Katie Taylor feelgood factor gives way to grim and difficult month for Irish sport

The difficult month for Irish sport starts in the coming days with an Irish Open being played at Trump International Golf Links and Hotel, and with the expected presence of the US president himself a guarantee that debate, angst and protest will be fuelled even further.

US president Donald Trump on the 15th hole at Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg, Co. Clare.

If Katie Taylor gave us a script the country so desperately wanted on Saturday night then the abiding memories of an historic occasion in Croke Park won’t, can’t, be restricted to the ring that served as the stage for her last act as a boxer.

The entire show spanned almost seven hours, from the moment Paul Ryan and Paddy Gallagher got the undercard going, up to the point when Taylor and an enormous retinue of family, friends and assorted others finally made their way back to the Hogan Stand.

For all the images captured and words written, it is the vibe that stood out.

People danced and laughed, cheered and sang in celebration of a unique career and moment. There was a lovely abandon to it all. A rare moment in modern life where all that ‘stuff’ melted away and 83,000 people surrendered to the feeling and the freedom.

It was an outlier, even as sport goes. There was almost no jeopardy in it, next to no fear that Taylor wouldn’t win. The hard yards had been done over the previous 30 years, but it never lapsed into the realm of exhibition stuff either. Flora Pili did her bit.

It all had the air of escape that envelopes people at World Cups and Olympic Games when the outside world, with all its problems and its vastness, melts away in the face of heated discussions about nothing more important than running times or a striker’s hamstring injury.

We’ll miss that simplicity this next four weeks.

The month to come will, in many ways, be the polar opposite of Croke Park. Irish sport has had its fair share of controversies. Saipan. Shergar. Thierry Henry’s handball. The Lansdowne riot in 1995. Michelle Smith. The Rio ticketing scandal.

Some others have spilled miles beyond sport’s borders and made us question ourselves as human beings, as a society and as a nation. Think of Douglas Hyde’s run-in with the GAA almost 90 years ago, and swimming’s sexual abuse scandals.

The next month will ask more than a few uncomfortable questions.

That starts in the coming days with an Irish Open being played at Trump International Golf Links and Hotel, and with the expected presence of the US president himself a guarantee that debate, angst and protest will be fuelled even further.

It will be followed next Thursday week by Heimir Hallgrimsson’s squad announcement for an international football window that has tasked his Republic of Ireland team with facing Israel twice in the space of eight days.

Irish Sport for Palestine’s ‘Stop The Game’ campaign has been beating that drum ever since the Nations League draw was made back in mid-February, on the back of what a UN independent commission, among others, has described as an ongoing genocide in Gaza.

The argument is made in some quarters that the fixture calendar would make for quick reading if Ireland was to boycott every game against countries of some ill repute. The counter is to wonder why more blowback isn’t landing on Doonbeg this week.

The nature of Trump’s administration has prompted Amnesty International to ring the alarm bells on what they see as increasingly authoritarian practices in the US and “a devastating erosion of human rights” in the world’s most important democracy.

The US president has committed illegal acts of aggression in Venezuela and Iran, continued with support of all stripes for Israel’s appalling actions, threatened to annex Greenland and acted abominably to all sorts of long-established friendly nations.

This is the man whose name is above the door at this week’s Irish Open. It’s his name on the hats and the tee-shirts and the rest of the paraphernalia on sale in the club shop in the Co. Clare venue. It’s his motorcades and security that will upend the event come the weekend.

Trump has injected himself into sport’s mainstream time and again in the recent past: at last year’s Ryder Cup at Bethpage, at Madison Square Garden for the New York Knick’s finals run, at Flushing Meadow for the US Open tennis, and at the World Cup final.

What we know from past experience, and a basic understanding of human nature, is that plenty of the people attending this week won’t care a jot about a presence in Doonbeg that will be even more overbearing, more in-your-face again.

Go back to 2019, when the Irish Open was last held in Clare, and a brief and respectful environmental protest by the Extinction Rebellion group was roundly booed by the galleries who had come to follow Shane Lowry, Tommy Fleetwood and Russell Knox.

Climate change v one of the day’s big threeballs? There was only one winner.

And some Irish people, of course, support and like Trump.

If there is a small mercy to this week’s scene then it might be the brevity of it all. Trump will be here and gone in the space of a weekend. The Israel games have been looming so much larger for so much longer and the football will be sidelined in a way that the golf might not.

A poll by the Irish Football Supporters Partnership earlier this year found over 75% of respondents were opposed to the games going ahead. Media organisations are already debating how best the games in Debrecen and Topola should be covered, or not.

There is a recognition, surely on all sides, that this is not a ‘normal’ sporting story and not just because the two games go ahead in the depths of eastern Europe. It seems inevitable that the discord will spread to the home game against Austria on October 1st.

By then, Ireland will have already faced Israel in Debrecen in Hungary in the first of their two ties, by which point the memories of Katie Taylor’s fairytale night will have long been replaced by the realities of a grim and soul-sapping month.