Desperately seeking ticket to ride

Dear Most Holy Chairman of the County Board,

I know you are probably inundated with letters from so-called fans now that we have reached the All-Ireland final. Obviously, you don’t know me unless you remember that time I roared “you useless bollix” at you after our ignominious departure from the provincial championship last year. Or unless you’ve traced my IP address in order to discover who’s been posting that stuff about you on message boards. But, look, that’s all in the past now. I need to be in Croke Park and I deserve to be too. Why? Well, let me count the ways.

 

I deserve a ticket because I was the only fella in the pub in February talking up our chances of going to the final. It was shortly after I mocked two die-hards who were heading up the country to some god awful place for some match at a pitch opening. I remember distinctly that just after making fun of their interest at seeing how the new young fellas might fare in their first outing at senior level, I turned around and said: “Those boys are only wasting their time, you lads are only wasting your time and that team is wasting its time.” But that was only having the crack.

I deserve a ticket because I told everybody before the first round we’d see the sky over Croke Park come September. Now, there are some close to me who might tell you I said, “We’ll be watching Sky Sports instead of games in Croke Park this September.” Those fellas are liars. I like a bit of Sky as much as the next man and, made no mistake about it, I will be stopping off in the pub on the way to Croker to watch the United game on the big screen. But to suggest I sneered that we’d be watching the garrison game instead of the county team is just plain wrong.

 

I deserve a ticket because I’ve been going to the matches for years. Well, I’ve been going at least since the corporate market opened up and I started getting the freebies off my buddy who’s high up in Guinness. And then that guy who worked in the dodgy bank that dare not speak its name got that corporate box in Croker. I never tasted canapes like that before or since. That’s got to be ten years or more I’m going to these matches. And I haven’t missed one apart from the days when it was raining, when the pundits reckoned we didn’t have a chance or when the fixtures clashed with the Irish Open golf.

 

I deserve a ticket because I’ve always supported the games in the county. My track record at club level speaks for itself. I bought a raffle ticket that time the club were running the draw for the Mitsubishi Pajero. I went to several end of year dances back when I was going out with your wan whose father was on the committee. I bought an ad in the programme for the pitch opening and that was at a time when the club needed the money. That was 2002 or 2003 and fifty quid wasn’t easy to come by then I can tell you. And did I ask for anything in return? No, I did not. Until now.

 

I deserve a ticket because I went to school with several lads who played for the county. Sure I used to take the mickey out of them all when they were heading out training after school in the driving rain and the biting wind. I used to knock great fun out of their inability to come out on the lash with the rest of us because they were always either training or preparing for some game or other. That was character-building stuff. Do you think they’d have made it where they are today without the likes of me helping them find inner reserves of strength? I don’t think so.

I deserve a ticket because I go to all the big events. I never miss a rugby match as long as the media convince me it’s an important one or if it’s on somewhere good like Paris or the south of France. I used to go to all the soccer internationals back when that was the done thing. Oh yeah, I was part of Jackie’s Army and all that. There are some around here who’d tell you that it’s not a sporting bandwagon unless I’m on it so the county board would want to think of that when they consider my application. It’s not a serious to-do unless I’m there tweeting pictures of myself.

I deserve a ticket because I’ve invested at least 150 euros in replica shirts over the past two decades. I’ve bought at least one every time we’ve reached an All-Ireland final. If nobody believes me they can come around to the house and look at the back of the wardrobe where all of them have remained in a heap gathering dust since I returned in a drunken state those Sunday nights. Not to mention I’ll buy another one this year if I get a ticket because, well, the years haven’t been kind, and the old shirts will never stretch down over the swelling belly at this point.

I deserve a ticket because I know a lot about the game. I know that “an effing Brolly” is not a golf umbrella you left behind in a pub but a reference to some fella from up north who is sort of the Gaelic football version of George Hook and Alan Hansen. I know that the Clare roar is not the delighted sound every tourist makes when leaving that godforsaken county, it’s a shriek their fans emit when they make their twice in a lifetime trip to Croker.

