The ‘top-10’ most annoying words in Irish sport

1 Passion has been reduced to ad-speak, a banal corporate shortcut, another tired cliche for politicos and suits: if there's a ticket to flog, air-time to promote, or a sound-bite to trot out, one of the most evocative words in the language gets it in the neck, reduced to an easy-to-remember password into self-serving bulls**t and stupid yahooery.

2. Once upon a time I pitched the query as to why a well-adjusted young GAA person might choose to devote the best years of their life to the all-consuming demands of inter-county action, and how those demands are leading towards obsessive athleticism rather than actual skill.

The response from some quarters was so vitriolic that there's a certain irony in how some of those same quarters now seem obsessed with player burnout.

But here’s the thing. Nobody has to play top-level GAA. It’s a choice: any player feeling particularly singed can simply walk away at any time, at no financial cost either. There will always be someone younger and hungrier waiting to take over. And when they in turn get that burning sensation and want to take a deep breath, there’ll be a new greenhorn to take their place too.

That’s also the reality in real life, so much so that the tired consequences of freely entered into activities in the GAA playpen pale in comparison when so many have no choice at all with stuff that matters desperately. Excuse us for not trying to quench the burnout topic with our tears.

3. Okay, it's a phrase but world class does actually mean something, precisely it means being among the best or foremost in the world. It is not verbal Polyfilla to be inserted into dead-air by hysterical former professional footballers taking the buck from the media they once so despised.

4. Since we're on about meaning, and it is that time of year, is there any chance that old chestnut physicality might not get flung around rugby, like, all the time.

You can see why the original culprit might have thought it sounded snappy. It’s got a slight sciencey sound while being simultaneously so imprecise as to effectively mean nothing, a handy trick when you either don’t know what you’re talking about, or don’t want to talk about what you should be talking about.

Rugby has especially embraced physicality because so much of it now revolves around bulked-up behemoths bashing into each other. That doesn’t sound snappy at all, so being able to coat it in a veneer of pseudo-sophistication helps big-up what is basically a collection of rutting 20-inch shirt-collars.

But worryingly it has stretched to other sports, allowing similar veneers to be applied to what is often little more than plain good old-fashioned dirt.

5. Long before your time, digital children, there was a media phenomenon known as green-ink. That was when the permanently outraged appeared to be in possession of the world's supply of green-ink pens. It was a handy shortcut for tipping their "disgusted of Dalkey" letters into the bin unopened.

Now society has advanced enough to tip that loony-bin out again and turn it into the hard currency of online furore.

Here’s a free tip: if the words furore and online appear in a headline it is because it is a very, very slow news day. There’s enough to be outraged by in the world without regurgitating bilious trolls and packaging their hang-ups into supposed relevance.

6. Identifying a sporting spoofer can be tricky but indiscriminate use of the word philosophy is always a giveaway. Jack Nicholson once said the Greeks invented sport as an antidote to philosophy and he was right.

The whole glory of sport is that it isn’t philosophical. You either win or lose: the ball is either in or out: you cheated or you didn’t cheat. Its purity is in creating an artificial certainty at odds with pondering endless permutations for not doing anything, which is where philosophy merchants usually come in.

7. Top-10. It's self-explanatory really. Lists are just geeky and convoluted, perfect for a speed-obsessed bullet-point culture and ever-decreasing attention sp . . .

8. Legend is too easy. There was a time when you had to be dead to be one. Now it's got so any yokel-goalie for the local Junior 2 team gets labelled legend if they hang around long enough. It's become a verbal tic for many people and no more than that. Talisman though is much classier. It sounds good, complimentary definitely, even if most of us aren't quite sure why, or what it actually means exactly.

9. Irish sport's most loaded word – Gael. It is remarkable how much of the GAA can spout this with a straight-face, and in English too, which you would think might cleanse some of the ethnic purity away.

But this isn’t about speaking Irish: Gael comes with Devish presumptions about what it means to be really Irish: buck-leaping handballer at the crossroads, glory of the little village, Brit-hating-Shinner Irish: the real green deal.

It’s ironic with all this burnout talk that the flames of this tired old piece of Provo-lite cant still gets so vigorously fanned by the ethnically pure hot air of the truly repressed.

10. Roy Keane. Seriously enough is enough. This preoccupation with a single hairy Cork man has gotten really old. It's true that nobody appears more absorbed in the hairy Cork man than the hairy Cork man himself but seriously, what more is there to absorb: Cork man thinks he's right and everyone else is wrong. Really? This is news?

Such creatures are not exactly unknown you know.