Jennifer Horgan: Hurling gives my dad pure joy — the GAA must not take that away
In his poem , Seamus Heaney likens Ireland’s rich heritage to a bog. It sounds like a massive downplay until you read it.
Contrasting the bogs of Ireland to the prairies of America, he describes how we travel ‘Inwards and downwards” in Ireland, whilst American pioneers travel out.
Well, if we were to roll up our sleeves and get down into the ‘black butter’ of our bogs, we’d be certain to come away with two distinct objects. A ball. And a hurl.
Hurling is at the heart, or as Heaney puts it, ‘the wet centre’ of Ireland, and in this, I’m not being figurative. Sliotars have been found in bogs from north Sligo down into Cork, dating back to the 12th century. An old hurley was pulled out of a bog near Doon in Offaly from the 16th century.
From carbon dating, we know that Ireland has always played hurling, or some form of it. It features in our most ancient mythology, and as a minority, native sport, it deserves to be preserved beyond the dark cradle of our boglands.
His love affair began at the age of five when he was taken by his Uncle Ned, all the way from Mallow up to Dublin on the train, to see Cork play in what was then called the Oireachtas Games. Can you imagine the excitement?
His uncle, Ned, was a fanatic, and he very successfully passed on his fanaticism to his young nephew.
I envy them all. But above everyone else, my husband, my sister, and my brothers included, is my dad. You couldn’t find a bigger lover of The Game. His life has been narrowed since having a stroke, but like the magical bog Heaney describes, it still holds great depth and joy, due in no small part to his enjoyment of sport.
I avoid the sitting room when games are on, sport ignoramus that I am. But last weekend he actually invited me in because he needed my help, and my twin embarrassments of knowing nothing about sport, and being absolutely useless at technology, coalesced.
It fell to me to get GAAGO up on the big screen. I had to access it via his email, and so the first hurdle was getting him to remember his password. After half a dozen tries, we got lucky. We were in. I managed to find the Cork/Limerick game and started the streaming.
Then came the job of synching the laptop, my laptop, to his screen. GAAGO was telling me I needed to download the app on his phone in order to connect it to the screen, which I really wanted to do as my father also has a visual impairment.
I didn’t manage it. Embarrassing, yes, but I am certain that there are many people, particularly elderly people without tech savviness, who would have fallen at the same hurdle. When I contacted GAAGO days later, I was told that anyone lacking technical ability should get someone else to do the set up.
There is no help provided for an elderly person left with the likes of me (next to useless) or someone with no support network. We all know we have an issue with loneliness as well as aloneness in this country, with over 20% of Irish people reporting feeling lonely most or all of the time, the highest level in the European Union.
In the end, my dad watched on my laptop. It was ok. But for a man who lives and breathes the game it was also not good enough. He paid €12 for the pleasure of squinting into a tiny screen when he deserved far better.
The after-game celebration was still glorious.
“They won! They won! Cork beat Limerick! They did it! Cork has beaten Limerick,” he shouted.
Then the phone started going. Old colleagues. One, a mother of a player. Nieces. Nephews. Brothers. Everyone knew to contact my dad, knew what it would mean to him. It was an excuse to get in touch. A lifeline.
My column this week is for my father, but it is also for the many other people, elderly, already marginalised, possibly lonely or alone people, who are being excluded from a sport they have loved and supported all their lives.
I know all the good reasons why GAAGO exists. Yes, it is wonderful for people living abroad. Yes, it is wonderful that more games are screened and that this has resulted in more free-to-air games on our televisions. I’m not knocking it in general, and I would never unnecessarily knock the GAA.
GAAGO has many positives. Television stations were uninterested in buying the rights for games and so the GAA simply had to innovate. They also had to shorten their season for the benefit of their players, resulting in a proliferation of games.
When President Jarlath Burns described Tyrone player’s Sean Cavanagh’s criticism of GAAGO as overly ‘emotional’ this week, did he mean to suggest that this is not an emotional issue for fans? Because it absolutely is an emotional issue. That’s the real bottom line, whatever the numbers might be.
And those figures seem healthy. ‘Solid’ and ‘modest’ is how their last published financial report was described, with a €6.5m surplus recorded until September 30, 2023. According to RTÉ, “Croke Park had a total of 1.2 million visitors in 2023 with matchday attendance rising from 890k to 948k. Museum and skyline visits were also considerably up from 91k to 129k.”
People within the GAA will say that it is viable because of GAAGO. I don’t know how true that is, but I do understand that the GAA needs to be financially secure.
So, I have only two criticisms. The GAA already gives free passes to care homes and hospitals. They must also help vulnerable people at home trying to use their technology or they must make that technology simpler, more user-friendly.
And then, they must very carefully consider the games that go behind the paywall.
The GAA, as it was founded in 1884 by Michael Cusack, was never meant to be about profit. It was “to provide amusement and recreation for the ordinary people of Ireland”, according to historian Paul Rouse.
That’s what the GAA, and particularly hurling, does for my dad, what it has always done. Beyond family, it gives his life meaning and joy. The GAA should honour that.
There’s one story my father has shared for decades. The two of us, as he tells it, are at an All-Ireland final. I’m seven or eight years old. I’m getting increasingly worried by his behaviour. He’s shouting, reddening, shaking, jumping up and down like a jellybean.
I turn to him and say, “Don’t worry dad; it’s only a game.” He looks down at me lovingly, with a wisdom I’ll never inherit.
“Darling,” he replies, patting my head. “It’s never only a game.”