I know you’ll be hearing from a lot of bluffers and spoofers in the coming weeks and I don’t envy you trying to sort out the worthy causes from the chancers but two upper Hogan will do the job.

Yours in Sport,

The county’s biggest fan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desperately seeking ticket to ride

Dear Most Holy Chairman of the County Board,

I know you are probably inundated with letters from so-called fans now that we have reached the All-Ireland final. Obviously, you don’t know me unless you remember that time I roared “you useless bollix” at you after our ignominious departure from the provincial championship last year. Or unless you’ve traced my IP address in order to discover who’s been posting that stuff about you on message boards. But, look, that’s all in the past now. I need to be in Croke Park and I deserve to be too. Why? Well, let me count the ways.

 

I deserve a ticket because I was the only fella in the pub in February talking up our chances of going to the final. It was shortly after I mocked two die-hards who were heading up the country to some god awful place for some match at a pitch opening. I remember distinctly that just after making fun of their interest at seeing how the new young fellas might fare in their first outing at senior level, I turned around and said: “Those boys are only wasting their time, you lads are only wasting your time and that team is wasting its time.” But that was only having the crack.

I deserve a ticket because I told everybody before the first round we’d see the sky over Croke Park come September. Now, there are some close to me who might tell you I said, “We’ll be watching Sky Sports instead of games in Croke Park this September.” Those fellas are liars. I like a bit of Sky as much as the next man and, made no mistake about it, I will be stopping off in the pub on the way to Croker to watch the United game on the big screen. But to suggest I sneered that we’d be watching the garrison game instead of the county team is just plain wrong.

 

I deserve a ticket because I’ve been going to the matches for years. Well, I’ve been going at least since the corporate market opened up and I started getting the freebies off my buddy who’s high up in Guinness. And then that guy who worked in the dodgy bank that dare not speak its name got that corporate box in Croker. I never tasted canapes like that before or since. That’s got to be ten years or more I’m going to these matches. And I haven’t missed one apart from the days when it was raining, when the pundits reckoned we didn’t have a chance or when the fixtures clashed with the Irish Open golf.

 

I deserve a ticket because I’ve always supported the games in the county. My track record at club level speaks for itself. I bought a raffle ticket that time the club were running the draw for the Mitsubishi Pajero. I went to several end of year dances back when I was going out with your wan whose father was on the committee. I bought an ad in the programme for the pitch opening and that was at a time when the club needed the money. That was 2002 or 2003 and fifty quid wasn’t easy to come by then I can tell you. And did I ask for anything in return? No, I did not. Until now.

 

I deserve a ticket because I went to school with several lads who played for the county. Sure I used to take the mickey out of them all when they were heading out training after school in the driving rain and the biting wind. I used to knock great fun out of their inability to come out on the lash with the rest of us because they were always either training or preparing for some game or other. That was character-building stuff. Do you think they’d have made it where they are today without the likes of me helping them find inner reserves of strength? I don’t think so.

I deserve a ticket because I go to all the big events. I never miss a rugby match as long as the media convince me it’s an important one or if it’s on somewhere good like Paris or the south of France. I used to go to all the soccer internationals back when that was the done thing. Oh yeah, I was part of Jackie’s Army and all that. There are some around here who’d tell you that it’s not a sporting bandwagon unless I’m on it so the county board would want to think of that when they consider my application. It’s not a serious to-do unless I’m there tweeting pictures of myself.

I deserve a ticket because I’ve invested at least 150 euros in replica shirts over the past two decades. I’ve bought at least one every time we’ve reached an All-Ireland final. If nobody believes me they can come around to the house and look at the back of the wardrobe where all of them have remained in a heap gathering dust since I returned in a drunken state those Sunday nights. Not to mention I’ll buy another one this year if I get a ticket because, well, the years haven’t been kind, and the old shirts will never stretch down over the swelling belly at this point.

