Purple is an all too rare colour for most of us

ON the truly white sidelines of yet another sporting year we can be certain that the perennial mystery of the Purple Patches for both individuals and teams will remain unsolved in twelve months time.

The existence of those blazing patches is one of the brightest and most enthralling elements on the patchwork quilt of all the disciplines in the world of sport. Thank God for them. Otherwise the form-books would become infallible tomes rather than the flimsy documents we know them to be.

Everyone who has ever participated in any sport, either in a team or as an individual, knows in their bones about the Purple Patch and its dreaded first cousin the Black Patch. They have been struck by both of them at one time or another during their careers. Their arrival on the sporting scene is as unpredictable as next week’s weather. They both come out of the blue and normally rip up all the form-books in sight and desolate either the punters or the bookies. They can both last for months, or for entire seasons.

They may only last for one match, for one competition, or indeed, in some cases, for only minutes or seconds. Nobody really knows where either comes from.

Managers and coaches, even the best of them, are as much in the dark about the causation of Purple Patches and Black Patches as the teams or individuals involved. But they are a perennial reality and they will shape the statistics of this incoming year as they always have done.That is the wonder of it all.

I only experienced one Purple Patch in a very undistinguished career as a GAA club-man. I was an erratic corner-forward for a junior club side the day it came. It was a bright Sunday in June, I was 20 years old, and I felt no different trotting afield at the beginning of the game than on any other Sunday.

But the first ball I got, the dry warm feel of it, the dry springy turf under my boots, converted me into a Peter Canavan or Gooch Cooper of an attacker. I scored three goals and five points in that game — two great goals at that — and that was a higher tally than I ever achieved in an entire season either before or after. And that’s the unforgettable truth.

Great stars with real skills like Cooper in Gaelic football or Shefflin in hurling or Lionel Messi in soccer, or Usain Bolt the sprinter, for example, are probably the stars they are because they can get into the empurpled zone more often. But they run into the black zone as well.

The gifted Drogba cannot even score penalties for Chelsea at the moment. Wayne Rooney has lead in his boots. Cooper did not have his best season either on the GAA front. Padraig Harrington has slumped alarmingly almost all year. Paul O’Connell will be glad to see the back of this year.

Robbie Keane and Roy Keane will both be glad to head into January and the new challenges ahead. And what about the deflated Tiger this past year? Meanwhile the cog marks left behind these days by the fleet-footed Gareth Bale are as purple as the battered visages of those who take on Katie Taylor.

I bet that even Mick O’Dwyer knows no more about the causation of these patches, both positive and negative, than you or I. Or the choleric Scot whose name I never mention here? Or the Special One?

The manager or coach who eventually learns where the hidden triggers may lie concealed will be a special person indeed. But there will be no discovery of those biological triggers this year either.

So it could happen, because of this reality, that Carlow’s footballers could defeat The Kingdom in the qualifiers, that Leitrim’s footballers could come roaring out of Connacht again, that Offaly could hammer the Cats in the hurling. All unlikely, but we can never be sure because, on the day of destiny, some player could get a rush of purple blood to his boots or his hurley and the form-book will be torn asunder again.

Because of the growing tide of emigration from the parishes and provinces of the GAA heartland in these harsher times I am highly unlikely to be granted my dearest New Year wish I’m afraid. There are now a lot of empty club jerseys left behind by all the clubmen who have gone to seek better times abroad.

The guts have been ripped out of any number of teams for that reason. And what will happen in this New Year, surely as the rain will return, is that too many team managers, desperate to “fill the jerseys” will fill those jerseys in emergencies with young minors, still more boys than men.

A few of those minors will make the grade. A lot of them, though, will have their careers irreparably damaged by what can become a “blooding” in more ways than one. You have seen that happen in the past and so have I. It should not be allowed to develop again. But it will.

Happy sporting New Year to all.