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The life of the travelling Gael
By Liam Horan
 He
will rise early of a Sunday morning, well before dawn, and address an
artery-blocking, cholesterol-promoting tightener of a Full Irish.
“I won’t go through the Midlands after all,” he’ll
say to the missus, poring one last time over the map stretched out on
the table.
“I’ll go up through Sligo, and cross at Blacklion. Better
roads. And that way we’ll get 10 o’clock Mass in Collooney.”
The planning that goes into away National League matches surpasses possibly
even that of the engineers who built the roads in the first place. Nothing
is left to chance: The night before, in his local hostelry, he will have
canvassed opinions on the best place to park a car in Clontibret, or Ballinascreen,
or Ballinrobe, or Aughrim, or wherever.
Six-and-a-half hours before throw-in time he’ll embark on what he
confidently expects will be a three-and-a-half-hour journey. He picks
up his three travelling companions and the four of them (always four,
apparently it’s a league bye-law) will set on their way, discussing
weighty affairs of the day: Tribunals, power struggles, the strike in
Cork, Dustin’s chances of winning the Eurovision, trouble in the
camp.
The early bonhomie gives way to long bouts of earnest silence as they
move out of their own county and across new frontiers. Each man will cast
an approving eye on the surrounding countryside.
They will remark on the strangest of things. The grass is always greener,
the fields bigger and the roads better.
“Your man there has the gate-post painted in three different colours.
I wonder if that’s common up here?”
Almost everything is related to life back at home. A pig-farm will be
duly noted, with the rejoinder that “he keeps it a damn sight cleaner
than Johnny Walsh, I’ll tell you that for nothing”. The sight
of a club team out training in the biting cold will draw unflattering
comparisons with their own boys who ‘probably aren’t long
out of The Long Jaw Inn at this stage, never mind doing laps of the field’.
On and on it goes. They eventually get around to discussing their own
county team. Always in tones of wearied resignation.
“Can’t understand why they’re trying your man again
at midfield — sure we’ve seen him a thousand times before
and he’s still not good enough, and won’t ever be”;
“That other fellow is grand this time of the year but when the ground
speeds up, he’ll be lost, like he always was”;
“I see our hero of a centre-forward’s out injured again. Why
wouldn’t he! He’s the best man ever I saw to be injured for
the League. He’ll come with a burst again in a few weeks, play the
last League game or two and we’ll be sick looking at him again in
the Championship. We’re a nice county alright.”
Mass and the Sunday papers, a bottle of Fanta to wet the whistle after
the Saharan breakfast and on their way again. A positive sighting of a
car from home brings forth an orgy of excitement.
“He’s a great man to go to the matches,” one will say,
“sure it’s the same ones who go all the time. He has the kids
with him too. How he gets the nine of them into that yoke, I’ll
never know. And you won’t see him in the corporate box in Croke
Park in September, either, like the rest a them.”
Hearty waves, spirited thumbs-up, and a prolonged sounding of the horn
most assuredly take care of one great, unspoken requirement of going to
away league matches: ie, you must be seen, so that news of your unflinching
commitment to the cause will reach home.
“Many from around here at it?” is one key question in the
local on a Sunday night. Important to get the mention there. It’s
a shortcut to respect, much respect, in a small community.
Near the venue, they will ‘face her for home’. With two-and-a-half
hours to kill, they sit there, reading the papers, until the windows fog
up and all members of the party develop niggling headaches from sharing
the limited supply of fresh air.
Just over an hour before throw-in time, they will set off walking towards
the pitch. They go in for one, ostensibly to further wet the whistle,
but, in reality, to spot and be spotted. Locals will cast meaningful looks
their way. “Ye came a long way, boys — what are ye like this
year, have ye much new?”
The reply — “we’re not too bad, a few of the minors
from two years ago are coming through, good lads, but sure it’s
early days yet” — will mark them out as men of great knowledge
of the game. “And yourselves? Tell me, is Duffy/ McMahon/Flynn/Langan
still playing?”
This amounts to something of a gamble, blurting out the only name of a
recent player you can think of. You could be told he hasn’t played
for five years and your credibility would be shot. Tread warily. Many
veterans of away League games would strongly discourage such blatant risk-taking.
They’ll buy a few tickets in the local club Lotto. Ask them how
they got on in the club Championship last year. Any boys on the county
team? Is it costing much to run the club? Ye get floodlights yet? A second
pitch?
A bowl of soup and a few sandwiches and off down to the pitch, buy a
programme for the collection, freeze to death during an epic (and losing)
0-7 to 0-5 encounter, sigh at the sheer predictability of it all and right
as rain for home again.
Get down the road a bit while it’s bright. More good land and alternative
farming systems to be studied before darkness:
A mixed grill in The Watery Sauce restaurant. The time-honoured “no,
we’re paying for it now and that’s it — you drove”
tete-a-tete when the bill arrives. Grab bits of sports news on sundry
local radios as you speed through the regions. Mutter knowing comments
when word comes through that Kerry or Kilkenny have put up big scores.
The annual pageant is beginning to unfold. Anxious times. Great times.
To think Cork fans were almost denied these delicious pleasures this year.
liam@weeklycolumns.ie |