I deserve a ticket because I know a lot about the game. I know that “an effing Brolly” is not a golf umbrella you left behind in a pub but a reference to some fella from up north who is sort of the Gaelic football version of George Hook and Alan Hansen. I know that the Clare roar is not the delighted sound every tourist makes when leaving that godforsaken county, it’s a shriek their fans emit when they make their twice in a lifetime trip to Croker.

I know you’ll be hearing from a lot of bluffers and spoofers in the coming weeks and I don’t envy you trying to sort out the worthy causes from the chancers but two upper Hogan will do the job.

Yours in Sport,

The county’s biggest fan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cosmos still the great New York story

During the most famous season in its history, the New York Cosmos was owned by Steve Ross, the ebullient and controversial chief executive of Warner Brothers. He didn’t know much about soccer but he knew the realities of the box-office. When he saw FranzBeckenbauer playing at the back on his debut that memorable summer of 1977, he phoned down to the dug-out to bawl out the manager with the immortal advice: “Get the Kraut into midfield! We’re not paying him all that money to play deefence!”  

 

Ross was a hands-on owner who had to be strapped into his seat in the upper deck of Giants Stadium during matches for fear he’d fall over the side with excitement. After one run of poor performances that year, he took the corporate helicopter from Manhattan out to New Jersey one morning, landed on the field in the middle of a training session and warned every player, including Beckenbauer and Pele, that their jobs were on the line.

 

At Hofstra University Stadium on Long Island next Saturday night, the reborn New York Cosmos take on the Fort Lauderdale Strikers in their first competitive game in 29 years. Anecdotes like those above explain why the passage of almost three decades without playing has done little to diminish the legend of the club. They remain one of the most storied outfits in American sports and if their return to the North American Soccer League (a level below Major League Soccer) has prompted an outbreak of unashamed nostalgia, it’s also been a rather protracted affair.

When an English consortium including Terry Byrne, best-known as David Beckham’s business manager bought the Cosmos name back in 2009, it was presumed a move to MLS was imminent, perhaps even with the then Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder on board in some on or off-field capacity. In a blaze of publicity, Eric Cantona was hired as director of football, Umbro began marketing a range of retro shirts from the club’s 1970s’ pomp that were sold in men’s clothes shops, and Pele was made honorary president. Although Cantona remains involved in a rather tangential capacity as a loosely-defined ambassador, the presence of Pele in the ground next Saturday will remind everybody once more of the club’s unique heritage.

During the Cosmos' lengthy courtship of Pele in the mid-1970s, it became apparent that the Brazilian government might actually refuse to allow the country's most prized national asset to leave. Knowing that sort of political intransigence had prevented the biggest clubs in Italy, Spain and Portugal from signing the player from Santos before, the Cosmos decided to try a different tack. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (a soccer nut) accompanied one of the club's delegations to Brazil where the central thrust of his rather blunt contribution to the debate was as follows: "Listen, America has done so much for Brazil that we'd now like you to loan us Pele."

The biggest signing of the new edition arrived in a rather more straightforward fashion. Although the club has largely eschewed the old-time route of importing expensive past-it marquee names from other countries, an exception was made for Marcos Senna, the Brazilian midfielder who played such a pivotal role in Spain’s 2008 European Championship win. He’ll anchor a squad featuring half a dozen players from the surrounding area that will be managed by Giovanni Savarese, a New Yorker and a former MLS stalwart.

“We know that we must earn every bit of respect and credibility that is afforded to us in the highly competitive sporting landscape that operates across this city,” said Seamus O’Brien, the Cosmos chairman who has driven what he calls this “reboot” since buying out the English consortium in 2011. “I am happy for us to be judged, not by words but by our actions and deeds. Step by step, we have begun that journey, building a foundation which I hope will ensure that when we reach the top again, and we will, we’ll be able to stay there long past my lifetime.”

