This summer has made it clear that Ireland’s temperament and general disposition – the nation’s very wellbeing and happiness, in fact – is dictated by the whims and emotions of the GAA’s twin brotherhoods who see the world in very different ways: the Hurling Crowd and the Football Crowd; those immovable optimists and agonised pessimists, the narcissists and the self-loathers, the cup runneth over (with Möet) crowd and the-glass-not-only-half-empty-but-cracked-and-leaking-crowd; the self-contents of the “fastest game” and the malcontents of the “broken game”.
If hurling were an island, it would be Ibiza circa 1975; a golden-hued idyll as yet unspoiled by the hordes. If football were an island, it would be Lough Derg in a January gale.
The Hurling Crowd love life and they aren't afraid to show it. Peek through the living-room blinds of the Hurling Crowd on a Saturday night and you'll see them partying like its 1994-1998, Loughnane and Tommy Walsh lighting up the dance floor, where the soundtrack is always Luther Vandross's Forever, For Always, for Love. Meantime, over at the Saturday night bash hosted by the Football Crowd, Joe Brolly is making everyone listen to I See a Darkness on repeat while out in the kitchen Spillane is delivering a sombre lecture on how the blanket defence is basically a metaphor for the futility of life. Nobody else is allowed to speak. The gin's running low. There's no ice. And it's all Mickey Harte's fault.
You can spot any of the Hurling Crowd from a hundred paces. There’s a Travolta-jaunt to the stride: that “you can tell by the way I use my walk I’m a hurling man” kind of strut. In fact, the Hurling Crowd don’t so much walk at all these days as kind of float across the room radiating a vitality and a delight with life that could sometimes be misconstrued as smugness. When together, they exchange these odd, secretive smiles that mean: we’ve never had it so good but tomorrow will be even better. The Hurling Crowd accept that the world knows hurling is the best field sport in the world – the fastest, the most skilful, the most sporting, the most exciting, the most – to use a favourite term “manly”, the toughest and – don’t ever forget – the fastest.
They know the world knows this because this is what they tell the world, over and over again and with great enthusiasm. Hurling specialises in evangelists. How many idle radio enthusiasts, twiddling with a Roberts Radio in the remoter edges of Siberia or Papua New Guinea have stumbled, with bewildered delight, on to the sound of John Mullane praising the gods over the intricacies of a Joe Canning pass or an Austin Gleeson dash-and-score live on air? What does the first-time visitor to Ireland, just into the rental car and flicking through the radio leaving the airport, make of a Tommy Walsh soliloquy on the close-up-and-personal nature of the Galway half backs?
Hurling as beauty
When Ireland tunes into The Sunday Game on those balmy June and July twilights, the entire country still stupefied by the latest miraculous seventy minutes from Semple or Nowlan Park or Wexford or wherever, the camera will slowly close in on the beatific expressions of Henry or Cyril or Ger or whoever happens to be on that night to spread the gospel. Their faces are as serene and enlightened as the very Children of Fatima – as dressed by Louis Copeland. Their faces set the tone before they say a word. Their faces make it obvious that the country at large has been blessed and privileged yet again by the latest demonstration of hurling as beauty.
Their faces say: just because we've brushed shoulders with some of the greatest hurlers who ever lived; in fact, just because one of us may well be the greatest hurler who ever lived, doesn't mean that the game can't return us to childhood bliss. There are evenings when you fear that that they have been struck dumb by the sheer splendour of what they've witnessed "down below" in Parc Uí Chaoimh or the Gaelic Grounds. There are many hurling evenings on The Sunday Game when it seems as if absolute silence is the only appropriate response to the glories of the game; that words would only besmirch the perfection. Finally, though, someone will break the ice, and, when the Hurling Crowd talk, it is in torrents of appreciation and wonderment and absolute conviction that their path in life is the only path. "Where would we be without this game of ours?" they will purr. "Where would you get entertainment like it?"
And in the shadows of the television studio, the Football Crowd have to listen to all this. It deepens their collective agitation and inner torment. It is one of life's dark jokes that on The Sunday Game, they put the hurling on before the football. As if the Football Crowd didn't feel bad enough about things without having to follow the Greatest Game in the World. Their body language is always in stark contrast to the Hurling Crowd: they are downbeat and apologetic, they frown, fidget with their pens and behave like errant schoolboys who have flunked another exam. The presenter, Dessie Cahill, will sit back with the forbearance of a kindly but unsparing pastor willing to listen to a confession he has heard a million times before.
“It wasn’t a good game, Des,” someone will begin sorrowfully and then the floodgates will open: Football is ruined, the game is dying “on its feet”, the rules need to be changed, nobody will beat Dublin, there is a problem with the tackle, cynicism is “creeping” into the game, there is no fun any more, there’s too much hand-passing, there’s not enough kicking, what’s to be done about the weaker counties, Dublin are a “different animal” and if Fermanagh win Ulster playing the blanket defence, then there is no God.
Too many scores
These are the messages that filter across the land, reaffirming a worldview that either chooses to see life as a furious and breathtaking joyride from beginning to end or as a thankless slog through a relentless series of punishing obstacles knowing all the while that your endeavours are never going to be good enough. The Hurling Crowd can barely disguise their contempt for the slowness of football, while the Football Crowd privately believes that in hurling, there’s just too many scores.
Both crowds are, in their different ways, zealots, which ultimately leaves them both in the same place. The Hurling Crowd end up bitter and disillusioned because even though everyone tells them that hurling is a marvel and that everyone should play it, it has mystifyingly failed to become the most popular – indeed, the only – game in the world. The Football Crowd are in the same boat because even though they tell everyone the game has gone to the dogs, they become bitter and disillusioned because nobody disagrees with them. So they dig in.
Like a cold drink fizzing on ice, hurling rhapsodies and football laments are among the indispensible sounds of Ireland’s summer. The truth about both games – not to mention life – probably lies somewhere between.
But try telling that crowd.
