We Are The Champions

In what looks likely to rank among the most exciting football campaigns to date, Kerry, Dublin, Armagh and Galway remain among the strongest contenders. But what is it like playing at the highest level of hurling and football? And is there a future for the amateur code, now that the players – or some of them at least – have become media darlings as well as sports stars?
The thump of the boot against the ball, the thwack of the sliotar on the hurl, the frenzied roar of the crowd – it’s the soundtrack to our summer, the score to a national soap opera that has held us in its thrall for generations, with its nail-biting drama.
Strange isn’t it, how important a single game of 70 minutes can become? How the rivalry between Dublin and Meath or Cork and Kilkenny can hijack our common sense like nothing else on earth? But then, this obsession, across Ireland, with games that no-one else shares has waxed and waned and waxed again for reasons that have at least a little to do with our sense of ourselves as a nation. The GAA is part of what we are.
There was a danger in the era of Sky Sports and soccer players as celebrities that the GAA, and the All Ireland Championships with it, might get stuck in a time warp. And that the fervour and excitement associated with the spectacle might begin to pale by comparison with the glamorous pictures being beamed in from the Premiership and the Champions League.
That was to underestimate the strength and the resilience of the Association. It was also to misapprehend the attractions of both gaelic football and hurling as sports. And finally, it was to miss the essential part that allegiance to the county still plays in Irish life. The GAA has fought back against the encroachment of football, rugby, golf, athletics and whatever else you’re having on its turf. The soap opera has been sexed-up, the story lines have become bolder and a younger, fresher, savvier cast introduced.
The Gaelic Players Association (GPA) has put the cat among the pigeons in many ways since its inception, but it’s also been responsible for raising players’ awareness of their own images. With it has come the haircuts, the theatrical celebrations, the jerseys worn outside the shorts, the socks above the knee: the GAA, you might say, is becoming fashion obsessed.
The new Croke Park is a manifestation of this phenomenon – young, cool and exciting, it is a statement of confidence and strength on behalf of the national sports. Similarly with the players: from Ciaran McDonald’s corn-rows and Eoin Mulligan’s blonde streaks to the various personalised boots, there is a new energy and confidence amongst the inter-county elite that is at once compelling and impressive.
These are modern sportsmen – fit, strong, and dedicated to the point of single-mindedness. The demands made by the modern game are immense. The training regime of any team that aspires to competing at the top level is frightening. Those who battle it out in Croke Park and the other GAA stadia around the country as the Championship nears its climax are gladiators, yes – but they are seldom distant, arrogant or spoilt by their success in the manner of too many of the leading lights in other sporting codes. They live and work amongst us, scratching an existence during the week and living out the dreams of millions at the weekend. So what is it that makes these part-time heroes tick? Why do they do it?
Alan Brogan is a perfect example of the modern GAA star. At 23, he should be just breaking into the Dublin first team squad. Instead, he delights in destroying the toughest opponents, displaying the maturity and confidence of a veteran as he does it. He’s the jewel in that most intoxicating of GAA ideals – a winning Dublin team. The rivalry of near neighbours is frequently intense in the GAA, with Galway and Mayo, Cork and Tipperary or Tyrone and Armagh setting the tone – but the Dubs are the side that everyone wants to beat and they fill Croke Park like no other county team can. In football, they are the summer blockbuster: Kerry may walk away with the Oscars more often than the rest but, in a good year especially, Dublin are guaranteed to top the box office.
Brogan makes it all sound like second nature. “Playing for Dublin, you do get a lot of extra attention from the media” he says, “and that, I suppose, is because of the big population in Dublin. It sells the papers and it sells radio – but you just have to accept that and get on with the football. I enjoy it to be honest – it’s super that the attention is on Dublin at the moment and I think a lot of the lads thrive on it too.”
Brogan, of course, is Dublin GAA royalty – his father Bernard was part of the legendary team of the late '70s. But there’s no trace of arrogance to the man, just the calm self-assurance of someone who is fiercely good at something he loves. He’s a typical young Irelander of the modern generation. He’s done the Australia thing, and plans to travel some more – Thailand is next on the must-see list or maybe Mexico – but there’s just no escaping his vocation.
“I always wanted to come back,” he says. “I went to Australia for six or seven months. I wanted to see Australia and do all these things that a young person should do – but at the end of the day, playing for Dublin is what I really want to do and I wouldn’t put anything else before that.”
