Nothing to say about saying nothing
IS ANYONE truly upset about the Armagh footballers’ media ban?
The Armagh footballers aren’t. The management team isn’t. The vast majority of people in the country are no doubt getting on with their lives, beset on all sides by Irish Water, Russia’s ban on EU produce, the blizzard of World War I commemorations, but surviving all the same without the wit and wisdom of the Orchard County football team.
The media is unhappy with the Armagh footballers’ ban, but nothing is guaranteed to stoke the fires of apathy in the public like the unhappiness of the media, so we can move on from that aspect of the matter pretty swiftly.
The Armagh media ban is valuable for a few reasons, however, both within the GAA world and without.
For one, it points up the ramshackle state of relations between players and media. This is significant not because a breakdown in those relations is an inconvenience to reporters, but because it illustrates the vacuum between the two sides.
The player is not under any obligation other than that of native politeness to speak to the media; if he is so minded he need never give an interview in his playing career, and some players choose not to. He cannot be compelled to give his thoughts under any circumstances; after all, he has signed no contract binding him to media duties.
What is significant here is the potential for inducement to intrude in this vacuum: when this writer’s book GAAconomics came out last year many people fixated on GAA Director-General Paraic Duffy’s comments on satellite broadcasting deals, particularly when the Sky deal was signed in April.
Fewer people referred to the comments of Mick O’Keeffe of Pembroke Communications regarding the payment of players for media commitments.
O’Keeffe pointed out that most intercounty players are off limits to the media during the height of the championship summer anyway, and added it might be worth looking into offering counties a cash incentive — whether for player holiday funds or county board projects — as they go deeper into the championship to make players available to the media.
Perhaps the most significant point, though, is the one allied to the quote at the top of this piece by the late David Foster Wallace, one which questions the wisdom of expecting value from athlete commentary on one hand, and queries the reason behind our disappointment when that value doesn’t materialise.
To my mind the Armagh footballers may have done us all some service, as we manage, somehow, to enjoy the lead-in to the game, and the event itself, without being subjected to a parade of cliches, bumping gently against each other like icebergs bobbing in the sea, each one nudging its fellows along in a never-ending litany.
Clearly there are intelligent sportspeople out there with fully-evolved adult opinions on all sorts of matters.
It was refreshing for this writer to sit down with a Cork football player last week and hear him discuss the impact of the conflict in Ukraine on energy prices in this country; it’s hardly a coincidence that that player is almost 30 and therefore has had a chance to develop opinions and insights which would be beyond the reach of most players as they begin their senior careers in their late teens or early twenties.
I don’t know if the Armagh footballers have read David Foster Wallace, but they seem to have modelled their media approach on his opinions.
The real secret behind top athletes’ genius, then, may be as esoteric and obvious and dull and profound as silence itself.
The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player’s mind as he stands at the centre of hostile crowd-nose and lines up the free-throw that decides the game might well be: nothing at all.
— David Foster Wallace
