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Tyrone and Dublin start the 2009 league. James Crombie/INPHO

Does the GAA care about the league? Their failure to promote it suggests not

16 years since a full house game in Croke Park launched the leagues, the GAA now seem blatantly ashamed of a competition ‘celebrating’ a centenary this year.

YOU GO MOSEYING for a half-remembered story, back in the depths of January 2009 and you stumble upon the great Culture War of its time.

The battle lines were drawn either side of the opening fixture of that year’s national football league. The context was that it was the 125th anniversary of the founding of the GAA.

This brought a measure of fanfare. A week before, The Late Late Show even had a special episode that featured lengthy explorations of the societal impact of the GAA upon communities, the diaspora, the economic impact across parishes, villages, towns and cities, through discussion with venerable GAA figures.

Only joking! They did a quick recce of their rolodex and brought in those died in the wool GAA characters Brush Shiels, Bertie Ahern, and Eamonn Dunphy.

From plumbing such depths of general cruddiness, it was left to the GAA to pull up their own drawers. Kicking up dust and riding into the picture at this point was one Jarlath Burns, of Silverbridge Harps in Armagh.

At the time, he was heading up a Games Presentation committee. They came up with the idea of a Monster Game to launch the league, and the year to follow with various initiatives such as Lá na gClub and so on and so forth.

The idea was hatched. Tyrone and Dublin would fill Croke Park. There would be pageantry, music blaring and the whole thing would feel like a Syd Barrett fever dream were you could touch the music notes and hear colours. A bit spacey.

There would be fireworks. Half a million snots spent on them, just to round it up.

Now, Tyrone and Dublin needed to be in the same division, of course. And in 2008 this wasn’t a certainty as Dublin scraped their way up to promotion from Division 2. Tyrone finished fourth from bottom in Division 1.

Then, they needed Tyrone to go well in the championship. The night they were beaten in an Ulster championship replay match in Newry by Down, Burns was singing ‘Sweet Caroline’ at a Neil Diamond concert in Croke Park. His heart sank at the text on his phone. Surely if Tyrone could not beat Down, they were at nothing.

jarlath-burns Jarlath Burns launches the programme of events for the 2009 season. Donall Farmer / INPHO Donall Farmer / INPHO / INPHO

Tyrone recovered to win the All-Ireland, recalling Stephen O’Neill along the way – who actually showed himself to be the star turn of that opening league game.

Now, not everyone was behind this initiative. Back then, the Ulster GAA weekly, ‘Gaelic Life’ had Burns as a columnist, and obviously he was getting very excited about the project, in person and in print.

In the other corner, was Joe Brolly, voice of the downtrodden proletariat. The nation’s consciousness.

A fortnight out from the event, Brolly loaded up his bullets and fired indiscriminately.

The half-a-mill figure got his goat. He cited Imelda Marcos and her taste in flashy shoes and spending months at a time in the Paris Ritz while the people of the Philipines starved.

Understated stuff, like.

‘Alongside the sickening commercial back-slapping,’ it continued, ‘Croke Park now uses a language that New Labour would be proud of,’ taking aim at the phrase that the bill for the fireworks would be, ahem, ‘cost-neutral.’

Brolly peaked with the line, ‘We do not need a fireworks display to tell us we are great. Who are we trying to impress – boys from Ardboe? We already know the importance of the GAA and its values.

‘Wasting €500,000 in this way is a frivolity and a disgrace.’

Burns’ column had a different perspective, as he got straight into things in the intro.

‘Saturday night made us all very proud to be members of Cumann Luthchleas Gael. That last seventeen minutes of inspiration took a full year to plan; a year filled with endless meetings, numerous protocols, enough health and safety certificates to paper the stadium and lots of sleepless night. But worth it all.’

Later, he returned fire.

And the begrudgers. Boy did the come out with populist, uninformed gibberish. In Ireland if you plan anything imaginative, creative, lateral or just slightly different, you just have to factor in the begrudgery.’

I’m sorry.

That’s too much.

All you can hear is two nordie voices flinging insults at each other. While I am no doubt more used to it, I must concede, that’s all I can hear too.

Let’s have a palette cleanser.

Let’s think about the night itself.

Tyrone and Dublin came sprinting out the tunnels, draped in vintage kits specially made for the night, laces around the collars, big baggy togs, socks with hoops. Flat caps for players had been briefly considered until they conceded it might take things a little too far.

The game was sensational. Bernard Brogan hit 1-5, and Stephen O’Neill bent geometry to his will with 0-8. Tyrone won 1-18 to 1-16 and then the lightshow started.

A full house in Croke Park meant that despite the scoffing, the event was indeed ‘cost-neutral’. And you wouldn’t have had the full house without the promise of something special.

pre-match-entertainment Pre match entertainment. Donall Farmer / INPHO Donall Farmer / INPHO / INPHO

The point is this. No matter what Joe and Jarlath were shouting at each other or the stresses involved, the GAA built it up and the people came. Hype works. Frank Warren. Don King. The GAA was the chat at watercooler, bar counter, shop floor and urinals for that weekend and the week after.

Wind the clock on 16 years.

It might be argued that Gaelic football reached its high point somewhere in the mid to late 2000s. From the start of the following decade, the sport has suffered. Supporters now go along to watch games and still feel the old tingle in the build-up and parades and anthems, before the inevitable deflation.

Widespread addiction to smart phones leaves spectators scrolling for stimulation while long periods of nothingness takes place in front of them.

In order to arrest that, the GAA established the Football Review Committee. They brought in radical changes.

Only, the GAA got rid of the usual pre-season competitions where the rule changes could have entered into the popular imagination.

From a spectator point of view, given there had been no intercounty football since the All-Ireland final on 28 July, there was a genuine hunger for football.

And in Tyrone, every primary schoolchild came home the week before their league opener against Derry with a 12-page fanzine called the ‘Red Hand Fan’.

Inside were player profiles, a full fixtures list for football, hurling, ladies’ football and camogie, along with vouchers for half-time draws.

ryan-mcmenamin-and-davd-henry Tyrone captain Ryan McMenamin and Dublin captain David Henry waiting on the coin toss. Donall Farmer / INPHO Donall Farmer / INPHO / INPHO

There were also addresses from the managers of the senior football and hurling teams.

‘On behalf of the players and backroom team we would love to see as many families as possible there to support us. The boys always play best when they hear the roar from the stand as everybody cheers on the Tyrone team….’ Malachy O’Rourke wrote, emotionally blackmailing every family in Tyrone with pester power not seen since the last time you were faced with a wall of chocolate at the tills of your local shop.

Despite those valiant and worthwhile efforts, Tyrone under the new and exciting management of O’Rourke, and Derry, a side who have won two out of the last three Ulster titles, had a crowd of just 6,700 in Healy Park last Saturday night.

This figure is dismal.

And charging children under 16 years of age into Division 1 and Division 2 league games is, if you’ll pardon the expression, a dick move.

The day before – THE DAY BEFORE – the leagues began, a league launch and press event was held.

Before you give the GAA even a smidgen of credit for this, it was sorted and hosted through a third-party, and that’s how it has been for several years.

Because of Storm Éowyn, the format was changed to a few online Zoom interviews, which creates the atmosphere of a waiting room for a suburban dentist.

That’s all there was. With the Six Nations gearing up and rugby smothering every available crevice of sports coverage, the GAA did absolutely nothing to publicise the start of their most comprehensive competition.

In 2025, the National Leagues are 100 years old. Taken as pure footballing contests, it is the best competitions that the GAA has.

So why does the GAA hate the leagues?

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