The ranks of the great unwashed GAA club player were broadly divided into three camps last weekend. There were the players who were at Electric Picnic and thus made themselves unavailable for selection. There were the players who were togging out who wanted to be at Electric Picnic, but who stayed behind out of a sense of grim duty. And then there were players who were playing and were extremely annoyed at those of their team-mates who were at Electric Picnic.
The men and women in Camp 3 were absolutely steadfast in their belief that those in Camp 1 (and dammit, they didn’t want to be looking at the glum faces of those of you in Camp 2, either) have no idea what it takes to run a successful GAA team.
But the summer of 2022, it’s safe to say, was not a regular summer. After two years of being locked up, denied a chance to socialise, and robbed of at least two years of their college-going experience, young people this year made solemn oaths to themselves to go out and enjoy it.
From the point of view of the young GAA player, the split-season gave them a chance to head off to America – either to join a GAA club over there, or just on your humble J1 – for May, June or July with no chance of them missing club championship games.
For those who stayed home there might have been a few dates pencilled in their diaries as non-negotiables, and Electric Picnic was probably one of them. So you’ve stayed home, you’ve played all the league games, you’ve seen your entire college class on Instagram all summer living like Ferris Bueller (ask your parents, kids!) and now you’re asking me to sell my Electric Picnic ticket to play a group game in the senior championship? Good luck.
There’s a sizeable constituency in every club who would have a conniption at the idea that their first-choice wing back would rather get drenched in a field somewhere in the midlands than play for their club. The way they see it, each year should kick off broadly similar to our introduction to the warden in The Shawshank Redemption. In their eyes, a club manager should walk into the dressingroom every January holding a Bible, and say – “put your trust in the Lord, your ass belongs to me. Welcome to senior football.”
Asking young people to put their lives on hold to play club GAA is getting harder and harder. And the arguments less-enlightened club managers and coaches use have less and less of a hold on young people. There’s a big old world out there, and you’re not going to stop young people from trying to see it by saying that the club will fall apart without you, that you owe it to them, that the entire village will feel let down if you step aside for a weekend or a couple of weeks from something which, lest we forget, is supposed to be a hobby.
This is where the GAA’s core driving principle – emotional blackmail – once again tries to make its presence felt. There is a fetishisation of suffering in the GAA that is almost puritanical. It’s not enough to enjoy playing the games, there must also be great sacrifice involved.
To say one plays because one enjoys it and would like to stay fit and involved in a team sport is an utter misunderstanding of the thing, quite frankly, and I don’t know who you’re trying to impress with that kind of chat.
The intermediate team I play with in Dublin had six lads with Electric Picnic tickets. On the night after we drew our second group game in the championship, and we realised we’d need at least a draw in our last game, news of this particular diary-clash quickly spread around the pub.
My reaction was immediately to offer to drive them back down to Stradbally after the game if they could make their way back to Dublin in time for throw-in, an offer borne not so much out of charity but with the words of Nora Ephron ringing in my ears (“everything is copy”, after all, and this column doesn’t just write itself).
As it turned out, three of them stayed where they were throughout the deluge on Saturday, and three more drove back, arrived in our dressingroom wearing their wellies, played their hearts out, got the win, and then sat in the car and drove back to Stradbally in time for Tame Impala, who I’ve been told is a wonderful musician and a charismatic performer in his own right, and to whom I send best wishes in his future endeavours.
I spent some time on Saturday before the game started interrogating my own feelings on this. I desperately wanted to win the game, of course. But I was glad to be on a team that respected the idea of a weekend off, too. Now I’d like to think that wouldn’t have changed if the result had been different … but maybe I’m too old for Tame Impala, too old for camping in a field, and too old to change that stubborn feeling that young people owe GAA clubs their whole lives.
