Games have never been as available or free as some think
We never had a new car, and whatever cars we owned were never washed. That job was left to the rain.
My father, who was raised on a farm, has always struggled with the concept of land being used for decorative purposes. Suffice to say, our garden wouldn’t have won many prizes at the Chelsea Flower Show.
When we moved to the Fair Hill, my father informed my mother that he was going to plant vegetables in the back garden. My mother tried to reason with him. She suggested that the children might want to play there. They reached a compromise. He only dug up a quarter of it.
The tiny front garden served absolutely no purpose, neither for sport nor spuds. After a number of years, it was sowed out with ’Quinnseed’. That’s concrete to you and me.
Anyway, you should get the picture. Chez Heaney was no South Fork.
But there was one feature to the Heaney house which generated a steady stream of compliments. We had the most fantastic RTÉ.
For years, family and friends never ceased to marvel at our perfect reception. Visitors would often ask to see how our RTÉ compared with the other channels. We were always keen to oblige. Our remote control, a long, thin device, was usually stationed near the TV. It was called Paddy.
When Paddy flicked the channels, and the tea drinkers saw no discernible difference, there would be audible gasps of astonishment.
We Heaneys were all incredibly proud of our great RTÉ.
Reading and listening to the storm of controversy that has erupted following the GAA’s deal with Sky has reminded me of those days when only a few people in the North had RTÉ, and fewer again had a decent picture. Not only has the tenor of the argument presented by those opposed to the Sky deal been slightly irritating, the lack of any acknowledgement for their vested interest in the debate has also been hard to stomach.
Naturally enough, RTÉ pundit Ger Loughnane slammed the Sky deal. And guess what? Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh, a former employee of RTÉ, is also against the move.
And this will really blow you down. Martin McHugh, a pundit for both RTÉ and BBC, isn’t in favour either.
Neither is Joe Brolly. Even Eamon Dunphy managed to embroil himself in the debate. Lo and behold, the soccer pundit, who earns a six-figure salary from RTÉ, is also against the switch to Sky.
Loughnane said: “Most people in the country don’t have Sky and don’t want it.”
Loughnane is obviously unaware that many people in Northern Ireland don’t have TV3 — and they do want it. Others don’t want Sky, but have it, because they need it to get RTÉ. A friend of mine is a good example. A GAA fanatic, he lives in the metropolis of Belfast. He gets RTÉ via Virgin cable. His father, who lives in North Antrim, gets RTÉ via Sky. Neither man has access to TV3, the channel which broadcast nine championship games last year.
Let’s not forget it was TV3, and not RTÉ, that lost out in the recent contract negotiations. GAA commercial director Peter McKenna has since revealed that one of the reasons TV3 was overlooked was because it’s not available in the 32 counties.
However, that minor detail failed to stop Dunphy from saying: “If everyone in the town, village, county or townland can’t see a match, I think that’s wrong. The basic bottom line for me is that the GAA is one of the sports that brings communities together, that people bond around and share. If that is damaged, then that is a real shame. It is very worrying.”
Because he never lived within a GAA community which had noaccess to RTÉ, Dunphy will not appreciate the irony of his statement.
As a boy I can remember being in my grandparents’ house during an All-Ireland final. Most of my grandparents’ neighbours couldn’t get an RTÉ reception. For those that could, the picture was very poor. In keeping with family tradition, my grandparents had the best reception in the area (their garden was pretty basic too). Needless to say, the front room was packed with neighbours and friends who came to the house to watch the game.
That experience totally contradicts Dunphy’s view. It was the limited access to a television channel which brought the community together.
Ó Muircheartaigh expressed similar sentiments to Dunphy when he said the move to Sky “was a break from tradition and would isolate older GAA supporters”.
Again, let’s examine this grand tradition of RTÉ broadcasting. For starters, up until 1995 the only games broadcast by RTÉ were the All-Ireland semi-finals and finals. That’s six games. Yet, for huge swathes of the population in the North, those games were inaccessible.
So, for the purposes of a more enlightened debate, this incessant moaning about the need for a universal broadcaster of Gaelic games needs to stop. It has never existed.
TV3 is unavailable across much of the six counties.
In return for dropping TV3, the GAA has secured a contract with a company can broadcast 14 championship games into 11 million households in Britain. There will be no 20% drop in audience ratings.
Last week the RTÉ crew kept reminding us that not everyone has Sky. They were also keen to point out that GAA members will have to pay to watch games on the subscription channel.
That’s all true. But for many years, not everyone in the North had RTÉ.
Even now, to access RTÉ many people have to pay a cable company.
This repeated depiction of the golden days when everyone in Ireland could watch all the games for free on RTÉ must stop.
However, it will not be long before men of a certain vintage can relive the days of their past.
Once again, neighbours and friends will be flocking to the house with the TV that can broadcast the game.
‘Sky — bringing GAA communities together.’ Now there’s a vision that will send a shiver down the spine of all those pundits on RTÉ’s payroll.
