I decided last week that it would be a good idea to follow Clubber, one of the online streaming services that allows us to watch so much club GAA weekend after weekend, on Instagram.
I spend hours on the infernal app any way, and get fed seemingly endless GAA-related videos while I’m there, so I thought I may as well put my relationship with this stuff on an official footing.
I did not reckon, however, with the sheer avalanche of scores, stripped of all context and meaning, that came my way. Clonguish have scored a goal! Rhode have scored five goals in a half! Aaron Masterson has hit a two-pointer from 60 yards out for Moorefield!
I didn’t necessarily know what any of that meant, but I found myself scrolling along regardless. Do Clonguish need a win in their group? Are they in a group? Clonguish is in Longford, right?
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I found all of a sudden that the Clubber Instagram account was a thrilling metaphor for my use of the internet more generally. It is a 30-second dopamine hit, which you ingest, blank-eyed, before the algorithm throws up its next offering. No real information is offered, beyond the minimum. It doesn’t matter. The only important thing is that you keep watching.
This is the internet now. Faced with the prospect of having all of humanity’s accumulated wisdom at my fingertips at every waking moment of every day, I choose instead to rewatch a TJ Reid assist for a Ballyhale goal 20 times in a row.
If you haven’t seen it, by the way, it was genuinely beautiful. Reid moves out from the full forward position to collect a long delivery, stuns the ball on his hurley and then plays a pass to Brian Cody without taking the ball into his hand at all. Cody gave the move the finish it deserved, but it was an absolutely mesmeric piece of skill from Reid, and without Clubber and its ilk, we just wouldn’t have ever seen it. So there’s no doubt that having cameras at all these games is a gift.
But last Monday, it had become overwhelming. I found myself thinking that what I need is for someone to explain all this to me, as slowly as they could manage it. Never mind the endless stream of scores; give me some of the backstory.
Would Celbridge be expected to beat Johnstownbridge? How many more goals can John McGrath be expected to score between here and Christmas? Is it wrong that I don’t know how the Longford senior football championship is set up? Surely an hour-long television show, dedicated solely to explaining county boards and how they run off their senior championships, has broad crossover appeal? Right?
And as I asked myself that final question, I realised that I had become just another old white dude radicalised online. The people watching Clonguish are those who don’t need to have the Longford senior football championship explained. They’ve probably been watching it their whole lives.
Stream Sport got my money this week to watch my home club Milltown draw with Corofin in a thrilling group game in the Galway senior football championship. I didn’t need to be told what that meant. The club GAA season is more than just a 30-second clip of a ridiculous point kicked by a player you barely recognise, but that’s how many of us now consume it.
The economics of the GAA club coverage ecosystem might seem precarious, but the success of Stream Sport, who have deals with the county boards of Mayo, Galway, Donegal, Limerick and others, or Clubber, suggests otherwise. Two separate Mayo football podcasts tweeted about experiencing unprecedented listenership and uptake on the back of their coverage of the county’s club championships last week.
Maybe the key defining characteristic of the internet as it has been structured over the last 25 years is the realisation that no matter how weird or perverted your taste is in anything, there is someone out there thinking the exact same thing (which has not been a net benefit to humanity, to put it mildly.) This is what club games being streamed on the internet screams to me.
I know I’m a Grade 7 GAA nutjob. I don’t need to be told it was weird how invested I got in Fourmilewater’s thrilling late comeback against Abbeyside in the Waterford senior hurling championship last Saturday. But I also know that there are more severe cases than me out there – I’m related to at least one Grade 9, and that number might be conservative.
Maybe, instead of belittling the idea of an hour of television, even if it’s internet television, dedicated to the group stages of the Offaly senior football championship and other like-minded sporting competitions, I should lean in. Sure, I’m a weirdo, but I know I’m hardly lacking for company.
Show me some goals, and then tell me what it all means. Tell me what the hell Graigue Ballycallan need to do from here to get into the Kilkenny senior hurling final. Get Neil deGrasse Tyson on a Zoom call to explain the more complicated competition structures. Maybe I’ve opened up a whole new vista of broadcasting opportunity for these companies, or maybe it sounds like a lot of work when they know I’ll be staring at my phone regardless, scrolling my brain into obsolescence.