It’s hard for him to explain to the unconverted what it is about the game that exerts such a pull on him. Except maybe this way. Playing in front of the Hill on Leinster Final Day: what more could a footballer ask for?
“I wouldn’t change it for the world,” he laughs. “I love playing for Dublin and it’s what I always wanted to do and I’ll never have any regrets about the demands that it makes. It’s hairs on the back of the neck stuff going down past Hill 16, it’s just phenomenal the atmosphere the fans create. I’d say the soccer grounds in South America are the only places that can match the Hill for atmosphere now.”
Therein lies the beauty of the GAA. On a weekday, Alan Brogan might be just another bloke. He loves U2 and golf, hopes to catch the Stereophonics next time they’re in town – but come the weekend, he’s thrilling over 80,000 people in Croke Park as he bears down on goal. And with the Dubs seeing off Laois in the Leinster Final, there could be more memorable adventures still to come this year…
Galway’s Michael Meehan strikes you as the kind of guy who, as a kid, drove his neighbours mad. You imagine that he spent almost as much time clambering into their garden to retrieve the ball as he did kicking it around in the first place. Now, though, he’s being spoken of as ‘the next big thing’.
“It’s nice to be considered in that category,” he admits when asked what it’s like to be hailed as a star. “But it’s no good unless you justify it. It’s a challenge and that’s always good. I want to be able to rise to that challenge. That’s what it’s all about: to get the better of your man in every game – and continue to be a marked man for the next one.”
He hates to lose too, be it on the Playstation with his mates or out on the pitch with Galway. In fact, he can’t stand it.
“It’s my biggest motivation,” he admits. “Growing up I was always playing football, I was always involved in it. My family has a healthy football background – so it was football, football, football. You dreamed of winning the All Ireland Final for Galway and scoring the winning goal and all that hero stuff. So trying to realise those dreams, as well as wanting to win every day you go out, every game you play, is what drives me.”
When he’s not wreaking havoc on the pitch, Meehan is studying at NUIG.
“Anytime I’m not playing football, I’m hanging around college and with my friends,” he says. “I played a good bit of golf last year to get away from football, but I haven’t really got the chance this summer. Otherwise, I’d be watching Man United or the Premiership. I wouldn’t really have any major hobbies that I’d use as an escape from Gaelic because really it’s hard to get away from it when you’re involved in it so much.
“Music, yeah – I like nearly all kinds of music from dance to chart music, there’s no specific genre that I’d limit myself to. I was at U2 in Slane in 2001 and that was amazing. I meant to go and see them in Croke Park this summer but I couldn’t because I got caught with the football.”
It’s just a small example of the sacrifices that inter-county players have to make. The demands placed on them involve having to train and perform to the same level as professionals, in what is still an amateur game. Armagh footballer Steven McDonnell is sanguine about it.
“If you were to ask any GAA player, whether they’re involved in hurling or football, cinema would be the biggest pass-time because with all the training we’re expected to do, we’re not allowed out to drink or anything. So spending our weekends in the cinema is what a lot of us do.”
The increased physical demands of the game have led to a growing debate within the association about payment for players. Waterford hurler John Mullane feels strongly about the issue.
“I do want it to happen,” he says of players getting paid for their efforts. “I don’t think it can keep going the way it’s going because it has become too much of a burden on players to be doing it for nothing. So hopefully it will happen in the near future.”
Mullane believes there is a movement towards change within the traditionally conservative GAA at the moment – a groundswell symbolised by the gleaming new stadium that has become it’s most recognisable landmark.
“You look at the new Croke Park compared to the old version and it goes to show you how far the game is after coming and how it’s after developing into what it is,” Mullane insists. “And you have to go with the times, you know. I guess that relates back to the issue of players being paid. You have to move with the times, just like they have up at headquarters – so I think it’s time for the players too. Croke Park will eventually be paid for, and the question then will be: where the money will go. It will have to go in the right direction and some of that will have to end up with the players.”
It’s a question that divides the GAA along much more complex lines than simple distinctions like age or geography. Alan Brogan sees no reason why players shouldn’t be paid for the sacrifices they make in the name of playing entertaining football.
“The ordinary person wouldn’t understand the time we put into it,” he observes. “Everyone can understand the training because there’s loads of footballers with club teams who go training Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, just the same as we do. But it’s apart from that, when you’re not training, the way you’re treating yourself and your lifestyle that is so important. That’s where the inter-county players are different from the normal club players – because they eat proper food and make sure they get proper rest and it just takes up your whole life. It takes up your social life, your personal life, everything.”
