Not the time for silly pettifogging motions

Time for a rant on the confused morals of the GAA – Part One: alcohol Part Two: underage competition

OKAY. BAD MOOD. So first things first. This column will be personally sponsoring a nationwide competition to see who can drink the most liquor from a newly-modified GAA cup as the alcohol – poitín for competitive purposes – drains from the holes which the shiny-suited county secretary has drilled in the cup as per Cavan’s skin-crawlingly embarrassing motion to congress last week. Entries on a postcard please.

Having done that and sold the TV rights, this column proposes legal action against anybody who tampers in any way with the GAA’s trophies. That’s from the Liam McCarthy, the Sam Maguire, the Bob O’Keeffe down to the Harty Cup and the Hogan Cup and beyond. These are cultural artefacts held in trust by the GAA. Just because Cavan never win them or would be too stingy to fill them doesn’t give Cavan the right to turn them into colanders.

Let’s just grow up about drink. The culture has changed. People’s attitudes have changed. That is good. There is less cultural tolerance for chucking drink across counters at underage people, whether those underage people have just won a county title or not. That is good.

In this change the GAA has played its part. The association, a massive cultural influence in almost every corner of the land, provides healthy and enjoyable recreation for vast swathes of the populace. It is the primary example of volunteerism in a “where’s mine” culture which is forgetting about that concept.

The GAA is our great national diversion, a massive and culturally unique amateur sports organisation that is doing something radically different to any other sports organisation in the world. However, the GAA is not the thought police. Providing a healthy alternative to the drink culture is sufficient. Hypocrisy need not be added to the mix. Croke Park benefits hugely from the sales of drink. Hurling has benefited hugely from the innovative sponsorship of Guinness. In urban areas, in particular, clubs depend on drink sales in their bars to survive. In many rural areas, clubs depend on the local publicans for sponsorship, meeting rooms and a focal point for celebrations.

The GAA finds itself in a uniquely competitive environment now. The world of sport is coming to terms with an emaciated corporate sector which doesn’t have money to throw at either the premium level or local level. The Government is ransacking the National Lottery with its usual shamelessness. People are losing jobs and emigrating again. Sport has to fend for itself.

The GAA, then, has no need to be painting itself into corners with silly pettifogging motions. The sports pages are filled with coverage of the Magner’s League and Heineken Cup, major competitions of recent (ahem) vintage which have helped change the face of rugby. More than that, rugby is a sport which markets itself in an exemplary fashion and which is drawing the attention of kids up and down the country.

It’s a phenomenon for which public houses can remain open on Good Friday and for which the GAA will alter the start times of national finals. Yet, we are going around piously drilling holes in cups, welding caps onto them or casting spells on them so that all who sup shall become frogs? Bah.

If there is to be any rule regarding drink in the GAA it should be that any club whose bar loses money for two years in succession is required to close that bar (with the possible exception of functions, etc). In too many places now a loss-making bar is taking funds away from hurling, football and camogie and those sports are subsidising drinking instead of the other way around.

AND NOW a second rant, while we are feeling cranky and politically incorrect. This column is not jumping up and down with delight at the prospect of “Go Games” being extended up to under-12 level. Before the Thought Police come and get me, let me say that I have spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert pondering this and I have just watched the 11-minute Go Games video on the GAA’s excellent website and, though I don’t believe in such things, I have just blessed myself because to disagree with anything which the great Paudie Butler says is against nature and against God, if there is one. I feel as if I am about to be struck by lightning.

This column is not against Go Games per se, indeed we think they are quite a good idea as a transition from the play-time of mini leagues to the more serious business of championship. It’s just that kids are naturally competitive and, in the context of modern sport, competitiveness it is a skill worth developing. Competitiveness is why we keep score and give out cups or colanders. Why then is sport so against competitiveness?

Schools give out marks and send home reports from the time we arrive until the time we leave. Kids who go to Irish dancing or to Billy Barry are entering competitions or competing for lead roles. There is a big world out there which is competitive all the time. Sport is part of preparing kids for that.

I like Go Games, but only as part of a balanced diet. Much of the beneficial experience of growing up in sport is learning the co-relation between practice and results. The kids who put the most in to their games generally take the most out. Lots of the others are there because, from mini leagues to Go Games and beyond, the GAA club offers a nationwide free babysitting service for a lot of parents. Drop the kids out of the people-carrier on a Saturday morning. Pick them up at lunchtime. Cry freedom!

You leave a group of kids alone with a ball they are playing competitively within two minutes. When you train a group of kids, they respond many times better to competitive drills than anything else. Part of their nature in play (like lion cubs) is to be competitive.

The fear this column is risking chastisement for is simple and is based on the radical premise that kids aren’t stupid. They watch sport all the time and understand the exultant rush of winning, of being the best. They understand that being second, third or worse probably means more work on your game but not death.

They aren’t, as we believe, blighted for life by being beaten in the first round of a county championship. They are hugely resilient. They notice who the good players are and who the bad players are. They like the experience of being part of a team, a collective which suffers the ups and downs of winning or losing and responds as a group.

If they are not going to get all the lessons and benefits of competitiveness from the GAA until they are in their teens, perhaps they will go somewhere else. And if they don’t, what can the GAA offer them? A falling off in participation is a necessary part of GAA life.

The 50 kids who start mini leagues at five-years-old can’t all graduate out of minor 13 years later because there is nowhere for them to go. At some stage, 13 is the designated age now, they are going to be hit with the fact that hurling and football aren’t performance arts but competitive concepts for which you have to practice and train hard and figure out whether or not you want it enough to do those things. So why not phase in competitiveness by the age of 11 or 12 while insisting, perhaps, that a certain number of kids have to be given at least half a game every week.

Losing isn’t the end of the world. Being a sub isn’t the end of the world. Those things are part of the journey, part of the contribution which sport makes to shaping a person. By pretending that defeat and the subs bench don’t exist, we stigmatise those things a little later. Now off to Croker for the league finals. If I don’t get back safely you’ll all know why.