With Saudi Arabia’s Sela Sport as co-owners, the Cosmos has more than just money going for it. Firstly, the kids who lived through the glory years of Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia and Beckenbauer (when for they drew an average of 40,000 plus several seasons), are all parents now. They were the first generation in America to grow up with pro soccer on the menu and, lately, they’ve been dusting off the Pele lunchboxes from their schooldays to prove their credentials. Secondly, opting to base themselves on Long Island, where they hope to build a bespoke 25,000 seater stadium at Belmont Park racecourse, gives them a population of 8m and the largest schoolboys’ league in the world to tap into.

While the previous owners opted to garner international headlines by putting together a team of all-stars, including Robbie Keane, to play at Paul Scholes’ testimonial in 2011, the new bosses are all about tending the grassroots and building for the long-term, with moving into MLS the eventual goal. Cosmos’ players and officials have been visible at events in the island’s soccer community for the best part of a year. A much more organic approach, it’s befitting an outfit that in its previous incarnation went from desperately giving away tickets free with Burger King Whoppers to having Mick Jagger, Barbara Streisand and Muhammad Ali turning up to watch them play.

“The beautiful and the near-beautiful dropped out of the skies in corporate helicopters, while down below Jersey housewives in pink polyester suits found themselves in traffic jams getting to the games,” wrote Shep Messing, the Cosmos’ Harvard-educated goalkeeper during the glory years.  ‘So did pin-striped stockbrokers, large Ukrainian families, college students, bored baseball fans, the Governor of New York and the President’s son. Those of us who were there in the beginning, the mud-caked crazies who played for food-stamps and the sheer fun of it, call it a miracle.”

 

Messing is back in the Cosmos fold as a television announcer today, hoping to see the water turned into wine all over again.

 

 

(first published in the Irish Mail on Sunday, July 28^th  2013)

 

Cosmos still the great New York story

During the most famous season in its history, the New York Cosmos was owned by Steve Ross, the ebullient and controversial chief executive of Warner Brothers. He didn’t know much about soccer but he knew the realities of the box-office. When he saw Franz Beckenbauer playing at the back on his debut that memorable summer of 1977, he phoned down to the dug-out to bawl out the manager with the immortal advice: “Get the Kraut into midfield! We’re not paying him all that money to play deefence!”  

 

Ross was a hands-on owner who had to be strapped into his seat in the upper deck of Giants Stadium during matches for fear he’d fall over the side with excitement. After one run of poor performances that year, he took the corporate helicopter from Manhattan out to New Jersey one morning, landed on the field in the middle of a training session and warned every player, including Beckenbauer and Pele, that their jobs were on the line.

 

At Hofstra University Stadium on Long Island next Saturday night, the reborn New York Cosmos take on the Fort Lauderdale Strikers in their first competitive game in 29 years. Anecdotes like those above explain why the passage of almost three decades without playing has done little to diminish the legend of the club. They remain one of the most storied outfits in American sports and if their return to the North American Soccer League (a level below Major League Soccer) has prompted an outbreak of unashamed nostalgia, it’s also been a rather protracted affair.

When an English consortium including Terry Byrne, best-known as David Beckham’s business manager bought the Cosmos name back in 2009, it was presumed a move to MLS was imminent, perhaps even with the then Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder on board in some on or off-field capacity. In a blaze of publicity, Eric Cantona was hired as director of football, Umbro began marketing a range of retro shirts from the club’s 1970s’ pomp that were sold in men’s clothes shops, and Pele was made honorary president. Although Cantona remains involved in a rather tangential capacity as a loosely-defined ambassador, the presence of Pele in the ground next Saturday will remind everybody once more of the club’s unique heritage.

During the Cosmos' lengthy courtship of Pele in the mid-1970s, it became apparent that the Brazilian government might actually refuse to allow the country's most prized national asset to leave. Knowing that sort of political intransigence had prevented the biggest clubs in Italy, Spain and Portugal from signing the player from Santos before, the Cosmos decided to try a different tack. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (a soccer nut) accompanied one of the club's delegations to Brazil where the central thrust of his rather blunt contribution to the debate was as follows: "Listen, America has done so much for Brazil that we'd now like you to loan us Pele."

