The joys of the Gael in deep and dark winter

LOCKERROOM:We Irish have an aboriginal oneness with the earth and the seasons, and the GAA is slave to those ancient rhythms, writes Tom Humphries

I LOVE the sleepy way in which the GAA year limbers up in January – unless, that is, you live in Cork, where Balkan feuding is an integral part of every festive season. If you live in Cork the rest of this column is not for you. Sorry.

For the rest of us, we stretch and yawn into the New Year, nudging the metabolism ever so slightly around National League time and aiming for full coronary arrest excitement any time between July and September.

It’s civilised and in keeping with the rhythms of the year. It’s the way we are reared and the way our ancestors were reared. Back to school and serious cases of seasonal affective disorder in September.

Nothing explains America’s confusion about itself better than that nation’s insistence on staging the Super Bowl in late January or early February, when half the nation is up to its oxter in snow. We Irish have an aboriginal oneness with the earth and the seasons, and the GAA is slave to those ancient rhythms.

In Dublin, we traditionalists take the extra acreage out for its first breath of fresh air on New Year’s Day when we amble along to the annual Blue Stars games with the other paunches. This year the hurling was first on the bill. For the first time in a long while you could see the separate constituencies of the city’s games in clear profile. It was cold out in Kilbarrack and the hurling started at noon, so many afficionados, enthused by the arrival of Bishop Dalo of Clarecastle, arrived early, inspected the hurlers and left early.

Hurling folk were filing out as teeth-chattering football fans were drifting in. Those hurling people who don’t consider football to be an abomination or a biblical plague waited until half-time in the football game, or until their circulation ceased, and then left.

Next up, last weekend, was an unwise decision to go to watch the Dub footballers – or what was left of them on this island – play Wickla in the O’Byrne Cup. If there is ever a Tribunal of Inquiry into my declining health, I will be unable to satisfactorily answer any questions as to why I went to see Dublin play Wickla in the O’Byrne Cup and it will look bad.

I will remember the game only as an afternoon of my life I will never get back, but also as the afternoon when I should have caught hypothermia but didn’t. Micko, bad cess to him, tired of the everyday miracles he performs among the halt and the lame of ailing Leinster counties, made the rain chase me (and others, but it seemed especially vindictive toward me) around the stand in Parnell Park. By midway through the second half, having started just beside the Dubs’ dugout (I really thought they were going to give me a run this time: I couldn’t have been worse), I was sitting in the back row in the far corner of the stand and the rain was sweeping up into my face in stinging sheets as if gravity had its HQ in my nose.

And I smiled to myself beneath my mask of frost, because all the while the island is shaking itself into GAA life and this is what it is like to be Irish in January.

Then, feeling hardy, I took a dander out to see the Dublin hurlers train in monsoon-swept O’Toole Park the other evening. Watching training at this time of year is like being the judge in a Biggest Arse competition. (Jaysus, he had a good Christmas, those knicks fitted last year.) First sight of some county men sweating in training. All was well with the world.

On Friday, it was up to O’Tooles, where I watched in envy as they unveiled the Taj Mahal of hurling walls, and then on to Donegal on Saturday to watch the boys from The Downings shake off the cobwebs as they trained on their picturesque field with the greeny ocean throwing up great muscular, whitecapped waves behind them. Good company and images to get me into February.

And yesterday back to Parnell in more muck, wind and rain to see the lads in blue officially launch the Daly era with a handy game against Kilkenny. They whole lovely feel of January was destroyed. Bloody Kilkenny aren’t Irish at all. They are Krauts. Infiltrators. Germans left over from the POW camp in the Curragh who moved to some caves in Kilkenny and continued the entire Aryan race experiment while we poor Paddies kept on with the drinking and the fighting.

Just in case there was any little buzz of excitement which might lift the game here in Dublin, the All-Ireland champs brought in a sampling of their back-up talent and ran over Dublin like a panzer unit. The Dubs had trained hard all week and were, ahem, missing a couple (well, Ronan Fallon and Ross O’Carroll), but Kilkenny’s touch was so good for January, their finishing so confident, their young players so hungry, it was hard not to be a little depressed.

Kilkenny just don’t enter into the spirit of Irishness. They don’t do limbering up and yawning and stretching. At times yesterday they were sublime. Not just for winter hurling, but for any time of the year. Their upper-body strength is remarkable. They can hold men off with one hand while darning socks with the other. Their strength under a dropping ball is incredible and their ability to find each other with telling passes is unnatural.

The Germans scored five goals in the second half, but I’m probably not alone in thinking that the Dublin corner backs, Niall Corcoran and Budgie Treanor, actually did well during that period.

Germany can produce players from nowhere (Michael Grace who didn’t make the 21s last year), or from the production line (Kieran Joyce and both Hogans, Paddy was on the inters last summer), or from the pantheon (throwing on Gorta Comerford and Eddie Brennan for a gallop late on).

They scored six goals in all. One was my goal of the year, the sixth and final one probably my goal of the decade. They were sublime and perfect and nobody will lay a finger on them this year.

Still, it was poor form to be so good in January. In January, we are all supposed to be contenders.

Hey, Germany! Lighten up!