GAA Invaders
Talking Balls Comments
Some looper wrote a book called Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. It gives succour to the view that women are the gentler of the species and men the mucksavages. Obviously the good scribe has never attended a junior camogie match or a ladies football match.
Talking Balls rarely ventures out these days for people keep asking where we stand on pay for play, what sort of a fella is Paul Galvin and who will win Sam. The answer to all three questions is ‘we don’t know’. Last week we attended a local hostelry with an Antrim man who got tanked up the night before the match rather than the night after the match. A masochistic type, he believes that it’s better to get as much pain on board at one time when watching the Saffrons hence the hangover.
We got to talking and the chat came around to what would aliens think of a GAA match if they landed at the back of the Cusack stand in the bus park there, and ventured in for a look. Would they retreat frightened at the proliferation of ruddy faces, reddened from a week’s good weather and work in the bog; would they enjoy the stench of hotdogs, the reek of spilt beer and the whiff of ammonia from the Croker washrooms? Or would they sidle up to an empty seat on the Terrace, pull in their antennae because an over aggressive fan shouted ‘Sit down you green bastard I can’t see’, and settle to enjoy the game.
What would they make of thirty earthlings on what appeared to be a battlefield, each with a weapon that looked a little like a club and a little like a gun, each restraining from hitting each other most of the time, but happy to club what look like a small resident of the planet Zlittttter round the greensward. Back on their planet, do they have large patches of greenery or is this a location for expectant females of the species to clock, waiting for a new alien to emerge. And what of the strange eye bulging exhortations of the earthlings round them, speaking the language in a strangled roar, occasionally lepping out of a seat to implore the great god called ref to sort things out?
God only knows. The strange things about it is that if a posse of Space Invaders did descend on Croke Park, no-one would pay much attention.
They’d be too busy watching the game.