The biggest signing of the new edition arrived in a rather more straightforward fashion. Although the club has largely eschewed the old-time route of importing expensive past-it marquee names from other countries, an exception was made for Marcos Senna, the Brazilian midfielder who played such a pivotal role in Spain’s 2008 European Championship win. He’ll anchor a squad featuring half a dozen players from the surrounding area that will be managed by Giovanni Savarese, a New Yorker and a former MLS stalwart.

“We know that we must earn every bit of respect and credibility that is afforded to us in the highly competitive sporting landscape that operates across this city,” said Seamus O’Brien, the Cosmos chairman who has driven what he calls this “reboot” since buying out the English consortium in 2011. “I am happy for us to be judged, not by words but by our actions and deeds. Step by step, we have begun that journey, building a foundation which I hope will ensure that when we reach the top again, and we will, we’ll be able to stay there long past my lifetime.”

With Saudi Arabia’s Sela Sport as co-owners, the Cosmos has more than just money going for it. Firstly, the kids who lived through the glory years of Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia and Beckenbauer (when for they drew an average of 40,000 plus several seasons), are all parents now. They were the first generation in America to grow up with pro soccer on the menu and, lately, they’ve been dusting off the Pele lunchboxes from their schooldays to prove their credentials. Secondly, opting to base themselves on Long Island, where they hope to build a bespoke 25,000 seater stadium at Belmont Park racecourse, gives them a population of 8m and the largest schoolboys’ league in the world to tap into.

While the previous owners opted to garner international headlines by putting together a team of all-stars, including Robbie Keane, to play at Paul Scholes’ testimonial in 2011, the new bosses are all about tending the grassroots and building for the long-term, with moving into MLS the eventual goal. Cosmos’ players and officials have been visible at events in the island’s soccer community for the best part of a year. A much more organic approach, it’s befitting an outfit that in its previous incarnation went from desperately giving away tickets free with Burger King Whoppers to having Mick Jagger, Barbara Streisand and Muhammad Ali turning up to watch them play.

“The beautiful and the near-beautiful dropped out of the skies in corporate helicopters, while down below Jersey housewives in pink polyester suits found themselves in traffic jams getting to the games,” wrote Shep Messing, the Cosmos’ Harvard-educated goalkeeper during the glory years.  ‘So did pin-striped stockbrokers, large Ukrainian families, college students, bored baseball fans, the Governor of New York and the President’s son. Those of us who were there in the beginning, the mud-caked crazies who played for food-stamps and the sheer fun of it, call it a miracle.”

 

Messing is back in the Cosmos fold as a television announcer today, hoping to see the water turned into wine all over again.

 

 

(first published in the Irish Mail on Sunday, July 28^th  2013)

 

The official guide to being a GAA snob

We’ve all met the GAA snob on our travels. An insufferable character at the best of times, here is your eight-point guide to the cardinal rules of being a GAA snob.

One: You’ve always seen a better game. No matter how pulsating the clash you’ve just witnessed has been, no matter how epic the thrilling encounter, you must always be able to play your trump card by mentioning a match you witnessed that was superior in some way. If you have to go as far down the food chain as an Under-14 B league game to find something to reference, so be it. The idea is to make sure that everybody else sitting around the table basking in the glory of what they’ve just witnessed in person should lose a little of their after-glow when they hear you wax lyrical about an obscure fixture. “If you thought this was special, wait til I tell you about…”

Two: You knew he was good before anyone else. This is the card to play on days when a new star announces himself on the national stage. While everybody else is purring about his wondrous performance, you must establish your credentials by pointing out that you first glimpsed his potential years before most people had even heard of him. Again, the farther back you can go to find this evidence the better. A street league match in which the guy scored four goals is obviously the perfect play here but any off-Broadway game in which you saw him before he hit the mainstream also works. “There weren’t ten people there to see him play that dirty, wet morning I can tell you…”

Three: You make sure to get at least one away league game involving your county every year. This is an absolutely vital part of being snobbish and looking down your nose at your fellow travellers. It will allow you to exert moral superiority over all others during the championship. The farther away you travelled for that particular game and the worse the winter weather you endured getting there the better. Never mind how insignificant the league encounter was, the important thing is that you can name-drop a couple of the nearly men who played that day. This will make the casual fans at your table on a balmy summer afternoon get all sheepish and easily impressed. “It was the weekend of the bad ice but sure I drove anyway….”

