Even Taylor Swift can’t compete with the value of local heroes

Cavanman's Diary

This is a snippet of a real conversation I heard second-hand recently – out of the mouths of babes and all that. Two little boys, one seven, one five, from Cavan. The younger of the brothers was talking about Taylor Swift.

“She’s famous,” he noted, quite correctly, showing an early gift for under-statement, which he did not inherit from me, his uncle.

“Shut up,” the older brother commanded. “Taylor Swift is famous but did she get a picture with Paddy Lynch? No.”

We knocked good fun out of that one. It was further evidence that children will always have heroes and of the importance of those role models. In that regard, the GAA does things very, very well.

In fact, two of the most wholesome developments in Gaelic games in my time concern this very thing, at different ends of the spectrum.

One is the way young followers are allowed on to the pitch after games to meet the players. While supporters always entered the field after games to mingle with players, to congratulate or console them, and kids might have got to meet them, in the pre-smartphone era, this wasn’t such a big thing as far as I remember.

That has all changed now – everyone has a camera in their pocket and the selfie with the star player has taken over from the autograph as the most valuable memento from a big game for youngsters (and not-so-youngsters!).

David Clifford, the best player in the game, is routinely swarmed, even after club matches, and yet still seems to find the time to sign jerseys and stand in for pictures until every child has left contented.

The Fossa Collosus is not alone – most footballers and hurlers are happy to hang around, even after losses, and meet the fans. The Cavan players do it after every game, even in foul weather, and it has quickly become a tradition, this race to meet and greet the heroes of today.

The other relatively-new custom, which has established itself, concerns the heroes of the past.

The ever-increasing popularity of the jubilee teams, who are introduced to the crowd at half-time in All-Ireland and county finals, speaks to a couple of things. One is the all-pervading nostalgia in sport – guilty, yer honour – and the other is the importance of recognising LOCAL heroes, who provide a level of authenticity sometimes lacking in some of the other major sports.

Would the reaction be the same if, say, Manchester United’s great Champions League-winning team from 1999 were to be introduced to the crowd at half-time in a match this year?

That was a brilliant United side. I was preparing for my Junior Cert at the time and remember watching the game, United stealing it with two late goals. So the nostalgist in me would like to see them re-unite, even if the realist knows that professional soccer is something of a mercenary game, a sport which, at the top level, has lost both its charm and its soul.

I always remember this story: The late, great Paddy Minagh, our underage Gaelic coach, was a Leeds fan but fell out of love with soccer, he once told me, when leading striker Joe Jordan crossed the Pennines to play for Manchester United – and later to star against Leeds in a big game. Paddy was disgusted.

But soccer fandom is different anyway. There is the well-publicised hooligan element (a tiny minority but enough to ensure police must corral fans away from each other at many games) and a certain cohort seem to be driven by an irrational, vitriolic loathing of the opposition. That's a thing in the GAA too, of course (oh, how it is) but it seems less visceral and certainly less violent.

At the weekend, a Leeds United supporter claimed to have been slashed in the neck by rival fans from Norwich City after he confronted them over alleged ‘tragedy chanting’, a particularly despicable trend whereby supporters taunt their counterparts about tragedies such as the Munich air disaster, Hillsborough, the Heysel Stadium fire and so on. It's rotten.

In many aspects, the GAA could learn from soccer, chiefly that in the quest for more and more, something can be lost.

Gaelic football, at the moment, has lost the crowds for a lot of games and has lost the competitiveness at inter-county level. There is a gap there between the best teams and the weaker ones which, in the not-too-distant past, wasn’t nearly as wide and which is unlikely now to ever close.

The association recognised this by introducing the Tailteann Cup but it likely won’t stop there. Now that the ladder has been pulled up, the strong will only get even stronger and the weak are left to fight it out among themselves.

And money can turn things sour. The GAA has come under fire of late because of its streaming service, GAAGO, with President Jarlath Burns coming out strongly in defence of it on RTE on Monday morning. The ironic thing is that it is not the association’s right to make money which is in question, rather the link-up with the broadcaster itself which should be challenged. The question must be asked of RTE as to how much of the public’s money has been spent setting up and running a commercial enterprise, which sells matches back to that same public.

It’s an interesting juncture in the association’s journey, with long-standing traditions falling by the wayside. For example, there is a clear push, backed by swathes of the media, to downgrade the provincial championships, which would be the wrong move.

A decision has been made that a bloated All-Ireland Championship, divided into two tiers, is the way to go. For two years in a row, we have decided Ulster finals on penalties in a rush to make way for a group stage where 24 matches will be played to get rid of four teams, two or three of which most observers could probably predict now. It's wrong.

Where the GAA goes from here will be fascinating to watch yet one of the main advantages it holds over other codes is that it is a community organisation and from those communities spring genuine local heroes.

Those scenes after games, when the Word is made flesh and children can share a moment with their idols, is the proof of that. When you have that, you don’t need Messi and the boys – or even Taylor Swift herself.