Michael Moynihan: Post-match interviews - corridors of power, corridors of Jaffa Cakes

Tipperary manager Liam Sheedy speaks to eir Sport before the Allianz Hurling League clash with Limerick at the LIT Gaelic Grounds. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

The return of serious GAA action means a lot to people. I understand that.

If I didn’t, then I understood it when people were getting in touch this past week to ask if I needed help with my stats. Or keeping tabs on the scorers, or substitutions. Or — my favourite — “carrying my gear into the stadium”.

Carrying my gear? I have a small backpack, lads. I’m not doing a set at Creamfields.

But I understand. There are games going on, and it’s exquisite torture to know there are games going on and yet not be able to see them. I can gauge how much people want to see those games by their willingness to sit next to me for an hour and a half in order to do so.

What nobody asked about was one job I wouldn’t mind farming out. Standing in a corridor after a game, waiting for someone to come out and talk about what just happened.

This has changed in recent years, as more venues look to formalise the event with dedicated rooms, while last season it became more of a movable feast — managers and players came and stood in the stand, with interviewers scattered about and pitching questions from two or three seating rows away.

It had its appeal, too, but as an indication of something like normality returning, the corridor ambush by a group of hacks is as good as any.

This is the usual scenario: the clacking of studs on the floor has stopped, and the unmistakable smell of deodorant is curling out beyond the dressing-room door. Suddenly the manager appears. His mood is dependent on how his side fared in the 70-odd minutes lately finished, but whether he’s happy or sad, the tape recorders are unleashed.

Some corridors are better than others. There’s an informal ranking of them according to several criteria, the most significant being the exit doors.

The very best corridor has one way in and out, which makes it hard for the victims —er, interview subjects — to make a clean getaway.

On this score, Nowlan Park and Cusack Park get a pretty low mark, but in fairness:

a) the Kilkenny venue is one of the best in the country to visit by any metric, and they never duck out the escape hatch while:

b) I have a particular fondness for Cusack Park after the evening I landed a kick on a radio journalist’s leg for a smart (on-air) comment.

Easily pleased, that’s me.

Walsh Park in Waterford has an odd configuration because the two teams come through a corridor/tunnel onto the field but all have to exit the same way, past the waiting tape recorders. Readers must apply to the email address below for the identity of the county which bought its way out after one game by distributing free Jaffa Cakes to the press pack.

Pearse Stadium in Galway has another enjoyable wrinkle on the access question: the two dressing rooms off the tunnel to the pitch each have a kind of ante-chamber. When the teams go in after a game and the hacks gather, once someone comes back out into that adjoining room there’s a tacit agreement that they’re there to talk, and the pack descends en masse.

Limerick has a different alignment again: the teams tog out at either end of the field but after games interviews are usually held in a tearoom under the stadium.

When James Horan of Mayo spoke there after the All-Ireland semi-final replay defeat by Kerry in 2014, he did so from behind a counter, with a Burco-type boiler on one side and masses of cups on the other, but no-one had the heart to ask for milk, two sugar.

Croke Park has a press room with tiered seating, but sometimes you’d be nostalgic for the squash of a corridor ambush there as well. Perhaps when we’re all vaccinated, so I can kick someone else?

Spotters: How to get to a live GAA game

Regarding people who are keen to see games, can I make a suggestion?

It was reported last week that Fifa are expected to appoint concussion spotters for the next World Cup.

These spotters will be medical staff members who’ll sit away from the team benches during games and make an independent judgement on players who seem to be suffering from the effects of concussion.

I wasn’t aware such spotters have been used in the NFL and in Premiership Rugby.

How long before they’re working at GAA games, and why not volunteer to do so now if you want to see a game?

One inevitable Super League

Before abandoning super leagues forever, or until such time as they return, like a nagging throat infection, another sighting, this time in golf.

I see that Phil Mickelson has been mulling over the pros and cons of a proposed Premier Golf League, or Golf Super League. The organisers have set up shop in Florida with a view to getting players on board for 2022 (though if they’d like some marketing advice, settling on a definite name wouldn’t hurt. Who do I invoice for that?).

“I think the fans would love it because they would see the best players play exponentially more times,” Mickelson said recently. “Instead of four or five times, it would be 20 times ... I don’t know what the final number is.

“But that’s a big deal to give up control of your schedule. I don’t know if the players would be selfless enough to do that. But every other sport, the entity or teams or leagues control the schedule. The players kind of play where they are told to play. Whereas here, we’re able to control it.”

I have to admire Phil’s breezy claims that golf fans would like to see him and his compadres play “exponentially more times”, but as ever the devil is in the detail.

The new league is backed by Saudi Golf, according to ESPN, and the same outlet reports the monetary rewards are “significant”.

There’s so much to unpack here that I fear we’ll have to come back at a later point.

The involvement of Saudi Golf, the autonomy of the players, and, intriguingly, the likely reaction of golf supporters if this project takes off. Are we likely to see mass protests with disgruntled fans making off with flags and other memorabilia?

More on this as the situation develops. Or if there’s an urgent need for demonstrations.

The Whale and the Artist

I have a Philip Hoare book at home — Leviathan, or The Whale — but ever since one of my research assistants took a turn against whales as a species, it’s been demoted to the shed.

Hoare’s new book — Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World — sounds promising.

The rapturous reviews of the book — which deals with the artist’s life but also Hoare’s life, and any number of interesting digressions — encouraged me, but a short excerpt about Dürer’s home town of Nuremberg convinced me.

“Skeletons of executed robbers hung in bony avenues to discourage other offenders. The same roads brought rats carrying fleas bearing the plague. In the forests, darkness held sway.”

One for this summer’s staycation, maybe.

Contact: [e-mail]