Four: You must exaggerate your own playing prowess. You can go one of two ways with this. You can claim you were very good. Don’t go too far and say you were a county minor or anything. That’s too easy to disprove in the Internet age. You can mention the county medal you won at U-16 without bringing up the fact you were number 25 on a panel of 25, a small boast to separate you from the non-playing arrivistes. Alternatively, you can exaggerate how bad you were. Tell them you couldn’t hurl snow off a rope despite all the years training you put in. This makes you sound like a purist, a devotee of the game that broke your heart. “I loved the sport much more than it ever loved me…”

Five: You must take the contrarian position in every argument. Whatever the consensus view is, you voice the opposite opinion. Always and loudly. If the rest are saying before the match your team will win handy, you’ll vouchsafe it’ll be much harder than everybody expects. If they are saying after the match that your county will come through the qualifiers easily enough, you adopt your gloomiest face and announce, “We’ll be down for years yet.” If somebody claims a player looked unfit out there, you testify that you have it on good authority he’s the fittest man on the panel and his Yo-Yo test scores are off the chart. “I’m not saying you’re wrong but let me tell you…”

Six: You had to go to greater lengths than anybody else to get to this game. And you spend hours telling everybody you meet about the incredible odyssey you embarked upon to make it to the pub two hours before throw-in to sip pints and pontificate. Feel free to bore everybody to death with tales of the planes, boats and trains you had to take to get there. If you can pepper your yarn with travel near-misses and the anger of the missus, that should do the trick too. “I said to the wife, ‘you think I’m missing a championship match for our tenth anniversary holiday’…”

Seven: You look down on whichever code your county is weaker at. To sound convincing, you must denounce it at every opportunity. By all means, feel free to blame all the county’s problems in your favoured code on the board giving too much time and money to the other. If you are a hurling snob, make sure to trot out Christy Ring’s line about football being a game for bad hurlers. If you are a football snob (they do exist, I swear), point out that hurling isn’t even a national game, it’s more of a regional delicacy. “I’ve said it for years that game has this county ruined…”

Eight: You must claim a close association with a member of the panel or the backroom team. It doesn’t matter if the closest you come to knowing an actual player is that you work in the same building as the sub goalkeeper and nod at him in the corridor occasionally. The important thing is to give off the air of somebody with genuine inside knowledge of goings-on in the camp. Who’s in? Who’s out?  Nobody will know that your “knowledge” is really just a few Internet rumours you’ve cobbled together from the more hardcore message boards, at least not if you deliver them in a convincing enough tone. “Come ‘ere til I tell you what I heard from somebody who shouldn’t have even been speaking to me about this…”

The official guide to being a GAA snob

We’ve all met the GAA snob on our travels. An insufferable character at the best of times, here is your eight-point guide to the cardinal rules of being a GAA snob.

One: You’ve always seen a better game. No matter how pulsating the clash you’ve just witnessed has been, no matter how epic the thrilling encounter, you must always be able to play your trump card by mentioning a match you witnessed that was superior in some way. If you have to go as far down the food chain as an Under-14 B league game to find something to reference, so be it. The idea is to make sure that everybody else sitting around the table basking in the glory of what they’ve just witnessed in person should lose a little of their after-glow when they hear you wax lyrical about an obscure fixture. “If you thought this was special, wait til I tell you about…”

Two: You knew he was good before anyone else. This is the card to play on days when a new star announces himself on the national stage. While everybody else is purring about his wondrous performance, you must establish your credentials by pointing out that you first glimpsed his potential years before most people had even heard of him. Again, the farther back you can go to find this evidence the better. A street league match in which the guy scored four goals is obviously the perfect play here but any off-Broadway game in which you saw him before he hit the mainstream also works. “There weren’t ten people there to see him play that dirty, wet morning I can tell you…”

