November has always been a relatively quiet time for the GAA.
Even in the days when there were still national league fixtures before Christmas or for the 25 years of the International Rules project, there was still a sense that the year was receding.
It is slightly ironic, as the Association itself came into being on November 1st in 1884, an indeterminate number of people gathering in Hayes’s Hotel in Thurles to start the now ubiquitous organisation that marks its 140th anniversary.
On a different level, it was also the date that I took up this position, 30 years ago this week. As a measure of where the GAA has travelled, the three decades have brought more change than any previous interval in history.
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The landscape’s most obvious change at this time of the year is that the intercounty season is no longer a feature. It was one of the most bizarre aspects of the old calendar and meant intercounty activity ran all the way around the clock, from October when the league started to September when the All-Irelands concluded.
That changed first in hurling, in 1997, and then four years later in football.
The current sensibility concerning demands on intercounty players was unknown in the context of a championship structure in which half the competing counties had only one match each summer.
If there is a change in the past 30 years that carries most significance on the playing field, it is the slow and painfully realised reorientation of the Association’s schedules to take account of the vast majority of players whose outlet is exclusively at club level.
In the world – or at least on the island – at large there is no doubt about the greatest improvement and it had a major impact on the GAA; the cessation of the widespread violence in Northern Ireland.
It was significant that Liam Mulvihill, when departing office after 28 years as director general, identified the hunger strikes of 1980-81 as the most challenging phase of his tenure, coming just after his appointment in 1979.
“It was emotionally a very, very difficult time in particular because it didn’t relate to the core business of the Association, the games, but the whole cultural and political scene – I wouldn’t like to give the impression that that isn’t core business but it wasn’t part of my normal experience to have deal with that sort of scenario and I found it quite difficult and as I said both myself and the president [Paddy McFlynn] were new to the position.”
The first step in the cessation of violence had come earlier in 1994 with the IRA and other paramilitary ceasefires and although violence resurged for a while and there were further atrocities, such as the still unresolved murder of Seán Brown in Bellaghy in 1997, eventually an equilibrium of sorts prevailed.
Even imperfect peace presented challenges and within a few months of the 1994 ceasefires, the Down county convention took the decision by a wafer-thin 59-57 to sponsor a motion for the repeal of Rule 21, which prohibited members of the Northern Ireland and British security forces from membership of the GAA.
The contentious ban didn’t yield easily and it would be another seven years before the late Seán McCague used his presidency to convince Ulster counties not to stand in the way of abolition, as the new police service, the PSNI, would be soon recruiting.
That interaction hasn’t quite been happy ever after but at least the GAA is no longer blocking the recruitment of nationalists.
The past 30 years has also seen some of the most successful teams in history between Kilkenny’s hurlers under Brian Cody and Dublin’s record-breaking footballers.
In that context, just this week, James McCarthy retired after a phenomenal career. One of children of the 1970s whose father, John, was a key player on the Kevin Heffernan teams of that era, he came through with the 2010 All-Ireland-winning under-21s. A year later he was starting when Pat Gilroy led the county to the end of a 16-year wait for the Sam Maguire.
His physicality was formidable, hard as iron and about as pleasant to hit, and his athleticism and speed gave him the appearance of gliding on the pitch. In one of the Kerry matches early in the decade, he came from metres behind Paul Galvin to ease past him and claim a loose ball.
McCarthy was genuinely versatile. Initially a wing back, he was also occasionally deployed as an emergency full back, particularly when facing Donegal’s Michael Murphy. His centrefield credentials were obvious during the run of his club Ballymun Kickhams to the 2013 All-Ireland final and it was no surprise that he ended up being deployed in the middle by Dublin.
It is fitting that he ends his career as joint-record All-Ireland medallist with team-mates Stephen Cluxton and Michael Fitzsimons, both of whom will presumably be pondering the same decision.
In an unexpectedly emotional tribute before McCarthy captained Dublin to last year’s All-Ireland success, manager Dessie Farrell put it in a nutshell.
“He’s probably the greatest we’ve ever had. Just, he’s all in it. It’s all about the team. He’s the most low-maintenance individual you can come across. Every day he’s like a lion out there. He just wants to play football and be the best version he can for football. I’ve the utmost admiration for him – as do all the lads.”
Machine-like in terms of his reliable delivery, he was also an understated, quiet-spoken man whose respect for the game, even as a ferocious competitor, shone through.
Comparing players from different eras is futile but a small number stand out for their consistent contributions to great teams. James McCarthy is undeniably one.
