SIDELINE CUT:The league carries its people through the long weeks of the Lenten period and into spring and sets the rhythm for the season ahead, writes KEITH DUGGAN
THE GAA league is back and you can all but hear the Hallelujah chorus. No sporting competition in the world is as democratic or unpretentious as the league.
This is the only weekend in the GAA calendar when the footballers of Kerry and the footballers of Kilkenny exist on the same plane. All men are equal and all are entitled to dream big. They are starting from scratch, with no points won or lost. Anything is possible. The league doesn’t care for reputations or for comforts.
Tonight, the All-Ireland champions Dublin will take a bow under the dazzling floodlights of Croke Park. But over the next few months, they will embark on a no-frills tour of the countryside, with scheduled stops in Newry and Ballyshannon and Castlebar on their itinerary.
Because they are All-Ireland champions, they will be treated like royalty but they will have to rough it too. They will huddle in small dressing rooms; they will use their gear bags to shield them from the rain as they walk from the team bus. They will stand in tunnels when it is getting dark and sign scraps of paper and match programmes for youngsters and will find that all hot water is gone by the time they get to the showers. They will file into a hotel dining room at seven o’clock on a Sunday evening when they are tired and bruised and feeling far from home.
The league is all about home and away. Peter Canavan, the Tyrone wizard, is about to dive through the looking glass as he prepares his Fermanagh team for a series of games in Ruislip, in Freshford, in Fraher Field.
Things work differently in the league. In the league, the man with the keys rules the roost. He opens the main gates, the dressing rooms and the clubhouse and he is responsible for locking them afterwards as well. He will appear in the pressbox 15 minutes before his Sunday dinner is due to be served and will jangle his impressive collection of keys in a manner that is nothing short of suggestive. In the league, it is fine for supporters to park on double yellows and to wander late into the match.
For some reason linesmen are always more prominent in the league. Nothing gets GAA fans riled like a sideline ball awarded the wrong way and in the league, you can hear the variety of comments, which ranges from good-natured advice about eyesight tests to the outright hurling of abuse. In the league, abuse is always hurled and if there must be scenes, they are generally “disgraceful”.
Play is often halted in league games, when the star forward calls for attention after feeling a twinge in his hamstring or when a football gets hoofed behind the clubhouse and it takes a few minutes to locate a replacement ball. These breaks in play provide an opportunity for spectators to study the linesman and consider just how strange a way it is to pass a Sunday, sprinting along a sideline and pointing a flag in a direction that is bound dissatisfy/enrage half the crowd. Linesmen are incredibly stoical. It is not so bad for the referee: he darts and weaves through the players and can take shelter behind a slightly overweight full-forward if he is feeling vulnerable.
Linesmen have no hiding place but manage to behave as if they are completely unaware of the commotion behind them. They do not even blink. If they had sent a selection of linesmen to negotiate the treaty with Lloyd George, it would be a different country now.
The league breathes life into county grounds considered too small for championship games. For instance, when you step through the turnstile of Tuam Stadium, that wonderful film set of a ground, you are not just walking into see a football match, you are strolling right into the year 1959.
Nothing ever changes there. One of the highlights of a league afternoon is when the tannoy man clears his throat and announces the half-time results from other places. Steve Jobs may have changed the way that humans communicate throughout the world, but in the league the man with the microphone is still king.
In the league, the Gael will enjoy running a proprietary eye over the stars on the field much like the Sultan of Brunei inspecting his thoroughbred stable. He will tut-tut if he feels that the centre-back or midfielder is displaying signs of post-Christmas excess. It doesn’t matter that weighing scales have been known to scurry in alarm when the same Gael approaches to assess his own worth: he expects his county men to be in pedigree form.
In the league, there is always the chance that you will see a genuine great – a Maurice Fitzgerald or a Michael Donnellan – make his debut.
Equally, it is during the league that you will see a fading legend trot off the field for the last time, the ringing applause a polite way of telling him that he just hasn’t got it anymore.
Managers are more relaxed and talkative during the league. Sometimes the manager will sit down on a bare wooden bench beneath a box window after the players have departed leaving a mess of mud, banana skins and water bottles in their wake. He will invite the gentlemen of the press to gather around and he will receive their questions in a tolerant and even light-hearted way. During the league, he may feel sufficiently emboldened to crack a joke, which could never happen in the All-Ireland championship. Joking in the championship is banned. It can get you a four-week suspension.
Sometimes, the manager will turn nostalgic for his own playing days. It is not quite like sitting at the hearth for one of FDR’s fabled fireside chats. But it is good all the same.
In the league, the lights in the press box can go out without warning.
Provincial grounds are eerie in winter. If you want to know the definition of loneliness, try being the last man left in the Gaelic Grounds after dark, wandering around the cloister beneath the stand not sure if the latch has been left off the door. The light can play tricks too. An old pressman once told a spooky yarn of finishing a match report in one of the great provincial grounds on a foggy evening. His colleagues had left and he was alone. He looked up from his typewriter out onto the field and for a few seconds he was convinced that he could see a famous player, a legend from his childhood, about to kick a point. He knew it was impossible: the player had died years earlier. “And what happened then?” one of the press man’s audience asked. “Sure he put it wide, as usual,” the veteran replied.
The worst that can happen in the league is that you drop down a division, the GAA equivalent of adjusting to reduced living standards and tightened belts. Angela Merkel would approve of the mechanics of the league. In fact she’d like it so much she would probably suggest dispensing with the expense and luxury of the All-Ireland championship altogether.
Of course, that will never happen. But the league has its own voice. It carries its people through the long weeks of the Lenten period and into spring and sets the rhythm for the season ahead.
“Nobody remembers the league” is the old refrain from winning managers, wary that they are setting themselves up for a fall. And that may be true.
But deep down they know they’d be lost without it.
