Money, money makes sport go round

Before we get started this week, let's make something absolutely clear: "Walking" is not a sport. That needed to be said. Next case please, bailiff.

Given the week that was in it, one could argue that the title of this column should be Money on Television, for no matter whichever cranny of sport was examined over the last seven days, the explicit or barely disguised topic was lucre, filthy or otherwise, and its relationship to sporting endeavour.

It ran from a debate about professionalism in the GAA, to the developments at London Irish rugby club, to a soft-focus chat with Gorgeous George Graham and a tight shot of Michael Johnson's lovely new swoosh running shoes, and back to Gaelic games and the neglect by headquarters both of the legacy of Liam McCarthy and of the current struggle of the games' supporters in London.

It began in Monday's The Sporting Press Gang, which is slowly - slowly - finding its feet. But why, oh why, must they persist with those appalling "comic" accents from the actors reading the clippings? You want an American accent? Get an American. I can give them the phone number of a well-known Yankee actor here - member of Equity - who'd jump at the job. And did I detect someone imitating an Ulster accent? Good God.

That said, last week's comedy sketches showed real promise, with a welcome edge of nastiness creeping in.

The programme included a panel discussion - "debate" would be too strong - on the nascent, inevitable (?) professionalisation of Gaelic games. On the panel were those famous footballing Carr brothers, Ross of Down and Tommy from Dublin, Wexford's ex-manager Liam Griffin, Fr Leo Morahan, ex of the Central Council, and Donal Keenan of the Title.

For anyone following the issue, nothing terribly startling was said. But that the discussion took place on television was interesting in itself: the GAA does not have a sterling record of conducting its affairs in public, and programmes such as this one will go much further in injecting a bit of glasnost into the organisation than any number of well-written articles by GAA correspondents.

Everyone on the panel was agreed that players should not get paid to play, but they were equalling unanimous that the dosh swelling the association's coffers must be redistributed to the benefit of the players, i.e., better expenses, insurance schemes, etc.

Tommy Carr never used the term, but what he was advocating was, in effect, the formation of a players' union: if Croke Park doesn't make some move, the players will do it for them. Fr Morahan got a bit of a hard time for an eloquent and impassioned defence of the tradition of the games and their central ethos, the sense of parish and place. All he was trying to say was that the day a player from one county is paid to play for another is the day Gaelic games will begin a long, slow decline into glitzy shamdom.

But others on the panel reacted to his comments as if they'd been given a belt from John Charles McQuaid, and them days is over, so they are. It was all very noble, Keenan said, but money is out there, players are getting paid, agents are head-hunting wholesale and it's all escalating.

It is escalating, certainly, and may I put this humble hypothesis: in 10 years, when the contemporary histories of the GAA are being written, the decision by Croke Park and RTE to televise games live will be seen as the final catalyst in the evolution to semi-professionalism. The other, earlier, fundamental catalyst, of course, was commercial sponsorship of clubs and counties.

The extraordinary success of the television experiment, or gamble, can be illustrated by a little tale from our Sports Department. One sub-editor, a genuine Dub, a talented footballer (soccer) and Everton fanatic, has, like many of his peers, moved with his young family to the plains of Kildare. This week, as he was planning his Sunday off, he rubbed his hands in relish at the thought of heading into the local for a couple of pints and "the match". Oh yes, I said, Manchester United and Chelsea. He looked at me blankly. No, he said, in quiet wonder at my ignorance, Kildare and Meath. How times change.

Rugby, of course, is a couple of years further down the painful transitional road to professionalism, and the realities of the new order were on display in TnG's Sportiris this week, when they paid a visit to London Irish. The club were headed for the - very expensive - drop to the second division last season when Willie Anderson was brought in to kick some butt. "Some of the lads here didn't seem to understand the demands of the professional game," he said. Willie spelt it out to them, and they survived by that curious phrase, the skin of their teeth.

But survival is not enough, and this year the club was, in effect, bought out by a consortium of businessmen, who threw in £1 million and are busy raising that sum again in investment. Inevitably, professionalism necessitates sacrifices, and often what has to go is a traditional tenet of a sport or club. Hence, London Irish will now recruit players with no Irish connections. Since TnG had spent some very scarce cash heading over to London, they made sure of getting value for money by cobbling together a piece about the GAA in that fair city and, more particularly, on how the association has paid little more than lip service to the contribution of Liam McCarthy, he of the hurling Cup.

Damien Gaffney, of the Irish World, filled in the background. McCarthy was born of Irish parents in London in 1853, and spent his entire life supporting Ireland and the Irish, including its language, its sport and its politics. Although he had, naturally, an English accent, he had fluent Irish, learned from his mother. Indeed, in later life, he boasted that English was his second language.

In his efforts to support Gaelic games, he often travelled to Ireland to bring back a consignment of hurleys for the London clubs, and in 1921 he designed and commissioned, for £50, the Cup named in his honour.

Last year, most of the GAA big wigs, who were in London for the annual congress, attended a ceremony to dedicate a new headstone to McCarthy. A year later the grave is untended and over-grown.

Equally untended by headquarters, according to Gaffney, are the grassroots of Gaelic games in Britain. Ironically, the Celtic Tiger has something to do with this.

"There are clubs folding in this town because of lack of support," Gaffney said. "There aren't the same number of people coming over to play Gaelic football and to play hurling. They should be pushing the national games through the second generation Irish in this city. They have a prime platform to do that, in the memory of Liam McCarthy, who was himself second generation Irish. He would be turning over in his grave if he knew tonight that the GAA had not marked his grave or were not honouring his name, or had let it go grown over, as we see it today." Finally, back to amateur, swoosh-filled Athens and the balding pate of Primo Nebiolo (is his son named Secondo?). Did you happen to see the Ukrainian shot putter who, seconds before stepping into the circle, took two enormous snorts of what we'll describe as "smelling salts", then proceeded to rabbit on to himself with the manic eyebrows of a dangerous man in an underground station? Whatever about the Olympian ideals of swifter and stronger, this lad was definitely higher.