Brilliant Dubs miss out on gongs but it wasn’t a ‘snub’
Other than we have not much better to be talking about at the end of the year, some of us don’t understand the meaning of the word “snub”. The Dublin senior footballers and Jim Gavin may have been overlooked but to use the word ‘snub’ is a precarious exercise when those claiming one can’t prove that the team or their manager were ignored.
Beaten? Yes. Passed over? Absolutely. But snubbed? No.
The foundation for this conspiracy theory in the capital goes back to the All-Stars selections where David Clarke was chosen ahead of Stephen Cluxton. Had Cluxton not also been nominated alongside Clarke for footballer of the year, there might not have been so many cries of complaint but that was the decision of the football selection committee. Cluxton had a fine season; Clarke’s was finer.
Gavin would have been our selection as manager of the year but then what Micheál Donoghue accomplished with Galway was worthy of acknowledgment also. Outside the GAA, there’s a belief that the Philips Manager of the Year is presented to a football or hurling individual in an otherwise weak year for sports management but when Donoghue trumps not only the likes of Aidan O’Brien but a man who led a team on a run of 36 unbeaten games across two championships and the majority of two league campaigns it illustrates the current strength of GAA county management.
Dublin would also have been our selection as team of the year. One defeat this season, one defeat going back to March 2015, is an incredible record and RTÉ’s choice of the Ireland show-jumping team could appear tokenistic.
But then that is what the voting public wanted, not as some might be led to believe the decision was a “snub for a snub” given Gavin boycotted interviews with the national broadcaster earlier in the summer because of Pat Spillane’s comments about Diarmuid Connolly.
If these are truly the RTÉ awards then they should be selected by RTÉ themselves as The Sunday Game chose their football and hurling teams of the year.
At least the Philips Manager of the Year was chosen by a group of selectors. Public votes are open to abuse as Ireland have so comically illustrated in the past with the likes of The Wolfe Tones and Ronnie O’Brien and who could forget Boaty McBoatface.
But the result of the team of the year vote does raise the question of whether we are mature or knowledgeable enough to appreciate Dublin for what they are: a truly brilliant side.
Can we look beyond the size and scale of the county and recognise that it isn’t just money and resources that make them what they are? Can we recognise the humility of the likes of Jack McCaffrey giving his time to GOAL and Con O’Callaghan on the Gaelic Voices For Change sleep-out and understand that there is something more to admire about them than the fact they are winners?
The same questions apply to inter-county football players too. Andy Moran was a deserved footballer of the year for 2017 – even the presence of Clarke along with Cluxton and James McCarthy as fellow nominees didn’t manage to split his vote.
For September, McCarthy became the first Dublin player to win a championship footballer of the month award since Paddy Andrews in September 2015. In between, Mayo claimed three (Moran and Keegan this year, Paddy Durcan last year) and Kerry one (Paul Geaney, August 2016).
As far as All-Stars go, the media mightn’t have the relationship they would like with them (Dublin, for that matter, don’t either) but that doesn’t mean to say it will hold that against the group.
Connolly last week hit out at the way his hour-long interview with the Hill16Army podcast was portrayed by some in the Fourth Estate – “It goes to show how negative and lazy the media are”.
It was a sweeping remark but Connolly can be allowed blow off some steam given what happened earlier in the year.
In his always thought-provoking report last week, Dublin secretary John Costello once again fired back at those who attack the county.
It was expected and it was delivered in typical irreverent fashion. An appending section following the recent awards might have made for good reading too but somehow you sense he is happy with Dublin’s lot and he treats the subjectivity of end of season awards as just that.
It’s difficult to swallow the idea Dublin are persecuted when they wear the crown but there is an undeniable belief out there that those jewels should be enough for them. They are - but a round of applause shouldn’t hurt.
More than time catching up on players
In Armagh, there’s Ciaron O’Hanlon, Paul Hughes, James Morgan, Oisín O’Neill and Jamie Clarke. In Waterford, there’s Shane Bennett. Cork’s hurlers will be without Stephen McDonnell. David Moran won’t be available for the early part of Kerry’s season. In Clare, Aaron Cunningham and Cian Dillon will be absent. James Breen won’t don the Wexford colours in 2018 as well as Podge Doran, Gary Moore and Andrew Kenny. Offaly’s footballers won’t have Graham Guilfoyle to call on. Kildare will go on minus Ollie Lyons and Shane McNamara.
It’s a regular feature at this time of year to select the best team of recent retirees but it’s time to discuss just how many are stepping away from the inter-county game not because Father Time has caught up with them but because of life. From travelling to work to other personal reasons to frustration.
More and more players are opting to leave or at least take a break from “The Commitment”.
Last year, Emmett Bradley, Gareth McKinless, Liam and Sean Leo McGoldrick left Derry. Odhrán Mac Niallais and Leo McLoone departed Donegal but are now back involved. Brendan Kealy quit Kerry. Kieran Bergin left the Tipperary hurlers only to then switch to the footballers (and retiring subsequently).
Paul Devlin and Ryan Mallon withdrew from Down at the start of the year. Paul Schutte, Joey Boland, Shane Durkin and Paul Ryan departed from the Dublin hurling panel for this season following in the footsteps of team-mates Danny Sutcliffe, Conor McCormack, Colm Cronin and Peter Kelly. In 2016, David Kelly removed himself from the Sligo squad.
This is player power but of a different kind: the right to say no. It’s not such an unhealthy thing to say.
Sleepout shows GAA at its best
It shouldn’t need current and former inter-county Gaelic players to raise awareness and funds in the fight against homelessness but their presence sleeping out on city and town streets on Saturday night and Sunday morning will hopefully pique people’s social consciences about the crisis at such a sensitive time of the year.
The modus operandi of those involved should hardly be questioned but that didn’t stop former Meath captain Anthony Moyles tweeting: “Self publicity on the back of genuine issues still alive & at large this Christmas I see!! #spoofers”
The likes of ex-Donegal player Éamon McGee took Moyles to task on his remarks and rightly so. To cast aspersions on people genuinely being altruistic, certainly without expanding on his point, is pretty lousy.
What was done and achieved on the sleep-out exemplified so much of what is great about the GAA. As one of the chief organisers, former Wexford hurler Diarmuid Lyng said: “We engage most effectively through community. Not just a geographical community but by anything that brings people together. Hurling, football and camogie bring us together. If we can do our small bit and engage as many of those people as possible, we are contributing to a fairer and a more compassionate society.” The long-held theory that the GAA is the one sport in this country that best reflects society is difficult to argue with but on occasions it mirrors what we would like society to be. What happened over the weekend was truly one of those times.
