As championship season arrives in Mayo, John Corless, looks at why most dual-players choose Gaelic over soccer when it come to the business end of the season.
The arrival of the GAA club championships is bad news for soccer clubs across the county. Many will lose key players at a time when they need them most, and while it doesn’t affect all clubs, it does have an impact on how the soccer season finishes.
So why will players abandon their soccer pursuits for Gaelic football at this late stage in the soccer season?
There are a number of factors which feed into the decision process.
Many would argue that Gaelic football is a more exciting game to watch and possibly to play, than soccer. It is faster and has more scores. And there can be no argument about attendances – with local GAA club games often pulling in a few thousand supporters. Extended family, neighbours, friends and many, many more people attend GAA games. The roar of the crowd; the club colours; the banter; the hassle parking.
Soccer enthusiasts argue that their game is more technical, despite which, domestically, apart from maybe two or three clubs, it can’t attract more than a handful of people at matches. Because it’s not as end-to-end and doesn’t usually provide as many scores, the excitement level can be somewhat less, despite the technical skill of the players involved.
But elite soccer does attract huge in-person and TV audiences. And herein, lies part of the attendance problem for soccer and its resultant issues at local level.
When Gaelic football is played internationally it is played by the Irish diaspora. The clubs adopt Irish names and whilst some non-first generation Irish people do play the game, the sport has not become an international one, in the true sense of the word. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s just the way it is.
Soccer, athletic, boxing, golf, etc, are true international sports – as witnessed in the Olympics. They are played all over the world by locals; not just the diaspora of the nation where the sport originated.
The elite end of Gaelic football for the past number of years has been the men’s senior championship where Dublin, Kerry, with Mayo and whatever other county was enjoying its moment in the sun at that particular time, have been the cream. This year it is Armagh. In recent years Donegal, Tyrone, Cork and Galway have also featured at the top table.
The registered players of most Mayo GAA and soccer teams, never lived in a period where Mayo were not part of that GAA elite, despite the county not getting their hands on the Sam Maguire Cup. The Green and Red have always been thereabouts during the lifetime of the current crop of players of both sports.
If you play for nearly any of the senior club GAA teams in the county, you are likely to share the dressing room with an elite Gaelic footballer. One who is a national household name; has featured on TV; been ridiculed for Mayo’s inability to bring Sam home, possibly has an All-Star or two, and has a few Connacht medals. If there isn’t one on your team, the chances are that there will be one on the opposing side. If you play in the Mayo soccer leagues, you won’t find corresponding icons in your dressing room. Few if any League of Ireland players are household names. Our national team is enduring a fallow period.
So when the local GAA club send the WhatsApp announcing that the Championship is on, the soccer player, who also plays GAA, (or more accurately, the other way around) will send the thumbs up reply immediately, to announce his concentration on the national game. Bad news for the soccer club needing another win to ensure survival, or looking to get a good start in the Connacht or FAI Junior Cups.
With Gaelic football, players mix with, and sometimes are, the elite that sport has to offer. The top-tier of domestic soccer, is the seventh tier in the hierarchy of the sport. And like in every other county in Ireland, the game is judged against the top tiers. You’ll see a lot more Liverpool or Manchester United jerseys on the streets of Mayo towns that you will any domestic, or indeed, League of Ireland, club.
So when the local GAA club calls, the lads answer, and let their soccer colleagues battle to secure promotion or avoid relegation without them. It’s simply the way it is. To be fair, most of them explain this to their soccer manager at the start of the season, and managers and clubs in general, know who the ‘GAA Lads’ are anyway.
