SIDELINE CUT:SOMETIMES WHEN GAA stars are trying to downplay their own effervescence and flair, they will turn grave and pious and tell you: "There is no "I" in team." It is one of those wonderful Keeganesque phrases that has crept into Irish sport and seems to mean both everything and nothing.
When you have just watched a nifty Kerry forward or a swashbuckling Kilkenny man knocking home a total of 1-9 with outrageous ease and he then, while accepting his MOTM bit of crystal, asserts that there is no “I” in team, one is naturally suspicious of his message. What the hell is he trying to tell us here? Is the man simply being modest or is he dabbling in metaphysics?
Are we to believe that what we have just witnessed is an illusion: that he wasn’t really out there, doing that stuff? A man who is but a dream, as the poet said. It is a worryingly open-ended cliché, the kind of endlessly philosophical conundrum that can and will lead to bad rows in pubs before the next championship is out.
And yet there is no denying the truth of it: There is no “I” in team. Then, there is no “I” in manager either. But funnily, there is an “I” in Bainisteoir. Two of ’em, in fact.
That curiosity may cross the minds of many motorists should they happen to notice the billboards trumpeting the return of the popular GAA-reality show, Celebrity Bainisteoir(there is also, one must point out with regret, an "I" in Celebrity, a big star-spangled "I"). Although, to be more accurate, one doesn't so much notice these C B billboards as stare slack-jawed at their unbelievable scale and chutzpah.
If you haven’t seen one, you will: they are roughly 1:1 with Luxembourg and display our new cast of dazzling managers lining up in a manner that might be described as Hollywood Mafiosa. In fact, from a distance, I fleetingly and joyously believed they had remastered The Sopranos until I realised that the Tony figure was George Hook.
The disappointment was brief but crushing. In fairness, Captain Hook was one of the few faces that seemed recognisable. The others belong to that variety of can’t-just-put-my-finger-on-it cast: you may know them from the telly or you simply may have sat beside them for a time back in national school.
Lining up genuine All-Ireland championship managers in this fashion (imagine say, Mickey Harte, John O’Mahony, Jason Ryan, Brian Cody, The Cork Hurling Manager of the Day (with, of course, the proviso that he had first obtained the full and written consent of his players), Jack O’Connor and Mickey Moran standing in black suits with menace written all over their faces) would make for an arresting visual image.
But the feeling here is that most modern managers would cringe at the idea of appearing in a vast photograph on the gable end of a supermarket, all spruced up and hair quaffed like John Travolta. Because they know that such overt gimmickry would be asking for trouble. Keep the head down: that is the mantra of the proper manager.
Although it is probably just coincidence, the phenomenon of Celebrity Bainisteoirwas foisted upon us at precisely the same time as the mood for hounding actual GAA managers into resignation or suffering humiliating dismissals if they weren't achieving instant success. The concept behind C B may be a winner and the production slick but it all boils down to yet another exercise in Paddy-Vanity and one cannot help being somewhat dubious about the motives of the celebrities involved.
They do not help their own cause by repeatedly emphasising that they knew nothing about the rough and tumble world of Gaelic games prior to signing up for the show. So why the sudden interest? Now, that is one for Scooby and the gang to figure out.
It may have come to your attention that one of last year’s Bainisteoiri, Mr Gerald Kean, has penned a book chronicling the journey of self-discovery on which he embarked through managing a club side in Cork. Mr Kean is a solicitor with whom – the decision-makers in RTÉ evidently believe – the nation at large has an abiding fascination.
The cover of the book shows him in CB mode, contentedly puffing on a huge cheroot. It is clear, then, he tapped into the more subtle elements of GAA management.
In the brightest days of Armagh football, their fans always knew that another victory was in the bag when they saw the familiar plumes of smoke rising from the dug-out where big Joe Kernan sat, undoubtedly chuckling as he declared: “I love it when a plan comes together.”
And how the crowd laughed last year at the hurling final when Davy Fitzgerald pulled a Zippo from his track-suit and suavely proffered a light to Brian Cody, who was just unwrapping his customary Cuban. Yes indeed, the GAA manager is a devil for the flash cigars – they say Dwyer has enjoyed a few with Castro himself. Mr Kean’s status as a Celebrity meant he was able to call upon Alan Shearer to write the foreword for his book and, during the programme, Gordon Strachan to administer words of wisdom to the troops. (This kind of “pull” can leave actual non-celebrity club GAA managers in no doubt as to their place in life’s pecking order and in the depths of despair as they seek out a “personality” to bolster their team talk before that vital McGurk’s Chemist and Health Shop Division Two North league relegation game).
The book is handsomely produced and includes many photographs of Mr Kean inspiring his team, delicately balancing the feat of appearing authentically managerial while clearly separated from his charges by that celestial aura which distinguishes Irish Celebrities from the rest of the natives.
It, is, of course, unforgivably sour to cast aspersions on celebrity reality shows, many of which are, after all, fundamentally about raising money for – yes, you know it – charity. Here’s another way to help charities, though. You go to your church or St V de P. You put your celebrity hand in your celebrity pocket and take out your money – of the common or celebrity variety: it all adds up.
You put it in the poor box and then, as Dionne Warwick so beautifully instructs, Just Walk On By.No lights, no cameras, no applause; nobody knowing a thing about it. A gesture that is just about you and your celebrity soul. It's just a suggestion. Yet another way to help charity would be to simply take the cost of making Celebrity Bainisteoirand donate that in its entirety.
One would have thought the meteoric crashing to earth of Ireland’s grand pretensions would have ended the myth that this country has celebrities. One of the joys of living in Ireland is that you aren’t allowed to be a celebrity. Even the famous Bono knows that while he can legitimately be classed as an uber-celebrity in LA or New York, when he hits the streets of Dublin, he is just a well-known guy in platform heels. ‘Keep the head down,’ he mutters to himself. When Bono is in Ireland, he is in championship manager mode all the time.
This is what the crack-commando unit of interchangeable Irish celebrities, forever interviewing one another on their TV shows and presenting each other with awards and smiling their assassin’s smiles and referring to one another as ‘babe’ (!) do not seem to understand: Nobody out there believes the game. Or perhaps they do. Perhaps the big dream of the kids nowadays is to one day become a Celebrity Maor Uisce if not a full-blown Celebrity Bainisteoir. After all it is only a bit of fun! It adds a bit of colour and excitement to our lives. Who doesn’t want that? Real live celebrities among us, in our dressingrooms and on our sidelines.
Look! Isn’t that the guy from that weather show? And oh, what was she on again? It’s a helicopter! Who could it be? Listen up, team: there is no “I” in manager. (But there is in Despair). Let’s do it for the jersey.
