This amateur/ professional debate is dead
Not if Saturday evening in Limerick was anything to go by.
Call us cynical – many have – but there was a rat to be smelled early this week, in the oddly friendly approach of the Australians to their media duties.
One press hack, veteran of many a monosyllabic encounter with sports people of many hue characterised it thus: “They didn’t exactly say ‘thanks for having us’, but they might as well have . . .”
That uncharacteristic friendliness – consult Irish rugby players or English cricketers if you think we’re being harsh – continued into the weekend when, to put it mildly, the physicality was conspicuous by its absence.
I know what you’re saying. If they battered the poor Gaels senseless you’d be giving out; they didn’t batter the poor Gaels senseless and you’re giving out.
Maybe. Before we go any further, though, consider same: polite Australians. Whatever next?
BACK to the sport.
The conflict at the heart of these encounters is one of many issues with the Compromise Rules, a description that cries out for the past participle. If that Aussies aren’t going to come with intent, then the games are compromised from the start.
Yet it points up the most fundamental issue with these games. You can’t have professional sports people in competition with amateurs. No matter how much people like to flatter themselves about the fitness of top hurlers and footballers, citing isolated cases of GAA stars stunning soccer players with their fitness as they recuperate from injuries across the water, or rugby players speaking politely about their amateur colleagues’ dedication, it’s a case of apples and oranges.
In fact, compared to rugby union, Australian Rules players come from a far deeper hinterland of professional preparation when it comes to weights, diet, skills – and, most important of all because it’s one area GAA players suffer in by comparison – in recovery sessions.
For long time, though, the difference between Gaelic footballers and Australian Rules players was articulated in a zero-tolerance policy among the latter when it came to fair play.
The Australians were over-reliant on the láimh láidir when it came to their encounters with Irish players, and had no compunction about using tactics and tackles that would have been frowned upon in their own game.
Every one knows the litany of rows and fights that littered the first few years of this game; see under the file marked ‘disgraceful scenes’.
But this latter development is even more dangerous to the future of the sport, if it has a future (or if it is a sport, come to that).
If the Australians persist in reining in their natural instincts – on and off the field – then the competitiveness of the fixture has to be questioned.
At one stage in the third quarter yesterday there was an outbreak of foot-passing (‘ground football’, to use the pre-1971 term; ‘tiki-taka’ to use the post-2010 World Cup lingo) from the boys in green (and white).
It wasn’t surprising that they tried to keep the ball away from the Aussies like that; it was very surprising, though, that the Aussies allowed them to do so without landing one or two reducers. What’s the value of a victory won in those circumstances? The value, one suspects, is in the shop window which it offers Australian Rules clubs, a criticism which Tyrone boss Mickey Harte has made many times.
It’s difficult to conceive of any other sport which would put its best and brightest on offer to another sport which could offer those players better opportunities in a far more congenial climate.
Fair play. The GAA is the world market leader in this regard.
The contest remains alive, or at least not comatose, into the next encounter. It’ll be interesting to see the attendance, if nothing else, to gauge just how bored people get on October weekends in Dublin – er, just how interested people are in this game.
Our suspicion is that the various county finals around the country will prove more attractive. When it comes to country, most people don’t give a continental.
* Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie ; Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
