Shutting out the media will damage GAA in the long term

Talking Sport – Stephen Glennon argues change in attitude towards the press is detrimental to the Association

 Former Cork goalkeeper, All-Ireland winner, All-Star and Sunday Game analyst Donal Óg Cusack wrote a very interesting article over the Summer regarding the decline in the relationship between the media and GAA players.

His On The Line piece, which featured on the official GAA website, offered plenty of food for thought and cited a couple of examples where the media – or the national press to be more specific – had used a throwaway remark by a player to create a controversy.

One of the examples he alluded to was Joe Canning’s comments about Kilkenny and Henry Shefflin following the 2012 All-Ireland drawn final, which some journalists – national journalists, I might add – decided to put their own interpretation or spin on.

Basically, Canning said the Cats, and Shefflin, were a bit cuter when dealing with the referee. Questioning the “sportsmanship” of remonstrating with the man in black – as most do – the Portumna sharpshooter noted Kilkenny were simply using their experience to get something from the game.

Next thing, though, a media storm had erupted – Canning v Shefflin. Cusack believed the “debacle” was an attempt to cause a “blood feud” and he asked: “So why would Galway players make themselves available [for interview] again?”

Cusack said it was because of contrived controversies like that one which caused a distrust between GAA players – and, indeed some managers – and the media. And he was right. The chasm between both sides continues to grow with every passing year and it is not good for the game.

It’s not only at national level. At local and provincial, there is also a gap emerging. It is not necessarily – at least I would hope not – borne out of distrust but, whatever the reason, the whole dynamics between the media and local GAA has begun to change.

Throughout my 15 years so far as a local ‘hack’ – having also played the game and coached hurling and camogie sides in that time – I have always had a good relationship with managers and players across the GAA spectrum but, in recent times, it has often become a song and dance to get a quote or team news.

God be with the days when the local newspaper could ring the manager or a player and they would be genuinely excited to be doing a piece. Or, if you called out to a training session – pre-arranged with the club – how they would be so enthusiastic and embraced the arrival of the local press as part of the fanfare of the county or All-Ireland final build-up.

For clubs like Portumna and Corofin, it can become somewhat repetitive, but hopefully they still recognise the role the local media plays in promoting their club and the game, in enhancing the sense of occasion, and, from a newspaper perspective, having this moment in time recorded for posterity.

Over the past year or so, though – and colleagues here and reporters in other media outlets have remarked on this – the relationship between the local media and the GAA has begun to alter.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.