Tommy Martin: Shane Walsh's dummy solo has wrong-footed Gaels

For the discerning Gael, his attempt to transfer is a philosophical dummy solo.

ON THE MOVE?: Shane Walsh of Galway. Photo: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Disorientation is a typical side-effect of any encounter with Shane Walsh. The two-footed Galway star has long traded on the confusion inflicted on defenders unable to decipher which way he will go next.

So it’s probably fitting that the tale of his proposed move from home club Kilkerrin-Clonberne to Dublin’s Kilmacud Crokes has left many GAA fans not sure what to think. On one hand, one man’s simple wish to play his chosen pastime less than two hours drive from his house. On the other, the cry of a rural heartland bled dry of its best and brightest.

For the discerning Gael, it’s a philosophical dummy solo.

Were it not for the jilted party’s comments on the matter, most would have ruminated quietly on the implications of a top player requesting a transfer from his small rural club to a big city behemoth. He was hardly the first and would not be the last.

But Kilkerrin-Clonberne chairman Ian Hynes raised the volume on a story that might otherwise have been greeted with a world-weary shrug, telling various media outlets that the club would “fight it all the way” and that the news was like “a death in the area.” 

“Everybody here is in shock,” Hynes said, “particularly the juvenile players because he was such to hero to them. We believe it is wrong that a huge club like Kilmacud Crokes are allowed to do this. We are trying to keep the GAA alive in rural Ireland.” 

The comments have been derided as ludicrously histrionic — a club going to war with one of its native sons over an individual life choice.

Using Walsh to draw some line in the sand in the battle against voracious urban super-clubs is hardly in the player welfare handbook. At the time of writing there are doubts about the move due to Walsh being a third-level student, rather than in permanent residence in Dublin. If the transfer were to fail, would he be inclined to turn up for training back home any time soon?

And yet, while the comments can be classed in the category of ‘things I really shouldn’t have said out loud’, they do speak to a deeper sense that this business is anathema to some fundamental order of things.

It was possible to hear of Walsh’s transfer request and find it both perfectly understandable and a little bit depressing. At its heart, an appreciation of the GAA requires a complex mental architecture of seemingly jarring principles. The inter-county game contains most of the trappings of professional sport but derives its life force from an amateur, community-based core.

Elite performers branded with commercial logos strive to win, at all costs, in front of enraptured, mass audiences – then go back to the club when it’s all over. They become stars, elevated in the eyes of their peers, feted and celebrated – but they must not be seen to regard themselves as such. It is akin to how Roman emperors parading in triumph were accompanied by a slave whose job was to whisper in their ear “Memento mori”: remember, you are mortal.

Even the modern, corporate iconography of the GAA maintains the notion that its fundamental essence is bucolic, humble and egalitarian. GAA sponsors are more likely to film big budget ads in remote pitches in the mud and driving rain than in slick, aspirational locations. The move to the split season was to strike back at the sense that the intercounty tail had been wagging the dog. Upon witnessing his heroics in the All-Ireland final, many marvelled that David Clifford’s next game would be in the Kerry Junior Championship for Fossa against Listowel.

To celebrate the GAA is to celebrate communitarianism, the idea that a person’s identity is shaped by their community. It’s what makes GAA players think nothing of driving for hours to a club or county training session, then making the return journey afterwards. Some even fly in from abroad to play for their clubs. It’s why cases like Walsh’s, though not uncommon, are nowhere near as common as they might be.

So Walsh’s decision arrived like a blinding flash of reality, a snap of the fingers breaking the hypnotic spell that sustains the ideal. “It’s the right move for me at this point in my career” – a line in Walsh’s statement explaining his reasons for seeking the transfer that any sportsperson moving clubs might utter yet, coming from a GAA player, it had the dissonant ring of individualism.

The truth of it is that all GAA animals are equal but some are more equal than others. Just as Walsh’s talents mark him out as special, so too do Kilmacud Crokes’ geographical and financial advantages confer on them exalted status. He is one of the best players in the country, they one of its most powerful clubs. He has given years of service back home. It is a chance to better himself. He is living nearby. In his current circumstances, it is enough to tilt that delicate balance, the one between me and us, enough to stop him pointing the car towards home.

The devastation in Kilkerrin-Clonberne is a feeling of something being stolen, the timeless anger of have-nots raided by the haves. There have been calls for the GAA to legislate against transfers that enrich the already prosperous, to repair the damage that such moves do to the idea that the individual is subservient to the community and the big no more important than the small. The spell that holds it all together.

As for Walsh, he says he would like to finish his career back at his home club when his time with Crokes is done. Perhaps that is consolation for Kilkerrin-Clonberne, though they will know well that he is a hard man to guess as to which way he will go.