Three: You make sure to get at least one away league game involving your county every year. This is an absolutely vital part of being snobbish and looking down your nose at your fellow travellers. It will allow you to exert moral superiority over all others during the championship. The farther away you travelled for that particular game and the worse the winter weather you endured getting there the better. Never mind how insignificant the league encounter was, the important thing is that you can name-drop a couple of the nearly men who played that day. This will make the casual fans at your table on a balmy summer afternoon get all sheepish and easily impressed. “It was the weekend of the bad ice but sure I drove anyway….”

Four: You must exaggerate your own playing prowess. You can go one of two ways with this. You can claim you were very good. Don’t go too far and say you were a county minor or anything. That’s too easy to disprove in the Internet age. You can mention the county medal you won at U-16 without bringing up the fact you were number 25 on a panel of 25, a small boast to separate you from the non-playing arrivistes. Alternatively, you can exaggerate how bad you were. Tell them you couldn’t hurl snow off a rope despite all the years training you put in. This makes you sound like a purist, a devotee of the game that broke your heart. “I loved the sport much more than it ever loved me…”

Five: You must take the contrarian position in every argument. Whatever the consensus view is, you voice the opposite opinion. Always and loudly. If the rest are saying before the match your team will win handy, you’ll vouchsafe it’ll be much harder than everybody expects. If they are saying after the match that your county will come through the qualifiers easily enough, you adopt your gloomiest face and announce, “We’ll be down for years yet.” If somebody claims a player looked unfit out there, you testify that you have it on good authority he’s the fittest man on the panel and his Yo-Yo test scores are off the chart. “I’m not saying you’re wrong but let me tell you…”

Six: You had to go to greater lengths than anybody else to get to this game. And you spend hours telling everybody you meet about the incredible odyssey you embarked upon to make it to the pub two hours before throw-in to sip pints and pontificate. Feel free to bore everybody to death with tales of the planes, boats and trains you had to take to get there. If you can pepper your yarn with travel near-misses and the anger of the missus, that should do the trick too. “I said to the wife, ‘you think I’m missing a championship match for our tenth anniversary holiday’…”

Seven: You look down on whichever code your county is weaker at. To sound convincing, you must denounce it at every opportunity. By all means, feel free to blame all the county’s problems in your favoured code on the board giving too much time and money to the other. If you are a hurling snob, make sure to trot out Christy Ring’s line about football being a game for bad hurlers. If you are a football snob (they do exist, I swear), point out that hurling isn’t even a national game, it’s more of a regional delicacy. “I’ve said it for years that game has this county ruined…”

Eight: You must claim a close association with a member of the panel or the backroom team. It doesn’t matter if the closest you come to knowing an actual player is that you work in the same building as the sub goalkeeper and nod at him in the corridor occasionally. The important thing is to give off the air of somebody with genuine inside knowledge of goings-on in the camp. Who’s in? Who’s out?  Nobody will know that your “knowledge” is really just a few Internet rumours you’ve cobbled together from the more hardcore message boards, at least not if you deliver them in a convincing enough tone. “Come ‘ere til I tell you what I heard from somebody who shouldn’t have even been speaking to me about this…”

The GAA could sing a Turkish protest song

When I first moved to America, I ended up playing junior soccer with a team made up almost exclusively of Turks that was called New York Besiktas. We wore the black and white stripes of the Istanbul club, we had the crest containing the crescent of Islam over our hearts. During that hugely entertaining season, I learned that the Turks had a near-monopoly on the petrol stations of Long Island, loved to argue with each other at half-time, and, if you were wearing the colours of Besiktas, you had to despise their hated crosstown rivals Galatasaray and Fenerbache.

