BRENDAN O’BRIEN: Programmes and press boxes — not at the Sigerson!
No-one is saying it was anything like breaking rocks for a living but it sure did test a man’s resolve. With little money and less experience, it was all a cub reporter could do to navigate a way to pitches sequestered down back roads and via the confusing complexities of this country’s public transport system.
The standout memory in that sense was taking a bus to Monaghan one gloomy February morning before hiring a cab to and from Clones for a day that lasted over 12 hours and ended up costing far more than it paid but that pales when compared to one colleague who once gunned a moped all the way from Dublin to Athlone for a First Division League of Ireland game.
Naturally, it rained that night too but it’s a story that never fails to trigger that hilarious image of Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels wobbling in to Aspen on their clapped-out Scooter in Dumb and Dumber before collapsing as one in frigid exhaustion on the main street.
Once on site, the next obstacle was always team sheets. Or lack of them. Players invariably lined out in numbers other than those listed, substitutions were made in silence or, in some cases, through sheer subterfuge and the logistical problems were only beginning with the final whistle.
If the word wifi existed at all 10 years ago it was as a typing error. Finding internet connections was in fact a task worthy of The Krypton Factor (really betraying the age now) and all that for a measly few paragraphs in which the team lists invariably took up as much space as the report.
Needless to say, the money wasn’t great either.
Let’s not kid ourselves. It was bloody awful but you did it because you knew you had to and because no-one was going to ring up out of the blue and ask you to cover the All-Ireland final or a Six Nations match just because you slept through a four-year Communications degree.
But there were little rewards to be earned along the way, nourishing crumbs of comfort that kept you sane along the path to what you hoped and prayed and told everyone who would listen were sure to be bigger and better things to come.
Every now and then you would cover a schools, colleges or club game and come across a pearl of a player, one whose undoubted class could not be diluted by the wind and the rain and the limited but game efforts of those around him and that sense of discovery was always heightened by the proximity to the pitch.
As careers develop, that is one thing that is often lost.
Covering events from the comfort of a press box affords a bird’s eye view but it removes reporters from the intensity and humanity of games and tournaments which is one of the plus points of being asked (ie. told) to cover something like the Sigerson Cup weekend, which starts today in Athlone IT.
The Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cups are unique in that they are high-end products wrapped in inauspicious packaging, precious nuggets played at inconvenient times and unlikely places and lost to all but a few GAA supporters amid the fast-flowing stream of fixtures that flow through the calendar year at various levels and age grades.
More is the pity.
There will be somewhere between two and three dozen inter-county players in action in the midlands with DCU, UCC, DIT and AIT this afternoon. Roughly half of the 32 counties will have a man representing himself, his club, his county and his college and yet it is given no more thought by most than the Interpros.
Much hand-wringing has been employed over the failing health of the old Railway Cups and yet the Sigerson and Fitzgibbon Cups are taken for granted even though they remain the only competitions in the Association where top players from all corners of the island get to play together in a truly competitive environment.
The weather doesn’t always play ball at this time of year but the forecast has promised a 0% chance of rain, the wind sounds like it will be manageable and the satnav is set.
Now, anyone have a team-sheet by any chance?
*email: brendan.obrien@examiner.ie
Twitter: @Rackob
