KIERAN SHANNON: Kiernan comments highlight plight of Irish athletes
At least to GAA people he did. His comments about the fitness level of inter-county players and their slice of the Sports Council grant pie provoked widespread outrage, with some critics resorting to tackling the man and not the ball.
One media personality on Twitter described him as an “overhyped mediocrity” when people pointed out in Kiernan’s defence that he finished ninth in the 1984 Olympic marathon, an achievement our friend in Tweetland reckoned would hardly have been worth a mention in another country.
Of course, Kiernan’s achievement did barely register a mention in this country as it was completely overshadowed by John Treacy finishing second in the same race.
Observing the whole debate, we couldn’t help but think of the maxim: Don’t belittle or you’ll be little.
In belittling Kiernan’s achievement, some people we know looked very little.
You could argue that Jerry himself looked little in belittling the fitness and commitment of GAA inter-county players.
As Brendan Hackett — an athletics coach who has been part of the management team of several GAA teams — observed, Kiernan’s comments were outdated by at least 10 years.
In trying to ‘up’ athletes, he should not have belittled GAA athletes to the degree he did.
But he was right to trigger a debate on how the Sports Council grants scheme extends to every inter-county panellist playing under the auspices of a sporting organisation in a healthy financial state compared to nearly all other national governing bodies. And he was certainly right to express his frustration that athletes aren’t ‘upped’ more.
Seamus Power won nine national cross-country championships but even in his own county did he enjoy the profile of even the ninth-best-known Clare hurler in the noughties, let alone 90s?
For a five-year period, Mark Carroll was regularly one of the world’s fastest white middle-distance runners, even beating Kenyans, yet in the pantheon of Cork sporting heroes would he even get a mention from a people that deifies stickmen who play what is essentially a 10-county sport?
Yet some of our best athletes we barely know or barely appreciate.
Compare Rob Heffernan’s profile to Katie Taylor’s. There is none. Yet you consider how many people compete in walking to how few women box in Taylor’s division, his fourth to her gold is definitely commensurable Audley Harrison won an Olympic gold too yet who considers him anywhere in the debate of great British athletes? We stress, we are not belittling Taylor’s achievement — she is a role model and a groundbreaking athlete, popularising her sport. But sometimes in this country we need to put some achievements in perspective to ‘up’ other athletes. Suffice to say, in our eyes, Sonia O’Sullivan’s preeminence as the greatest Irish sportswoman ever remains.
When this column met Jerry Kiernan last summer for a hugely enjoyable and engaging cup of coffee in Ranelagh, we were later joined by one of the athletes he trains. I’d never heard of Joe Sweeney before but Kiernan informed me that he had finished fifth in the previous year’s European cross-country championships. Just think of it. We can nearly all run in some form or another. A lot of people live in Europe. Yet compare Sweeney’s profile to the fifth-best known Gaelic footballer in his own county — say, Diarmuid Connolly. You can’t compare.
Athletics no longer has a grip on the public imagination like it used in the 1980s when Coghlan, Treacy, O’Meara and Marcus were in their pomp: drugs, African domination and the explosion of football partly explain why. These days Irish athletes rarely medal. But it’s all the more reason why we should salute what Fionnuala Britton has achieved this past 18 months, respect every athlete who reaches a major international championship and dismiss those who complain why we’re investing resources in them.
As Olive Loughnane put it to me in conversation last week: “People who criticise some athlete who is in the top 60 in the world; how many of them are in the top 60 in the world at anything?”
After the recent Olympics, UK Sport initially cut off basketball from future funding, deciding it would be better to plough its resources into sports like keirin cycling where GB were more likely to medal in. Thankfully they reversed their decision when it was pointed out to them just how big basketball was becoming in the country’s troubled inner cities and how big it was globally. Being in the top 12 in some sports equals being in the top three in others; staying out of jail and off the street, immeasurable.
Jerry Kiernan lacked some perspective a few weeks ago. But he added some as well.
