The GAA

Yes, the love and commitment that is given to GAA clubs by players and supporters for no financial reward is something in this day and age that I regard as nigh on miraculous.

It's odd how many Conservatives have no time for sport. Is it because they regard it as a 'distraction for the masses', I wonder? With most sports I would agree, but the GAA is different.

And there was in the old days quite a heavy involvement of the Catholic clergy. As recently as 1990 the Cork hurling team was managed to the All-Ireland by Canon Michael O'Brien.

The whole "distraction for the masses" thing bothers me-- as does anti-sport snobbery. Peter Hitchens is guilty of this, although perhaps he would say he is opposed to the CULT of sport rather than sport per se.

Why would anyone be anti-sport? I've never understood it. I remember I had one lecturer in college who described it as "form without substance". I've spent a lot of time musing on this. You could say the same thing about classical music, abstract painting, fireworks, and any number of other pursuits.

Gaelic games began as a kind of vehicle for cultural nationalism. They've transcended that-- thousands upon thousands of players and spectators are swept up in them without thinking of cultural nationalism at all. But that's great! They've taken on a momentum of their own. Wouldn't it be great if we had thousands and thousands of people speaking Irish so unselfconsciously?

I think sport is good as an expression for national identity, but I also think it's good in itself. Sport should be valued for being sport, as well as being other things. I'm always a bit irritated by people who try to justify sport for teaching us persistence, discipline, teamwork, etc. etc. Yes, all that's true, but in the end the joy of chasing a ball around a field, or whatever else you do, is a wonderful thing in itself.

As a national gel I admire the GAA. It seems to be one of the few national bodies that so far, is scandal free , has managed to adapt but has mantained its core values and is present in every parish and in the Irish community abroad.

I do have concerns about it though. In the early 1990s in rural Ireland I noticed the local GAA organising matches to coincide with Sunday Mass times and basically telling those objecting you can go in the evening. Previously they had a respect for religion but gradually young people involved were absent on sunday morning and eventually absent full stop. I don't blame the GAA for young people not going to mass but I was struck at the attitude at the time. The GAA were loyal to themselves as is their right but seemed to have no real loyalty to Sunday worship even back then. I dont know what things are like now.

I don't get sport personally but all my family does. They don't read I do. Its just one of those things. Mass sport in all its' forms has replaced Mass as a community creating phenomena it would seem in Ireland.It is good to get people exercising but it seems to me to be The only thing that most Irish people do or to be more accurate what they watch on their TVs. This is thin gruel on which to base a sense of national unity or identity. It is good to have the GAA but I would rather we had more things to unite Irish people around.

Internationally mass sport is a huge phenomena that has its own saints clergy and liturgies. It attracts tens of millions who worship and make sacrifices to follow their team. As we abandon church some of us at least have turned to Sport. Particularly significant is the male aspect. Men have by and large left the church. Men by and large are the biggest sports fans.

There is also a phenomena that cultures in decline obsess about leisure activities. Ancient Romes bread and circuses is the classic example of a culture that ended up with a bloated welfare system, an obsession with mass entertainment and organised immigration that gradually undermined the will of Rome to even exist. Declining cultures also make a fetish around food and have a greater sense of gender fluidity among other features. Sound familiar?

Shouldn't have to be one or the other, should it?
I know of a priest who had a country parish in Australia- he abolished Sunday Mass. Well not exactly, he held it on Friday, as he said the sport culture there was too hard to compete with.
It's hard to find a greater figure in sports broadcast in Ireland's history than Michael O'Hehir , yet he was a man faith. He was part of a special GAA broadcast to Africa once, as a service to the many missionaries that lived there at the time. From memory, it was after missionary religious were allowed holidays, but when travel would have still been cumbersome.
A footnote: I've never really followed sport in a big way, but the first big Australian Rules fan I knew was a priest from West Melbourne, Western Bulldogs area. They broke a seventy year drought to win the grand final last year. This year a top hat was put on it-they were one of the two first teams to play on Good Friday, last. In
FROM DÚN SÍON TO CROKE PARK, Gaelic broadcaster Micheál O'Muircheartaigh wasn't afraid to express his faith also

The druids are alive and well it would appear.

I have been thinking about this whole issue of what makes us Irish in the context of a rapidly changing Ireland , probably more rapid change than any period since the arrival of human settlers here thousands of years ago.

They didn't play GAA , speak Irish or go to Mass( or not )but to some extent they became the "Irish". At a certain point in late 19th century Ireland a line is drawn and a definition of Irishness is drawn up which doesn't fit Ireland in 2017 , for better or for worse.

Two thoughts 1)I think being Irish is more subtle than we sometimes assume and is not simply about ticking very easily identifiable boxes like religion . Samuel Beckett was a non believing protestant who spent most of his life abroad writing depressing literature in French .Is he Irish?
Large groups of Irish people don't tick the traditional Irish boxes anymore but were born here live here and speak with Irish accents. They may not believe in what I believe in but they are Irish. Sometimes you have to listen to an outsider who can tell you what Irish people are like , how they behave etc.

We sometimes lack perspective. We sometimes think we are the greatest little country ever. We sometimes think we are the worst little country ever.

Secondly I recall something Brendan Behan said about one of these identity debates in the 1960s - If we are not the Irish, who is?