Sometimes, it's simply not about the game

LOCKERROOM:SOMETIMES WITHOUT looking you inadvertently stumble on the reasons for the GAA's continuing success as a sporting phenomenon. We were in Italy last week, down in Bari, and I came across the story of Grande Torino and Superga. I'm a little embarrassed that I had never heard of Superga. If you had asked me a week ago I would have said Superga was Cork's hurling captain last year, writes TOM HUMPHRIES

Anyway, on May 4th this year the captain of FC Torino will do what his predecessors have been doing virtually every year for the last 60 years, climbing a mountain to the shrine which marks the spot where perhaps the greatest Italian soccer team of all time perished. In the 1940s, Torino had a team which put all others, including their neighbours Juventus, in the afternoon shade.

In 1949, in early May, when they flew to Portugal for a friendly to honour a retiring player, they had just about wrapped up their fifth Serie A title in a row. Not just that. They had been unbeaten for 18 games, hadn’t lost at home in their beloved Filadelphia stadium for six years or 93 games and were the backbone of the Italian national squad.

They flew in bad conditions that evening and visibility was poor in the mountains which protect Turin. They crashed at Superga, a point high on a hill with a basilica.

Oddly, the task of identifying the bodies of the victims fell to Vittorio Pozzo, who was perhaps Italy’s greatest manager. By then, however, he was working as a journalist and was among the first to the crash site. The bodies he identified belonged to some of the greatest players Italy has known.

In 1943, Torino had won just the second championship in their history to become the first Italian team to win the double. They beat our friends in Bari to secure the league title. That was a typically Italian 1-0 margin. By the next year they had left the mores of Italian football behind them and hammered Livorno 9-1 on the day they secured Serie A. By 1947, when Italy beat the legendary Hungarian side of the time in Turin’s Stadium Communale, 10 of Italy’s team were Torino players. They were legends in a country which creates soccer legends with facility. Winning the 1947 title, they scored 104 goals in 38 games. Juventus were runners-up a distant 10 points behind.

According to John Foot’s excellent Calcio, the following year they scored 125 goals in 40 games, beating Allessandria 10-0, Luchesse 6-0 and Salernitas 7-1.

The team were led by the incomparable Valentino Mazzolla. In Turin, Captain Valentino, as he was universally known, was famous as the orchestrator of a 15 minutes granata, the period in any game when he would literally pull up his shirt sleeves and metaphorically pull up those of his team and roar “alé”. It was the signal that launched the charge of the light brigade. The next 15 or so minutes, however long it took to yield a satisfactory score, were what the LA Lakers used to call “Showtime”.

On Superga, 31 people, including 18 players, died. The entire first-team panel, trainers, management, pilots and journalists. After the burials had taken place, the league was completed. Torino’s youth side played out the club’s last four fixtures and, out of respect, each of their opponents fielded a team of similar stature.

And Superga, like Hillsborough or Munich or Heysel, turned Torino into something more than a club. The sense of grief around the team of Grande Torino is almost fetishistic. Unlike Liverpool or United or Juve, the club has never truly recovered and hover just above Serie B yet again as another season draws to a close in Italy.

But in common with United and Liverpool too, FC Torino draw a support which is both sentimental and passionate. It was interesting to be in Bari last week and feel the anger of the locals that their favourite son, Antonio Cassano, is consistently left out of Marcello Lippi’s squads. Although Cassano left Bari a long time ago, he is still worshipped there.

That sense of place and community which great tragedies bring link a select few football clubs, and, in a mercenary world where players come and go all the time and clubs have increasingly little contact with the communities that support them, grief and the odd triumph are the only ties that bind.

The GAA weathers so many storms and thrives because many years ago it tied itself to the parish pump and has refused to budge.

Meanwhile, I’ve fallen for FC Torino.

Fogra: In these times of recession, when we tend to feel a little sorry for ourselves as a nation, it is good to see some people haven’t forgotten how fundamentally lucky we are.

The popular charity Bóthar provides a lifeline to many families in Third World countries, and Martin Fogarty, Kilkenny’s engineer and coach, has organised a day next Saturday from which Bóthar and lots of hurling people will benefit.

Martin has put together what promises to be the coaching day of all coaching days in St Kieran’s College. Hurling enthusiasts from far and wide, even Cork, will have the opportunity to listen to and learn from a vastly experienced group of coaches and players.

Offering their services on the day will be Kilkenny’s senior management of Brian Cody, Michael Dempsey and Martin himself, under-21 trainer Jimmy Meagher, minor trainer Brian Ryan, former under-21 and James Stephens manager Adrian Finan, former All Stars and current Leinster coaching officers George O’Connor of Wexford and Pat Critchley of Laois.

Several of the current senior team will also attend to share their experiences.

Topics covered on the day will be: Strength/Conditioning work; Goalkeeping and Free-taking; Drills Galore – developing skill and utilising training equipment; Team Play – Attacking and Defending, Video Analyses – and more. There is a modest contribution of €30 for attendance with all proceeds going to Bóthar.

For details and bookings contact

Martin Fogarty (087 - 2222113), e-mail mfogarty@iol.ie, or Brian Ryan (087 - 2492343).

And if the day is already full subscribed by the time you read this send something anyway.

That’s what it is all about.