Cooper has last word on sport’s wasted boom years
“Something that interests me is the work ethos that Irish sports teams have adopted. The Irish and Munster rugby teams didn’t get anything easy, they had the traditional Irish thing of being gallant losers, but they changed that through hard work. The Kilkenny hurlers the same, Tyrone footballers the same.
“It’s not the same for the soccer team, which is interesting. You’d wonder if the fact they have a different attitude because they left Ireland in their early teens.
“But the negative side of that is maybe that there are unrealistic expectations among supporters — go back to the 2002 World Cup and people saying ‘if Keane had stayed with Ireland we’d have won it’. Something happened with our expectations.”
The Cork man doesn’t have to search far for evidence: “That’s why you had such a backlash against the rugby team at the 2007 World Cup, despite the fact that we were in a damn hard group to begin with.
“It’s great that teams have expectations and want to work hard for it — in a way that some businesspeople weren’t prepared to work, for instance, in the boom — but the downside comes in unrealistic expectations from supporters.
“Even though banks, business, politics are all crumbling, the sports teams are holding up. Munster have bounced back from a bad start, same as Leinster, so the right ethic seems to be there in sport. It’s just that maybe the fans have lost the run of themselves, that they’ve moved on to a level Ireland haven’t been on before.”
Cooper began as a business journalist and is fascinated by the intersection between commerce and sport.
“In horse racing, while you have trainers and owners who love their horses, it’s very much run on a business basis. I’ve been around Coolmore and Ballydoyle, and there’s a passion for winning, but the other side is John Oxx being so pragmatic about Sea The Stars. It was a business decision.
“It’s a matter of a happy medium, between love of the sport and having the money to do things properly. Munster and Leinster seem to have found that balance — it’s not cheap but they have to pay players and recruit players while also not losing sight of where they’ve come from.
“For me horse racing looks a bit like it’s lost the run of itself — the amount of subsidy is unbelievable compared to other sports. By contrast, one thing I’ve admired about the GAA is the way it’s held the line on pay for play — can you imagine not just the divisions within the GAA if that had come in, but the financial pressures the downturn would have brought?
“Brian Cody has an interesting take on that, saying he has no problem with people being paid to provide a service in Croke Park, that’s their job — but hurling out on the field isn’t a job.”
With so many people out of work nowadays, Cooper sees many sports fans facing tough choices when it comes to following teams.
“It’s a lot of money — if you’re a Munster or Leinster fan you’ve to think about justifying that if you have other things to spend on. The GAA have done some good things in that regard — I brought my three girls and eldest boy to Cork-Tyrone, and while my ticket was €45, all the kids cost a fiver. They loved it, and that gets them into the whole thing.
“Mind you I think the provincial championships have been devalued — I’m sure people would wonder about going to those games.”
A Leeds United fan, Cooper sees poor organisation at the root of domestic soccer’s well-publicised problems.
“Rugby and GAA clubs were always better organised, and had clubhouses and pitches. They were organised and that fed through to a higher level on and off the field.
“In Cork, say, professional soccer clubs have always been going bust. There’s a hardcore that go to Turner’s Cross, but that’s not as big as the crowds that went to Hibs-Celtic games in Cork for instance. I don’t think that’s necessarily down to the influence of overseas soccer — which I think increases interest — it’s more to do with poor organisation within soccer here.”
Cooper also has fears for domestic soccer’s governing body and its ability to keep up its end of the Aviva Stadium deal.
“I’d worry for the FAI. They keep saying they have their finances in place for Aviva Stadium, and I don’t doubt that; my worry is how they’re going to repay that financing. They’re now doing things like securitising the revenue, which is a boom era move. The ticket deal could end up costing you €200 a game; a friend of mine has a nine-year-old son, and he isn’t going to pay €400 a game, particularly when you could have only one big game every two years. You’d worry a bit that ticket prices for the new Lansdowne Road were set at boom era prices. I wouldn’t have a prescription for sorting out the FAI’s financial problems, but I think they need to face up to them for a start.”
He’s more complimentary about the IRFU and the GAA. “I think the IRFU have done a good job in recent years — my only query would be the rule changes, which are more of an international issue, that have changed rugby into a game of aerial ping-pong.
“Then again, you see TG4’s Rugbai Gold, games from the 80s, and you’d wonder why you were interested in the game at all.
“The GAA has come on so much in professionalism, what they do, understanding their marketing... in playing terms I’d like to see a firmer line on discipline, as something I don’t like in football is the idea that you’re proving you’re manly by hitting someone on the blindside.
“It’s a physical game but the idea that you can swipe at someone and not get punished is objectionable.
“The championship format needs to be tweaked also — I’m sure a player’s first provincial title is great, but surely Tyrone, for instance, see the irony in winning the All-Ireland through the back door last year and losing out this year having won the Ulster title!”
Cooper laments the wasted opportunities of the Celtic tiger years — and fears competitiveness is being eroded from children’s sport.
“Last year some of the parents in the school my kids go to said the sports day was too competitive, with kids not getting medals and so on. My view was that sport is competitive, it’s about learning to lose and win, coping with defeat.
“If your kid’s in the school orchestra you wouldn’t accept a situation where someone said their kid wasn’t much good but was having a go anyway. There are standards kids should have to aspire to. There should be accessibility, so kids have opportunities to participate, but you can’t make it all warm and fluffy and ‘everyone’s a winner’.
“It’s frustrating to see the money we’ve wasted in this country, and the opportunities we’ve wasted. Investing in sports facilities would also be an investment in health and education, but instead we have a two-tier system. We should have been putting facilities into every school in Ireland, but we’ve missed out.”
* Who Really Runs Ireland? by Matt Cooper is published by Penguin and is in the shops now. He appears in the Four Angry Men Debate at City Hall, Cork on 3 December, 8pm, along with Pat Leahy, Fintan O’Toole and Shane Ross; for tickets, try www.ticketmaster.ie or tel: 0818 719 300
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