The ticket raffle, the plot twist and the quest for offence

Cavanman's Diary

Asked once about whether his parents were religious, the great Leitrim writer John McGahern commented wryly: “I think my mother was very spiritual. My father was very outwardly religious.”

McGahern’s father, a native of Gowna, was the inspiration for much of his best writing. He was, his son said, into the “theatrics of religion” above anything else, making sure to sit at the front of the chapel where he would be seen, delivering the Rosary with an ostentatious flourish.

Those quotes came to mind recently when a furore over a harmless fundraising draw blew up online. It was entirely and depressingly-predictable, of course, the only difference being that this time, there was a delicious plot twist, worthy of McGahern himself.

McGahern was at his best detailing the extraordinary within the ordinary of Irish life. I wonder what he would make of social media and the current trend towards manufactured outrage, this ferocious lust for make-believe martyrdom, which is so pervasive these days.

I believe it is, at its essence, a thirst for validation and it’s particularly prevalent in Ireland in people my age and younger. Ironically, these generations, mine included, are the most privileged and pampered and spoiled this country has seen; maybe, to go full pop psychologist on it, it stems from some sort of unspoken self-loathing arising from that.

We see it in the performative adherence to various trendy causes, which go in and out of fashion like the tide. In the last five years alone, there have been several. We all know this; life is too short to list them.

The first step in this quest is to seek and take offence. Then, you must profess it loudly, the pretence being that you are drawing attention to it when in reality, it is for yourself.

No better people than the Irish to garner a little bit of knowledge, that dangerous thing, and instantly and repeatedly pronounce themselves appalled – and, let it be very clear, more appalled than you are, whoever you are - at some carry-on or other, at home or abroad.

That part is important, too – oneupmanship is at the heart of it. To feel strongly is no good; you must feel stronger about this than the next punter, whatever ‘this’ is, and you must make sure everyone knows it. By the end of this tiresome cycle, you are indistinguishable from those on whose behalf you claim to be advocating. You, too, now enjoy the trappings of victimhood, minus the inconvenient suffering.

The common denominator to this caper is that those who indulge in it tend to possess a child’s level of understanding of what is actually going on. But that’s all it takes.

There was a humorous example, on a scale so small as to actually add to the comedy of it all, online last week. Cavan county GAA board have been running monthly draws for the last couple of years to raise funds, not to swell their coffers for the sake of it, but to pay for things that will improve the lot of the association in the county.

The prizes are quite attractive – holidays to destinations like Dubai and New York and so on – and the initiative has proven popular.

Last year, the draws took in €101,000, which was down by €6,000 on the year before, with the treasurer commenting at the annual convention, quite reasonably, that “maybe the prizes need to be looked at again”.

So, it came to this month’s draw and the hottest prize in the land, the most sought-after bar none, was clearly tickets for the All-Ireland hurling final. Yes, the football final is usually a bigger attraction, especially with a relatively new finalist like Donegal in it, but Cork hurlers – along with the Armagh footballers – are a huge draw. No other teams in Gaelic games can muster as much support, bar the Dublin footballers, and even their fans found the lustre had worn off when they were winning all before them.

Cork were going into last Sunday’s decider as favourites, too, and were strongly fancied to end an unprecedented 20-year wait for the Liam MacCarthy Cup; in the match programme, six hurling scribes were polled and all six predicted the Rebels would win.

That status as favourites added to the ticket scramble. Everyone with a passing interest in the Cork hurling team, it seemed, wanted to be there to see it in the flesh. One club secretary in Cavan told me that his email address had been inundated with requests from Cork fans who were desperate to get their hands on a ticket.

Now, Cavan county board was in the lucky position of having access to 10 of those. These didn’t come from their official allocation; the board had purchased 10-year tickets at a significant outlay.

With, it seemed, literally hundreds of clubs raffling off their own tickets, the board innovated – they decided to put all 10 up as a single prize. It was different, probably unique, and it stood out from the crowd, no pun intended. I’m not privy to the numbers but the sense I detected was that the draw did very well – and isn’t that the purpose of fundraising draws in the first place?

It was when the board began to advertise it online that almost immediately, the shrill uproar started, a trickle at first, which quickly turned into a torrent.

A sample of the comments: “It is truly baffling that 10 tickets would be awarded to a single prize winner,” remarked one anonymous account, adding, with a gloriously over-wrought flourish, that “The optics and potential consequences of this are horrendous.”

Horrendous, mind you!

It got worse. “Ye are no better than the ticket touts hanging around Croke Park like vultures,” wrote another man.

“What gobshite decided this was the way to do it,” wondered another. “Jesus wept – must have been a six year old child came up with the idea.”

“Cavan,” opined one, with a long memory, “the county that didn’t field a hurling team for six years in either the league or the championship give 10 tickets to one man.”

“Absolutely ridiculous,” chimed in a different tweeter, “Cavan GAA should be ashamed of themselves.”

Others, high on that sweet righteousness, cranked it up, referencing “Senior hurling clubs in Cork with 150 years of history and multiple titles” and citing how “genuine volunteers” in some Cork clubs have “walked away” and “genuine supporters have been left ticketless”. Victims are we…

The comments rolled in, the indignant queuing for their turn to proclaim how mad they were, how hurt they felt at how they and, more importantly of course, others (“I have a ticket but I feel sorry for the fans who don’t,” read one comment) were being treated. The despair of it all, it seemed, was truly shocking, a word that came up a few times.

“Shocking,” blasted one supporter with an in-vogue flag in his profile picture, “that fans of the actual teams in the final can’t get tickets but one person from another county can get 10.”

In an objectively hilarious turn of events, at the height of it all, I discovered later, Liveline, the nonpareil pulpit for those whose message is wasted at the local level, who simply must tell the whole country how bad things are, got in on the act, seeking comment from the county board.

And then, it happened. The draw was made and a man named Sean O’Brien from, you guessed it, County Cork was announced as the winner.

Mr O’Brien is a member of the Kilbrittain club, the only hurling club in the far west of the county, an area which is a football heartland. He would be bringing family members, he said – his father, uncles, aunts, Cork people who wouldn’t ordinarily have been able to go.

The county board posted a photo of the winner, beaming in his county colours, thumbs up for the camera.

The next morning, I scrolled on. The silence was deafening. The outwardly offended, it appeared, had departed overnight, moving on swiftly to the next crusade...