A tourist in the reality of others
The kerfuffle, that is, not the game itself. I know that whimsical dissections of the steep decline in the FA Cup’s attractiveness are the last refuge of the column-writing scoundrel, so don’t worry about having to wade through that here (until next week, at least, when I have no other option available).
But I couldn’t help notice the . . . well, backlash seems a mild term for the venom and loathing directed at a chap for the insufferable faux pas of bringing a slightly larger version of what everybody else has in their pocket to a soccer game.
If you remain unaware of this little comedy, the details; a chap pulled out an iPad at the FA Cup final at/after one of the goals and, well, that’s it.
We just equalised in an FA Cup Final lets get my iPad out pic.twitter.com/bUWlazzVBt
— conor (@conor_spurs) May 17, 2014
Arsenal fan at the FA cup final with an iPad #FACupFinal #FACup pic.twitter.com/3dEwLWiqMQ
— Mike (@LinkinPerkzz) May 17, 2014
He was promptly likened to Hannibal Lecter’s less pleasant brother, in one of those maddeningly proportionate outcries on social media, though ‘medium’ is itself a very inadequate term for the full-throated rage being vented.
Personally I have a sneaking regard for someone with the nous and co-ordination to produce an iPad to some effect when a goal is being scored, particularly as a defibrillator and accompanying paddles would be the electrical device you’d need most for some of the stupefyingly boring encounters I glimpsed these last few months.
I imagine that many media outlets are busy trying to track this gentleman down, even as you read these words, to get his exact reaction to being labelled, in front of millions, a five-letter word used to describe the male genitalia, and no, penis is not the term in question.
Perhaps he is staying at home this morning, having rung in sick, sitting on his couch as reporters hammer on his front door imploring him to come out.
If he has any sense at all he’ll open the door a crack and point the iPad outwards with the camera function turned on once again: he might as well document the occasion.
In one of her meditations on reality and photography Susan Sontage said, “The camera makes everybody a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.”
One man at Wembley certainly found that out this weekend.
1: Can the world stop arranging itself to suit the hurling snobs amongst us? It’s not bad enough that we’re counting down to Jim Gavin transforming into Lord Business from the Lego Movie in Gaelic football terms, but now this? At least put up a fight.
2: By which I mean put the brakes on the expectation by just a few measly percentage points. I heard a rather overheated radio exchange speculating on where exactly Gavin Duffy was going to make a difference for Mayo, whether it was full-forward, where his physique would stand out, or midfield where his speed would be an asset . . . I mean, cool the jets a bit, ok?
3: If Duffy does make a significant on-field contribution, what does it mean for Gaelic football that you can abandon it, play another sport professionally for 15 years, then pick it up again at the very highest level with a team that’s contested two of the last All-Ireland finals?
4: For Duffy himself, how is the adjustment to different traffic systems going to go? I note a telling quote from athlete David Gillick, who chose last weekend to play a Gaelic football game: I’m not used to running sideways. Much is being made of Duffy’s vantage point at full-back on a rugby field, but that alignment, and the full view of proceedings it affords, isn’t available in his new sport. Unless you’re a keeper, which is one position the rugby player isn’t being associated with.
5: The different-shaped ball. Let’s not get into that a while.
6: Precedent? The key to Tadhg Kennelly, Tomás O’Leary and Setanta Ó hAilpín, for instance, is that they made the transformation to other sports as youngsters.
7: . . . and Kennelly had a lot more Gaelic football played in his close season trips back to Kerry as well.
8: I note only one GAA player has “reached out”, as the Yanks say, to county men who are now playing rugby with a tongue-in-cheek invitation back to the fold. I’d expect more to follow soon.
9: Eric Miller, who had a brief sojourn in Dublin’s sky blue after packing it in with Leinster, must be following this with interest.
10: Is it more affecting or less affecting that Mayo is the county involved? Everyone’s favourite sporting famine isn’t short of backstory and plot twists, but this kind of Messiah doesn’t seem to arise in other counties. Mayo has personified its dreams in the past – see under Maughan, John, and McDonald, Ciarán – and if truth were told, an individual who sums up the quest was the missing ingredient from this particular hunt for Sam Maguire.
11: How are the Mayo lads taking to a chap in the gym who’s been lifting professionally for a decade and a half? I’d say the t-shirts are a bit baggier among the squad since Duffy fell in for the bench press.
12: What does he press, actually?
13: I’ll allow the hurling snobs one comment. “You wouldn’t see Cody putting up with that.”
14: To be honest, if I were over in Mayo I’d play him just behind his own centre-back and let him break forward as he wanted . . . see? You can’t help yourself.
15: Well, at least the numbers on the jerseys are the same.
A brief word on the simmering unrest among certain Munster GAA counties which are neither Cork nor Kerry, which includes a certain amount of sabre-rattling about a proposed boycott of the Munster football championship next year if an open draw is not introduced.
It might be worth examining the revenues of the Munster Council for a year in which Cork and Kerry don’t feature in the Munster football final compared to years in which they do, though.
Not everything comes back to money, of course, but the funds generated by the big two football counties in the province are a huge help infunding grants that benefit counties beyond the two counties mentioned.
Recently I enjoyed a chat with Liam Walsh of Lisgoold, master hurley maker, in which I learned several things that would have benefited me hugely in my own long-finished hurling days.
The chat will appear in next Friday’s championship supplement with this newspaper, about which I can only say that it reaches the standard expected of that annual publication.
Check out Walsh’s words on bas size and the sweet spot when striking the ball when you get your hands on it; just one in a bagful of jewels.
