Game, settee and match to reformers

There have been numerous observations to the effect that something has been missing from the GAA football championship so far this season.

The thrill of the qualifiers has begun to fade as inevitably as the actual Thrills, the raspy Blackrock outfit whose jangly, melodic strangulation was often used in television championship promotions back when the qualifiers were hip and new and mysterious.

But given that even George W Bush has pronounced he cannot see beyond Armagh, Kerry and Tyrone, the old qualifiers rigmarole could be interpreted as an expensive and somewhat convoluted way of killing the lesser teams with kindness.

It will not be too long before the brutal shock of the old knockout years will be remembered as something noble and grand in comparison to the somewhat wishy-washy second-chance deal that has replaced it. No, this year's championship has lacked what hard-chaw celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey might identify as "f****n' bottle" if he were asked onto the Sunday Game. (And I am surely not alone in my willingness to pay the licence fee twice over to see the spike-headed, archetypal geezer aggressor talking over the finer points of Meath/Dublin or even bouillabaisse on the couch with Pat Spillane.)

Which brings us to the meandering but nonetheless disturbing point about the style of furniture recently added to our favourite weekend digestif, The Sunday Game. The nation was probably mildly stunned last week to observe Pat and the boys loafing on the kind of expensive and seductive settee that would cause your grandmother to moan in shock and pleasure were she to land on it. Progression is all very well but to lose over successive seasons both the easy knowledge and suavity of Michael Lyster and the fundamental solemnity the table brought to discussions is a bit extreme.

And it has to be asked: is the GAA man fully comfortable reclining, as it were, on such a licentious piece of furniture? For the self-respecting GAA man, there is a fine line between sitting in a fashion the RTÉ memo probably suggests as "casual" or "chilled" and coming across as a bit of a Nancy. A man could spend decades chiselling out a reputation as a mean hoor of a corner back only for RTÉ to ruin it all in half an hour by decking him out in a lemon sweater and having Spillane advise him to put his feet up on the pouffe. If you invited Mick Lyons, for instance, to commit to such an act - and on a Sunday - he would probably take your head off in outrage. And he would be right.

But no, this column has definitely detected a degree of dissatisfaction with the games to date. Friends and colleagues have sighed and muttered darkly about the GAA needing to watch out. "They'll ruin it if they're not careful," they warned before slinking away infuriatingly before one might investigate how it might be ruined.

They complain that something is missing and, when pressed on what, just smile knowingly. After exhaustively pondering the missing ingredient, we are fairly certain the populace long to see the reappearance of the Mêlée. Found in the GAA phrase book just before "Melon: To be Served As Alternative To Soup at Congress" and "Melia: Stephen, Long-serving and Heroic Louth Utility Player", the Mêlée is something that used need no explanation.

A bit like the rising of 1798, the Mêlée tended to break out sporadically in fields all over the country, from midwinter junior relegation games to All-Ireland championship encounters. Its province of speciality was probably Ulster, and there were several games when the number of mêlées was greater than the number of points scored.

It is probably important to note here that there is a difference between the Mêlée and actual violence. There was really very little to distinguish the Mêlée and the kind of gregarious bonding that went on when the DJ would play AC/DC's Whole Lotta Rosie 10 minutes before the shutters went down on the bar in provincial nightclubs all over Ireland. For instance, the Meath-Mayo dust-up in 1996 began as a Mêlée but wasted little time in transforming itself into a hell-for-leather-scrap-outside-Athlone-chipper-over-who-owned-the-Hawaiian-burger-type fight. Genuinely worrying and heartfelt fighting over a weighty issue.

The Mêlée was a more courtly type of affair and we have reason to believe several classic lower-grade mêlées actually had their origins in matters of love. That is, neighbouring players, fated to encounter each other on the same patch of sodden turf, ended up confronting one another not for the honour of a jersey but over a young (or sometimes not) lady they were both besotted with. A series of late tackles, antagonistic advice from managers on the verge of a nervous breakdown and the production of yellow cards would eventually lead to a push and a shove and the obligatory ritual of squaring up.

Not a punch would be thrown and quickly, the few forlorn spectators present would pile over the wire fence, half out of a desire to warm themselves up and half out of a desire to see something approaching decent action. Before you knew it, bucks who owed other bucks money or courted another buck's girlfriend or stole another buck's pencil case in primary school 20 years earlier would bump into each other on the suddenly packed field and sort it all out on the spot.

And always at hand would be some hoor sporting the kind of primitive video recorder they used to capture that film of Bigfoot in the mountains and he would record some grainy, smudgy and entirely indistinct film action that would make the whole scene look like the Battle of Aughrim.

And the local radio commentators would usher in the scene in tones of suppressed excitement bordering on the erotic with the words: "And a mêlée is ensuing. A mêlée has ensued. Disgraceful scenes here. Bedlam is breaking out all around me."

Of course, the radioman had to say that but it wasn't unknown for a commentator to abandon his position as voice of the community and leap with youthful abandon into the dark heart of the bedlam. The Mêlée would ensue and because fitness levels were not so great, fatigue would fast follow. And the Mêlée's denouement would feature 20 or 30 lads, some in playing gear, others in Sunday best, staggering around wondering how in the name of God they were going to explain the boot print on the collar back at home (and that was just the priest).

It is hard to identify precisely when but in a much more covert method than used for stuff like Rule 42, the Mêlée was subtly cleansed from the GAA conscience. Much like those alarmingly short shorts, the fat but brilliant full forward and the hirsute full back, it is as though the Mêlée never existed.

And while the contemporary GAA creature is very civilised and urbane, you sometimes sense there is a restlessness at the heart of the GAA fanatic, a vague need for the kind of unexpurgated release that even the mere rumour of a Mêlée could offer. It could be that the sudden favouring of soft furnishing will trigger some kind of reaction, a retreat to the past, a realisation that an old Mêlée might be no harm at all.

So, when are Meath playing again anyhow?