Cavan boss Hyland fears for future of football
OUR HURLING HYPE IS OTT
WHILE Kieran McGeeney was gutting Pat Spillane this week, the other half of the GAA family was basking in a UNESCOsponsored love-in.
When our inbox pinged this Monday, for a moment we thought that Sir Humphrey Appleby was alive and with us in Croke Park.
‘Further to the approval by the Irish Government of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage on the recommendation of Minister for Arts and Heritage Heather Humphreys, Cumann Lúthchleas Gael welcomes the opportunity to have the national game of Hurling nominated for inscription.
‘It is hoped pending the final ratification by the Oireachtas to have hurling considered for inscription on the UNESCO Representative World Heritage List for this March as one of the designated masterpieces of Humanity,’ read a statement.
There are many things that Brian Cody has been called over the years as we have ravaged our thesaurus for the words to hail the 11-time All-Ireland-winning manager, but a ‘masterpiece of humanity’ is one that somehow eluded us until now.
Not any more, even if the honour of the game’s inscription is just a little tainted to some blinkered eyes and tone-deaf ears by the fact that it will be frog-marched on to the list in the company of an army of uilleann pipers, who have also been nominated.
Each to their own, and, in all seriousness, we don’t believe that securing this honour will do the game any harm at all.
GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail has claimed it will ensure that hurling will be ‘integrated’ into the country’s lucrative tourism heritage sector.
Meanwhile, we have been advised that the minister has informed the cabinet, who sadly have not been nominated for inclusion as masterpieces of humanity, that it will provide an opportunity to showcase the ‘uniqueness’ of hurling beyond our ‘national boundaries’.
Like we say, nothing in any of that to bother us, except…
Well, maybe just a couple of things. The ongoing obsession that hurling is far too good a secret to be kept to ourselves means that our ‘national game’ is in danger of morphing into our national craving to be patted on the head by the rest of the world.
That is why some hurling folk get as much of a thrill out of Dick from Devon or Chuck from Cincinnati tweeting about just how ‘crazy’ this game is they have stumbled across in digital space as they get from watching Joe Canning splice the posts from a sideline cut.
It is a little sad and every time the notion is peddled about the latest initiative ‘showcasing the game’s uniqueness to a global audience’, it invites the obvious and cheap shot that Cootehill should come before Chicago.
That is a little unfair; the failure to develop the game in the game’s wastelands here has more to do with local mindsets than central resources.
But the bigger issue this honour raises is the perception that hurling is as much a museum exhibit as a living, breathing and flawed sport.
And where the notion of change is utterly foreign — even when a rule is changed for health and safety purposes it can lead to the fundamentalists having a wailing session at their local hurling alley walls, as transpired with the pained reform of the penalty puck rule — advising the outside world that what you have is a masterpiece and not a game hardly encourages introspection.
That is not to say hurling is not great; it is, but we have just come off a Championship not shy of ordinariness, with many games infected by acts of cynicism which, unlike football, are not legislated for. Evolving, competitive sports invite debate, outrage — the kind that this week led McGeeney to not being able to refer to Spillane by name for his ‘puke football’ comment which is a decade and a half old — and ultimately reform.
Meanwhile, masterpieces don’t evolve — they remain frozen in time, to be seen but not touched.
That’s no place for any sport.
‘There is a perception that hurling is as much a museum exhibit as a sport that is played’