Strawberries and cream in Croke Park?

Many years ago I was walking through Blarney village with a then colleague of mine, Dan Ahern. We met this older guy that Dan knew and stopped for a chat. It turned out he was a lifelong GAA character and as far as I can remember he had some involvement with the Cork County Board. He was what I would refer to as a ‘die hard’ GAA man.

The two of them discussed football for a bit when he suddenly asked me about my involvement with sport. Dan advised him that I knew absolutely nothing about Gaelic football or hurling and that tennis was my sport of choice.

At that point he looked at me as if I had just cursed him and his entire family with the plague. His voice went up a couple of octaves. He was spitting fury and he said “Tennis, tennis? Hurling is a man’s game played by men. There’s no strawberries and cream in Croke Park”. There were a few expletives in there as well.

I had no idea what sparked that outrage because I hadn’t actually spoken a word to the guy.

I never had an interest in GAA, particularly the football side of it. Hurling is something I can watch occasionally but the football just drives me nuts. The rules, or lack of them, are hard to figure out. The number of steps you can carry the ball in the hand seems to change by the miniute. What constitutes a fair challenge by one player can be determined to be a foul immediately after. It’s the inconsistency that bothers me.

I have great respect for the guys that play the game and their level of fitness and professionalism but as a spectacle it doesn’t float my boat. I think that maybe it is a game better played than watched. Tony Davis, a friend and ex colleague of mine, used to refer to me as a Philistine. Maybe he was right.

It is important though, to recognise the important role that the G.A.A. has played and continues to play in Irish society. It has a huge network of clubs spread across the land and is involved in the life of every village and town in the country in some shape or form. It is an amazing statistic that over 40 per cent of all sports volunteers in Ireland are involved with the G.A.A.

A high percentage of women volunteers are also involved, not only with camogie and ladies football, but also in the core operation. The G.A.A. has developed an impressive network of grounds and club facilities and over 60 per cent of the total attendance at sports fixtures in Ireland is accounted for at G.A.A. games. These are impressive statistics and they just go to prove that the G.A.A. as an organisation, is a well-oiled machine.

In the GAA’s own manual for clubs, the Association itself states that: “The GAA Club is the bedrock of every Irish community and provides an organised structure from which great community spirit is generated.” It’s difficult to argue with that statement. The GAA is always a talking point for Irish people and everyone has their own opinion on the style of their team, the players and the management.

We shouldn’t underestimate the role that the GAA has also played in keeping youngsters on the straight and narrow either. It is well established that young people that are involved in sporting activities are less likely to find themselves getting into trouble. The discipline and training required to perform at a certain level in sport gives youngsters a great foundation for life.

I have to agree with my old friend from Blarney that hurling is definitely a man’s game played by men.

I once heard a Scottish friend of mine who was trying to explain hurling to a Hungarian friend of ours. He described it as being like ‘shinty with attitude’. Shinty is a cross between hockey and lacrosse and is a fast paced game where the ball spends a lot of time in the air. My Hungarian friend was a little confused.

Now, I’m not Hungarian but I may as well be when it comes to trying to understand the difference between a legal tackle in Gaelic football and an illegal one. The legal tackle seems to be open to interpretation.

The Rules of Fair Play state that a player can’t trip, punch, kick or grab an opponent, strike them with arm, elbow, hand or knee and it is completely forbidden, under punishment of a yellow card, to actually wrestle the ball from an opponent’s grip.

From what I have seen though, if those rules were to be strictly adhered to, then the most competitive part of the game would be the coin toss.

There are those who argue that interference with the rules of the game is unhelpful and ruining it as a spectacle. But I would suggest that the rules as they are at present are also spoiling it. It could also be argued that more spectators might be attracted to the game if they could understand what was actually going on. So it would seem that there is a definite issue to be resolved.

For the time being though, it is unlikely that I will be convinced to buy my first ever ticket for Croke Park any time soon. I could, at a push, be persuaded to go to a game of hurling but definitely not to a game of football. Now, if Roger Federer was playing and the G.A.A. was to introduce strawberries and cream then that would be a different story.