Tom Humphries/LockerRoom: Sometimes you give up the struggle and you lie back in the arms of the GAA and rest your weary, complaining head and just purr softly about what a wonderful world it is.
Even on a Sunday afternoon when Dublin's hurlers and footballers got slain in Croke Park, the comforts are many and lasting.
Yes, it's a wonderful world and the more you explore it the less mysterious it becomes. We were wandering around Westmeath a lot late last week, watching games in the Féile competitions being played there, and suddenly had an answer to the old question as to why Westmeath teams are so seldom successful. The reason is Castlepollard. Not just Castlepollard, but Crookedwood and Clonkill and Delvin and all those places at the lovely drowsy heart of the county.
Westmeath just doesn't want those places put, metaphorically, on the map. The gentle hills, the lakes, the windy roads and stone houses and quiet pubs. Why spoil it with inviting curious visitors to tramp around?
On Friday last we were in Clonkill and we wondered why a GAA club we'd never heard of before had such a perfect set-up. The answer was obvious though. If you had a pitch like Clonkill you'd just lie on the great hill above it and gaze down at this gorgeous napkin of green all day long. You'd listen for chaffinches singing and you'd swish horseflies away. Nothing more. You'd never train.
Westmeath has this discreet, hidden beauty to it and as such it was the perfect venue for this year's hurling and camogie Féiles. These competitions are the hidden beauties of the GAA calendar, such perfect expressions of the association's noble intent that the wonder of them is that they are restricted to the under-14 grade.
Kids generally only get one crack at Féile unless, of course, they have the bloodlines. The Féile programme notes had us slackjawed with tales of Martin Storey and his progeny. A son and daughter winning hurling and camogie All-Irelands a few years ago is impressive enough; the fact that the daughter was there going for her fifth All-Ireland Féile title this weekend and her club going for the sixth in succession is so incredible a feat that news of it should be suppressed lest it cause mentors everywhere to give up coaching and rely totally on genetic engineering.
If you were in Croke Park for the hurling yesterday you will know (and have been gladdened by knowing) that St Vincent's of Dublin won the camogie title. It's a story, of course, that kids from Marino should have reached such a level of excellence and organisation by the time they are under-14s that they can blow past the challenges from the champions of Tipperary, Galway and Cork, but what was extraordinary about the girls was the depth and spread of their talent.
Teams at these grades often get by with having one or two or three extraordinary players in key positions. St Vincent's were strong everywhere. Different players stepped into the breach as they were needed. Winning the final by 11 points didn't flatter them anymore than the fact that they were well into their third game of the competition before they had to take a puc out. It's that mixture of good character and good coaching that makes you think the good times are just starting for these kids.
What a few days it was. Hurling games and camogie games erupting around the midlands. Kids celebrating, playing, excelling. There's not much difference between being Irish and being of any other race in these franchised, homogenised days, but standing in the green heart of the country watching a camogie match and thinking of all the strands of family and friendship that go into a club team, you get a little sense of what is blessed about this island. You look over the club team sheets and names leap out at you.
So and so's young fella. A grandchild of whoever. You sit and look at the names of the kids, the stories of their lives still largely unwritten, and you wonder will you remember the names in 10 years when some of them are famous. Will they remember this day in 60 years when they are old?
People often say, correctly, that kids' sport is not just about winning. It's not. But winning is a by-product of the best of what sport is about. You work hard, practice with love and frequency and play with a heart. Then it'll be all about winning.
All about winning and losing and what's in between. Coping with those things, deciding which you want. It's about that old gridiron truism: most teams are prepared to win, very few are prepared to prepare to win. It's about patience and learning and discipline and commitment. It's about where you're from and what you are. And that's what those few days in Westmeath were about.
The St Vincent's hurling side lost their captain and best player, Colm O'Flaherty, as he ran onto the pitch for the first game and turned his foot in a divot. Imagine such a freakish, heart-breaking, mishap striking you at that age.
His team wound up getting shaded out of a semi-final but laying a marker down about the future of Dublin hurling. James Stephen's of Kilkenny won the competition. Something inevitable about that maybe. Genes again, perhaps.
When you are a kid and learning something as complicated and beautiful as hurling there are no short-cuts. If they love it enough they don't want short-cuts anyway. That was the lesson from the few days really. The best players had the best touch, honed out of habit and culture.
We learn that the hard way here in the capital. Maybe elsewhere hurlers are born and not made. Here they need nurturing and hothousing and a lot else. By the time the Dublin senior hurlers had showered and said their goodbyes to each other yesterday it was touching four o'clock and the ground was well nigh full and those Dubs who had been too indifferent to come in and see their hurlers play gave them a warm ovation as they walked from the Cusack side to the Ard Comhairle side.
Dublin hurlers saw how close they are yesterday and how far away. The city traits of bad first touch and taking too much out of the ball haunted them. The answer is the kids and the culture they'll grow up with. Days like Friday and Saturday in Westmeath.
In a few years the Dublin hurlers will be treading the same grass on an All-Ireland Sunday and the tickets won't be gettable for love nor money. And that will be good, too. It's too big a game to be small about, too fine a time to be possessive with.
Dublin hurling is still on its way to the good place. Dublin camogie may get there first. Either way it will be a sweet, wonderful world.
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