Keith Duggan: Great lockout tearing the soul out of sport

You’ve met this man. He is hitting maybe 80, wears the years the way a superhero wears a cape and with dark humour he tells you that Covid will be the death of him. Not the virus, mind. “No, the rest of it,” he grumbles happily. He takes the precautions. He follows the advice. But he wants to get on with life, too.

After all, he has the spring of a Kenyan Olympian and an unnerving reserve of bouncy Tom Cruise energy and zest. He appears to shake off various medical procedures - this hip or that heart replacement a few months ago - with a breeziness that borders on the indecent and powers on like someone intent on celebrating their one hundredth with an all-nighter on a beach in Ibiza.

He likes to say his tastes are simple and he is a man of his generation in that he firmly believes that the high point of good manners in Ireland coincided with the period when Don Cockburn and Charles Mitchel read the main evening news.

He is a man for all seasons when it comes to GAA games and a few pints and he's damned if either virus or them above in Dail Eireann is going to prevent him from either pursuit. And that is his problem. The other night, he perhaps informs you, he ventured out with a friend and had six pints of "the finest stout" he ever tasted (he has the constitution of an ox).

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But because he visited three different establishments, he also had, “by government orders” as he put it, a bowl of chowder, a cod and chips and a slice of Maltesers cheesecake with cream. He is now concerned that his cholesterol levels are going through the roof.

“A few more nights out like that,” he says, “and I’ll be loosening the belt buckles. I’m afraid to hit the weighing scales as it is.” (Unapologetic vanity is probably his greatest vice). He says that his night out had left him in poor shape for “the ladder” the next afternoon and he turns impatient when you look blankly at him. It turns out that for the past few Sundays, he had been throwing an old painter’s ladder in the back of a van and propping it up against the walls of GAA grounds around the county so he could see his team playing in the championship.

And as far as he is concerned, this ladder-climbing is a hazardous business. Just last Sunday he was both sunburnt and drenched to the skin before half time. And because he stationed himself behind the goal end wall, he nearly had his head taken clean off with the football after a hopelessly stray strike for glory from his team’s long-serving corner-back, who has always been more of a fighter than a lover of finesse scores.

He’s not at all worried for himself but is deeply concerned by the sight of “auld bucks” limping and wheezing their way up ladders on either side of him, aging lads who to his mind had no business at all watching championship games from these precarious vantage points. He says it’s only a matter of time before one of them takes a fall and ruins it for everyone else. “That’s what the country has come to,” he’ll conclude with an uncharacteristic dash of bitterness.

“Auld bucks, up ladders.”

And you have to concede that there is an undeniable element of truth in the complaint, even if the country has also this week come to the unbeatable glory of having its 79-year-old president riff a jazzy version of Rave On, John Donne in birthday tribute to Belfast's contrary genius, Mr Van Morrison. MDH was also buzzing with a similar surfeit of energy during his recital and it would be no great surprise to find Ireland's president hoisting a ladder against the wall of Deacy Park to see Galway United in action on one of these squally autumn nights.

Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh, the resident voice of the GAA, recently turned 90 and made an appearance on the opening night of the Late Late Show to make light of it. As he might: it’s becoming increasingly clear that the idea of ‘age’ is a fluid concept. And it has become obvious too that among those most keen to see sports live and in the flesh are those supporters in what used to be the retirement phase of life. They’ve got the energy and time and want to burn it in the same way they’ve always done. If that means dusting down the old ladder to see their team, then so be it.

For the number of photographs emerging from action-starved GAA fans improvising with ladders and conveniently located trees in order to watch their club teams are forming one of the many odd subplots of this deeply trippy summer. Some of the most famous GAA photographs do indeed feature supporters adorning the narrow precarious walls of the old Croke Park. But that’s because the famous venue was full to the rafters for those games, breaking every health and safety rule yet to be invented.

What makes the 2020 photographs so sad and striking is that the supporters are climbing onto the exterior walls of country sports grounds around Ireland that are perfectly empty inside. Like so many of the restrictions and impositions of this virus, it doesn’t appear to make sense.

And with the best will of the world, it is terrible. There is something awfully empty and hollow and echoing about the sight and sound of high quality games played out in front of tens of thousands of empty seats. We do our best to ignore it but sport without the crowd is simply lonely. The various sports bodies are scheduled to meet with the medical representatives and the minister for sport in the near future. The complete ban on spectators at games is bound to feature prominently in their discussions.

It beggars belief that the GAA and Ireland’s other leading sporting bodies can’t be trusted to safely shepherd a limited number of spectators through outdoor stadiums laid out so that they can sit and watch their teams while adhering to the distancing regulations.

Soon, the spotlight will turn on the All-Ireland championships. For a century they’ve been the beating heart of the Irish summer. There’s a small chance that the 2020 version of the All-Ireland might be remembered as the most significant of all: as the championship that quickened and enlivened a strained autumn and winter. The presence of the people at those games, however limited and however faint the roar, would feel like a small victory for society. It won’t be perfect but some voice from the crowd must be better than no voice at all.

And it may put an end to the phenomenon of men of an age that guarantees they will never know better from shimmying up ladders to see a bit of ball.