I've always wanted to be a journalist. A lenghty career on Fleet Street - or Tara Street as it soon shall be - followed by an eponymous novel documenting life in Ireland at our moment in time has always been the dream. But I've continuously found it hard to get started. Especially since I wasted my years at college being involved in something I shouldn't have been in involved in.
To remedy this, I entered a sports writing competition ran by my local paper. The winner was to be given a regular job and the freedom to graze his cattle on the town green. Well, not quite. Only Bono has been granted this privilege. My interest was nourished by the fact that Tom Humphries, Ireland's second greatest living sports hack, was one of the judges.
I didn't win. But I did come second. They'll publish my article on June 14th. For most readers, this is trivial, a minor triumph in a local rag. But for me, this is huge. Huger than huge. Words won't suffice.
Here it is.
SPORT AND MEANING
In the Beginning there was the Word, and the Word became God. And God created Man, who then created Sport. In retribution, disgusted that Creation had thought of it before Him, God created Luck. And therein lies the key to Manchester United’s victory in the 1999 European Cup Final.
The English social commentator Francis Wheen, analysing the exaggerated orgy of national mourning that accompanied the death of Princess Diana in 1997, concluded that the only rational explanation was humanity’s desire to belong to something greater than itself. The British people had been deprived of the means of communicating with each other through the sustained atomisation of their society. Eager to connect with their neighbours and to invest in sumptuous social capital, they flocked to each other’s garden fences and grieved in unity.
Sport is one of the principal alembics within which community, an ideal that has lost some of its currency through the modernisation of Irish society, might be distilled once more. The traditional bulwarks of shared identity – Church, one-eyed nationalism, Gay Byrne – have either disintegrated or disappeared. Yet while Catholicism still seeks to address the fundamentals of modern living, nationalism has, to some extent and not before time, given way to a more multicultural social model, and Gaybo contents himself with sporadic televised jaunts down memory lane, thousands of us still congregate, week in week out, at sporting venues across the land to participate in glorious athletic communion. And so it was that a crowd of us tumbled along to Parnell Park last weekend, where down-and-out Dublin took high-fliers Mayo on a whistle-stop tour of the National League Division 1a dance floor.
The rain was wild, and the climate far from mild, as we rushed down from Elm Mount Road to Dublin’s home ground, the impressive floodlights towering over sullen Donnycarney Church luring us ever onwards. Late as usual, we arrived just as the teams were taking to the pitch, and the presence among the visitors’ convoy of Ciarán McDonald was duly, gleefully noted. He wasn’t togged out, but that day would inevitably come. Anticipation rising.
Eyes fixed on Mickey Moran, the man who had breathed new life into our county team. His trawl through the vast reservoir of eager talent that lay dormant across the Plain of the Yew had bore sumptuous fruit, and a new wave of optimism spread through the county that always dares to hope.
For those of us who live away from home, ensconced in this ever-enlarging capital, another away tie against the Dubs, following on from last years Round One stormer, was a great blessing as our pilgrimage was shortened considerably. The floodlit sheen of the venue belied the uncertainty of the playing surface, which had in recent times endured torrents unheard of since the era of plagues and locusts. As we stood – had we any choice on the terrace? – for Amhrán na bhFiann, the importance to the scattered Diaspora of events like these began once more to dawn upon our brows. Glances traded with old school pals. Knowing winks and awkward nods. Friends long forgotten emerging from the woodwork of the past to remind you of who you were, nay, who you are. The impressive crowd populated by many émigrés whose knowledge of the sport might be deemed questionable. It mattered not; they were there to feel part of something. To belong.
The ball was thrown in, and the visitors slid into a two point lead, with Austin O’Malley chalking up the first score, followed by a cool brace from the fresher, Alan Durcan. The signs were comforting for Mayo. Alas signs in Ireland never really paint the full picture. The surface contained all the certainties of a glacial summit, and Dublin closed their opponents down in a determined manner that gave rise to an indefinable, yet ultimately recognisable anxiety. Benighted since the early promise shown against Tyrone by charges of indifference and anonymity, they finally took charge of their own destiny.
