Jackie Healy-Rae Ardfheis (Monday-Friday RTE 1, Sky Digital)
International Australian Rules/Gaelic Football Type Of Thing (Sunday: Network 2, The Discovery Channel)
The Jackie Healy-Rae Ardfheis, blanket coverage of which took up no less than 56 hours of air time on RTE 1, provided few entertaining moments. One of the problems of being a party with only one member is that there is little room for debate. The member is usually in agreement with himself, and even the usual fare of ardfheiseanna, such as amendments and Tom Kitt buying people drinks and playing Simon and Garfunkel songs on an acoustic guitar, is sadly absent. In one memorable Neil Blaney ardfheis in the 1980s, Blaney famously walked out during his own speech - in effect splitting with himself - over the issue of abstentionism from the Dail.
Dissension within one party can be catastrophic enough, but when it happens within the individual, it is time for the men in white coats to be called in. (I once made exactly this point to ex-taoiseach Jack Lynch, who now has a tunnel named after him. He seemed confused for a while, and then said something like; "Why would you need those lads? They're only there to tell you if the ball has gone wide." It eventually dawned on me that the ex-Cork hurler thought I was talking about umpires at GAA matches. However, self-dissension such as happened in Blaney's case is rare.
The most interesting moment in the Healy-Rae Ardfheis came when the Kerry TD accidentally interrupted his own speech and then ruled the interruption out of order. Otherwise, this was just very dull TV. Even his keynote (four-hour) end-ofardfheis speech to himself held few surprises, although it was gratifying to see that he had enough petrol left in the tank to give himself a hearty round of applause at the end. When the dust had settled, only one policy change was made. The famous hyphen separating Healy from Rae is to be abolished, and in future, instead of Jackie Healy-Rae, it will be plain old Jackie Healy Rae. (Plans are afoot to transform Rae into Ray by the year 2005). The hyphen will be auctioned for charity during the interval of Daniel O'Donnell's concert at the Gaiety Theatre in March.
Last Sunday's International Australian Rules/Gaelic Football Type Of Thing at Croke Park was a less bloody affair than previous encounters between the two countries, and resulted in only three deaths. If Gaelic football is soccer without rules, then this fixture/mixture was a kind of combination of soccer without rules and Australian Rules . . . without rules. Basically, it's football that's as de-regulated as the Irish airwaves of the late-1970s - a kind of permissive society of sport where everything is allowed. For Sunday's affair, drains were fitted at the touchlines at Croker, and teams of volunteers from the Irish Blood Transfusion Service were on hand to pump the gallons of spilled fluid directly to the blood bank, where enough was collected to deal with 10 major earthquakes. A cousin of mine makes a habit of invading pitches at the end of matches and collecting souvenirs of the contest; usually a sod of turf or a section of goal netting. After Sunday's affair, he returned to the terraces with three toes and part of a spinal column.
A soccer-playing acquaintance once made an astounding and seemingly unprovoked attack on the GAA to the effect that they are a bunch of sectarian, small-minded, petty, arrogant bigots promoting what surely are the most brutal, thuggish and ugly field sports in the world.
Strong words indeed, and I was not overly surprised when he was kidnapped by masked men shortly after he made this comment and had his hamstrings snapped. What my friend didn't realise is that Gaelic football and hurling are manly sports, whether played by actual men, or increasingly these days, by women. As manliness, cowed by feminism, computer games, Channel 4, and my partner, the nationalist poet Orla Ni Suibh, becomes increasingly rare, the values of the GAA rise like an glowing beacon on the ancient Hill of Tara. It is right and fitting that the only other people in the world not seemingly governed by a bunch of girls should be our regular opponent in de-regulated footie: the Australians. So what if Graham Norton mightn't like it and occasionally a few people get killed? It's only a bit of fun and gives folks something to do on a wet winter afternoon. Last Sunday's game provided cracking entertainment. As the ex-Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, once explained to me, we must not judge our Irishness by how Irish we are, but by how Irish we appear to the Australians (?). I didn't quite understand what he meant, and I am no clearer now, but it seems a fitting note on which to end.
Arthur Mathews is co-writer of Father Ted