One night in 1989, the disc jockey and stadium announcer Tommy Edwards was at the cinema with his wife waiting for the show to start when he heard a few bars of synthesizer music and experienced a lightning strike of inspiration.
The Chicago Bulls had been tinkering with darkening the house lights since the 70s and introducing their team to music. But the teams were generally awful, the music never worked, the crowds showed up late and there was always the danger of spilled beers and tumbles when the auditorium went dark.
But now the Bulls had Michael Jordan. And Edwards discovered Sirius, the dark, gorgeous synth instrumental which opens Alan Parsons’s 1982 album Eye In the Sky. Edwards sat at home playing the record and practising an introduction later made iconic by the gravel-voiced Ray Clay “And now …”
It took a few seasons before the pregame guaranteed an absolute full-house by tip off – which was the main aim. But as Jordan made the strange transition into the most famous athlete on the planet, the intro became an essential part of the mythology. Its power is derived from the ominous beauty of the piece of music and the daunting charisma which Jordan radiated. The Bulls’ introduction might have been a marketing ploy but it required no budget or convolutions.
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Jordan has been out of elite sport for almost 20 years but the recordings of those introductions have not dated. It’s the oldest trick in the book: turn off the lights and let the imagination do the work. And it presaged the move towards rehearsed polished introductions and entertainments at sports stadiums across the world – and countless have borrowed Sirius.
The presentation may be more slick and polished, but nothing will touch the Bulls’ idea. It was the perfect crossing point of sport as fabulous entertainment and real, authentic experience – which is a very tricky, elusive balance. You watch it again – these old, long finished games and still: it gives you the shivers.
And isn’t that all we can ask for from sport?
We’ve always been fortunate in this country to have a century of tradition through which Ireland has been in thrall to Gaelic games. It was, of course, far from a perfect tradition, promoting an active hostility and suspicion of other sports and remaining a male preserve for decades after it might have. But it has moved and learned and shape-shifted and opened its doors and has retained its miraculous balance of amateurism and sense of local identity which generates a depth of emotion which cannot be faked or fabricated.
And so, the spirits raced through Croke Park last Sunday when Galway and Kerry pushed one another to the edge. Those few seconds of anticipation and the surge of uncontainable crowd noise before the throw-in were as good as it gets. But then, on the road up that morning, a man had decorated his tractor in the Galway colours, parked on an overpass not far from Moate and, with his children, saluted the passing cars on their way up to the city. It was a lovely, simple gesture and as much a part of the occasion, the day, as the noontime gatherings around Dorset Street. It was a reminder that Ireland is still a land of eccentricities and all the better for it.
There remains something extraordinary about the depth and solemnity of effort behind elite Gaelic games for what will remain, for the vast majority of players, an unrealised idea. Few will get to play in an All-Ireland final, fewer still win it.
But what a glorious distraction. Isn’t that the point? Isn’t the joy of being transported to a place where you feel fully alive and temporarily shorn of the inevitable day-to-day worries and concerns. It doesn’t have to be the fancy stuff or the big days. And it doesn’t even have to involve winning. The game keeps changing and yet the game will always be the same.
On Monday evening, the defeated Galway football team made their way home. It might have been a sombre conclusion but as Pádraic Joyce acknowledged later, the homecoming proved to be an uplifting event. The bonfires were lit. The people turned out on one of those dank west of Ireland July evenings. And the team and supporters became indivisible and in his words of thanks, Joyce began to turn his thoughts to next season.
Right now, that seems a far-off thing. Meantime, there will be the big glittering distractions – the football nights in England, the winter rugby afternoons, the late-night broadcasts out of football fields and basketball arenas in America. And there will be the best stuff too – the excruciating few miles you plod through alone, the morning swims, the team you coach still losing but maybe something that makes their eyes light too. The million tiny victories!
Those come boxed in many forms.
For years, the press box in Clones had among its guests the resident Donegal Democrat columnist ‘The Follower’ whose closing line on a particular Donegal win which stirred his blood remains unfathomable and unbeatable: ‘As Marie Antoinette, Banríon na Fraince, said: Après Moi, Le Deluge.’
Who knows what that means? And who cares?
On one of his last visits, The Follower sat on a blazing summer day of an Ulster final, a Dairy Milk and Club Orange close at hand, delighted that he had been able to conquer the steep hill past St Tiernach’s one last time. He’d been attending these games for decades but surveying the scene now the field, the teams parading, the faces in the crowd, he couldn’t contain his delight. He was like you or me when sport fully takes hold and gives us the tingles and shivers. He was like a child.
