James Brown’s lessons for the GAA

A PAUSE to begin as we salute the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, who died on Christmas Day. Brown — the hardest working man in showbusiness — had hits with classics such as Mother Popcorn, Papa Don’t Take No Mess and Call Me Super Bad (Pts. 1 & 2).

And as we mention Call Me Super Bad . . . thus to Kerry footballer Paul Galvin. During the week in this newspaper the wing-forward described how his professional credibility — he’s a secondary school teacher in Cork city — had been compromised by loud criticism on television and radio of his playing style.

It’s an interesting case which raises some relevant questions beyond Galvin’s particular situation — how much criticism of a sportsman is too much? When does that criticism become too personal? Isn’t all criticism personal? Is criticising someone’s hairstyle or the spelling of their tattoos far more personal than pointing out intent to maim or scar on the sports field?

The more serious question which arises is this: when does criticism of an amateur sportsman, like an inter-county hurler or footballer, become excessive?

Even if you’re playing on those fabled Sundays in September in front of 80,000 people, you still have to pull your pants on one leg at a time a few mornings afterwards and go out to work. Hence the general feeling that it’s not fair to go over the top in pointing out a player’s failings. At least one pundit resigned from TV analysis in Ireland on the grounds that it would be unfair to hang a nickname on some player that would follow him and his family around during the week as he went about earning a crust. Sometimes it’s worth remembering that a soundbite lasts longer than 30 seconds.

So far so good. But annoyingly enough, another reality exists in parallel with this accepted notion of fair and unfair criticism — to wit, the number of hurlers and Gaelic footballers who make some money out of their fame. Just as many observers think excessive personal criticism of GAA players’ on-field performances is unfair, many of those same people also believe those players are entitled to make some handy cash based on their public profile.

And that they are. The commercial endorsement sector has changed for the GAA to the extent that during the summer entire television ad breaks were oriented completely towards products endorsed by GAA stars or featuring canny placement of O’Neills footballs or hurleys; you know things have moved on when a McDonalds advertisement features a youngster with a hurling helmet.

However, you could go a step or two further when it comes to the rather murky intersection of GAA players and commerce. Even allowing for a certain delicacy of expression, it would be fair to say that some inter-county stars enjoy success in their professional/business lives as a direct consequence of their high public profiles. No-one has a serious objection to that either; after all, so that particular logic goes, aren’t they only getting something back from what they put into the GAA in the first place? As James Brown would have put it, The Payback?

Yup. However, isn’t there also an obvious contradiction in tut-tutting at excessive criticism of someone enjoying what is, after all, a pastime — and simultaneously approving the exploitation of that same pastime for monetary gain?

Even before that question is answered — if it can be answered satisfactorily at all — there are all those annoying corollaries that keep springing up, such as the fact that not all GAA players enjoy a profile high enough to exploit in the first place. And the fact that elite GAA players are asked to regulate their lives to professional standards — diet, rest, training — in order to compete, yet are also required to maintain full-time employment.

At times, you’d wonder if it’s worth it, particularly if your work suffers — whether through excessive criticism or excessive devotion to the county cause. That’s sacrificing one form of professionalism (in work, where it counts) for another where it doesn’t, in the strictest sense of the word.

When things comes to that pass, then maybe there’s just one option left. To borrow one last title from James Brown, is it time to Give It Up Or Turn It Loose?

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