Tom Humphries from The Irish Times stable is one of my favourite sport journalists. He is a terrific wordsmith, however, like most of us, he can be hit and miss on occasions. Nevertheless, when he hits the spot as he often does, there is a ping in your head like the noise that you hear when you occasionally catch a drive off the tee box as it should be done. For those few fleeting seconds as you watch the ball arrow down the fairway — you feel really good about yourself — and as those who love clichés turn to you and say - “that’s the one that will bring you back the next day” — you let yourself have that inner smile of satisfaction.
Humphries has written his Lockerroom column on the back page of The Irish Times for well over a decade and it is required reading for most sports fans. His self-deprecating humour allows him to poke fun at most things. Last Monday, he wrote 125 things that he loves about the GAA as his reflection on Lá Na gClub. Some of them were off the wall in my view and some just did not work, however in an effort to keep the doom and gloom of economic meltdown and Local/European/by-election talk at bay, and obviously a way of getting 800 words on a quiet week, I have selected my personal favourites from his list of 125. You don’t have to agree with them; just enjoy them for what they are. A bit of fun.
Ray Silke’s personal favourites from Tom Humphries’ list of 125 things to love about the GAA as published in last Monday’s Irish Times.
1. Joe Canning, hurling’s everyman. Don’t you love the first sight of him in early spring having been too well fed and watered over Christmas. And then watching as he shrinks by instalments but grows with every game.
2. There are few things more enjoyable in life than taking a batch of new hurls out of a car boot and talking bulls*** to your mates about balance and grain and lightness and moisture content and linseed and banding and double banding and seasoning before giving the hurls out to the under-11 Bs.
3. Seeing how many kids you can get into a car going to a match. “Yes, I know Garda but it’s a county under-12 semi-final and they’re late.” “OK. I’ll put the siren on. You follow.”
4. Where else can you have a breed of player good for nothing else really but able to go in and “bust up the play”?
5. The mock concern of certain Ulster defenders as they lean over their victims after the “accidental” collision! Like the old joke about what you get when you cross a pitbull with a collie? The answer being a dog that rips your leg off, then goes for help.
6. The junior Bs. Slow as a wet week in Dundalk, they’re permitting a film crew to remake Gorillas in the Mist in the showers after their games, they’re smoking like chimneys, they’re cursing like troopers, they’re drinking enough to finance two clubs. And that’s just the camogie girls.
7. A f%*^in’ farmer’d make a fortune on the land it takes him to turn.
8. Modern Ireland. A church, a post office, two pubs, a school, a graveyard, and the mother of all GAA complexes.
9. No matter how much you know about the GAA you’re only a bar stool away from a fella who knows twice as much.
10. “Lads have ye de slip? Have ye de slip? De f***in’ ref wants de slip. He won’t take it after. Have ye de slip?” “Yerra warm up again.”
11. Cumman na mBunscoil finals. Honest to God. Take a day off and go along. Put the grin back on your fretful old adult face.
12. ”Hey 14, ya wouldn’t get a kick in a f***ing stampede.”
13. “Jaysus if they won’t take you off, have the decency to come off yourself. It’s not your fault son, it’s the gobs***es that picked ya”.
