Too much of a great thing

Cavanman's Diary

There is a value to scarcity in sport, something you only really notice when it begins to disappear.

I was at the National Handball Centre in Croke Park a couple of weeks ago. Due to something of a perfect storm, the programme of All-Ireland senior handball semi-finals was late starting and ran way over time; players were still in the court as midnight neared.

It was far from ideal; the crowd – those who stayed around - were yawning, people were cranky and tired. I was commentating on TG4’s stream (as bearla, before you ask), and, reduced to making jokes as the interminable evening wore on, pretended I had been kidnapped as the fourth of the semi-finals started (“They are treating me very well here..”).

It was that kind of evening – and the handball itself, perhaps predictably, wasn’t the greatest fare either.

In the middle of the maelstrom, however, one figure shone like a beacon. Ciana Ní Churraoin, the women’s world champion from Galway, won her match after a sluggish start and, afterwards, I caught up with her for an interview.

Ciana, who turned 30 earlier this month, is the most marketable asset the sport of handball has. A sports psychologist by trade, she has a huge online following – her handball-themed videos have a massive audience - yet described herself to me once as otrovert (look it up).

A Connemara native, she is a passionate advocate for the Irish language, too, and a world-class athlete. I think she will be – or should be – snapped up for her own television show and hope handball can keep her for another few years.

Anyway, that’s Ciana – and it was something she said to me that really got me thinking.

“For me personally, this is my goal every year,” she commented.

“You know, it's great to win the other tournaments but if I don't win the All-Ireland Championship, I'll be bitterly disappointed with my entire season.

“I'll still be proud of those other wins, they're great and you're playing the same people, but the All-Ireland is what you grow up wanting to win and that's what you set your sights on.

“Even if you play senior handball for 15 years, that's only 15 opportunities to win the All-Ireland - and there are so many players who want to win that All-Ireland.”

In those few words, she managed to distil something Gaelic football has forgotten. Part of what makes sport special, for players and supporters, is how seldom the big days come around. The truth is, you really can have too much of a good thing.

In the 1990s, a quarter of the counties in Ireland brought home Sam Maguire, almost a third played on All-Ireland final day. Cavan, Kildare, Leitrim and Clare won provincial titles which they are still talking about. And at the end of that decade, it was decided that the knock-out system was no longer fit for purpose. Sadly, in the lust for more and more, we didn't know what we had till it was gone.

A Kildare man, Seamus Aldridge, spoke out against it at that Congress. “If,” Aldridge warned, “you ask children whether they want two plates of jelly or one, they'll always opt for two.”

One of the defining features of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship was always rarity. If you lost, you were out; if you won, you advanced. If you drew, you played again. Games were events, with time for the hype to build in between. If Cavan played Monaghan in the Ulster Championship, you knew that, barring a replay, this was their last meeting of the season. For that couple of hours, nothing else mattered. Scarcity also creates significance, which in turn burns events into the collective memory. It feels now that things have been cheapened to an extent; wins, scores, even the matches themselves.

Cavan versus Monaghan in the Ulster Championship is the oldest tie of them all; generations of football folk in these two counties have attended this fixture, played in it, bragged about it. It was a big deal. This year’s meeting? It may be the smallest crowd at a Cavan v Monaghan championship game in a century. It’s worth nothing that this is a very bad thing.

On the weekend when they meet this year, April 18-19, there 23 championship matches. Every county in Ireland will be playing, plus some from overseas. In fact, eight counties will play championship in both football and hurling on that weekend and two – Antrim and Derry – will play championship matches in different codes on the same day. How could the significance of championship not be diluted? It’s almost by design.

When there were only 35 championship matches in a season, each was imbued with an extra importance. That is no longer the case – there is a B championship which the powers that be were so unsure of that they couldn’t risk naming after an iconic figure lest it be shelved, a la the Tommy Murphy Cup.

At least one more tier will likely follow. More matches, each with the tag of championship but far from what supporters once understood that word to mean. And we wonder why, new-rules bounce aside, crowds have plummeted over the last 20 years?

Modern life tends to favour abundance but sport is actually the opposite; the rarer the opportunity, the more valuable the prize. If there was an All-Ireland final every month, we’d all agree, it would mean much less so it only stands to reason that if there is a saturation of championship matches and numerous chances for beaten teams, the same logic holds.

Scarcity isn’t a flaw in sport, it’s one of the things that make matches matter. Ciana recognised it because it’s still the way in handball, for all of that game’s flaws, and it’s a shame to see football taking the path it has.

Where that path leads, the next few years will tell us. But by the time there is a collective realisation as to what we have lost, it may be too late to get it back.