Poor Tommy Murphy.
One of the greatest men in GAA history. One of the finest players. A proud Gael.
His memory was disrespected somewhat not by the Tommy Murphy Cup, but by the snide sneers that followed the mere mention of that competition. It was disrespected by how the tournament was treated and how little chance it was given to take off. It was also disrespected by the initial belief that it ever could take off.
Joe Brolly is onto something. His 45-minute chat with Colm Parkinson on The GAA Hour – he told us he only had 20 minutes – was passionate and well-placed for the most part. The GAA is – at least it should be – facing an identity crisis as it finds itself strayed so far down a commercial path with all sorts of deals and handshakes already taken place and so many different ways to venture off course and do your own thing now for any bit of money.
The problem with Brolly and all these people who engage in any of these conversations is that they’re so obsessed with pushing their own ideas – not of values or philosophies or even how the TV deals should be divvied out, but of fundamental practices like how the game is played and what structure the championship should take.
So, when he sits down to talk commercialism in the GAA, it leads to talk of the Tommy Murphy Cup.
And Joe Brolly’s idea to reinvent the Tommy Murphy Cup and to keep the weaker counties competitive is very simple: Bring back the Tommy Murphy Cup.
But replace the name with a more recent GAA legend.
He also wants to play the Tommy Murphy Cup Paidí Ó Sé Cup final before the All-Ireland final, as if the ticket scramble isn’t ridiculous enough as it is. As if they couldn’t sell Croke Park five times over for the All-Ireland final. As if the B final deserves to be played at that time anyway.
But he’s seen first-hand how the Tommy Murphy finalists were treated and, no, it doesn’t sound good enough.
“You’ve got the Super 8s and then you’ve got the Shit 24,” he said on The GAA Hour.
“You guys are shit. You can have a half-ass proposal for a Tommy Murphy Cup, which is embarrassing, and you’ll play the Tommy Murphy final with the crows circling over head at Croke Park at 12 o’clock on the morning of juvenile matches being played later that day in Croke Park.
“I’ve been there for Antrim when they won the Tommy Murphy Cup. You don’t get any privileges, you don’t get any holidays. ‘You guys in Leitrim and Antrim and Wicklow and all the rest of it, you are shit on our arse. Now, Dublin and Mayo? We’ll give you 150 grand for a holiday. You can go to Kuala Lumpur, you can send us selfies and, when you come back from Kuala Lumpur, you can send us selfies of the brand new Audi that you’re driving around’.
“The inequality now in the GAA is an enormous problem. The whole point of the GAA is that, whether you’re from Laois or from Derry or from one of the superpowers, you’re afforded equal respect and you’re part of a shared journey. That’s what we need to get back to.”
The problem is that Brolly and so many other people are taking us to a place where the poor and the weak can and will only ever get poorer and weaker. Thinking Antrim v Wicklow in the Paidí Ó Sé Cup would be given any more credence because you’ve changed the name and cried about it enough doesn’t help.
We already have a tiered structure in the league and the attendances and interest in anything outside of the top flight frankly speaks for itself. It isn’t about how it’s pushed or treated – 5,823 people bothered their arses showing up for a double header of league finals where four counties fought for silverware at Croke Park. 5,823.
Imagine, now, you give Antrim a realistic chance of winning something again – that’s the line that’s used anyway, the one that’s supposed to galvanise a county again. So you put them into Division Four for championship and say, ‘look, you can win that’. Imagine how many people in Antrim – never mind outside of it – are going to give a shit about playing football for the county and imagine how difficult it will be from there to create infectious fever and grow.
All those easy examples we reach for – like Tipperary and Fermanagh’s championship runs, like even Carlow’s extended summer – are far more valuable for a county than competing in a division cut off from the big time.
Ireland will contest in the Nations League this year against countries of similar standard. Nobody is going to give a toss about international football now for the next two years. Games against Germany, the world champions, are what are remembered in folklore, even if we’re only Ireland.
And if the GAA is really about equality – as Brolly says in his interview – it’s about keeping every county as part of the one system. It’s frustrating that there’s a gap in standard but dividing those gaps into tiers will only copper-fasten it.
Talk like this threatens the All-Ireland championship because, put simply, any sort of a tiered structure is no longer an All-Ireland competition.
WATCH: Liverpool BOTTLED the title race 🤬 | Who will win the Premier League?
