Why the GAA needs mint sauce on its lamb chops
At the sharp end of the attack is the loping lethality that is Benny Coulter and the ball is in the net even before it actually strikes. It’s a vicious goal. Coulter electrifies himself into the air in a joyous explosion in a manner which must have hurt all of the old injuries he has taken during a stellar career...
Joe Canning is well shackled by Wexford through the Leinster hurling clash between the Tribesmen and Wexford. The star is dimmed by dint of hard defending. He drifts outfield and gets two or three inches of space for a change. In an instant he turns that few inches into a few feet and a wondrous classic point arrows over the bar....
And Aisake O hAilpín goes into the modern Hell’s Kitchen of the Tipperary defence below in Cork and dines hugely on Tipp flesh. It’s a terrible beauty. You can see why Aussie Rules doesn’t suit him. The hand can pluck the sliotar from the sky but there’s no zip speed at the end of the longest, awkwardest legs in hurling. It takes seconds for that gangle of limbs to align themselves, power up, and then charge forward. He’s like a Harry Longlegs in a boarding house window around the square. But he devours all before him, somehow, the ball hits the net and another star is born...
How we need these stars of our native codes! Never more so than today. The teams, exactly like the new fiddlers and fluters of Ireland, are so highly drilled, trained, robotic even that the old regional styles have disappeared.
A Sligo reel now sounds exactly like a Clare reel. It is played better than it used to be when gnarled farmer’s fingers somehow knocked it out of a cheap fiddle. Nowadays the fingers are nimbler and they have expensive fiddles. And they all sound the same. And is it not the same with the footballers and hurlers? They are all at least six footers, they are so lean that you could not get the makings of a good porter belly from all of them from Malin to Mizen. They can all run and pass forever. They are machined cogs on the same wheel.
They are bigger and faster and better than their grandfathers were, I suppose, but dammit it can get boring to watch their sameness. Farewell to the long-range Meath point. Farewell to the Kerry soar.
Farewell to the catch-and-kick and divil take the hindmost. Farewell, maybe, to the individual touches that used to garnish every big game when the championships began.
We need the Gooch Coopers, Paddy Bradleys, Sean Cavanaghs and Páraic Joyces of football very badly.
We need the Cannings and the O hAilpíns and the Shefflins and Dooleys just for the pure entertainment and unpredictability they bring afield. The small galaxy of stars, be they young or old, be they attackers or defenders or goalkeepers, are the piquant mint sauce on the lamb chops of the new season.
Think of the joy for the masses afforded in their time by Jimmy Keaveney of Dublin and the significant corporation even at his best bobbling over those lethal feet. Think of the soar of O’Connell. Think of the heavy flat feet of Brian Stafford of Meath, the spring heels of Vinny Murphy, the casual elegance of Nicky English, the power of Purcell, the eternal engine of Jack O’Shea, the beauty of Jim McKeever, the bullish power of Mick Lyons, the stiletto that was Sean O’Neill, the rotund genius that was Ring, the twinkle that was Joe Deane, the guile that was Canavan.
The sheer gangling power of young O hAilpín has been unseen since the era of Gerry McEntee, and the teak-tough Lynskey of Galway against whose shins a hundred hurls shattered. And it is that individual thing that enlivens all the many games in both codes nowadays that are cut from the same template.
Garnish on the plate and, like Coulter’s late goal, often the difference between victory and defeat.
As with the giant Kieran Donaghy when he burst on the scene for Kerry a few seasons ago, those astute managers and plotters on the sideline will find a better way to handle O hAilpín than Tipperary did on Sunday. They always do in the end. He is unlikely to have as hearty a banquet again this season. But, as with Canning against Wexford, the young giant, like his older brother, is likely to become an enduring star. It is not just defences whose hearts flutter when this elite group secure possession. Our hearts beat faster too because you do not know what feats may be performed before your eyes in the next seconds. That is a kind of magic.
Rugby has its O’Driscolls, O’Connells and Sextons. Soccer has its Messis, Rooneys and Ronaldos. It is so often their deeds which make headlines and delight the sporting eye.
The more organised and disciplined and strategised our native games become the more we need the garnish which the stars bring to the Sundays on the fields of our dreams.
* cormac66@hotmail.com
