SIDELINE CUT:The current dearth of revealing interviews with GAA stars is a shame, but there is something to admire in the Dublin goalkeeper's stoic refusal to play the fame game, writes KEITH DUGGAN

THROUGH ALL the noise, Stephen Cluxton’s silence has been like blissful music this week. If it is indeed true that the Dublin goalkeeper is completely uninterested in “cashing in” on the fame that his All-Ireland winning free has brought to his doorstep, then hats off.

The GAA is about stories and people as much as it is about games. One of the consequences of the new era of Gaelic games – the crowded calendar, the heavy-duty training regimes and the presence of television cameras at almost all intercounty games – has been the virtual fatwa placed on the tradition of players giving newspaper interviews.

There are many reasons for this. The main one is a fear that managers have of players saying something – anything – that opposition managers could use as a motivating tool. It has become a fashionable paranoia, with no hard evidence to back it up.

It was commonly noted last year that Lar Corbett, nominated by his country for agreed Sunday interviews, appeared in big “splashes” in virtually every Sunday broadsheet and he went on to enjoy a storming three-goal performance in that year’s final. This year, he was not scheduled for interview but things didn’t go so well.

You could probably find several examples of the counterpoint as well but they mean nothing. And the idea that managers might still be pinning news sheets to the wall as a means of psyching his own team up is as old fashioned as Horlicks. Other teams may feel the idea of players sitting down for leisurely interviews may inadvertently promote a “star” system within the team. Some players are, understandably, very conscious about being perceived as to be getting above their station.

This is probably particularly true of the Kilkenny hurlers. The stripy men go through the obligatory All-Ireland press nights with politeness but also with gritted teeth and are masters at saying virtually nothing. Kerry have been similarly cagey in recent years and as Darragh Ó Sé outlined in this newspaper prior to last week’s All-Ireland final, the process of press interviews can be a distraction that players either enjoy or loathe.

Some counties have always held a relatively open door: Tyrone players, under Mickey Harte, always had the freedom to speak their minds and it didn’t exactly do them any harm. Harte’s method of dealing with the press has always been sensible: he has never made a big deal of it one way or the other.

External forces have also led to the demise of the player interview. Sponsors events have all but taken over, with players required to turn up for 15 minutes and mumble sweet nothings at the assembled press in return for a cheque – one of the few legitimate perks to which the players are entitled to. But these arrangements are unsatisfactory on several fronts.

To begin with, they are confined to a handful of “marquee” players so the vast majority of terrific intercounty players get nothing from them. And those events are, by their nature, rehearsed and dull. It is only a matter of time before the press begins to lose interest in covering them.

The other big reason is television: a lot of players, like a lot of people, just like being on television. And there is nothing wrong with that.

The last reason is that modern life is so busy that players simply don’t have the time to do interviews. It all points to the fact that for now, at least, the tradition of GAA stars sitting down for leisurely interviews is becoming a rarity.

There is a certain shame in that because it is through such interviews that they give the public a chance to learn a little about the players that they follow – about who they are in their community and about the people that helped them become the players we see on television and about what they think about the game or about Ireland or about anything that takes their fancy.

And maybe, in 50 years’ time, the grandchildren of those players might find that page cut out and buried among the rest of the memorabilia.

And given that newspapers won’t exist then, they may learn, over the course of a long interview, something of who their grandfather was at that time in his life.

Already, the anecdotes that were commonplace in earlier decades seem thin on the ground.

The whole business has become unrelentingly serious and, like much of the duties involved with being an intercounty player, press interviews are treated as a necessary chore rather than a means of communicating with the public what this passion of theirs – this sport that defines their waking hours from day to day and season to season – is all about. There is something sad about that.

But the reason Stephen Cluxton’s silence is so admirable is that it is plainly who he is and it is consistent. Whether he is uncomfortable with the idea or just figured out that his life would be simpler without it doesn’t matter. He has literally been true to his word. That he is equally unmoved by the commercial potential that playing for Dublin brings is heartening.

The hope here is that he resisted the pressure to appear on last night’s Late Late Show to talk sport with Tubs. The hope is that he was off at the movies or exploring culture night or playing scrabble or practising his frees or whatever he does when he is not playing for Dublin.

Like Ciarán McDonald of Mayo, the Dublin goalkeeper never felt the need to surrender his right to remain a private figure while playing on a high-profile team.

Of course it would be fascinating to learn what was going through Cluxton’s mind when he walked up to take that free and to hear what he had to say about standing before the ball, facing into the Hill.

But in a time when GAA players are discouraged from saying anything really honest or interesting about themselves, Cluxton’s reluctance to say anything at all makes for good listening.