In his pre-championship press conference last week Ben O’Connor made an unprompted reference to a postmatch interview Alan Connolly had given to TG4 last month. After Cork had beaten Kilkenny in Nowlan Park, Connolly was asked about Cork’s “aims” for the remaining league matches, and rather than serving a puff-pastry line about building for the championship or searching for improvements, he gave an uncensored response from the tip of his tongue.
“Keep winning, keep winning,” Connolly said. “Win the league, win Munster and win the All-Ireland, that’s our goal.”
O’Connor applauded Connolly’s remarks and said he had been unfairly “castigated”. It is unusual for GAA players to talk openly about winning, at least before it happens. There is a cultural taboo about declaring your intentions, as if by putting them out in the open they might die from exposure. Everybody is expected to be demure.
“He was being cocky, that’s what people said [of Alan],” said O’Connor. “I’m delighted Alan said that. I’m delighted he said what he thought. I like that in fellas. I don’t like fellas just going along with the company line, saying ‘We’ll see how we get on’. We’re going up to Thurles to win [against Tipperary next Sunday]. Why not say it out straight that we’re going up to win? We’re not telling any lies to anyone.”
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It brought to mind Cork’s press night before the 1986 All-Ireland. Cork were managed by Johnny Clifford, a wily veteran of many All-Irelands as a player and coach over the previous 30 years. Galway were hot favourites for the 1986 final, but before the reporters arrived Clifford told the players that if they were asked who was going to win, “tell them Cork will win”.
Long before sports psychology became a mainstream science this was an unconscious example of self-talk. If Cork intended to win, why should they deny it?
In sport, this is a busy space now. Athletes and teams are “goal-orientated” and “process-driven”, and even if these have become buzzwords, they are active ingredients too. Athletes and teams are expected to embrace the concept of intentional winning.
There was a time when Irish athletes of all stripes hid their dreams for fear of ridicule. For the most successful Irish athletes now, that inhibition no longer holds. Winning, and the pursuit of winning, is integral to their self-image. Not something to make them blush, or feel uncomfortable, or force them into facetious denials.
Rhys McClenaghan is an Olympic gold medallist now and two-time world champion, but before he achieved any of that he bombed out in the final of the pommel horse at the Tokyo Games. In the mixed zone afterwards, he congratulated the athletes who beat him, but that was the extent of his deference.
“I’m thinking about being the greatest of all time,” he said. “I didn’t show that today, but I’m hoping that in the future, that’ll be the case.”
For McClenaghan, saying it out loud didn’t add any weight to his ambition. He wasn’t worried about somebody throwing it back in his face down the track if his deeds fell short of his words. He had already made this contract with himself. What anybody else thought was immaterial.
“There are some things you set out to do,” said McClenaghan a couple of months after the Games. “Not just taking part but taking over. As soon as I could see the pathway to being the best in the world I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to say it because it needs to be said’.”
After he won his swimming gold at the Olympics in Paris, Daniel Wiffen spoke about his nerves, but most of all he spoke about his certainty. “I had no doubt in my mind,” he said. “I had won this already, before I walked out [to the pool].” When he appeared on RTÉ’s sports awards show later that year he said it wasn’t a question of “if” he would be on the podium at the LA Olympics, it was only a question of how many medals he would win; his expectation is three.
People are still inclined to characterise that kind of talk as “arrogance”, and recoil from it. Humility is more palatable, even if it is not sincere. Through the generations, it is what we expected from Irish sportspeople. Nobody was comfortable with the language of winning.
Maybe that’s changing, though. This is the era of sharing on social media and oversharing; of confessional autobiographies and tell-all interviews; of being self-aware. Of emotional literacy. People are encouraged to share their feelings more freely. In that climate, the language of winning has a better chance.
“For the rest of my athletics career I will strive to win medals,” said Kate O’Connor at the end of last season. “I want to be the best.”
In other words, is that any different to what Connolly said?
In some sports, it has been completely normalised. In post-round interviews, golfers, for example, routinely reflect on their performance with unabashed candour. If they drove the ball brilliantly, or putted the lights out, they’re not waiting for anybody else to say it, they will tell you straight out. By the same token, if they couldn’t putt the ball into a bucket, they will say that too. It is not a conflict between modesty and self-praise: they are conditioned to talk about their performance matter-of-factly.
When Rory McIlroy turned up to his Masters press conference after his terrific first round 67 on Thursday he gave a quick summary of his round in answer to a question from the moderator. In a response of 138 words, he said something positive about himself seven times and something negative twice. Nobody would have batted an eyelid. McIlroy always talks the language of winning. In golf, it is common practice.
Earlier on Thursday, Gordon Elliott trained two Grade One winners at Aintree, and in a post-race interview he was asked about the trainers’ title race in Ireland, which he still leads, but barely. He acknowledged that his chances of holding on were slim, but he also said he “dreams about being champion trainer every day”.
Elliott has been using that line for years. He has never tried to conceal that ambition, or he never worried what people would think of him for saying it out loud.
In the GAA, though, that point hasn’t been reached yet. False modesty is still more valued.
