On Gaelic Games: What would we do without the World Cup? I regard it as less a sports event than a collection of milestones mapping out existence since I was old enough to be aware of my first tournament, in 1970, writes Seán Moran
It would make for quite a tale were I to sketch out my personal states, physical and mental, at those four-year intervals, including details of where I watched the finals, but that has to be balanced against the newspaper's insistence we try to keep the reader involved for more than a paragraph.
To my own personal enjoyment has been added in recent years the job-related interest of watching the effect - real and imagined - on Gaelic games.
This comes in two parts. If Ireland have reached the finals the oxygen is sucked out of the GAA air in June, but without fail the championship picks up thereafter and soon the soccer is just a memory.
Attendances are affected regardless of whether Ireland are playing on a Sunday. When they are - and only three high-profile Ireland games have taken place on championship afternoons - crowds suffer, though it's hard to imagine any other sport that could go head to head with an Ireland World Cup match and still draw 17,000, as the Leinster semi-final between Offaly and Kilkenny did in 1990.
Ironically, Donegal, where soccer has a big following, has twice been forced to field on such Sundays: in both instances, against Armagh in 1988 and Derry in 2002, the turnout was predictably paltry.
On the other hand, tournaments like the current one, ungraced by the Boys in Green and the Best Fans in the World, play on the GAA's mind more than is merited.
One upside is that GAA presidents aren't pestered for reactions to every Ireland match. One former president, the late John Dowling, reacted honestly if a little guilelessly - he had no interest in soccer; his other sporting passion was athletics - by saying he had been in the garden communing with nature.
Current president Nickey Brennan has been apprehensive - again it seems unnecessarily - about the impact of the World Cup.
On a bad Sunday for attendances a couple of weeks ago, soccer was cited in some quarters as a partial explanation. In fact it had just been a bad week for fixtures; the "counter-attraction" of Iran versus Mexico was hardly a factor.
Then last weekend with England - for Irish audiences the big box-office draw - playing a knockout match, the GAA had its best afternoon of the summer: bumper crowds in Thurles and Croke Park and fine ones in Clones and Carrick-on-Shannon.
There are, however, interesting points of comparison. The GAA Show on Setanta Sports last week discussed the supposedly disappointing quality of the championship and raised the contrast between coverage of the championship and World Cup.
GAA coverage tends to navel gaze. A few bad matches and suddenly crowds are disappearing, the public have lost interest and the future is bleak. The Sunday Game robustly bats match analysis around the studio in a way soccer panels don't always (accepting RTÉ's soccer analysts are less easily impressed than their British counterparts).
To be fair to Pat Spillane and colleagues, there has been plenty to be negative about in hurling (lack of competition) and football (defensive tactics and fouling), whereas on the evidence to date this has been a lively and compelling World Cup.
But the knockout stages in Germany have been noticeably tighter and more inhibited, and a tournament's reputation isn't based on group matches.
Of even greater interest are similarities in terms of officiating. Croke Park and Fr Séamus Gardiner, media officer to the National Referees' Committee, will have smiled wanly at recent controversies in Germany. Incorrect decisions have cost teams survival in the tournament.
One aspect Gaelic games could learn from is the relative stoicism that greets these errors. Of course there's a great deal of flapping on the field and some whingeing afterwards, but by and large refereeing calamities in soccer are accepted as routine misfortunes, much like the capricious intervention of a crossbar or goalpost; there are no sudden campaigns to have the result overturned or a rematch ordered.
Sunday's dire encounter between Portugal and Holland featured familiar material. Luis Figo's head butt was beamed to the world and the resultant yellow card was clearly inadequate. Fifa took the new GAA line and went with the referee's decision even though it was discredited by video evidence.
There is, however, at least an intellectual coherence to Fifa's stance; they allow no exceptions to rule and frequently uphold punishments even when they are shown to be excessive.
Soccer referees have long been coping with what GAA referees are increasingly encountering: diving, exaggerating the impact of fouls and generally codding the match officials.
These depressing practices are by their nature hard to identify and create awkward situations for referees, who must not only adjudicate on the "foul" but also show a yellow card if they feel the purportedly aggrieved player has been cheating.
The GAA can look at the vast professional paraphernalia of the World Cup and its week-long referees' camp and reflect that for all the resources available, human officiating remains imperfect.
But that reflection needn't take long, because in a fortnight's time there'll still be plenty of controversy and issues within Gaelic games, and by then there'll be no distractions.
