Sideline Cut: Despite being overwhelmed by the menu of live televised sport, we still find it in our souls to spare an hour to watch the archives of long-finished occasions.
Over the last few weeks, TG4 has returned with its All-Ireland Goldseries, featuring All-Ireland championship football matches from the late 1980s and early 1990s, a tough and not greatly loved period in the evolution of the game.
Knowing the result takes the tension out of the viewing and so for the fan, watching these old matches becomes an exercise in nostalgia and revisionism. And it is the whole package, from the electronic innovations of the day to the profile of the crowd, that draws us in.
It was disconcerting to see Seán Boylan roam the sideline in the 1988 final against Cork wearing what seemed to be a leather jacket borrowed from The Fonz in Happy Days. And to witness Mayo's pale last 10 minutes against Cork in the final a year later. Kevin McStay was playing that day, a clever, mischievous sprite, a purist of lightweight build dancing around a brawny Cork back line. Who could have known then he would be up in the crow's nest commenting for RTÉ on the stars of the generation to come?
For the Cork and Mayo folk who happened to tune into the archive footage and can remember precise segments of that day - the pint on Gardiner Street, the mind-blowing night before in the Pink Elephant, the traffic jam on the way home - having the actual match held up as a mirror to who and where they were then must be an odd and even disquieting experience.
And I wonder if the any of the players involved in those games - the dourly magnificent 1992 Ulster final between Derry and Donegal was also broadcast - happened to land on an image of their younger selves while channel-surfing only to flick away again, aghast. For many sports people tend not to revisit the scenes of their achievements or disappointments too often.
The magic of watching Donegal celebrate after stunning Derry in a 14-man second-half performance, of watching a gargantuan Anthony Molloy envelop the tanned, still youthful frame of Brian McEniff, was that none of them knew what was to come that day. None of that team knew they were only two matches away from not just winning a first All-Ireland title but also genuinely altering the way an entire county imagined itself. Somehow, Donegal inched a little closer to the Republic and away from Scotland and Ulster after that year. And equally, the bemused, addled figure of Eamon Coleman, watching his fine and awesomely strong Derry 15 misfire throughout that second half, could hardly have guessed his boys would storm the fort 12 months on. On that afternoon, in front of the massive, warlike hill of fans at Clones, all he knew was that he was shattered.
So there is a safety in turning to the old, treasured games from years back, even if, like Housman's blue remembered hills, they are lands of lost content, irrevocable except through the tantalising medium of celluloid film.
Of course, it is not just Gaelic games that we can look back upon. Setanta sports show classic heavyweight boxing bouts and NASN, the satellite station available on subscription, regularly show vintage American sports showdowns. And so it is possible to happen upon fuzzy 1970s basketball games instead of Eastenders.
But, much like tuning in for Wimbledon to find that, because of dark clouds over south London, they are rerunning Borg v McEnroe, the pleasure lies in the happenstance of coming upon these old gems and finding yourself transported back to that time (Look how sunburnt the centre-court grass was back in 1981. So the summers were better back then!).
But over the past year or so, sports fans have been not only selecting but also sharing their own favourite occasions on the internet site recently named Timemagazine's invention of the year, youtube.com.
Like most technophobes, I tended to look blankly at people who mentioned this latest online sensation. The youtube site basically enables people to post recorded versions of sundry happenings, from garden parties to major sporting, artistic, cultural or political events. Already, the library of amateur and official sporting footage is phenomenal. Although it only came into being early last year after being dreamt up by three regular techno whiz kids, the site has already been acquired by the cyber-giant Google for $1.65 billion dollars. Given that it is still in its infancy, it seems likely the archive will expand at an enormous rate and at the click of a button people will be able to revisit sporting moments whose recorded images were locked in dusty basements for years.
Already, you can punch in the name of any sports star and choose from a bewildering variety of film, from Babe Ruth's last home game to the 11 points from play kicked by Frank McGuigan for Tyrone in the Ulster final of 1984.
It is not the same as being there but short of hopping into the DeLorean that sent Michael J Fox smokin' through the decades, it is the next best thing. Until recently, that grainy McGuigan footage was considered to be semi-precious stone, not unobtainable but quite difficult to track down. In the past year, it has been watched by 1,200 people on youtube. And, in a more modern context, the homecoming of the Roscommon All-Ireland minor football champions, captured on official video, on camcorder and on phone videos, has been posted for all to see.
It is hard to argue against a facility that allows people to see 40- and 50-year-old clips of sporting feats they may have only heard and read about. But it seems all kinds of occasions, from All-Ireland finals to five-a-side soccer games, are being filmed now, and where once we had to make do with flickering, faltering footage of Christy Ring or Duncan Edwards, soon we will have the virtual life of every "sports star" on film, from the shocking speed of that fabled under-six egg-and-spoon race to the tantrum thrown in the dressing-room after the World Cup semi-final. Soon, nothing will be left to imagination and make-believe.
After all, camera enthusiasts show up everywhere; youtube.com even includes a snippet from a long-forgotten match played in 1990 in the Toronto skydome between Dublin and a Tyrone team featuring the 18-year-old Peter Canavan. That footage, in particular, was emblematic of the fact that even in the 1980s, when Ireland was smashed, every town had at least one video camera, a monstrous temperamental affair, heavier than a coffin, which would be hauled out for every kind of cat-fight that involved the pride and honour of the town.
You know deep down that in some cabinet or school library, there is some such videotape of yourself, shivering on the fringes of an athletics day, looking emaciated, with hair like Sheena Easton and clothes like Wham. You know that vital pass you gave (so tragically unappreciated), that consolatory point or that last-minute steal, or even just that glimpsed footage of yourself sitting anxious and frozen on the bench, that inconsequential sporting moment long forgotten by all except you, is on film somewhere, a great, small, moment captured. So watch out.
Some day soon, you might soon discover that it is out and proud, your finest hidden sporting moment, up there now in lights and in cyberspace with Ali, Pele and Martina Navratilova, there for the enjoyment of all mankind.
