The Last Straw Frank McNallyIt used to be a vibrant organisation with a great social life. But when I dropped into the club of Ulster Counties Never to have Won an All-Ireland (UCNWAI) during the week to renew my subscription, it was a sad spectacle.
The club has been haemorrhaging members at an alarming rate in recent years, and events at Croke Park on Sunday were another major blow. We were still coping with the loss of revenue from Armagh's secession last year, but now the October "500 club draw" has had to be postponed, pending its relaunch as a "250 club draw" next week. The clubhouse is in dire condition, having not been painted since the 1980s; the roof leaks, and heating is restricted to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and ladies' night. Worst of all, the regular barman was from Tyrone, and with the rest of his compatriots he faxed his resignation first thing on Monday, so for the moment customers have to serve themselves.
Not that there were many customers the other night. There was the regular crowd in from Fermanagh, of course, and there was a gang from Antrim (I use that term advisedly) over in the corner. The rest of us were from Monaghan, and lately we tend to stick to the other end of the room. Part of the tension relates to a joint Antrim-Fermanagh motion last year that would have readmitted Cavan, by amending the constitution to discount All-Irelands won before or during the Korean War. But despite the desperate need for revenue, the move was vetoed by our delegation, for reasons that are between us and Cavan.
The truth is there's also a certain stigma attached to Monaghan within the club, on the grounds that we're not oppressed by a foreign power (an argument which ignores the county's traditional relationship with the authorities in Dublin). Six-county snobbery is a growing trend in Ulster GAA. I noticed at least one Northern Ireland flag, crown and all, among the Tyrone supporters last Sunday. And OK, it might have been irony - the colours coincide. Or maybe it was a bridge-building exercise by the Alliance Party. But I'm not so sure. Pat Spillane has gone a long way lately to reconciling the North to British rule.
So the Monaghan people chatted among themselves the other night. We talked about the recent county final between Castleblayney Faughs and Latton, won yet again by the mighty Faughs. Many of us were up for the underdogs, but with the notorious Latton temperament, they never had a chance. We discussed Tom Freeman's inclusion in the Irish panel for Australia, and agreed it would be a great idea if the Northern Standard got him to do a diary and called it 'Freeman's Journal'. And of course we reviewed Sunday's match.
There was consensus that the media had been unduly harsh on a game that had a certain savage nobility (and that was just Francie Bellew!), but that this in part arose from a growing cultural divide between football in the South and that in the North. Essentially, the southerners seem to view sport in the same way as the ancient Greeks, with the emphasis on self-expression and exaltation of the spirit; whereas northerners view it like the Romans, stressing the importance of discipline and sacrifice (of humans, where available).
There was agreement that success for Monaghan could bridge this gap, and help soft-headed southerners understand that the game has evolved from the one played by legends such as Mick O'Connell, Jack O'Shea and Nudie Hughes. Some Dublin commentators have dismissed the scientific advances made by Tyrone and Armagh. But the news that the super-fit Tyrone team trained only two nights a week should give the critics pause. It seems to me that the breakthrough by northern teams has been the ability to transform a persecution complex into increased aerobic efficiency.
Nevertheless there was general acceptance that Monaghan would have to train seven nights a week. Otherwise we'd be stuck in this club forever - a grim thought. It's amazing to recall that, as recently as 1992, we still had Donegal and Derry as fellow members, and the crack was 90. The Donegal lads were full of songs, and hilarious stories about what the guards up there were at, which we didn't believe at the time.
Whereas the other night, the Antrim people left early, because they had a game at the weekend, in something called "hurling". And the Fermanagh crowd went soon afterwards, ostensibly on health grounds (they said they'd been infected with something - oh, I remember now, it was the "Protestant work ethic"). We stayed on for a while. But the emptiness spooked us and we left, turning the lights out after us.