The goal, in the end, came quickly. Mark Vaughan, reminiscent of Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, stole in between Higgins and Nallen to win the ball and begin a move that ended in rapture for the Dubs. Tomás Quinn ploughed the ball past John Healy, and the terrace erupted in a flow of navy and blue. Psychologically, the weight of the blow was tangible. A boisterous but apocalyptically cynical Mayo ‘fan’ behind us, bedecked in waves of green and red, cried “Game Over”, and promptly stormed off into the angry night. Such are the passions that these occasions excite.
No sooner had we rallied around the rationale that all was not lost, than our hopes were sullied once more. Dublin were awarded, or depending on your perspective gifted, a penalty. We steadied ourselves by sagely noting that penalties in Gaelic Football are notoriously difficult to convert. No such luck. Mossy drilled the ball home, and Dublin led by 2-2 to 0-3.
Behind the Mayo goal the chant rang out, ‘Come on you Boys in Blue, Come on you Boys in Blue’. We pinched ourselves, thinking for a moment that we had been wondrously transported to Stamford Bridge. The purists pursed their lips; we did not follow suit. Unsporting jeers and boos aside, the revelry added more than it took away from the occasion, and provided a stark contrast to our own fears and sense of self-pity.
Despite a Mayo rally late in the first half which narrowed the gap to three points at the interval, Paul Claffey’s half-time talk harnessed his men steadfastly to their task and they proceeded to tear through Mayo’s listless ranks. The visitors scored just one goal and four points to Dublin’s more assured tally of two goals and six. When Alan Brogan pounced to exploit a late backline error and scored Dublin’s final goal, it was all over bar the shouting. And oh how the faithful roared. Redemption was sought and assured.
Analysis? Dublin wanted it more. The dogs in the street had that for us as we descended once more onto Collins Avenue. All the hoary old clichés. The better team won out on the day. On top of them all, Mayo sorely missed Ronan McGarrity in the middle of the park, where they were duly annihilated, and of the senior players who did tog out, James Nallen and David Heaney were uncharacteristically guilty of prolific errors. Put simply, it was a bad day at the office. It seemed on this night the Dubs’ desire was greater.
It has been a wonderful league campaign – an institution that is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of irrelevance that plagued it in the past – so far for Mayo. From the euphoria of Round One, where the Kingdom finally witnessed a coup d’etat, to the drudgery of the contests with Fermanagh and Cork, the byword was regeneration. John Maughan’s era brought sustained success, but ultimate stumbles at the final hurdle. Mickey Moran’s task is to bring this talented team of gallant volunteers across the finish line. The result in Parnell Park was indeed a setback, but the Connacht Championship is still two months away. What’s more, it’s still all to play for in the NFL. Tyrone won’t be too worried. Then again, neither will Mayo.
As we walked out onto the Malahide Road and turned away from the ground, we were lost in thought. No floodlights guided us to our destination now, but the glow in our souls prevailed even in the wake of this most convincing and upsetting of losses. For over an hour, each of us had belonged to something greater than the sum of our parts, Dub and culchie alike. We were the faithful, concelebrants at an evangelical, ecumenical altar, where fortune favoured the brave, but also shone upon all who showed up. Our lives are so busy, and often so detached from our upbringing and those we cherish, that events such as these are solid gold. It was, as it always is, a privilege to witness these brave warriors do battle for their counties and for nothing else. There is a lesson in there somewhere. Sport enlivens and enriches national culture from the bottom up, from the under-10s kitted out each Saturday in Maypark, Burrishoole, Louisburgh, Portmarnock, to name but a few, through Derval O’Rourke hurdling towards History in Moscow, to the referee’s final whistle in the death-knell of September. It is to be cherished with the intensity the parent feels for the child, because it is ours. It is our heritage.
The West’s Awake. Even in Dublin 5.
