Tommy Martin: Bog beats beach. Drizzle 1, Sizzle 0 - is GAA winning battle with AFL?

The pony-tailed Adonis of Kilmaine, Oisín Mullin, had rejected the sun-kissed, sleeveless life of the AFL in order to continue pushing the green and red boulder up the hill, writes Tommy Martin. Picture: INPHO

There was no Blue Monday in Mayo this week, and not just for the lucky Lotto winner.

From Belmullet to Ballaghdareen, the January gloom lifted upon Sunday night’s news that the pony-tailed Adonis of Kilmaine, Oisín Mullin, had rejected the sun-kissed, sleeveless life of the AFL in order to continue pushing the green and red boulder up the hill.

Many reckoned the two happy events were linked. Had the new Mayo millionaire diverted their winnings to Mullin’s back pocket? If so, where would the shadowy benefactor’s largesse end? Air domes in every Mayo village? Or had Mullin himself won the big prize, making him rich enough to spurn the advances of Geelong and build his own bloody air dome.

Named best young footballer in the country — twice over — it’s hard to quantify the boost of Mullin’s continued presence in the great quest to bring Sam west. Not only were his turbo-charged excursions from defence a recurring motif in Mayo’s runs to the last two All-Ireland finals, but he came to personify the very indefatigability of his county — the sense that no matter how many of them you see off, still more will come to take their place.

As the best of those younger players that followed Mayo’s Nearly-But-Not-Quite Generation, Mullin represented the durability of hope. If he was to be lured away to the land where — it says here — the women glow and men chunder, what then? That boulder keeps getting heavier.

But it wasn’t just in Mayo that news of another Aussie Rules refusenik blew away the winter blues, or indeed in Cork, where Mark Keane threw his lot in with the hurlers after a year with Collingwood. Anyone who enjoys the spectacle of inter-county GAA was entitled to feel the warmth on their backs knowing some of its best and brightest were eschewing that strange and distant code.

Although it cuts deepest in their own county, losing a player to Aussie Rules is a collective bummer. Had the teenaged David Clifford been seduced down under, we’d all have been the poorer, not just Kerry. How much did Conor McKenna’s return from Australia add not only to Tyrone’s success, but to the overall merit of last year’s football championship? Imagine never having seen Ciaran Kilkenny or Brian Fenton or James McCarthy become legends with Dublin, had they pursued offers from the AFL in their youth.

As such, it is hard not to see decisions like Mullin’s or Keane’s as a broader victory, a small triumph for our rain-sodden, North Atlantic outpost over the bountiful attractions of Oz. One in the eye for the land of plenty. Bog beats beach. Drizzle 1, Sizzle 0.

Though they leave to try their hand at professional sport and not to dig tunnels or build skyscrapers, there is something of the traditional emigrant’s tale in the young Irish prospect heading Down Under. Some are turning their back on the limitations of home for the chance of something better. Others are captivated by the spirit of adventure. Most suffer from homesickness and the realisation that the streets are not paved with gold. A select few are bloody-minded enough to make a success of it.

For those at home there is the sense of the emigrant’s wake, the old practice of mourning the departing loved one because they will never return. This is even though, in this case, most of them do and are very often better GAA players for the experience. At that moment of loss, however, it feels like a sporting death.

Suddenly this player in whom they had placed such hopes is gone to the other side of the world and to do what? Play for a strange team in an even stranger sport. As befits Australia’s unique evolutionary environment, to the outsider Aussie Rules looks like the sporting equivalent of the duck-billed platypus. A bit of Gaelic football, a bit of rugby and, oh, let’s play it on a cricket pitch and use flagpoles for goals. It has a certain manic and brutal charm but then so did throwing Christians to the lions.

The irony of a GAA fan commenting on the mongrel idiosyncrasies of Aussie Rules noted, the point is that the AFL is a long way away, literally and metaphorically. Though there is interest in the sport here, primarily in the fortunes of its Irish protagonists, it is very niche. So, the achievements of those who go out there can often feel meaningless to most of the country from whence they came. Mullin might as well have been considering a career in Major League Lacrosse or Pro Kabaddi.

None of that is to detract from the opportunity that the AFL provides to young players who fancy a crack at it. Why shouldn’t they give it a go, the worst that can happen is they come back with muscles and a suntan? And the AFLW has given some of our best female players a growing platform to showcase their talents.

Indeed, the essence of the battle between GAA and AFL has always been that of individual against the collective — to strike out for fortune and success on your own or to stay within the bosom of those about whom you care most. The pioneering spirit versus the community ethos.

Covid-19 has helped to strengthen the lure of home and impacted on the AFL clubs’ ability to invest in what is still referred to as ‘the Irish experiment.’ But analysis of recent decisions to turn down offers from the AFL has noted how top GAA counties have tooled up in the battle to hold onto their young heroes: offering jobs, scholarships, benefits and, presumably, all the air dome access they could want.

Fighting fire with fire, they want to play, not just on the player’s emotional heartstrings, but on their desire for individual fulfilment as well; to persuade the future stars that, like the lucky punter in Castlebar last weekend, they have just as much chance of hitting the jackpot if they stay at home.