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In defence of event junkies  A
popular opinion to hold is this: The Irish sports fan supports big days
more than teams. The term ‘event junkie’ has entered the Irish
lexicon alongside other chestnuts as ‘knowledge-based economy’
and ‘embattled Taoiseach’.
I read somewhere these are called collocations — words that are
too often used together. This part of the paper is not concerned with
the embattled Taoiseach and would have trouble telling a knowledge-based
economy from an ignorance-based economy but the event junkie is of our
parish (sometimes).
The bandwagon hoppers are to be seen in their multitudes at the Six Nations,
Heineken Cup and important World Cup qualifiers or, in the ever more distant
past, World Cups. But you see them most in our national games.
The difference between the numbers of people who really support Cork or
Kildare or Dublin or Donegal and those who will turn out three or four
times a summer is staggering. From covering National League games as a
reporter for five years and from going to winter games off my own bat
(occasionally) before that I know that most decent-sized counties have
a hardcore support of a couple of hundred who will follow the team anywhere,
anytime. And the team can bank on a steady 2,000 or so who will go to
most home games.
Contrast this to the 50,000 who will march on Croke Park if things go
well later in the year.
The most blatant example of this pattern are the Dublin footballers and
Cork hurlers. Fully mobilised, their replica-shirted armies could lay
siege to Stalingrad but come a windy March Sunday only the devoted several
will know or care about the score. Ask yourself this though: Do the players
care what the score is? I don’t mean are they anyway bothered at
all, I mean will they lose sleep? Will they even remember anything about
the game in a couple of years? It’s a tricky one to prove but I’d
argue all day they are not overly concerned. Evidence is all around. I
just picked up a Monday paper and the Cork v Dublin hurling report ends
with a quote from John Gardiner.
“The League is very important to us but more so this year because
of the time we lost.”
Could you ever imagine a soccer player saying the League is very important
to us? It would be like a swimmer saying swimming is very important to
me. By saying the League is very important, Gardiner is tacitly admitting
that it’s anything but. It sounds like a delay announcement at the
airport regretting the inconvenience caused. Does anyone really regret
it? Of course not, it’s an empty platitude.
Cast your mind back five years to the end of the 2003 All-Ireland hurling
final. At the last whistle, John Gardiner sank to the ground, held his
face in his hand and cried till his eyes turned the same colour as his
shirt. It was an affecting site, one that helped spur Cork on to reverse
that result against Kilkenny in the 2004 decider.
Now I’ve seen Cork get knocked out of a fair few League campaigns
in the last five years but I’ve never seen John Gardiner, or anyone
else for that matter, crying afterwards. And if the League is so important
to Cork why don’t they go and win it?
In five years they’ve contested four All-Ireland finals, winning
two. They’ve never made it to a League final. Why’s that?
It’s hardly down to lack of ability.
I remember the last time Cork were in the League final. It was in 2002
and they lost by a point to Kilkenny at Semple Stadium. Filing off the
Town End terrace that sunny late spring day the consensus among the Cork
contingent was that it was “probably for the best that we’d
lost; don’t want to show you’re hand in April d’ye know
like”.
It was then I knew the League, despite increased newspaper and telly coverage,
would not catch on among the general sporting public until things changed.
It needed then, as it does now, to matter.
When you’re trying to draw a crowd to any sporting contest the crowd
will decide to come out only when something is at stake. More than trophies
or money the greater motivator is honour. When the protagonists are disgusted
at the thought of losing that’s when you get a decent game and a
decent crowd.
If you’re selling a product where the performers are to a large
degree going through a protracted warm-up routine then you can’t
blame the public for staying away. You don’t go the cinema to watch
the outtakes or the theatre for the dress rehearsal. You go to the real
thing when reputations are on the line.
The modern GAA season is long. Does it ever actually end? It doesn’t
make sense to spend the first four months limbering up for a knockout
competition. Most other big-time sports decide their champions based on
consistent high performance not a string of four or five decent performances.
The GAA would do well to look at changing culture where the League and
not the Championship is the main event. The reason they’ll do that
is because leagues by their nature have more games so there is clearly
a chance to get a lot more people through the turnstiles.
People will start turning up for League games in big number when every
game is an event, when the collocation ‘Championship fever’
is joined in the lexicon by ‘League fever’. When winning a
League final will bring prestige and honour and defeat tears. When it
matters. |
