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You know you’re a heart and soul GAA man when:
By Liam Horan
 1
In your time you played the first round of one year’s under-21 Championship
before the final of the previous year’s competition. This meant
you were overage for under-21 one month and underage again the following
month. And you didn’t see anything unusual about it either.
2. You tell anyone who’ll listen that “it says something,
too, about soccer in this country when the FAI can’t even pay the
Ireland manager themselves, some joke” — and don’t even
stop to think that the GAA have been doing this for years with Supporters’
Clubs, generous benefactors and the like. Even when someone points it
out you remain nonplussed.
3. You are totally in favour of the amateur ethos being preserved even
though your own club hasn’t had an ‘inside’ manager
for almost two decades. And you’ve been the club treasurer for the
last 22 years.
4. Your oldest son stopped seeing a nurse because she admitted on the
third date the only time she was in Croke Park was for a breastfeeding
conference.
5. You’ve stood up while playing a club match to return abuse to
your leading critic on the sideline. Later, you told everyone you regretted
doing it but, in fact, you didn’t. Not one bit. Your only regret
is that you didn’t go over and plank him and quieten him for once
and for all.
6. You’ve gone toe-to-toe with your own brother in training.
7. You remain close friends with the gentleman mentioned in Point 5 above.
8. You’ve no choice, he’s your father.
9. You’ve gone toe-to-toe in training with the gentleman mentioned
in Points 5, 7, and 8 above.
10. In a challenge game you’ve sent-off the gentleman mentioned
in Point 6.
11. You’ve used the phrase: “The hardest crowd to referee
is your own.”
12. You no longer talk to the fellow who sat beside you for five years
in secondary school. You accept some people might find a row over a last-minute
goal in the final of an under-10 blitz to be a trivial matter. But you
just can’t let go.
13. The gentleman mentioned in No. 12 is married to a daughter of the
gentleman mentioned in 5, 7, 8, and 9 above.
14. You still have the video of the time the club chairman appeared on
Quicksilver and even now you feel slightly emotional when he tells Bunny
Carr how he’ll be donating all his winnings to the club. Some people
said Bunny wore a wry smile when the chairman missed a 2p question about
who knocked down Hadrian’s Wall. But, £14.50 was £14.50
back then and you agreed with the symbolic gesture of using that £14.50
to buy the first bag of cement for the new club dressing rooms.
15. Which had to be knocked down 10 years later.
16. And still haven’t been replaced.
17. Due to a row over the best blocks to use. You fought for the six-inch
solid block but others wanted to stick with the cavity.
18. You remain adamant that developments in the block-laying world since
then have proven the wisdom of your judgement.
19. You once took a phonecall from a circus man who asked if they could
set-up on the pitch for a week in October. It had been a dry autumn and
there wasn’t much else going on games-wise so you agreed a fee of
£500 and said yes.
20. You thought the club chairman would be thrilled with the handy money.
21. He wasn’t and he called an emergency meeting of the executive.
22. On the third day you took part in a delegation which visited the circus
man at the field, handed him back the £500 and asked him to leave
inside the hour.
23. You didn’t identify yourself to him as the man who took the
phonecall. But the club chairman never forgave you.
24. The events outlined in Points 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23 above may be the
reason why the club chairman was so strongly in favour of the cavity block
in Points 15, 16, 17 and 18 above.
25. You wanted to propose at last year’s agm that a Women’s
Committee be formed to carry out tasks such as making tea, sandwiches,
flags and bunting. But you know it won’t really wash nowadays and
privately you tell everyone “the world is gone mad with political
correctness”.
26. At last year’s agm you proposed that a Special Projects Committee
be formed.
27. The function of this committee is to carry out key tasks such as making
tea, sandwiches, flags and bunting.
28. It’s chaired by your good wife and the other members are Teresa
Maloney, Margaret Corcoran, Winnie Cummins and Ann McCann.
29. Teresa Maloney and Ann McCann don’t talk.
30. Because of the bad feeling lingering since the events outlined in
Points 15, 16, 17 and particularly 18 above.
31. The members of the Special Projects Committee will all receive a bouquet
of flowers at the club dinner-dance.
32. You’ll wince when the chairman refers to them as the Women’s
Committee at the club dinner-dance.
33. You’ve thrown down the flag, stormed off towards the sideline,
frothing at the mouth, veins bulging on your forehead, while roaring:
“Empire it yerself, so, ref.”
34. You remain good friends with the referee mentioned in Point 33 above
and proposed him for the county senior final a few years back when you
were on the County Board activities committee.
35. You rang the referee mentioned in Points 33 and 34 above straight
after the County Board activities committee meeting to tell him the good
news. You also told him to say nothing about the call and to act surprised
when he got the official call from the county secretary.
36. He said nothing, acted surprised, and made a hames of the county final.
37. Which didn’t surprise you.
n Comments — and more tell-tale signs — to liam@weeklycolumns.ie.
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