As I write, the place over here in the backwoods is pretty crowded and full of noisy chatter - all about hurling and the event this weekend which once marked the summit of its season. My good friends and companions jostle around; some lean over my shoulder telling me, urging me, what to say.
I have known them by repute for years, these dear old dinosaurs, backwoods men, old fogies and the not-an-inch traditionalists. They've invited me to join their ranks and lend them a hand in their efforts to hold things back. For decades, they've been accused of refusing to live in the twentieth century; they plead with me to retreat from the twenty-first.
Our common goal just now, according to our antagonists, is to hinder and hamper the onward march of hurling, to drag it back into old God's time. In other words, to close the back door with a bang. Forgive me for painting an absurd picture of the current hurling scene but this is one of those situations for which irony was specially invented.
Mindful of the fact that this newspaper's readership abounds with sensitive souls I shall endeavour to restrain my comments on the ludicrous procedure which has landed us with Sunday's All Ireland hurling final. A so-called All Ireland final, the cynics among my friends in the backwoods say. The game being played at Croke Park on Sunday, they remind me, is, in reality, a second-hand Leinster final - a shop-soiled re-enactement of the provincial decider played on July 9th when Kilkenny trounced Offaly by 2-21 to 1-13. And the gap of 11 points between the teams flattered the losers on the day.
But now, thanks to the accommodating back door, the same teams meet again with hurling's premier prize, the Liam McCarthy Cup, at stake. The contrived arrangement which brought this about can be described only as a travesty of the championship's knock-out system. It downgrades (or dare I say it demeans?) the celebrated occasion which, with one exception, has marked the climax of each hurling season for more than a century. We hardly need to remind ourselves that the sole exception was the final of 1998 between the same counties. And Offaly won the McCarthy Cup that day, a second-chance gift which swung the back door into proper prospective. Of course, Offaly didn't lose the 1998 Leinster final by a massive 11 points: Kilkenny scraped through on that occasion by a mere five!
Perhaps that was why the GAA's special congress later that year decided by a huge majority to extend the back door experiment for four more years. The bonus derived from the innovation comprised more games in the All Ireland series, including semi-finals on separate dates, live television coverage of all those fixtures and consequently, substantial additional revenue. The euphoria thus created masked the flawed and incongruous base from which those developments sprang. This time round, however, attitudes are changing - slowly perhaps, but surely nonetheless. Since the back door business began in 1997 we have had three such events - come Sunday, Kilkenny and Offaly twice and in the inaugural year, Clare and Tipperary. Clare confirmed their Munster final victory on that occasion thus stifling the questions which would have arisen, in Clare and elsewhere if Tipperary had reaped the full benefit of the second chance gratuitously presented to them. It was too soon for followers of the game to recognise that the new garden wasn't rosy after all; and rivalry between Clare and Tipperary had at that time reached an unprecedented peak.
If Offaly manage to repeat their 1998 performance next Sunday (and that is a distinct possibility) opposition to this crass arrangement will grow. As the situation stands this week, this final is raising a real buzz in few places outside the competing counties. If as I suspect, a movement to bolt the back door will grow following this latest example of its ultimate absurdity, attention within the GAA will probably turn in favour of a new arrangement comparable to the current proposal, for radical change in the football championship. Those proposals call for the construction of a back door so large that all defeated teams from the first round up to and including the four provincial finals will get back in for a second bite at the championship cherry. Over here in the backwoods the dinosaurs and other denizens of these parts are racked by a terrible dilemma: they don't know whether to laugh or cry.
There is a simple but ideal alternative to the unseemly back door and the crazy circus of a competition designed to give beaten teams, a second opportunity to suffer defeat and disappointment - or else go on to pick up an All Ireland title by default.
I shall outline that alternative presently.
But before I do so I wish to make it clear that my comments on Offaly's participation in Sunday's final and the route by which they arrived there imply no criticism of or offence to that county's hurlers. I hold those hurlers in the highest respect. I have admired the skill and enjoyed the performances of Offaly teams over many years.
The Offaly's teams of 1998 and this year have simply used and made the most of the opportunities presented to them by the back-door system. That is their right under rule, as it is for all Leinster and Munster teams competing in the championship. They owe no apologies to anyone. It is the system which permits a beaten team to return to what is fundamentally a knock-out competition and, if they are able, go on to win the All Ireland, that offends. Here spare a thought for Kilkenny. They have been impressive winners all the way but now they are obliged to prove once again that they are a better team than the one that they hammered in an earlier round. And for them, if they fail, there is no second chance.
Against that background it is both ironic and laudable that the Offaly County Board are opposed to the back-door system. The county's delegates voted against its introduction at the 1996 GAA Congress in London and, even more laudably, again opposed the extension of the experiment at the special congress in late October 1998 - less than two months after they had won that year's All Ireland title via the system that they wished to reject. That is principle with a capital P.
It is ironic also that an excellent proposal for an alternative to the hurling back door came from an Offaly source - none other than their superstar half back, Brian Whelahan who put it forward in an article which appeared in the magazine, Gaelic Sport, prior to the Leinster final of 1998. Whelahan suggested that instead of the defeated Munster and Leinster finalists going through to the All-Ireland series the GAA should legislate for the two top teams in the National Hurling League to qualify for the championship quarter-finals.
His plan, if implemented, would retain the extra games in the All-Ireland series, maintain the extended life television coverage and the additional revenue would continue to flow in. But nobody in any position of power in the GAA - that I know of - bothered to pursue that idea and promote the obvious merits in open debate.
The plan could be extended to have four qualifiers advancing from the National League to four All Ireland quarter finals, thus engaging the champions of all four provinces (including Galway) in that stage of the championship proceedings. And if any of the league qualifiers went on to win their provincial title in a given year, provision could be made for the next county in line in the league to go through to the All Ireland quarter finals.
The merits of such an arrangement are multiple. Competing teams in both competitions would have two routes by which to qualify for the All Ireland series and an upgraded league would provide them with a series of competitive games which a chorus of repetitive complainers now claim the "weak" counties in particular lack. Crucially the adoption of such an arrangement would restore the integrity of the championship's knock-out system. Finally, some pleasing or, if you wish, astonishing news. Over here the dinosaurs and backwoods men are converging and chanting in my ears: "We buy it, we buy it. Yippee, we buy it, man!"
