GAA Clichés and Dublin Legends

Sport
1003

Kilkenny are reported to be flying in training.

Richie Hogan getting a particular mention. Now he’s been a great player on the highest stage so this next bit doesn’t apply to him but you sometimes get a lad that’s regularly brilliant in training but constantly fails to produce it in matches.

He’ll go down the pecking order again after failing to take his latest chance. Management will privately vow never to rely on him again but then the next season will come, he’ll start shooting the lights out in training and challenge matches between end of league and start of championship, memories of last season will start to fade, he’ll earn another chance based on scoring 0-5 from play against Cork on a Wednesday night in Dungarvan and then he’ll get destroyed on matchday and taken off before half time.

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1004

Calling a team a “work in progress”.

Even when that team is largely made up of past their best players and there is no sign at all of progress. ie. Galway under Henry Shefflin.

Donal Óg Cusack showcases this genre of cliché beautifully here.

https://www.rte.ie/sport/hurling/2022/0701/1307868-donal-og-cusacks-hurling-semi-finals-previews/
Galway are a work-in-progress and Henry has done well to get them here with a fighting chance.

1005

“One for the ages” is becoming an irritating cliché. Too many people are watching saccharine US sports programming and picking up its saccharine lingo.

1006

Build up, hype and not hearing a word about the upcoming match are massive gaa cliches. They’re from the same vein as ‘flying in training’ completely intangible.

Imagine fellas meeting on las ramblas and saying ‘jaysus you’d hardly know there was a champions league quarter final first leg on this weekend I’ve hardly seen a flag up and there’s fuck all chat about it around’

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1007

“Past their sell by date”.

Inside every GAA player is the ambition to be a perishable foodstuff. Every GAA player, and manager, has a sell by date.

The sell by date of several Dublin footballers is today.

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1008

"There was more than 23k/30k/39k there today. "

There was/were more than 73k in Croke Park today.

1009

Where else would you get it.

1010

“I said this at the start of the year” … (e.g. fancied Limerick, Galway, Kerry etc to win)

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1011

Not a cliche as such, but the GAA habit of adding an extra 10 yards to any score from their own half.

He scores from the opposition 65, its 70 yards, but he scores from his own 65 it’s a 100 yards.

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1012

Darragh Fitz was standing behind the umpire when he put one over last night :man_shrugging:

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1013

“Massive crowd”.

Usually used in relation to games with miniscule crowds.

Pretty much always used to performatively exaggerate the real crowd size.

Brian Carthy was a great lover of this cliche, especially for National Hurling League games in November or Roscommon county semi-finals.

Cork posters love it when talking about club games. Over the years the attendance at the 1989 Cork SFC final has grown from 12k to 25k to 50k to 100k, to half a million.

That attendance was still less than the 1994 Cork SFC final, which attracted a bigger crowd than Woodstock and the Pope in the Phoenix Park put together.

1014

“These are scenes nobody wants to see”.

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1015

Going to the well.

1016

We’ll sit down and have a good look at it.

1017

Two of them alone more than worth the price of admission. - glasagusban

1018

The idea that when a generational team from a county declines that that county will continue to be a major force is the GAA’s equivalent of how property vested interests predicted a “soft landing” circa 2007.

I see Limerick people doing this now. “We’ll never go back to how we were”. “We won’t be as dominant in the future but we’ll always be contenders.” Stuff like that.

The same stuff that was said about Dublin. It was widely maintained that Dublin would win at least five football All-Irelands per decade going forward, even if they weren’t as dominant.

Pretty much always things don’t work out like that.

Generally what happens is, one or two key players retire, and the cracks start showing. Maybe an All-Ireland or two is wrung out of the dominant generation late in their life span. Then a captain departs, or a manager departs, or a county board CEO departs. Then a rake of players depart, and the whole thing falls apart.

Even if you’re Kerry, you have a problem. Kerry went to shit after 1986. If Dublin don’t wring a final All-Ireland out of the remnants of the golden generation this year, they’re unlikely to win one for the next five or six years at least, or more.

Cody did an incredible job with Kilkenny to seamlessly weave a pattern with two golden generations from 2000 right through to 2015, but then that collapsed, and Kilkenny may not win another All-Ireland for a good while yet.

Go through other big counties. Mickey Harte did an excellent job to keep Tyrone very competitive post-2008 but he could not win another All-Ireland, but his successors did. That’s about the best you can hope for in a county that doesn’t have any special advantage, ie. any county outside the big two in football and the big three in hurling.

Meath collapsed in football post-2001.
Cork collapsed after their All-Ireland football-winning team of 2010.
Galway football went into a near 20 year slumber after 2001 and only now has it properly re-emerged as a force.
Armagh collapsed after their All-Ireland team. So did Derry. And most of all Down.

In hurling, Wexford collapsed after 1996.
In 1995, Anthony Daly said “we know that Offaly hurling is so strong now that it’ll be back”. Once those players departed, Offaly hurling was not back.
Clare went back into the doldrums after their 1990s team, re-emerged briefly as All-Ireland contenders but now look like falling back into the doldrums soon as the remnants of the 2013 team fade away.

Even Cork and Tipp have had long periods without winning All-Irelands in hurling.

Mayo keep coming because they still haven’t won one.

Limerick very likely will go back to how they were pre-2018 after this team has gone.

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1019

Young forwards coming through look too promising I think.

O’Neill, O’Brien, English…all slightly different style wise and should complimenteach other.

If Kinnerk stays around, Limerick will surely be contenders well into the medium future

1020

Armagh had Kevin Dyas and Jamie Clarke and Ronan Clarke and Aaron Kernan and Brian Mallon and Ciaran McKeever all coming through post-2006 and other players still in their primes.

They still ended up being shite.

1021

'Hey Joey: “Keep the faith.”

No Joey: “Spread the faith”

Wait Joe, hold on : “Fuck Tipp”. ’

Joe Biden 14.04.23

1022

Usually the only thing that many people want to see
It’s a familiar cry in my gaff if I’m watching a match ‘******** you better not come into the living room because there’s the kind of thing happening in the match that nobody likes to see’
I’d have company for a minute or two then