If the GAA isn’t in your blood you should mind your own business

I JUST don’t get it. I’ve written more than 400 opinion pieces for the Irish Examiner on every subject under the sun.

Most of them, by the way, very important (the subjects, if not the pieces). I’ve dealt with every aspect of social policy, the gossip, personality and inside story of politics, as well as the whole process of how public policy is created.

I’ve argued about disability, poverty, abuse, the misuse of power and authority, history, foreign policy, the peace process. There’s hardly an aspect of Irish life I haven’t covered since I started.

And don’t get me wrong. I’ve had reaction. Sometimes agreeable, sometimes a lot less so. I’ve been written to by perfect strangers who have now become regular correspondents, and I’ve been sent some stuff in the post by people who desire (and thoroughly deserve) to remain anonymous. I’ve been sent money to pass on to some of the people I’ve written about, as well as some kindly suggestions about various cliffs I might like to jump off.

But never, in all those hundreds of columns, have I encountered the reaction I got to last week’s piece about the GAA. I’ve been emailed, phoned, texted and accosted in the street. Slagged, mocked, praised and attacked in equal measure.

Actually, that’s not quite true — there’s been very little praise, apart from that sort of pitying, condescending nod you give to some poor eejit who has finally seen the light. And that has been more than balanced out by the people who have started treating me as if I was a member of Hezbollah who has decided to embrace the Jewish faith.

Let’s recap for just a moment. I wrote here last week that after a good portion of a lifetime where the GAA had meant little that was positive in my experience, I had come in recent years to have enormous respect for the organisation. The skill and talent of its sports people, the genius of its professional managers who had put large amounts of public and private money to good use, the integrity of its administration and, above all, its contribution to community development. I pointed out (hardly a revelation to those with half an eye to see) that there were towns and villages throughout Ireland that would have almost no social, sporting or cultural infrastructure at all were it not for the GAA. Others talked about the importance of social capital, I said, but the GAA delivered it.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that there’s nothing too controversial about any of that, nothing to take exception to? OK, there are people whose views about the GAA have remained as hostile as mine used to be — they see me as selling out in some way. But alas, no. I have discovered what it feels like to be the outsider.

Have you ever had the experience of walking into a pub in rural Ireland, one of those pubs where nothing much ever happens, where the only excitement is when a barrel has to be replaced? The conversation, what there is of it, dies as you walk in. People shift to one side not to make room for you, but to avoid any possibility of contact. You’re an outsider, and outsiders are an unwelcome intrusion, a threat to the balance of nature.

And of course, I sort of understand it. There’s a best-selling and very funny book, whose name escapes me just now, about the experience of being a Labour supporter in Britain during the Thatcher years. It’s about the dashed expectation of every election, the hope that with each new leader things would be different, the endless disillusion as every sighting of victory becomes a mirage.

I know a man who is planning to write a similar book on 20 years of being a Dubs’ supporter — 20 years of arriving on Hill 16 in high expectation only to walk away dejected an hour or so later. Twenty years of celebrating the arrival, and then the departure, of different managers. Twenty years of saying, just like now, “At last! This will be the year”. Twenty years of bracing yourself for yet another let-down, even before it happens.

HOW could I expect someone like that, or the men from Mayo who wonder, after last Sunday, if destiny is finally on their side, to regard my late conversion as significant in any way?

I met a man in Tralee last week who a week earlier had watched Kerry v Armagh on his own television at home, and who was still hoarse from shouting at the TV set for 70 sustained minutes. People like that are at best bemused, at worst offended, that I should have the temerity to pretend to know anything at all about something that has been part of their whole lives.

I’ve made matters worse, of course, by commenting on the matches I’ve been watching as if I knew something about them. It seems to be one of the differences between soccer and the GAA. Soccer is everyone’s property, but with the GAA you have to have credentials. You know the sort of thing I mean. If you say something like “Alex Ferguson made a terrible mistake letting van Nistelroy go”, you might start an argument, but no-one is going to tell you to mind your own business. But try saying something like “Actually, I reckon Henry Shefflin is every bit as important to Kilkenny as DJ Carey ever was” to a group of GAA supporters. They’ll all (especially the Kilkenny people) look at you incredulously. And the look on their faces will be unanimous. It won’t be saying “you couldn’t be more wrong” — it will be saying “what’s it got to do with you?” The GAA is not something to which you can have an intellectual attachment. It has to be in the blood before you can be accepted.

And of course, if it’s not in the blood, you’re always going to drop a clanger or two. Last Sunday morning, for instance. I was playing golf with a man who was born and raised in Mayo, but lives happily in Laois. He was, as usual, playing well (carrying me around, if the truth be told), but he was already mentally attuned elsewhere, to the coming afternoon’s events in Croke Park. Considering his dual ‘citizenship’, I said that I supposed he’d be cheering for Laois and praying for Mayo. He looked at me in quiet astonishment. “I’ll be cheering for Mayo,” he said. “Full stop.” And the “full stop” at the end meant more than emphasis. It also meant he was amazed I could even ask.

It’s not so much that you have to be born into the GAA — it’s more that it has to be born into you. The credentials you need can only be got one way, and that’s with your birth certificate. Still, I’ll keep trying. Maybe some day I’ll be accepted by GAA folk as one of their own, my commitment to county unquestioned, my understanding of the codes on a par with others. Maybe those two tickets to the hurling final will arrive in the post one of these days.

Maybe I can dream.