Mon was in a league of its own
I cannot pretend not to have a dog in this particular fight. Last year the Mon asked me up to a ceremony which entailed saying a few words, and I told the assorted 10-year-olds and such that they were going to the finest school in the world, a fact which would impress itself upon them in future life when matters such as the Xbox would recede in importance.
The reason for that is simple. The Mon equipped generations of boys with the attitude to downface Alexander, a line of Theo Dorgan’s — another past pupil — which I am fond of quoting.
In a little city as rank with obscure snobberies as Cork, robust self-belief has always been one of the prime requisites for youngsters walking down into the city from the northern slopes.
Removing that identity, carved out over two centuries — two centuries! — seems wanton and idiotic; even allowing for demographics and population decline, the suddenness of last week’s announcement seemed a betrayal of hundreds of dedicated teachers, decades of supportive parents, and thousands of boys who trudged, often unwillingly, up the Ramp and into the classroom.
Because of where this column is located, you will probably expect a sporting tinge to proceedings, but I won’t overdo same out of deference to other schools: they rarely come out well in comparisons with The Mon.
It remains the only school to produce someone who collected six senior All-Ireland medals in six consecutive appearances, or the only past pupil who won two All-Ireland medals in one year, or the last man to play in two All-Ireland finals in the same season.
The last man in that paragraph, Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, who said: “Tradition counted. The Mon went out and won and didn’t care about the odds.”
True then. True now. True always.
Last week I chatted to Rob Hartnett of Sport for Business, ahead of a conference he’s organised for this week. Recent developments (you can’t mention that book again, we have a moratorium — ed) have made me more interested in this kind of thing than heretofore, and it was enlightening to hear from Rob about what his company does.
“We bring the worlds of sport and business together in ways that people don’t expect,” he says.
“People think of a company brand on a jersey, but we go deeper than that — we help companies to understand how they can involve their staff and customers in sporting events, existing and new, how to take some of the power and emotion surrounding sport and put themselves into that conversation. Our membership goes from business to government to sporting organisations and we produce daily content and monthly round-table discussions on these issues.”
Take the brand ambassador concept — Hartnett cites rugby star Jonny Sexton’s link-up with Aer Lingus as a good example: “What does that do? Does Aer Lingus just pay him a load of money to stand in front of a plane? No.
“They’re able to play on the fact that Sexton flies from Dublin to Paris quite a bit, between home here and Racing Metro, to put it into someone’s head, if they’re flying from Dublin to Paris, to think, ‘if it’s a Monday morning I might be on the same flight as him, I’ll book with Aer Lingus’.
“Using good video and social media, then, you can work on the fact that he’s a very popular player to have associated with your brand.”
This Thursday, Hartnett and company host an event in Croke Park with some interesting speakers, including Robert Tansey, director of Sky Cycling’s Tour de France-winning team and Heineken’s director of marketing for Ireland, Sharon Walsh. Check it out — for more details visit www.sportforbusiness.com.
Negotiations are ongoing between the GAA and various interested parties when it comes to broadcasting the national games, and we are told those discussions — which take as long as they take, as one man involved once told me — are taking some decisive turns.
The landscape in which RTÉ, TV3, TG4 and Setanta are the main players in TV broadcast rights is, we understand, under considerable pressure from Sky, which now has a sizeable presence in its Dublin offices and which is looking fondly on hurling and Gaelic football.
This is interesting for all sorts of reasons. For one, GAA Director-General Paraic Duffy told this writer last year for a book which you’re well aware of — see the reference to a moratorium elsewhere on this page — that a ‘satellite broadcaster’ had made overtures in the past to the GAA, and that the sums involved were four or five times what might be forthcoming from RTÉ.
At the time Duffy intimated it might be a difficult sell to the GAA’s membership — a subscription channel, by definition, isn’t as widely available as a free-to-air outlet. You would be cutting off some of the GAA’s membership from the chance to watch blue-chip games.
Has that changed? Hard to say. But certainly the attraction of a pot of money has an allure that tends to stay constant no matter how circumstances change.
We were in Kilkenny last Monday for the Glanbia-Kilkenny GAA sponsorship launch, where Brian Cody’s thoughts on the red/yellow card disciplinary system in hurling took centre stage.
This stemmed from the thoughts of Eddie Keher on those cards, and his interest in seeing them abolished.
Cue a good deal of discussion on manliness, foul play and speculation on who would benefit from abolishing such cards.
Then to Páirc Uí Rinn on Saturday evening for Cork and Limerick in the NHL Division 1B for an example of how that disciplinary system operates in laboratory conditions, as it were.
There was one red card, issued by referee James Owens to Graeme Mulcahy (left) of Limerick, for an incident nobody in the ground appeared to see. Owens consulted his umpire, however, and sent Mulcahy to the line.
Later in the game Stephen Moylan of Cork dropped a ball over the bar at the same end, and the umpires dithered unmercifully, leading to a lengthy conclave which was eventually settled by a decisive linesman. My point is this: why are we getting hot and bothered about red and yellow cards when umpires still don’t know where to stand when the ball is hit at the goalposts?