Meehan, on the other hand, doesn’t envisage a day when he’ll get a wage packet from his county.
“It’s not going to happen that we’re ever going to get paid I think, in full anyway,” he says. “Definitely it’s getting more commercialised and there’s more sponsorship deals and stuff. But I only find it a distraction really.”
Dara O Cinneide is one of the current GAA greats. As the captain of last year’s victorious Kerry team, he is an established footballing star, who believes that it is important to preserve the spirit and the ethos of the GAA. He has been involved at inter-county level for at least 10 years and has played through the period that has seen the emergence of the GPA. He has witnessed the codes become slicker, the games offering a more entertaining package for television. He views these changes as positive but fears that, with the new emphasis on money, there are some values within the association that are under threat.
“I’m not a member of the GPA but I think I would be very much in the minority there,” he says. “In principle, I would agree with most of what they do, but I just made a conscious decision not to join. I would be viewed, I suppose, as being very traditional in my values towards the GAA. I think that time is fast moving on, and those values are being eroded. And maybe that’s not a bad thing – but I’d like to think that the ideals and the values of playing for one’s county and one’s parish and representing a tribe, for want of a better word, still hold true. And I think they do and you see that every Sunday and any given weekend in the intensity of the challenges and the competition that’s there and the rivalry between certain teams.”
In O Cinneide’s view, this blending of the old and the new has helped to create a more exciting game, giving matches a fresh sense of occasion.
“Just like a rock concert or any other event that is held during the course of the summer,” he says. “It’s actually an attractive thing – it’s a cool and fashionable thing to be at games now, which is great.”
But should the players charge for personal appearances and photos? Professionalism takes on different guises some of which are less than pretty (see panel re: John Mullane).
“I suppose the idea of image rights probably didn’t rear its head until such time as the GPA mentioned the whole idea,” O Cinneide reflects. “And that’s a huge debate at the moment within the Association, and amongst players as well. You can mention players now who would be seen to change their own personal image on a regular basis and they have other interests outside of Gaelic games. They’re not your stereotypical rural-type Gaelic footballer, who would eat his bacon and cabbage and stuff like that. They’re very much seen as being modern in dress and appearance, and have interests in music and film and such as well.”
Both O Cinneide and Michael Meehan cite the Premiership and the ‘Beckham effect’ as major influences on this trend.
“I suppose it’s catching on a few years later in the world of Gaelic football,” says Meehan. “But that is always going to happen. People are influenced by what is happening in the Premiership and seeing the matches – and the lads with white boots and bleached hair and socks up and all that. I’d see it as a good thing, really, because the players who go for these ideas, they attract a little more interest from the general public – people that maybe wouldn’t have been that interested in the sport but who now
see this kind of radicalness. They say ‘oh look at this lad, he’s a nutter’ or whatever. That sparks a bit interest in the sport, which is good – because any interest is good news.”
It can be an unsettling life to lead, playing at or near the top of the game. To go from being lionised by thousands of adoring fans one day to getting an earful for clocking in late to work the next – or having to sit through some dull lecture after the adrenaline rush of playing in a must-win Championship match – isn’t easy. But Steven McDonnell reckons it’s all part of the deal.
As the star forward of one of the greatest county sides of the modern era, he’s become one of the blue chip stars of the GAA world and is one of the deadliest finishers in the country. He’s got a healthy collection of All Ireland titles, Ulster titles and All Stars to his name and maintains an even healthier desire to add to his stash. Somehow, he also manages to find the time to run his own business. For him, it’s about being the best and you work and train and put the long and gruelling hours in with that objective in mind – everything else is secondary.
“You train to be the best and you try to be the best at all
times,” he says. “Playing in the heat of summer, that’s definitely what all the hard work is about. Obviously, year by year, the GAA is getting bigger and definitely players’ profiles are getting higher and higher – which is good. But, at the end of the day, if you want to get success at any level, you have to put in hours and hours of endless work.”
Such is the dedication of the modern inter-county GAA player. The passion they possess for their sport and the pride they take in entertaining the nation with their skill is what marks these ‘ordinary men’ out as extraordinary individuals. It is their triumphs and failures that we share in, their grief and joy that keeps us glued to our screens and, on a weekly basis, pulls in larger crowds than World Cup finals can manage.
Clearly, Croke Park has the monopoly on must-see gigs this summer. Long may it continue.