Connect Eddie HoltThe Athens Olympics open next Friday. Premiership football kicks off the following day. Earlier in the summer we had the disappointing Euro 2004 football tournament. Last month the Tour de France (it's now 17 years since Stephen Roche's win) completed its annual chemical excursion. The GAA hurling and football championships have reached decisive stages.
It's been a summer of sport, but many people are deeply disillusioned. For years, the Olympics and professional cycling have been stained indelibly by drug abuse. Big-time professional football becomes ever more mired in greed and money, with sex scandals for, eh, light relief. GAA matches have been marred by on-pitch and sideline violence.
In more than a quarter of a century of writing for newspapers, two subjects have always (yes, always!) guaranteed me robust responses. Beyond even the North's Troubles, the crisis of Catholicism in Ireland or arguments against the criminal voraciousness of business, condemnation of Israel's treatment of Palestinians or mention of GAA violence have always elicited maniacal anger.
To condemn Israel is automatically twisted by some readers as dishonouring the Holocaust. It's not, of course. Gratuitous Israeli violence and knee-jerk twisting dishonour the Holocaust. Likewise, to raise the issue of GAA violence is automatically twisted as being anti-Irish. Again, it's not. Covering up for, minimising and whitewashing GAA thuggery is anti-Irish.
The usual defence is that GAA games are "manly" and not for whingeing wimps. Fair enough - all passionately contested, physical contact sports will inevitably produce injuries.
But there's a characteristically arbitrary quality to the defences proffered by GAA apologists. What's "manly" about deliberately and without provocation belting an opponent with a hurley or fist? Who decides what's an "acceptable level of violence"? (Ironically, the GAA echoes Reginald Maudling when it comes to its own games.) Can a hurley or a thump to the torso be properly dismissed as a "bit of a sceilp"? How about a hurley or a kick to the legs? A hurley or a thump to the head? At what point does the "sceilping" become unadulterated criminal savagery?
Crowds like an on-pitch or sideline melée - or "mill", to place it in the vernacular. Rushes of blood have an infectious quality and spectators - usually vicariously but sometimes more directly - feel the primal thrill of erupting violence. For years, the anticipation of a "good mill" was the main reason spectators went to the Ireland v Australia compromise rules matches.
The super-macho Aussies - broken noses, tight shorts, vile perms - used to chide the GAA footballers about being wimps. In fairness, the GAA lads fought back and Dublin's Joe McNally became a folk hero for his reactive belligerence on a tour Down Under. At least in Ireland v Australia games, the GAA could claim - usually truthfully - its players were defending themselves.
Now, however, in spite of the super stadium at Croke Park, the slicker marketing of Gaelic games and the general sense of renewal that pervades the GAA, there's been an upsurge in traditional violence. Formed as an Irish alternative to the "muscular Christianity" that was the sporting ideal of 19th century British public schools, the GAA still tacitly condones brutishness.
Publicly, of course, the association condemns thuggery. Yet there's more than a lingering respect for the thick boyo, who is not only fittingly hardy, but compensates for a lack of skill with unprovoked savagery.
The games - especially top-class hurling - can occasionally be wonderful contests of will, skill and brawn but flagrantly cheerleading commentators regularly demean them. Ger Canning, Marty Morrissey and Brian Carthy sometimes sound more like PR officers for the GAA than sports commentators. Even the most humdrum scores, saves and moves are frequently described as "fantastic", "magnificent", "wonderful", "brilliant" and "superb", when clearly they are not. Whenever they are, the ritual abuse of superlatives means they are literally indescribable.
Thus are the games routinely demeaned through spurious aggrandisement. You sense that most GAA commentators and reporters feel obliged to turn a blind eye to the negative aspects of the sports. It's reminiscent of the way that, for decades, religion correspondents refused, for fear of being ostracised, ever to criticise the Catholic hierarchy. It's unhealthy.
Yes, of course, Sky Sports indulges in idiotic aggrandisement of Premiership football. It's flogging the stuff so it's unsurprising that the tone of the channel is closer to the tone of advertising than journalism. But just because big business debases English football, there's no need for misguided jingoism and the denial of a sub-culture of thuggery to debase Gaelic games.
Drugs have wounded the Olympics and professional cycling severely. Few people believe the results anymore. Hype is harming soccer. Jingoism and an ambivalent attitude towards violence may eventually undermine the GAA. The association is a great cultural organisation but it could find that thugs are just as lethal as drugs in the long term. More honesty and less PR, please.