Life is about what you see and how you see it. The GAA is about life and it’s about what you see. This is a thread for the discussion of all things visual to do with the GAA and the role it plays in exciting the fuck out of people.
What position the camera is in. What is the perfect height? What makes the perfect backdrop to a stadium? What makes the perfect backdrop to a match? The city, the town, the walk.
The aesthetics of playing style. Gaits, poses, general demeanour, kicking style, striking style.
Playing kits. Boots. Hairstyles. Celebrations. Goalposts.
What excites people and why? Why do some visual things excite people than others? Why are some things visual things turn offs for people?
Example 1: Tipperary v Waterford. People hate this pairing. They don’t know why. The main reason is there’s too much blue. Blue is a boring colour. It evokes a feeling of coldness. Why do Cavan never excite? Why do Laois never excite? Blue and white. Blue and white is shite. Blue and white is Rangers and Chelsea and Cardiff City. Blue is Tory and Fine Gael.
Example 2: Why do Cork excite? Why do Down excite? Red. Red is power and red is sexy and red is passionate and swaggery. Red is Liverpool and Manchester United and Arsenal and Bayern Munich and the San Francisco 49ers and Tiger Woods and Welsh rugby Grand Slams. Red is a colour to be worn in sunshine. Red is Che Guevara and socialist chic. It’s cool.
Example 3: Why do people hate Portlaoise stadium and why does this stadium never draw a good crowd? Because it looks shit. It has absolutely nothing interesting about it. It doesn’t have an interesting camera angle. It doesn’t have interesting surrounds. The view of the surrounds over the back of the end terraces is…nothing. The town is nothing. It evokes a feeling of coldness.
Example 4: Cult heroes. Cult heroes are cult heroes because of the way the look and the way they move. They move people and drive to them distraction with excitement. The aesthetics of Conor McHugh holding the hurley like a wooden spoon in a wooden spoon race and bullocking forward away from the giants of Limerick hurling, this was a shambolic David putting it up to Goliath. Strength through being shambolic. Hedgo in on the edge of the square bullocking around, throwing his weight around like an angry elephant, the aesthetics of this were potent. The aesthetics of this inspired the Dublin team and the Dublin support and undermined Limerick. What happened was in some ways inevitable. Limerick had been totally undermined throughout the pitch by the visual toll of these two Bash Street Kids style Dublin players standing the fuck up them in schoolyard fashion.
Example 5: PJ O’Connell. Clare could not have won the 1995 All-Ireland without this fella, because he put his shoulders back, bounced off his tippytoes, swung his hips and all but did that stereotype Madchester thing with the up and down arms like Ian Brown. He looked like a corner boy in a Clare village waiting for a lift to emigrate to London in 1985. It was 1995.
Example 6: Why does the new Croke Park not excite like the old one did? Lack of natural sunlight coming in. No Toyota clock. No view of the mountains. No Nally Stand. No morning sunlight coming in through the pillars of the old Cusack Stand. Perspex fencing. The lack of “familiar” advertising hoardings. No Go Esso Buy Esso. No Tayto Man. No Aer Lingus. No Go Greyhoud Racing. The view of Howth being obscured. Blue seats. The Railway end being a physically separate structure to the rest of the stadium. No hill on the Hill any more. No “square” on Jones’s Road outside the Hogan Stand. The Stasi box in the Nally corner. The finger. The screen over the Stasi box. The commentary position being too high and too central. No Gasometer in the background. No flags. No banners. No air horns. No terracing behind the Canal goal. No sloping roofs. Metal goalposts rather than wooden ones. No Crow’s Nest with the TV box visible to the entire stadium. No electronic scoreboard under the Nally with writing moving across it from right to left. No gigantic crane overlooking Hill 16 broadcasting television pictures. No ramshackle scoreboard box on the Canal End with some fella inside manually changing the numbers.
7: Boots. Tony Kelly excites not just because he’s a visual delight with feet like Nuryev and hands like Hendrix and hips like Shakira, but because he wears black Adidas Copa Mundial mouldies, evoking a lineage to decades of Kerry footballers and West German and French and Argentinean footballers and their sleek, sublime technical skill. Part of the swagger and cool and rebelliousness of Down 1991 was that they were the first team to arrive in Croke Park all wearing Puma Kings. The only sour note of Tyrone’s 2005 All-Ireland was that for the for the final, they mostly switched away from Predator Pulses to Nike boots. Nike boots were not meant for the GAA. Except for Gerry McInerney. Gerry McInerney wore white Nike boots when it was different. Now it’s a sign of a dullard.
