Boys in Green playing hard ball with the hacks
After the blur of green which crossed the ocean to play in North America during this past fortnight, I can’t avoid these messy internal politics even though I know how self-regarding it will sound.
It’s just I had somehow forgotten what it’s like to deal with the top-ranking Irish sporting bodies and how uptight they start to feel any time a player shows a little bit of personality or a journalist shows a little bit of initiative.
Whatever strange happenstance (apart from the lure of that other lucrative sort of green) had the IRFU and the FAI travelling to the same continent at the same time, it reopened my eyes as to how frustrating and dispiriting a task it is for the day-to-day men and women who operate on the beat back home for football, rugby and the GAA.
It’s been a while since I’ve had direct dealings with their communications crews, those poor souls charged with the unenviable task of herding players, managers, coaches, reporters and photographers into a room together.
But still, some things you can’t help but be frustrated by.
The other day I bade farewell to a member of the press who was flying back to Dublin after his stint over here covering one of the teams.
I can’t be specific about his grievances with one of those organisations as it would inevitably be transparent enough to betray a confidence.
And anyway he was well able to give them a piece of his own mind in a firm but unfussy way, a calmly delivered bollocking that should hopefully ensure he won’t be left standing around again while the liaison had a lie-in.
But it was just one example of how the breakdown in respect between media officers and journalists in Ireland seems to be at an all-time low.
I understand that both the FAI and the IRFU have experienced 12 months of bad press that will live long in their memories and might even cause them to place low on their priority lists the newspapers who sent staff over to the US and Canada.
But it was clear that apart from the most basic of requirements which reporters and photographers need fulfilled in order to do their jobs properly, not an inch more was given than was necessary.
I was turned down for an interview in Jersey City and then watched in wonder as a US radio broadcaster succeeded where I had failed.
In Toronto, we were forced to scramble out to the Irish bus with our dictaphones and heads full of confusion as a couple of the better performing players were hauled off for a few words of wisdom.
Most embarrassing of all, though, was the performance of the Irish soccer squad during their first official engagement in New York.
For weeks, the FAI had expressed their interest in somehow interacting with the Irish-American community and of course top of their list was the Superstorm Sandy-effected neighbourhood at the end of the Rockaways in Queens.
An hour late and feeling a little queasy from the night before, the players seemed none too keen to be there. I have spoken to a couple of the residents and they didn’t have much positive to say about the so-called superstars of Irish football who were more interested in their smartphones than they were in the gradual rebuilding of a shattered community.
The FAI was, of course, unlucky that just 24 hours before, a GPA-organised football tournament had once again reinforced that organisation’s ties with the people of Breezy. But if only Giovanni Trapattoni’s own best intentions had transferred down to the Boys in Green: “Sometimes it’s good for the players (to) see this situation and think about what can happen one day in your life. It’s important because we are famous, we live a different life. We have no time to think about this moment.”
It was great to reconnect with so many of my colleagues from the Irish media over here and I don’t envy what they have to deal with on a regular basis while trying to publicise the sports which readers care so much about.
On their behalves, I really hope something drastically changes about the way football, rugby and the GAA would like to see itself covered other than the increasing lifelessness of the professionals in the overly-controlled spotlight who will one day wonder why there’s no one willing or able to ghostwrite their respective autobiographies. The very thought of it...
*johnwr...@gmail.com Twitter: JohnWRiordan
