Great game loses a little camán ground

LockerRoom: Going to Thurles yesterday and it was like driving into New Orleans on the day after Hurricane Katrina hit. All the big saloons and SUVs clogging the road coming the other way and only the wretched of the earth left behind in Munster. The Celtic Tiger has done away with the notion that the Munster-based devotees of egg-chasing wear flat caps and keep whippets for the rest of the week.

It was a curious Sunday. The GAA's baffling decision to stick the Limerick hurlers on the clár at the same time as the big Munsterfest reflected an arrogance or a bullheadedness which was misplaced.

Clare and Limerick would have drawn a nice crowd to the Gaelic Grounds on Saturday evening. Instead those followers of Limerick who came to Thurles did so in an estate car with a spare seat to keep the flask and sandwiches on.

The battle between rugby and the GAA is in many ways a more interesting struggle than that between the Gaels and soccer. Soccer has its territory by now and sometimes there is overlap and sometimes there is cheek-by-jowl co-existence. The GAA loses the odd lad to soccer and soccer loses a few fellas to the GAA and in the end it all evens out.

Ultimately soccer isn't going to get any bigger. The game isn't going to get more coverage or bigger stars than it has already and the sport's structures aren't going to change greatly. Our domestic soccer game is, sadly, doomed to be a satellite of the neighbouring league.

Rugby's place in Ireland's sporting set-up is more interesting. A day like yesterday was inconceivable just a short while ago when the club game was pre-eminent and rugby's rituals were played out before the same worshipful sheepskins and alickadoos season after season. The schools provided the raw materials. The raw materials filled the clubs. There was a perfect marriage of supply and demand. Club memberships stayed in families.

Back in the day before I got found out I used to cover rugby and I knew the names of hookers and outhalves and blindside flankers in places as disparate as Ballymena and Old Crescent.

That world is a lost civilisation now though. There are Blackrock College boys playing football for Dublin now and Gonzaga pupils with All-Ireland Féile medals in their drawer.

Professionalism has brought drastic changes to the rugby landscape. Yesterday's hoopla in Lansdowne was a massive marketing opportunity for rugby, a sport with the resources and the nous to exploit the opening but perhaps without the structures to do so.

Professionalism has forced a canyon into the space between the old schools system and the top level of the game. The Heineken Cup has created a layer of employment and glamour just below international level but the old club system and the colleges competitions, which in themselves created celebrity and prestige, have vanished.

Rugby has a most delicious-looking pie set upon its table but it gets divided between very few players. And what if Munster and Leinster begin to fall away in the European Cup stakes - will they buy in from abroad to stay viable? And if they do wind up with a team full of Halsteads rather than O'Garas, will their appeal to spectators falter?

Playing for Munster or Leinster is undeniably a glamorous thing to do these days; playing for Blackrock or Old Belvedere or Young Munster somewhat less glamorous than it was in the old amateur era.

Rugby has worked hard to expand its grassroots base in the last decade or so but the collapse of the club system has raised questions. Into what do all the Blackrock Schools Senior Cup boys funnel these days? There's only one Munster side and only one Leinster side and so on, which creates a small stage with precious few opportunities on offer for the kid who yearns for the money and the glamour.

And in the fields where the development officers toil growing the fodder for towns cups and the like the reality is the same as it is for hurling. Rugby is a tough game to be good at. Lots of skills and disciplines and tricks of the trade create a tyranny of tradition and knowledge. The top dogs stay on top. The fortunes of the traditional powers at every level of the game ebb and flow but progress to the top level is achingly slow.

Perhaps yesterday the GAA was aware of all this and opted to let rugby have its few moments in the sun. Doubtful though. The overriding impression is that little thought at all went into yesterday's programme. Perhaps somebody thought, "It's only hurling". What might have been a decent showcase for hurling became an irrelevant sideshow played out on a fine day in front of fewer than 10,000 people. That's fewer than 10,000 gathering to watch four of the best teams in the country.

If four of the top Gaelic football teams in the country were slated to play against a huge rugby occasion in Dublin would the GAA not have scratched their heads until a little imagination began to flow?

It was a good day for rugby and a bad day for GAA, and a slightly bizarre finish to the tenure of Seán Kelly, whose principal contribution to the association he served for the last three years was to offer the confidence for the indigenous games to compete with other sports without fear. to accept season for everything and if the GAA acts with alacrity and maturity it can co>player is about to go the way of the dinosaur.

Instead the Irish sporting public, which sees little enough good hurling in any year, saw the GAA virtally erase the semi-finals of the second national competition from the popular consciousness. Henry Shefflin's return to action was little noted. Ditto Noel Hickey. A pity.

In Thurles yesterday we got two games which, while played at a p>journey.

We caught four teams at a fascinating juncture. Did Tipp week team who created an eight-point lead for themselves or the side who it championship ? Only Kilkenny had a day which was unclouded.

Fair play. There was a time back when the rugby revolution was still fresh and bloody, when it looked as if the game might keel over and die altogether so painful was the transition, but rugby found a way to re>>sponsors and bright business minds and now that the powers that be have >>yesterday.

Where there's an audience there's a competition and a barrel of spindoctors to satisfy that audience.

Croke Park could have learned something from the sporting weekend just past. Time to get thinking. Time to get spinning. There's no shame in performing a little fancy footwork to keep sales of the old snake oil vibrant.