GAA versus soccer, no contest.

GAA versus soccer, no contest.
By Tom Humphries
September 24th 2001.

In a spirit of peace and understanding, some reasons why the GAA season just finished will once again put the Premiership in the ha'penny place.

1. No diving for penalties. No diving.

2. The general ethos of love and tenderness which pervades the GAA. If the media can forgive the Galway hurlers their press night, then anybody can forgive anything. Getting a one-on-one chat with Osama bin Laden would be less trouble than getting some face time with a Galway hurler.

3. The paranoia of GAA managers has gloriously exceeded that of their Premiership counterparts. It was a GAA manager who once said: "No comment and I don't want to be quoted as saying that."

4. Seán Boylan.

5. Spare a thought for the Croke Park residents, who unaccustomed to our ways didn't notice a big stadium beside their house when they moved in . . . They are still awaiting a reply to the stern letter they sent to the Black and Tans regarding the dreadful racket on Bloody Sunday.

6. GAA fashion has moved on. So long mired in hell's millinery department, from where hats of finest crepe paper and cheapest fake fur dyed in the county colours were foisted on us; the GAA aficionado now stretches the county jersey over his gut or her bust. A small price to pay for dignity.

7. At the risk of a stern letter from Joe Lennon, let us say that the tackle in Gaelic football remains as yet a nebulous and poorly-defined thing, a subtlety appreciated by followers of the game and envied by those lamenting the passing of the tackle from Premiership life entirely.

8. The fact that my seven-year-old could wander over to Johnny Magee of Dublin while he was practising free kicks in Parnell Park. Instead of calling security he bent down and had a chat, signed a programme, endured her asking "which one are you" and then went back to his free kicks. That doesn't happen at Manchester United.

9. Maurice Fitzgerald's equalising free against Dublin in Thurles.

10. Breakthrough in physics. The greatest recorded rate of deceleration in history was established by a GAA team this year. The Kilkenny hurlers awoke one Sunday morning as perhaps the best team in history and went to bed that night wondering if they'd get any All Stars. Ladies and gentlemen, nobody has gone backwards faster or further than these brave men.

11. The unbearability of life since England hammered Germany; is the Apocalypse upon us?

12. Limerick's hurling renaissance.

13. Because the GAA is still a world where you can ask a player if his family were GAA-oriented, and he will say yes, his uncle played for Galway, and you will ask what his name was, and he will say blankly "Uncle Frank".

14. Eamon Coleman.

15. Razzmatazz. We ain't got it.

16. Post-Taylor report, I don't think there is anywhere in the Premiership where one can feel the pure claustrophobia, the groin-in-buttock intimacy with strangers, the airless, breathless, fear that one can experience in the tunnel under the stand in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

17. The smell of fried onions.

18. Kevin Broderick's point.

19. Vinnie Murphy's entrances.

20. Peter Canavan's exits.

21 Yerra, ye're only a back-door team. Only innate contrarians like the Gaels could yearn for years for a system which allows their team more than one match a year and then when it arrives christen it the back-door system and use the term as a weapon of derision.

22 Isn't Richard Dunne really a soccer player trapped in the body of a junior B full back? Or a tree.

23. David Bloody Beckham. Imagine if GAA players chose to name their children after where they were conceived. What's the Irish for Mondeo? Primera?

24. The Westmeath footballers.

25. Larry O'Gorman interviews. The only white man in Wexford to call everyone else brother. Big ups to Larry and his posse.

26. GAA players don't pull their jerseys over their faces while celebrating a goal. What's all that about?

27. The strange odyssey of the Cork minor hurlers.

28. The evangelisation of Mullinahone.

30. Fowler and Houllier. Fowlier and Houller. Howler and Foullier. Who cares if they've fallen out, there's always a millionaire replacement for either of them waiting in the wings.

31. John O'Mahony and Mickileen Donnellan. That matters.

32. Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh.

33 ITV's coverage. Premiership Lite for the Ibiza set.

34. Only the GAA offers the chance to interview players while they completely embalm themselves in Wild Mist spray-on deodorant.

35. Social mobility. Westmeath will win an All-Ireland before West Ham cease to be mid-table purveyors of fancy football.

36. All Star controversies still to come!

37. The thought that this could be the last Premiership season before England win the World Cup and oppress us all with it.

38. Killarney on a summer's day. If you are reading this Frank Murphy, Killarney on a summer's day is nice.

39. Frank Murphy. The comb-over who rules the world.

40. The wonder of the new timing systems and substitution boards.

41. Linesmen who shown same to all parts of the ground except the press box.

42. Journalists who see that there is one minute of injury time to be played and turn to each other in hilarious unison and say, "look they're substituting the goalie".

43. Sligo's groovy new shirts.

44. The admirable conservatism of GAA haircuts.

45. Kieran McDonald's haircut.

46. Meath comebacks.

47. The word 'sliotar'.

48. The word 'schelping'. As in Páidí's "there was grand shhhcelping out there today".

49. Sky Sports/Pay Per View/MUTV.

50. It just is.