Tommy Martin: It's only the league? That’s what they want you to think

Thu, 03 Feb, 2022 - 06:05

Easily the most enjoyable television of the week was provided by GB News, the fledgling national broadcaster for Brexit Britain, scourge of the woke and the remoaning.

To mark the anniversary of his funeral, they interviewed Winston Churchill, the former British prime minister who led the country to victory in World War Two and is, to put it bluntly, dead. But there he was, large as life, bow tie and cigar and all, chatting to weekend breakfast hosts Anne Diamond and Stephen Dixon as if he were a fitness influencer with a new cookbook out.

“Why do you think there is still so much admiration for you?” Diamond asked the great and, it must be said, rather dead man. “I think I was the right man at the right moment,” replied Winston.

“I don’t think I could probably survive in the current climate,” he added mischievously, “although one would it give it a go of course!”

To most broadcasters, booking a much revered but entirely dead former prime minister as a morning news guest might be an odd move, but for GB News it was perfectly in keeping.

After all, what screams delusional nostalgic dystopia more than a breezy chat with a beloved former leader who has been in the grave for decades?

That’s the great thing about today’s world, though. If you want to speak to one of the great statesmen of the 20th century, why let the fact that he is not actually alive stop you? Insisting on only talking to people who have a pulse is just another way in which the mainstream media has kept us under control. I mean, it doesn’t get more woke than no-platforming the long-dead.

Such ruminations on the nature of truth continued while watching Sunday’s Allianz Football League action, which came to us live from SEA LIFE Aquarium. Mayo and Donegal sloshed out a thrilling draw before the action moved to Omagh where Tyrone and Monaghan scuffled in the storm like angry trawlermen fighting over the last Fisherman’s Friend. Coming on top of Saturday night’s ravaging of the Croke Park citadel by Armagh, it added up to a compelling opening weekend’s entertainment.

But of course, we are conditioned not to allow ourselves to fully enjoy the National League. It is something which is objectively pleasing but which we are always told is not quite the real thing, like the taste of a Big Mac or the comedy of Ant & Dec. This belief has been handed down the generations by venerable sages like Mick O’Dwyer and Páidí Ó Sé, who famously preached that no useful football was played until the cuckoo had sworn off the drink, or something like that.

For too long now, Big Manager has brainwashed us to believe that everything that happens on a football field when the weather is cold and the rain is falling sideways should be taken with a pinch of salt. Think about it. As far as managers are concerned, the fewer games that actually matter, the better. The last thing managers want is for us to start taking all those competitive games against teams of similar standing too seriously. That way we’d have way too much empirical evidence to judge whether they were any cop at their jobs.

Only the league? Yeah, that’s what they want you to think.

Unsurprisingly, the conspiracy runs deep. Was that really rain on the TG4 camera lenses? What are they trying to hide? Remember all the talk that the league should be made into the championship?

Hah, like the GAA illuminati were ever going to let that happen. And for the last two seasons the league finals have just ‘mysteriously’ disappeared. What’s going on there? Something to do with Covid-19 apparently. Let’s not get started on that!

Most of all, we are told that we shouldn’t get carried away with anything that happens in the league. But on Sunday over 8,000 people traipsed into Newbridge in the wind and rain to watch Kildare take on Kerry. They had to delay throw-in for 15 minutes. I’ve been to St Conleth’s Park. The Bernabeu it ain’t. These people weren’t going for the corporate hospitality. If they weren’t getting carried away with something they need their heads examined.

And why shouldn’t we league truthers let ourselves get carried away? So you’re delighted that your county team had a good win or pissed off that they played like pack of senile alpacas? Why shouldn’t you inhabit those emotions a little? Isn’t that what being a sports fan is about? What kind of cruelty is it to lay on two months’ worth of the kind of games that players like to play and supporters like to watch and then tell us it is some kind of soybean substitute for the championship’s meaty goodness?

Even the kneejerk conclusions one could draw from last weekend have the ring of truthiness about them. Dublin looked like a team staggering between eras, unsure whether to cling onto an old identity or strike out for a new one. Mostly it all looks like a bit of a chore for them. Armagh are a coming team, full of bewitching attacking brio and with the scope for coltish improvement. Kerry and Donegal are still flaky. Mayo are given to rousing emotion-driven surges. There will never be more than a fingernail’s width between Tyrone and Monaghan. Derry and Galway look the most convincing shapers from the pack below. None of that sounds like particularly fake news, does it?

By the way, it turned out that it wasn’t the real Winston Churchill on GB News last weekend. After a few minutes of surreal chat from beyond the crypt, Anne Diamond revealed that their guest was, in fact, an amateur dramatics enthusiast called Stan. Rather than being the reincarnation of Britain’s inspirational wartime figurehead, he was actually a fat, bald man in an old suit. The cigar was even a vape.

See, sometimes the truth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.