Jealousy is a terrible thing

Last weekend saw one of Ireland’s greatest sporting achievements, as our rugby boys clinched a long-awaited Six Nations Grand Slam.

I don’t claim to be a huge rugby fan, however, I wouldn’t consider myself jumping on the bandwagon of our recent success as I remember watching, as a child in the early nineties, Ireland pick up their fair share of wooden spoons so I have been there for the bad times as well.

After one of the most tense sporting occasions I have witnessed in recent times, I felt proud of our rugby team and more importantly I felt proud for my country.

So your probably thinking where is this going? Well here’s my point, strangely the small shop around the corner from my flat stocks The Sunday World, an Irish Sunday tabloid newspaper that I always read back home (I live in Preston if you don’t know).

So on Sunday morning, bleary-eyed from the night before, I went to pick up the paper expecting celebration pictures, the match report from an undoubtedly ecstatic rugby correspondent and in-depth analysis from the experts.

All of which I did find but after being engrossed in the four or five pages of rugby I found myself through to the GAA pages (Gaelic Football and Hurling for our English readers) where I would expect them to report the sport that was in the shadow for that day.

What I did find shocked me and proved to me the amount of bitterness that lies in some quarters of the GAA world towards Ireland’s successful international sports.

Pat Spillane, a GAA pundit and schoolteacher, described in his weekly column how he felt that the skill and excitement of rugby played the day before was no better than a Junior League Gaelic Football match.

For those of you who don’t know the GAA system the level he was suggesting is roughly the standard of Sunday League football in England, maybe the lower levels of non-league if it was two top teams.

Spillane then went on to suggest that rugby has had an advantage of being a professional sport with money to hire coaches to come to schools where GAA is lacking.

Well, that is there own fault, first of all the GAA’s ignorance towards professional sport has left them behind on some fronts of development of young players. Secondly the GAA can afford to pay coaches to travel to schools to teach rugby, they just don’t want to cough up.

The pundit did mention that he was supporting the Irish team in their success but that he doesn’t see the appeal of rugby as a sport. I’m sorry but you won’t find many things as thrilling as a player having one kick that could either win the game or lose it, which is the position Wales’ Stephen Jones found himself in at the death last Saturday.

There’s also the charge Ireland made straight after the Welsh drop-goal, not exciting? Try telling that to the Irish fans that nearly took the roof off the Millennium Stadium when Ronan O’Gara returned Ireland’s lead with his drop-goal.

Nevermind the skill or the excitement, it doesn’t matter what sport it is, for a small nation with limited resources everyone should be proud of success whether it be rugby, soccer, GAA or even tiddlywinks.

The fact that Spillane would begrudge rugby their day before our summer is full of ‘his’ GAA is nothing short of disgraceful. Shame on him.