Are You a Dedicated Fan or Just a Bollix?
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Three runners up will get €1000 each for their local club. In these straightened economic times that’s not to be sniffed or sniggered at, sure it’s not.
Talking Balls has been asked to ask you a few questions so you can figure out if you are genuinely in the running or if you only think you are. So here goes.
Q1 You overhear in the pub on Christmas Eve that your county team is playing a challenge match on St Stephen’s Day. Do you:
(a) Make a few cold turkey sandwiches, a flask of tea and raid the children’s selection box before jumping in the car and driving the sixty miles or so to the match to watch it in the freezing cold, the only supporter there.
(b) Text a fella you know whose brother is on the panel to enquire as to the result.
(c) Totally ignore the fixture, pointing out to the people in the pub that no silverware is handed out on St Stephen’s Day.
Q2 It is cemetery Sunday in the parish and your aged, infirm and emotionally unstable mother and her widowed sister have no-one to take them to their husbands’ graves. Do you:
(a) Say f*** it, not my concern. The boys have a national league match away and we have to leave at the crack of dawn to get there so I’m not available to stand round a graveyard with them two oul dolls.
(b) Phone your sister that you haven’t spoken to since 1997 and ask her to get one of her grown up children or herself to do the needful as she hasn’t done a hands turn in helping in years.
(c) Tell your mother no problem, you can SKY + the match and sure no-one gives a shite about the league. Really.
Q3 At the end of every home league game, when the players are milling about do you:
(a) constantly seek an opportunity to talk to players, exchanging banal one liners as if you were their long lost friend and say ‘great goal today, but not as good as the one you scored when you were playing for the County U-16 Development Squad though’. You casually ignore the fact you howled abuse at him twenty minutes earlier for missing a ‘sitter that my one eyed labrador could have scored.’
(b) Let your children/brother/sister watch them come off the pitch and maybe get a signature or two on the back of their shirt so they can feel the glitter of star dust.
(c) Head for the car, keeping your counsel without loudly articulating your opinion to all that will listen. If you see any county players from your club you offer them a lift home and if they accept, have the wit not to fry their head about the match.
Q4 You pull up at a filling station and you see a leading county player from a rival county going about his own business, filling the car with fuel and buying some water etc. Do you:
(a) Gulder at him a tirade of abuse masquerading as banter before telling all and sundry what an ignorant hoor he is because he wouldn’t chat to you.
(b) Nod in recognition as you pass but realise the fella is on his own time and leave well enough alone.
(c) Realise that you don’t know the guy from Adam, he doesn’t know you and go about your business as normal.
The closing date for entries is Friday 23rd of July so why not get the whole community involved and get the application in now! A shortlist of eight semi finalists will be published in The Irish Sun on Saturday, 31st of July and the public will then be called upon to vote for their favorites. A shortlist of four representing each province will then be pitted against each other to find ‘Ireland’s Most Dedicated GAA Fan’.
For more details check out The Irish Sun or www.supervalu.ie.
Answers Mostly (a), you’re a bollocks, you need to wise up and get a life. Mostly (b), your not a bad person but you could be storing up trouble if this develops. Mostly (c), you are a proper fan, balanced and proportionate. Maybe need a wee bit of passion in your life though.
