Playing the Game

On 21 September 2010 the Guardian ran an editorial singing the praises of Gaelic football as a game of the people. Even at a match before a crowd of 80,000 there was no need to segregate supporters or have police in attendance. 85 percent of the money paid out by supporters is reinvested in grassroots clubs. It is a purely amateur sport, like hurling. The paper’s correspondence column on 25 September added to this: both sports are run by local communities, which helps keep them alive. The Cork hurling goalkeeper has come out as gay and continued playing at the highest level. One letter-writer predicted that commercialisation would inevitably have its way, but for the time being the amateur and voluntary ethos survives.

It’s difficult to avoid a comparison with professional football, where the top stars receive ludicrous ‘wages’ and have their own agents, where conning the referee is a way of life and money talks much louder than fair play. The obvious current contrast is with Liverpool Football Club, where boardroom battles have spilled over into the courts and the team is out of sorts and out of form. Two rich Americans borrowed millions to buy the club, with lavish promises of a new stadium and renewed success on the field. But after the bank began calling in the debts, they have been forced to sell to another American, who is making similar grandiose promises. The previous owners will lose plenty and have called the deal ‘a swindle of epic proportions’. They seem to have failed to notice that in the rough, tough world of business, the rich must occasionally expect to lose out. After all, isn’t that part of the capitalist mantra, that profit is the reward for risk?

And the supporters, sadly, seem to be taken in by the new owner. It’s like when Manchester United was sold to the Glazers in 2005. Fans then claimed ‘Our club is not for sale’. But of course it was, as it did not belong to them in the first place. Sports like hurling and Gaelic football may show that another way of doing things is possible, but professional sport is big business, especially for those who own the clubs, and it’s like everything under capitalism: profit first, other considerations last.
PB