NFL takeover shows what the GAA is missing on All-Ireland final week

The lax attitude which the GAA has had in promoting its biggest days was put into dramatic and unflattering focus by the carnival which the NFL held in Dublin over the weekend. 

Sunday’s NFL clash between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Minnesota Vikings at Croke Park was packaged with a three-day Steelers tailgate party in Merrion Square, ‘official’ team bars across Dublin, a special exhibition in Dublin Castle, and a Saturday fan Q&A with commissioner Roger Goodell. Pic: Ben McShane/Sportsfile

For over 40 years Kilmacud Crokes’ grounds on Dublin’s southside have served as a magnet for hurling and Gaelic football fans drawn to the capital on weekends where the All-Ireland hurling and football finals take centre stage.

The club’s annual sevens tournaments have meant many things to many people. Games to be played for the teams that pitched up from all over the country. A social hub on their code’s biggest week of the year. And a source to be mined for precious match tickets.

Conor Meany, who grew up in the Stillorgan area, has seen numbers at the Crokes sevens events dipping in recent years with the shift in the GAA’s inter-county calendar and the punishing hotel costs that peak in the months of July and August.

The GAA and its community can ill afford events like Kilmacud’s to suffer because, truth be told, there have been far too few of them to augment the main events in Croke Park come the Sunday afternoons on the city’s northside.

And this isn’t a recent gripe.

The Association’s inability, or unwillingness, to big up their big days has rankled for far too long, and the laissez-faire manner in which they have approached their finals and their promotion was pulled into dramatic and unflattering focus over the weekend.

Meany, whose background is basketball, was talking on the Irish Examiner’s special podcast previewing the NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings that kicked off on the back of a full court PR press from the visitors.

The game came pre-wrapped by a three-day Steelers tailgate party in Merrion Square, various NFL teams setting up shop in ‘official’ bars around Dublin, a special exhibition in Dublin Castle, and a fan Q&A with the commissioner Roger Goodell on the Saturday.

The amount of pubs and hotels that dollied themselves up in black and gold and purple and yellow was eye-opening, and the contest itself was decorated with what proved to be a very decent entertainment package that tipped the hat to both countries.

One outlet described it as like a mini-Super Bowl.

And look, no-one is saying that the GAA should copy and paste here. We absolutely should not install seats on the Hill permanently, or corner off one section of it for a band belting out numbers on a makeshift stage festooned with flashing green lights.

Some things should stay sacred.

The security operation that was put in place by the NFL was a window into a world of suspicion and separation that is par for the course in Bethpage, but one that will hopefully have no place in the hosting of games at GAA HQ on any regular basis.

The thing is that there is so much other hanging fruit to be picked here.

Dublin should be used as a canvas to be covered come All-Ireland finals week. Build it up. Generate some excitement. Turn some new heads. Make it bloody visible, for starters. Festoon the place with colour and flags and posters.

Use one of the public parks to lay on a mini-festival with food stalls and music and other ‘activations’ for families: test your hurling or football skills, have your picture taken with Sam or Liam, meet a Canning or a Mannion.

The Association’s admirable stance in keeping alcohol at a discreet distance rules out any ‘official’ boozers so commission some art on gable walls, promote handball with a temporary court in one of the squares, take over a radio station for the weekend.

The list is endless here, folks, and if money isn’t as flush in the GAA as it is in the NFL then there are sponsors that can be persuaded to open their wallets and the likes of Tourism Ireland and Dublin City Corporation that should be persuaded to buy in too.

The national predilection for modesty is endearing, just not when we should be shouting our own praises from the rooftops, and it isn’t just the two All-Ireland finals that are ripe for a promotional push in the height of summer.

The Central Statistics Office says there were 646,000 foreign visitors to these shores in July. Imagine if Croke Park and the unique joys of an Irish sporting event were shoved under their noses and not hidden out of sight and out of mind.

There were eleven senior inter-county hurling and football matches played in HQ across June and July. Four of them were sold out. That leaves seven games with ample room to cater for your average American or English tourist looking to put an itinerary together.

There was a Camogie final and a Ladies football decider in August.

So many possibilities, so little imagination.