The grown-up way of speaking

One thing you notice about sports journalism in America is that the practitioners seem to think it a job, not just for grown-ups, but a career in which a person might grow old with some dignity. Weird.

That notion is especially charming to those of us from the old world, accustomed as we are to the dysfunctional relationship which exists between athletes and the media. Where we come from, the guys with the notebooks play the role of unloved children and the people who sweat just play hard to get. And we've come to accept that that's how it is and how it shall always be.

There's a joke doing the rounds at the minute about the recently deceased Cardinal O'Connor of New York being expelled from heaven after the ardchomhairle up there got sick of hearing just how it is that they do things in New York. At the risk of committing the same sin, let's just say that the relationship between hacks and jocks in America is a good deal healthier than we are accustomed to at home, and from that everyone benefits.

Before and after games in all major league sports all over America, dressing-rooms are by mandate opened to the media. Hacks wander in and out holding conversations with articulate players who, in general, are happy to be jawing to somebody whose work will not only promote their image and their sport but will communicate to the paying audience something worthwhile about the game. Just imagine!

There's the odd renegade, of course. People like Indiana college basketball coach Bobby Knight, whose oft-quoted view of the media is that "most people learn to write in the first grade and then move on to other things". For those of us still wielding a crayon though, the American way takes a little getting used to, especially when you've been reared on a strict diet of soccer-speak and the "whatever you say lads, say nothing" culture of the GAA.

I was thinking yesterday of where I would be and what I would be doing were I at home, and one thing seemed certain: approaching five o'clock I would have been standing outside a dressing-room somewhere with my tape recorder in my hot little hand waiting for some jobs worth from a county board to admit the media.

Things would have gone this way. After the final whistle, we, the wretched of the earth, would have evacuated our cramped press box and taken advantage of the traditional post-match pitch invasion to beat the players down to the dressing-room area.

There we would have formed a greeting line of exquisite sycophancy outside the winners' dressing-room, bestowing on each arriving player the laurels of our biggest smiles and hoping that the sight of us being so pathetic would induce them to stop to talk.

Of course, while doing this we try to look like serious professionals, but frankly we look like nothing more than a kerb full of novelty hookers. Generally somebody will snare a player for a little yackedy-yak business, and we will crowd shamelessly around like flies on honey, chiming in by asking our own silly questions.

Then the gabby player will be summoned into the dressing-room by some county board yahoo in a shiny suit who feels that speaking to the press is an occasion of sin which is likely to bring disease into his county. The yahoo will admit the player and tell us tersely by way of explanation that the manager wants to say a few words. Five minutes. Okay gentlemen?

We spend the next 30 minutes knocking on the door and cursing. Occasionally one of our number will wander up the corridor to the losing dressing-room, wherein there is weeping, wailing and gnashing of mentors.

Losers shower and dress so astonishingly quickly that you just know they're not bringing two bottles into the shower - some of them can't even be bringing soap. Within minutes they are filing, heads down and mouths clamped, out the backdoor of their dressing-room and the yahoo who guards the front door is still saying to us: "Few minutes lads, okay?"

We will be telling him in various stages of exasperation that, despite how things may look, we actually have a job to do. And he will be smiling back at us like a nightclub bouncer refusing a group of 15-year-olds.

His moment in the sun will come when he opens the door wide and says, "There ye go lads", and we walk inside to find the team physio and three waterbottles left to talk to.

This process holds true for most Irish sports, not just Gaelic games. The Irish soccer team have broken the spirit of many a young sapper with their reticence, and veterans will recall that even on that glorious day in 1994 when Italy were beaten in Giants Stadium the Irish dressing-room stayed locked for an eternity-and-a-half, with only TDs, clergy, blonde women and FAI council members being admitted as Sunday paper hacks wept salty, post-deadline tears.

Meanwhile, the vanquished Italians were out in the corridor explaining patiently the deficiencies in their game and expansively discussing their tastes in modern architecture. By the time Ireland got beaten by Holland, the boys who had spent months putting the arm on newspapers for thousands of pounds in exchange for access were refusing to speak at all.

Of course, there's variety in there, too. Some teams, like Meath in football and Clare hurlers back in their heyday, are easy to deal with whether they are winning or losing.

In fact, one of the great unlearned lessons about GAA management is that the teams who are more relaxed about the media generally fare better. Sean Boylan's Meath teams are the leading example, providing decent press nights and welcoming access to dressing-rooms with nobody getting hung up on avoiding us.

I was thinking about all this during the week when the New York Knicks (having been assuredly tipped for glory in this column last Monday) inevitably and spitefully went down in flames last Friday. Within 20 minutes of that disaster their traumatised players were huddling with the media explaining their feelings.

It's easy to say that a hoopster like Patrick Ewing makes millions while the hurler who sends his mammy to the phone every time it rings during the summer is paid nothing; but the benefits of merely having a grown-up relationship with the media must be visible to most people and not just those of us who are growing too old and too fat for cursing players every summer.