That much came to mind over the past few weeks as I watched the television news scenes of civil unrest from Turkey. Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the whole brouhaha about Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s apparent desire to make the country less secular and more religiously conservative is the galvanizing effect it has had on the soccer clubs. Witness social media spreading a remarkable photograph of three Istanbul fans wearing Besiktas, Galatasaray and Fenerbache shirts while marching together, their arms entwined beneath a flag that read: "Tayyip do you know Istanbul United? Since 31 May 2013."

Imagine the most rabid Celtic and Rangers fans coming together, co-ordinating a march to demand Scottish independence and you start to picture how seismic and impactful this stuff has been on Turkey. Ordinarily, these supporters despise each other and very often, way too often in fact, clashes between their clubs, result in violence, hooliganism and murder. They are united now though because they see that something more important than sporting bragging rights over local rivals is at stake. This is not about goals scored or titles won, it’s about the future direction of the country they love.

Of course, we’ve been here before in recent years. During the Egyptian uprising in 2011, soccer fans were credited with being the most organised and coherent protesters when the people started taking to the streets to try to oust President Mubarak. In particular, the fans of Al Ahly (which translates as The National), a club formed a century earlier to help give students a voice against the British colonial rulers, were prominent on the barricades and in the pulling together of the various strands of the movement.

“The involvement of organized soccer fans in Egypt’s anti-government protests constitutes every Arab government’s worst nightmare,” wrote James Dorsey, an expert on the Middle East. “Soccer, alongside Islam, offers a rare platform in the Middle East, a region populated by authoritarian regimes that control all public spaces, for the venting of pent-up anger and frustration.”

While the role of soccer in the revolution in Egypt was overshadowed by a riot at a match in Port Said where 73 died, the importance of sport as a vehicle for protest hasn’t been diminished any on the world stage. In the build-up to last week’s elections in Iran, soccer clubs featured again and again in dispatches. Some candidates promised to free teams from government control, others sponsored the teams in an effort to win votes. All the while, the rulers worried that Iran clinching World Cup qualification might yield celebrations that would become become an occasion for protest against the government.

All of this is relevant because perhaps the most shameful aspect of recent Irish history has been the public’s rather stoic acceptance of the bondholder bail out and other fiscal atrocities committed by those with their hands on the reins of power. I understand there is no great protest culture in Ireland but, from the outside looking in, it seems astonishing that more people were not moved to take to the streets in greater numbers to vent their rage and demand action.

To this end, I look at the stuff going on in Turkey and Egypt and I realise we have the very vehicle for an Irish protest movement right under our noses. We have the sporting organisation that unites more people than any other. We have the GAA. By most estimates one in four people are members of a GAA club. There is one, usually with a clubhouse and meeting rooms, in every parish in the 26 counties. The GAA has the power and the infrastructure already in place to demand and to effect real change. It has the power to move mountains.

That it has never flexed this muscle yet isn’t the point. It could and maybe, as generations of Irish children have been sold down the river for the bondholders, it should. There’s a great irony here too. From what I can see, the longest and most sustained protest against the bondholders has come from Ballyhea, a town many of us instantly associate with hurling. Moreover, one of the key figures in that weekly and very noble tilt at the windmill is the Irish Examiner sports journalist Diarmuid O’Flynn.

In the interests of full disclosure, I don’t know Diarmuid O’Flynn. I spoke to him on the phone once many, many years ago. But here’s what I do know. Him and his ilk have done the country some service with their weekly effort and they have also offered an example. All those people sitting around in pubs, whingeing about the austerity measures and the increased levies and the Anglo tapes, need to get off their arses too to help the country get out from under these punitive conditions. And the GAA could have a role to play in this.

The GAA can provide a nationwide apparatus and a formal structure to any protest movement. It also has the social and moral weight to force the government to act. To do so all it needs is to stand up, speak up and show the authorities just how many people come under the GAA banner. Picture Kilkenny, Cork, Dublin and Donegal players heading up a million man march through the streets of Dublin the day before an All-Ireland final. Some might think that sounds ludicrous. Not more ludicrous than the idea of Istanbul’s three major clubs uniting under one flag to protest a prime minister.