LOCKERROOM: Had half a mind to write about the tabloid vigilantes who have caught that notorious old slapper Sven-Goran Eriksson in the sack with young footie icon Ulrika. Well you can't beat those Swedes, can you Stan?
Lockeri was going to share a story related to me by its central character while in drink many years ago. The narrator was a tabloid journalist and his newspaper had been involved in some prying into the private life of Bobby Robson, when Bobby was in charge of England. Anyway, our friend was in a hotel, "out foreign" feeling lonely when he had a idea. He'd look in the phone book to see if there were any "escort services" locally available.
Lo, there were enough to ensure no man need ever go unescorted through that town again. While dialling he experienced a little twinge of something he remembered as conscience. He decided there and then to let fate play its part. He would ask the agency if they couldn't send him a blonde "escort". The rational was Clintonian. If in a part of the world bereft of natural blondes a man was to make an enquiry and then be sent a blonde escort, well then a man would be morally pristine as he submitted to a damn good escorting.
They had a blonde and soon she was knocking on the hotel room door. My friend, elegant and portly, nay, an escort's dream boat, cruised to the door and pressed his eye to the spy hole. Ye gods! There stood a very large, darkly complexioned woman, whose magnificent embonpoint was crowned by sugar icing in the form of a lurid blonde wig. A walking pint of Guinness. Such an architectural novelty was she the two Englishmen standing chatting at the doorway across the hotel corridor had turned to survey her. These Englishmen, my friend noted, were none other than Bobby Robson and Ted Croker of the FA.
"Meester ---------," called the blonde as she knocked again, "I am here." All desire vanished. The choice was his: answer the door and face Bobby Robson or wait inside till later to face the irate proprietor of the local escort service.
I was going to write about that and the morally vacant swamp that the English tabloids and English football do their business ibut it struck me that you've heard it all before. What is surprising is that the GAA seems willing to go the same way. The GAA seems willing to dial the blonde and takes its chances thereafter.
By preserving Rule 42 a while longer the GAA handed Bertie the chance to nail a scaled-down Bertie Bowl into any agreement with his new Governmental partners. The populace will consider Bertie chastened. Soccer people and rugby folk will applaud. And it will suit the GAA. Croke Park will have its Bord Fáilte inspection. Every second year the Ireland versus England rugby match will be played there and maybe once every two years a big soccer game will be played there. In return the GAA's summer fixtures schedule will slop over into the little Bertie Bowl and take the strain off Croke Park.
So, to suit itself, the GAA, once rooted to the extent that its very success is built on community, is prepared to let the taxpayer take the hit of almost a billion euro. Money for grassroots sports in areas bereft of facilities, which might get kids playing something, anything, that gives them a structure? They'll have to get it elsewhere.
I'm not saying giving out free hurleys would eradicate drugs and joy-riding, etc, by Christmas. I am saying in major American cities programmes like Midnight Basketball conducted when kids are out on the streets looking for trouble have channelled those kids away from trouble. I'm saying there are many examples out there from Cabra to Cork of sports clubs working wonders with kids. A billion euro spent on pitches and coaches and clubs and mentors would be a lot more valuable to everyone than a billion euro spent on a traffic snarled white elephant.
As if that riverdance of prevarication over Croke Park wasn't alienating enough for people there then comes the hideous caterwauling which has begun about the issues of pay for players and drug testing of players. There is a moral equivocation here, a deliberate and unjustifiable linkage of the two issues. No cough bottles, no cups of coffee and no Coke and yet we don't get paid yet we are only amateurs. This drug testing is a professional thing to ask.
Yes intercounty players are amateurs. The professional things that are asked are those which they do already. Crazy training. Sports shrinks. Physios. Dieticians. Bleep tests. Body fat monitoring. These things are done because players and coaches choose to do them. No contracts.
And it's wonderful. That's why people who make that choice need protection against people who would cheat them. It's the purest dilemma in sport and people refuse to see it. You can have Coke, cake, coffee and cough mixture. You just have a list of those to avoid. Occasionally you urinate into a beaker. For that you know the shower on the other side of the Border aren't popping magic smarties which mean they recover quicker and move faster. You are protected. Just like rowers and canoeists and boxers and swimmers and all the other amateurs who go to the Olympics and live in the gloaming of anonymity all the years in between. When people do a thing out of love they deserve to be protected from cheats.
And why link this issue to that of getting paid. Players should be looked after well, very well. Mileage, insurance, tickets, treatment, holidays, the whole lot. Getting paid won't work, though. The intercounty game is corporatised to the extent that clubs virtually bid farewell to their best players when they make it. If we pay those players the gulf increases. So does the pay. €127 a week won't be enough next year when Kildare offer that plus a cushy job if you move to Newbridge but Cork will retaliate with €127 and the appearance of a job and so on. The sense of place and pride will vanish. Every €127 that goes into the pocket of a player is €127 not spent on putting a coach into local schools, We'll have glamour on top and a large, badly looked after body underneath. That's what you are sent when you forget who you are and you dial the blonde. Oh and two soccer people on the far side of the corridor having a good chuckle.
You can't always throw open the door and shout "where's my laundry?"
