Literary journal shows it has pulling power
Among the journal’s contributions is an essay by Eimear Ryan about camogie and hurling and a sense of place. And other matters.
The whole journal is worth reading, but this jumped out at me, from the deft analysis of the ‘This Is Major’ minor hurling commercial to the longing for a county medal.
“Writing the essay I found it difficult because when you grow up in the GAA you’ve got no objectivity whatsoever,” Ryan told me. “The only thing I thought I could do was make it very personal.
“The county medal? It’s the holy grail - it’s almost totally symbolic, a feeling that ‘if we had that title everything would be okay’. You’d always be able to look back and say, ‘well, we won that’. It would kind of consolidate the years you gave to the sport, but we’re still chasing it.
“It’s good to have something in life that you’re constantly striving towards, though. And a small club like ours, it’s really a pipe dream — we’re stuck for numbers, and given emigration and young people going to cities, that’s an ongoing issue for the GAA as a whole, obviously.”
Ryan’s sense of place is Tipperary-oriented: as a kid her heroes came with a blue and gold hue. Nicky English was a guiding light in that firmament, for instance, but she points to female equivalents for today’s girls.
“When I look back on my childhood now I realise I was going around like a little boy, because hurling was for boys and I was hurling with them. If there’d been an Aisling Thompson figure around at that time it would have been great — and there were, it’s just that they weren’t given the same level of attention.
“I used to tell people when I was a kid that I’d be a hurler when I grew up — I thought I’d be playing with the boys for the length of my career, all my heroes were the Tipp hurlers like Nicky.
“Have things improved? Definitely. There are bigger crowds at the (women’s) All-Ireland finals and so on, but there seems to be a disconnect with getting girls into team sports in general. Maybe it’s because those sports are physical, and there’s some societal notion that girls shouldn’t jostle each other or something, or engage in contact sports. It’s interesting to me that a lot of female sports heroes are runners and swimmers and so on, solo sportspeople.
“A friend of mine helps out with Cúl Camps and when I was asking her how it went she said the girls were great up to about the age of 12 or so, but then they literally said they just wanted to watch the boys.
“Where does that idea come from, that they’re no longer players but observers? It’s so weird.
“But I remember going to secondary school myself and learning very quickly that you didn’t talk about going to training after school. Or if you did, people’s eyes glazed over. It was seen as a bit masculine.”
Among the other gems in Ryan’s essay was a reference to a hurling novel now hidden in a drawer, so I gingerly asked when we might be seeing that . ..
“I revisited it (for the essay) and I had an idea I might extract a few pieces for the essay, but it was just too terrible, I couldn’t put it in print. No.”
Ah well. To tide you over, Winter Papers is in shops now.
What about a 96-team World Cup?
First things first: Gianni Infantino needs to be complimented for restoring a sense of humour to world of international soccer. Quite apart from having a name that translates roughly as Johnny Childish, the head of FIFA has also appeared to advocate a 48-team World Cup.
If anything, this is too conservative a measure. What about a 96-team World Cup? A tournament with 192 teams? In addition to seeing teams like Transnistria and The Vatican take to the field, it’d rid the schedules of all that nonsense with qualifying and groups and so forth. Andorra versus Brazil, the Antarctic Common Trading Territory versus Vanuatu: who could turn down that kind of quality?
On a more local level, hats off to Mr Jonathan Gabay for keeping the country entertained with his presentation on the rebranding of the League of Ireland last week.
If anybody thinks I’m going to poke fun at this chap because he said Cork City’s curry chips were scrummy then they’re wrong. If he is indeed the operator of jonathangabay.com then there are far more rewarding targets there (Non-random quote from same: “you’ll gonna love my favourite choice of bagel”.) I know it’s the season to be jolly. Thanks for facilitating.
You must be joking, Teimana
I enjoyed the comments of Northampton’s Teimana Harrison regarding his teammate Dylan Hartley’s disciplinary problems during the week. Hartley delivered a winder to the back of the head of Leinster’s Sean O’Brien and was justifiably red carded, but Harrison’s view was: “. . .with England, everyone is: ‘Ah, Dylan is awesome. Dylan is great. You’re the man.’
“Then he does one thing and he slips up, and everyone is like: ‘You’re a p——. You’re this, you’re that. You shouldn’t be playing.’ Whereas it shouldn’t be like that. He is not a p——, he didn’t mean to do that sort of stuff.”
I have blanked out the offending term, though rest assured it was neither prat nor plonker. Wasn’t the crucial part of the criticism of Hartley that it hasn’t been, you know, one thing, but an accumulation of things that have led to months of suspension?
Better luck next time, Teimana.
And if you can dredge up one individual who’s ever said Dylan is ‘the man’ without adding ‘who’s just been sent off’ then get in touch.
Fictional fans wear colours with pride
A late comment on the somewhat vexed subject of Friday Night Lights, which is a much-cherished TV programme in one corner of this house.
This account of high school football in Texas owes little by now to the original spark provided by Buzz Bissinger’s legendary account of a year following a school team in Odessa, and is set in the fictional town of Dillon.
What amazed me during the week, however, was the availability of Dillon Panthers merchandise — hoodies, t-shirts, the whole lot — online at the NBC Universal Store.
The question is this: is it too late to order something for Christmas?
