Ban man testing

TheLastStraw:  For me, the low point of September's All-Ireland football final was not Peter Canavan's cynical last-minute tackle on Gooch Cooper. No. It was an earlier event that also occurred off the ball, down at the railway end of the ground. The umpires couldn't have seen it, mainly because it was on the big screen behind them. But the rest of us had a clear view. It was an advertisement for - even now it makes me wince - Nivea for Men.

To be honest, I only got a fleeting glimpse of the incident myself. I don't know how it started. I'm not sure if the ad mentioned specific products from the range, which includes "active firming moisturiser" and "revitalising eye-cream". But it doesn't matter. The point is that events such as this have no place on a GAA pitch, and the sooner the Croke Park authorities act to protect the young, impressionable people who attend its games the better.

It may be too late already. There's a whole generation of males out there who not only think it's all right to moisturise, but might not even draw the line at an exfoliating body-scrub. It's a measure of the extent to which the men's cosmetics industry has gained respectability that I find myself wanting to be reasonable about the issue. I realise times have changed. I agree that guys should look after themselves. I accept that the smell of unadorned male sweat is not as popular with women as my generation was led to believe.

Dermatological protection products probably have their place, even among GAA people. God knows, Northern football supporters can have very sensitive skin. I accept that. I just don't want men to go down the same road as certain other genders I could mention, whose constant fretting about their appearance has made cosmetics the multi-billion dollar industry it is.

ALSO LAST MONTH, Gillette unveiled its new five-blade razor in the US. The development had been inevitable since Wilkinson Sword produced a four-blade model two years ago. But if this tit-for-tat continues, razor-blade proliferation will become a threat to world peace. Maybe the UN should send Hans Blix into the laboratories of the big shaving companies to find what they're planning next, before it's too late.

I suspect the increasingly macho image of men's razors, with names such as "X-Treme Turbo-prop S-Series", is all part of a global conspiracy to get men to use skin products. It's no coincidence that Gillette's poster boy is David Beckham, a guy who's so in touch with his feminine side that, left to his own devices, he'd probably prefer to use Immac hair remover on his chin. The message seems to be that it's okay to use products once considered feminine when you also use a razor that has more blades than a groundsman's lawnmower and sounds like a racing car.

Shaving - the one experience that forces men to spend time looking in a mirror - has always been the Trojan horse in which cosmetics could be smuggled into the male psyche. The genius who realised you could sell perfume to us if you called it aftershave knew this. But for decades the perfume manufacturers still had to get "real men" to advertise it.

In the 1970s, Brut famously used the boxer Henry Cooper in commercials to reassure consumers. Henry was clearly not in touch with his feminine side. You knew if Henry had to get in touch with it any time soon, it would be through his solicitors.

The fact that David Beckham is now its global face shows how far the conspiracy has advanced. With his front as a world-class football player - barely plausible though that is - he and his girlie-man ways have infiltrated our consciousness to such a degree that even the GAA is at risk. If Beckham is not stopped soon, future generations will think it normal for a man to be prettier than his wife.

But his very limitations as a player offer hope. When his missed penalty and lacklustre performances helped knock England out of the European championships last year, Gillette admitted it was a setback in their promotional campaign, albeit a temporary one. The next big showpiece in that campaign will be the World Cup in Germany.

Now that we've failed to qualify, all mature Irish football supporters who are not mired in a post-colonial mentality will of course want to cheer for our near neighbours.

Sadly, I believe this would be short-sighted. Much as it might hurt, I think we must hope that England are eliminated early, and in the most humiliating way possible. The future of man is at stake here. If Beckham lifts the World Cup, a lot more of that future will be spent in the bathroom.