SIDELINE CUT:In a time when players have become afraid to say absolutely anything interesting, Paul Galvin's fashion diaries are making a welcome contribution to the evolution of the GAA
FRIEND, YOU may not have the eye to notice this but a subtle change is creeping into the wardrobe of all Gaels ever since a certain Kerry footballer began penning his thoughts on haute couture in a certain Saturday newspaper that isn’t this one.
It is true that the worlds of high fashion and high Gaelic Games rarely collide (except for that time when the young milliner Philip Treacy clattered into the young prodigy Pádraig Joyce while playing a challenge match for Ahascragh. Both lads were booked). But the revelations by the redoubtable wing-forward for the Kingdom – that it is okay to like socks other than those of the green and gold hoop variety – is changing all that. For years, whenever the subject of GAA fashion arose – and it rarely arose – the mind immediately strayed to the set of The Sunday Gameand the shirts and jerseys of hallucinogenic hue that the various experts have sported down the years.
But this year, there are rumours and sightings of a spring revolution in place. Soon, being described as a "stylish" footballer is going to carry entirely different connotations. It is said that while killing time before a league game recently, a well-known All-Ireland winning manager was spotted leafing not through the pages of the match programme but the spring/summer edition of GQmagazine. Speculation that he carried his lunch – regulation ham and cheese in tin foil and flask of tea – in a Prada man bag is unconfirmed. But the revolution is general. It was noticed at the Mayo-Kerry game in Castlebar, many of the men in the crowd wore their pants – or "trousers" if you must – an inch or two higher at the ankle than is customary. It seemed like the most instant proof of what will surely come to be known as the Galviniano influence.
"Ah no, that's just the Bohola lads," the Western Peopleman assured us. "They've been wearing their brístí that way for the last hundred years." But there is more. At half time in a recent Division Two match, with the score delicately poised and eight different men on yellow cards, the manager from an ambitious Leinster team was heard shouting advice not on how best to shut down that tricky corner-forward, but how to keep the seam of the jersey in line with the seam of the shorts. "You are what you wear," he exhorted. And they went out and won.
It would be unfair to claim the GAA never much went for fashion: rather it has just lost its way. The lapse in standards arguably began in the press box. For many decades, it was the practice of the Gaelic Games press corps (or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Messrs Downey, Hickey, Puirséil and Dunne) to attend league and championship matches in attire which would perfectly suit the etiquette at evening parties.
For instance, it was not uncommon for Paddy Downey to wear a bow tie. There was a practical reason for this: days that began hammering out reports on the machinations of Ring and the other masters of the era were liable to end up mingling in high society: Paddy has told the story of heading to a league semi-final in Limerick on a Sunday and ending up at an ambassadorial dinner dance a few evenings later. When the GAA press corps expanded (there are currently 45,000 licensed GAA press journalists in Ireland, all of whom are expected to fit into the cosy press coffin in Tuam stadium at least once a year), the dress code became somewhat tardy, featuring too much denim and too little starch.
The scene outside dressingroom doors, as press men waited for "a word" became less like a serious journalistic mission and more like the aftermath of a Clash concert. I recall the late, lamented Peadar O'Brien fretting about this on one occasion, noting the casual apparel was lowering the tone of the trade. When Peadar retired after years with the Irish Pressand then the Sunhe continued doing Sunday reports up until recently and in appearance, his motto seemed to be like that of JP Getty on the Titanic: "We are dressed in our finest and prepared to go down like gentlemen."
I remember showing up one particularly frosty Sunday in Thurles. Peadar arrived minutes later, wrapped in a winter coat and a kind of Muscovite hat not seen in public since the heyday of Leonid Brevhnez. “Comrade O’Brien, is it yourself?” someone shouted. And then someone else: “Peadar, I thought you told me you would rather go naked than wear fur.”
O’Brien “came up” in the GAA world when the managers headed for the dugout in the clothes they wore to Mass that Sunday morning. When you look at the footage of the epic 1970s matches between Dublin and Kerry, it seems entirely appropriate that Kevin Heffernan and Mick O’Dwyer were dressed in street wear – Farah slacks and shirt sleeves rolled; a v-neck if September was chilly. Neither man will welcome the description, but they looked like coolers. They also looked in charge. That is the way managers ought to look – patriarchal, austere and in control. It set them apart and made them the identifiable figures on the sideline.
Nowadays, it seems most teams have anything between three and 30 sideline personnel, all of whom are required to wear those ludicrous orange bibs. It can take up to five minutes just to spot which one the manager is. I yearn for the day when some GAA manager shows up at a championship fixture sporting a shirt, tie and polished brogues and spends the match not fruitlessly wandering the sideline and pointing at players who are clearly in no position to understand what he is on about but lounging in the lower reaches of the stand a la Jose Mourinho, detached and even faintly bored by the whole thing because he has written his master plan and knows it will either work or it won’t. And that Marty Morrissey will wonder not what the manager is thinking but where on earth he got that scarf.
The GAA has had some stand-out moments in fashion. Who can forget that mid 1990s day in Clones when the great Brian Mullins manned the sideline for Derry? It was hot and Mullins wore shorts. But crucially, they weren’t the sinfully tight variety as once modelled by John Maughan and others; these were baggy. And Mullins also wore a floppy hat that was like something left over from the Madchester era. It may have been the singularly coolest moment in the history of the GAA – at least until David Hickey’s Cuban blockade protest – and several people are insistent that the inspiration for fashion’s “heroin chic” movement was plucked not from an emaciated Kate Moss but from Mullins’ look on the sideline in St Tiernach’s Park.
But such individualism is rare because the GAA has become more rather than less conservative in image down the years. When you see the old film reels of the 1950s hurlers – the young Ring, the young John Doyle, Nick O’Donnell and the Rackards with hair quiffed and styled – they all look as if they have taken time out from filming a John Ford epic just to star in the game. They looked glamorous.
A trend has crept into Gaelic games which all but forbids self-expression. How come the great Dublin team of the 1970s all looked as if they had just hopped off the Merry Pranksters’ bus at the last stop, while Dublin teams of recent years all seem to have come Straight Outa Templemore? Any departure from conformity – white boots, tattoos, braided hair, coloured hair – invites derision from the crowd and, more shamefully, from the pundits.
And that is why Paul Galvin’s fashion diaries make such a welcome contribution to the evolution of the GAA. In a time when players have become afraid to say absolutely anything interesting, the Kerry man is wearing his heart on his sleeve when it comes to clothes. And the masses are listening, I tell you. Viva la Revolución!
