I AM NOT SURE if Vladmir Putin has ever seen a Gaelic football or hurling match, so I doubt if he was targeting our national games when a new law banned gambling across Russia in July, writes DIARMAID FLEMING
Casinos shut overnight, and like Russian roulette players and poker-sharks forced underground, those of us in Moscow for whom summer without the GAA would be as bleak as the coldest Russian winter have had to resort to unorthodox means for sporting sustenance.
Until July, the GAA fan would beat a path to Novy Arbat, a Las Vegas in central Moscow. With a neon frontage almost as big as Croker, the Metelitsa Sportland Casino boasted as many TV screens as green-baized poker tables, beaming in sports from all round the world.
“The Irish football? Da, yes, come in,” said the sultry Russian receptionist last St Patrick’s Day.
Alongside Russians gambling with silent intensity, the TG4 commentary as Gaeilge of the All-Ireland club football final between Crossmaglen and Kilmacud Crokes mingled with the rattle of the roulette ball and gambling chips. A group of Bulgarians screeched intermittently nearby at another television, as did some Armenians across the floor at what seemed their equivalent of the Munster hurling final.
But then, alas, the doors shut overnight. I turned to the internet as my back-door to the GAA championship. While I’d miss Sportland’s exotic clientele for company, at least I’ll have Ger Canning on rte.ie.
My excitement at logging on for the Leinster football final was brief, a message proclaiming coverage was limited to the “island of Ireland”. No time to dwell on geographical tautology, desperate measures were needed.
I couldn’t possibly give the secret away, but it is not for nothing that the Russians put the first man into space, or that Ireland is a hub for the likes of Microsoft. Russian and Irish computer know-how led me to what claimed to be an Iraqi website, with perfect reception.
The unbridled glee at “beating the system” reminded me of being hustled over the turnstile and into the All-Ireland final by my late father on his ticket in the good old days. (Today you’d be frogmarched out by a fluorescent-jacketed security guard to walk the gauntlet of wheel-clampers where once the “lock-hards” protected you from daylight robbery with their motley peaked headwear, rolled newspaper and cooking-sherry bottle.)
I felt like a dissident trying to get the BBC in Soviet times, defying the controllers in Donnybrook and Croke Park guarding the television rights for the games. And sure enough, the signal from Iraq was jammed for the Dublin versus Kerry quarter-final, but another path was found. Deep joy at outwitting the computer geeks in Montrose again was only matched by silent horror at the merciless massacre of the Dubs I was to witness. If Stalin had been a GAA team bainisteoir, he would have approved.
This emigrant’s mind was bent on rambling after the trouncing, reflecting on how despite the internet today and twittery and tweeting, live GAA coverage away from home has never been easy.
Eager crowds up to the 1950s in London huddled around a radio pressed against a lamppost used as an aerial, to hear Mícheál Ó hEithir reveal unfolding history in Croke Park, often relayed by second-hand commentary from the man with his ear to the wireless. “They’d sometimes have to kick the lamppost to get a better reception,” my friend and 1950s Mayo football All-Ireland winner Mick Mulderrig tells me.
All-Irelands in the 1970s and 1980s were watched in huge cinema auditoriums, like New York’s Fordham University or the Hammersmith Odeon in London, turned into enclosed volcanoes of Gaelic intensity, like being in Croker itself.
I saw this feeling once go too far when well-fuelled exuberant Galway supporters tried to invade the pitch, clambering onto the stage of the Odeon to embrace Noel Lane after his late crucial goal in the 1988 All-Ireland hurling final. Enveloping not just their hero, but all of Croke Park in shadows by blocking the projector beam, sparked fisticuffs with stunned Tipperary fans desperate to see what was to be for them a grim conclusion.
Before Setanta Sports had even pucked a ball, we’d travel far and wide to pubs in London in the 1980s airing videos flown in on Monday of RTÉ’s Sunday Game. Channel Four for a time broadcast big matches late at night, bringing to mind another trauma, once again involving the Dubs.
A posting in 1992 to the remote windswept Orkney island of Papa Westray put Croker well out of reach. Despite Dublin’s narrow escape against Clare in the football semi-final, victory was anticipated against Donegal in their only All-Ireland final.
With no pub or drink for sale on the island, supplies for celebration were ordered in by boat. No emails or mobile phones then, and GAA sport being firmly foreign games to the 78 islanders meant I could record overnight and watch the game on Monday with refreshment, safely ignorant of the result.
I watched in suspended disbelief as the final whistle heralded another Orkney gale, defeat, and despair. The dinner uneaten, the drink undrunk, it was lights out in Papa Westray at 8pm. Bitter tears were only diluted with delight for all the Donegal tribe who’d be dancing, scattered across the world wherever they oiled the Rothaí Mór an tSaoil.
So the GAA is amateur, evangelising Gaelic games part of its constitution, and RTÉ is the broadcaster of the State to which we Irish all belong. But more hurdles in defence of TV rights may lie ahead to foil those of us in Moscow tuning to Iraq to watch the finals.
We may have to call once again on our Russian friends to ensure that the rattle of the till will not silence the Hill. The flash of the cash will never outdo the clash of the ash.