Journalists. Remember when there was one GAA hack per
county and maybe half-a-dozen working the national beat? It wasn’t
that long ago. But now that’s all changed. There were nearly as
many people in the press box as there was on the pitch at recent O’Byrne
Shield fixtures. And what a sullen bunch of pasty-faced egotists they
were. Enough about the players though. The craic in the press box is 90!
OK, it isn’t.
Kicking. Not that we’ll see much of it. Hand-passing
from one end of the field to the other is the name of the game, especially
playing against the wind. If we’re lucky we might see some kicking
when B breaks out.
Lights. This is still the new thing, in Croker at least.
For some reason a game where it’s darker and colder is more appealing
to the floating fan. No, we don’t understand either. Although it
is good to have Sky Super Sunday’s free for steady drinking.
Mileage. Goes a long was to explain the mutated and
multiplying strain of J.
New gear. It’s box fresh right now so expect to
see more than the odd player manfully fending back the shivers as he walks
from the car to the dressing room in his new county polo shirt.
Official programmes. e2 for the teams and an ad for
tool hire. And they say there isn’t the money in GAA to sustain
professionalism!
Peaking too soon. This condition is usually diagnosed
with the benefit of hindsight. So, head on the block time. This year Carlow
and Kildare will peak too soon. In hurling, we’ll go Galway. Well
it won’t be Cork anyway!
Queuing. You’ll have to do it at Croker or Parnell
Park. Should be alright at Ruislip mind. Nearly as quiet as Pairc Ui Rinn!
Rule changes. These are as fundamental to League ball
as Club Energizer is to post-match interviews. This season, every county
has to provide it’s own bevy of gyrating cheerleaders whose modesty
will be protected only by three miniature shamrocks. The laydeez will
double as runners between the bench and the players. Of course, permanent
change will be stifled by managers habitually resistant to anything that
eats into their camera time. Down with managers.
Supporters. The League is where you’ll find the
true ones. Not in the first game. Or the second. Not when there’s
a chance of a brawl, but in the last League Sunday away in Ballybofey
with relegation and play-offs no longer relevant sub-plots. A strange
mix of love and madness drives them. In the crass, moneyed world of the
Premiership they’d be home and away season ticket holders afforded
preferential treatment for cup final tickets. In the GAA they’re
often reduced to begging when their county reaches the final once every
50 years. It’s a funny kind of democracy.
Tenners. That’s what it costs these days to get
in. Value for money? It will be for the cute hoors who bring along that
€500 note for which there is no change available. A e50 note used
to do but well the times have changed, Celtic Tiger and all.
Umbrellas. We don’t care if it’s raining,
put ‘em down!
Vanity. For the past decade it has been white boots
and white hair flashing around the winter swamps of the western seaboard.
Now it’s bespoke footwear and ad campaigns; you’re no-one
unless your head is on billboards and your name has been stitched into
your studded shoes by some 10-year-old Vietnamese kid.
Wags. Is it just me or are they becoming more athletic
and less glamorous looking? Well, I suppose it’s to be expected:
The amount of training these lads do nowadays they’d kill the average
neatly preened cailín. Increasingly, players need lady footballers
to keep up with them off the field. Together they’ll create a GAA
master race: A new generation of kids with rubber limbs, leather lungs,
iron torsos and a tendency to kick quite a few wides.
X-rays. No-one gets simple injuries anymore. They only
get freaky ones; the types that only show up on internal scans. Instead
of breaks, we now have fractures, instead of fractures we have stress
fractures which aren’t visible to the naked eye although an x-ray
and a few weeks in the cryo-chamber will sort you out.
Yelling. Half the crowd at a League match go to air
their opinion in public. It’s practice for the one-liners when you
get to Championship, so at this time of the year you might get someone
shouting “Up Down” for 70 minutes. It’s a fine-tuning
process, getting the pitch and harmony right for the summer. Then such
beauties as this will be heard: Kildare played Offaly in Nolan Park a
couple of seasons back. Paddy Russell wasn’t having his best day.
A bad decision was followed by baying from the crowd, then the noise subsided
and one lonely voice was heard: “Russell, you’re useless.”
Magic.
Zany. The dregs of the dictionary for this one. We could
have gone with zebra — the performances will be up and down, black
and white — but it doesn’t really work does it? Zany will
do, if nothing you’ll impress/confuse your mates at the match. Anything
for a bit of attention! |
