SIDELINE CUT:The hooter is going to rob us of one of the great talking points of an Irish Sunday – injury time in Gaelic Games

THE GAA may be labelled a conservative organisation but they leave Allen Ginsberg and the Beats for dead when it comes to experimentation. They have been at it again this week, announcing that a “hooter” system is going to be introduced during the national leagues – the guinea pig competition for all GAA innovation.

It is hard to pinpoint why, but there is something amiss about the prospect of the best of hurling and Gaelic football matches of our future concluding with the kind of daft, mournful siren that has not been heard since the Luftwaffe last flew over Bethnal Green.

I guess their hearts are in the right place, but I worry about this whole hooter innovation. It may work well enough in Croke Park, a stadium that seems intent on incorporating every tinsely gizmo available.

But down the country, this new clock/hooter system could cause panic and even outright anarchy. There is a rhythm to these days and I am not sure a sound as stark as the stadium “hooter” fits in right.

If you show up early enough at county grounds during the slumbering league Sundays of February and March, you can sit back and watch a show being put together. (Or, so I hear, anyway.) Everyone has a job to do, jobs that are as old as the corrugated roofs over the latrines.

There is the Man Who Takes Money At The Turnstile and the Man Who Stands Behind Him Looking at You As If You Might Be Carrying A Bomb. There is The Fella Who Won’t Let Anyone (teams included, sometimes) Near The Dressing Room Without A Pass. Yer Man Who Blocks Hundreds of People Trying To Get Into The Stand Because He Is Trying To Help One Person Find Their Seat.

There is The Guy Who Runs Urgently Onto The Field To Say Something Of Vital Importance To The Referee Only To Change His Mind Halfway There And Turn Around Again. There is The Man Who Holds The Gate That Leads The Players Onto The Field.

There is the Man Who Does Magic Tricks With The Match Programme, Never Visibly Carrying Any But Producing Them From Up His Sleeve Or Down His Trousers With A Fishy Look Whenever He Is Asked. There is The Man In The Suit Who Shakes Everyone’s Hands And Everyone Thinks Is The County Chairman But He Isn’t. He is just someone who likes shaking hands.

And, up in a discreet corner of the pressbox, there is The Man With The Microphone. For years, this was the power role. Here is the man who communicates with the State to inform the public of the irresponsibly parked cars that are causing chaos down the street. Here is the man who – in a wonderfully calming way – informs a father that while he has been going berserk about the half-back, his six-year-old has wandered away – possibly out of embarrassment – and has become lost.

He is told that he can pick his son/daughter up at the pressbox or the sweet stand. (Often, the request has to be repeated at half-time, making it clear that the parent figures they might as well enjoy the bit of respite and collect their offspring after the game.)

The Man With The Microphone also has the power to command the thousands of people to seasaigi for a scratched gramophone rendition of the national anthem. This is often preceded by a minute’s silence for some fallen Gael that no one has heard of.

There is a broad suspicion the stewards just invent these dearly departed Gaels because it is 3.28 and everyone is ready to go but they can’t start until 3.30 and they can’t leave the teams on the field just standing scratching so they invent a Dead Gael and everyone stands, not remembering him.

The Man With The Microphone had a crucial role. But that status is likely to be eclipsed by the new kid in town: The Man In Charge Of The Hooter. When it comes to the allocation of jobs next spring, there is going to be war.

There are all kinds of problems with the hooter. The premise behind it is simple enough: that it be “introduced to signal the conclusion of the game following notification by the fourth official”. And the logic is obvious: to take away the uncertainty of injury time.

Injury time has long been a source of controversy for the GAA. The referee is hammered for either playing too much or too little. Never in the history of the GAA has a referee been complimented on the precise nature of his timekeeping.

Once a GAA game passes beyond the safety zone of the 70 minutes, the entire stadium resembles some kind of Seiko enthusiasts club. The referee checks his watch and thousands of people instantly do the same.

The game is all but forgotten as everyone obsesses about the time, everyone convinced that they and they alone know exactly when the game should end. As the referee checks his wrist all the more furiously, the general level of anxiety and agitation rises, especially if there is “just the one score in it”. And in Gaelic Games, there usually is just a score in it.

People feel cheated, robbed, defiled, used, plundered and hollowed out by the vagaries of injury time.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t love it. Injury time is one of the great talking points of the Irish Sunday. In a country where time has always been a vague and slippery concept – “I’ll meet you at nine or so”, “I’ll be there around tea time” – the haziness of injury time is in keeping with the general attitude towards those perpetually ticking seconds.

Not only do GAA referees stand accused of not allowing enough time, they stand above the great scientists of recent centuries in being able to procure it out of nothing. “Where in the **** did he get six minutes from?” is a common query after big games.

But the thing about time is there is never enough of it. So injury time in Gaelic Games and its endless controversies just reinforces the general belief that you can never get a proper handle on time.

The “hooter” promises to change all that. Apart from anything else, it doesn’t sound right. Think of all those evocative phrases involving the word “whistle”. What now?

“Play ’til the final hooter, lads.”

“I thought that hooter would never come.”

No, it just doesn’t sound right.

“This is a sharp time now, a precise time,” warned Judge Danford in The Crucible. “We live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world.”

He wasn’t talking about a five o’clock relegation play-off match between Carrickmore and Dromore but he might have been. Because the dusky afternoon is precisely what the GAA has lived in for over a century and befuddlement reigned supreme on many afternoons when the Man With The Whistle gave his watch a long, hard look (and sometimes shook his arm, to make sure the battery hadn’t stopped) until he was satisfied it had arrived upon the very second that he, and he alone, was convinced the game should end.

It was never a perfect system of time measurement but it was human and its very flaws and imperfections gave people something to talk about on the way home.

And, in a way, it provided an odd consolation for the losers: “If we had another minute, we could have done it . . . We will never know now . . .”

The “hooter” will kill all that mystery. Wait and see.

Anyway, it is bound to end in disaster. I can see it now. The Man With The Hooter up there in the press gantry, ordered to set the machine to “go off” after two minutes, but he is sure the referee signalled three and, anyway, there should be four so maybe leave it at five to be safe . . .