Hardly GAA's fault we Irish like a drink

Long before the notion of Good Friday as a drinking day became fashionable, it had acquired the reputation of being an irresistible day for going on the beer around where I grew up.

It seems like no time ago that Good Friday was observed to such a respectful degree that there was always a sombre and heavy air about the afternoon. The day felt appropriately sullen and muted. And there was nothing to do other than go to the church or moan about the shops not being open.

Growing up close to the Border, it began to occur to some that a preferable alternative would be to pass on the spiritual and to slip quietly into the godless North to get blitzed on spirits. After the Church bashing started in earnest a decade ago and Good Friday began to lose that sense of weighty foreboding, more and more of us were convinced that above all days and nights in the year, this was a day for drinking.

That perception has not changed and the nearest Border town to our own town is generally a fairly wild place to be at around 11.30 on Good Friday night, a hotbed of opportunistic commerce, hardcore boozing and Civic drivers revving up for the drag race of the century. After midnight, many of the southerners tumble back across again and on for the local nightclubs, which begin spinning the discs at the stroke of midnight.

The immorality or sadness of a situation where Good Friday has now become a festive occasion across the country is not for argument here: it is simply the way things are. But judging by the conversations on the national airwaves this week, there is always one handy scapegoat. Blame it on the good old G, A and A.

Derek Davis, RTÉ's favourite Cuddly Bear, was hosting Liveline this week when the decision to grant 11 new bar licences to Croke Park came up. The switchboard became the hottest thing in Montrose since Ryan Tubridy. The general reaction was one of shock. As if the GAA hadn't done enough, they were going to turn the country to drink. It was a national disgrace. It was a shame. It wasn't good enough. Up in Croke Park, the disgraced members met. They drew straws, awarded the unlucky man a medal of bravery (which he proudly fixed to his pioneer pin), wrote a CLG letter of condolence to his people and sent him out to defend the decision to establish not one but 11 dens of iniquity above the sacred turf.

It was a valiant defence but the jury was not for turning. John Lonergan, Big Derek, the Croke Park residents group (I worry for these people: aren't they ever in a good mood?) were all on a tour de force.

It goes without saying that traditionally the GAA holds an elevated place in the superstructure of this country, unique among sports associations in the power they hold in rural and urban society and over young people. And it is also true that the GAA have broadly been associated with the support of abstinence and the classic GAA figure is a suited man wearing his pin as a symbol of existence.

More recently, the GAA have begun to appreciate that their younger members were failing to turn up for training on weekend mornings because they were still bombed out of it on Aftershocks or Buckfast skulled the night before. And so they established a task force to implement some sort of cohesive, county-by-county reaction to what has become a phenomenon.

The reason the 11 new bars are being opened in Croke Park is plain. It means more money. Why have Armagh or Cork folk gagging for a drink outside the hostelries of Dorset Street when they can be catered for Chez Cusack? Croke Park is a capitalist venture and it makes sense to cash in on the fact that on championship days people drink. People drink big time. Croke Park will open those bars an hour before and an hour after their championship games, literally small beer in comparison to the ocean put away each championship weekend.

The 11 bars are so irrelevant in the general debate about alcohol, young people and the GAA that it is kind of laughable. Drink has always been a double-edged sword where the GAA is concerned. The association has many stories of stars turned alcoholics, particularly in those dressingrooms where success visited. It is probably a safe bet that every intercounty dressingroom possesses a couple of players who have the potential to become problem drinkers. And the reason all serious teams swear off the drink is because it is a denial of the only common interest and pleasure they share beyond the game itself: the team getting thrashed as a team.

The tendency to refer to "young people" as a species interested only in self-destruction through alcohol and other drugs is derogatory. But while the numbers of kids getting truly wasted each weekend is frightening, instancing the addition of 11 more taverns in Croke Park as a contributing factor is just plain daft. As is the oft-voiced complaint that the Irish attitude to drink is wrong and that we should be more like the French, for instance. The short answer to that - and with no disrespect intended - most of us have no interest in being like the bloody French.

The GAA are a big, unwieldy and imperfect organisation as compromised and lost in the whole marvel of Ireland's national dependency on drink as the Government, as the law and civic authorities and as parents and guardians. The GAA may possess teetotallers but by and large, the GAA like a drink. The GAA like to buy a round, the GAA are as fond of a lock-in as any other organisation in Ireland. Like almost all of Ireland, the GAA take a drink, they get funny and garrulous and sentimental and sometimes violent with a drink. In a certain mood and with drink, the GAA will dance with abandon to the sound of Ricky Martin.

Why do so many people, young, middle- and old-aged, drink too much in Ireland? Maybe because for all its beauty, Ireland is basically a damp and rather lonesome field where it is dark a lot. Maybe because many Irish people find being drunk an enjoyable state. Maybe because the effect of alcohol somehow does suit the national character. Maybe because many Irish people are unhappy about things. Maybe because for every poor youngster who gets lost in drink or is the victim of street or road violence, nine others get away with it.

Maybe because nobody has ever come up with a better way for charged groups of adolescents to pass drizzly weekend nights. Maybe because when many of us don't even abstain from drink on Good Friday, we have passed the point of no return. Maybe there are a thousand other stupid reasons like that. But it is not because of the GAA. Like the rest of this country when it comes to drink, the GAA are just muddling along, trying to make sense of it all and going with the flow.