A spatial issue
Credit:
Páirc Uí Rinn, Cork, March 12th 2011. Cork’s gaelic footballers charge out of the dressing room and into the cool spring air to be followed by Down. This is a rematch of last September’s All-Ireland final. A chance of redemption for the visitors, and a chance to show they mean business again this year for the Rebels.
Just 3,174 are in attendance for such an apparently highly-anticipated joust. Over behind one of the goals, around 100 youngsters seem more perturbed by the serious business of a game of chase along the poorly maintained terrace. Welcome to the world of the Irish sports fan.
Around 160 miles away, 4,200 paying spectators are packed into a cauldron like The Showgrounds in Sligo to witness the home side suffer a 1-0 defeat to Shamrock Rovers. The atmosphere is certainly more heated than that in Cork; the kids in attendance are even interested in what happens on the field.
The following morning, the newspapers all dedicate space to the GAA game, which admittedly is entertaining until the latter stages, while the better attended soccer match is given little or no column inches in sport sections across the board apart from one or two exceptions.
Last week, Irish Sun chief sports hack Neil O’Riordan, working for, it must be said, a newspaper that dedicates more space to the domestic game than most, spoke on RTE about how the media gives its fair share of coverage to games in terms of the people coming through the gates.
In a way, his point was valid. The Sun, Mirror and the Star all dedicate reasonable amounts of coverage to the league each Friday and they should be commended for that. En route to the opening of Mervue United’s Fahy’s Field last Friday, I read through each newspaper’s coverage and came to the conclusion that there is a distinct pattern here – all three were tabloids.
So, in the red-tops there is enough space dedicated to the league when correlated between the amount of fans that click through the ‘stiles on a Friday evening. That is until you look towards the big pages. The broadsheets turn a blind eye to our league for the most part. Instead, absurdly, choosing to spend more time dedicating copy to the upper-class, Haribo Tangfastic induced licentiousness that is schools rugby.
Of course, the recent phenomenon of the oval ball also meant there was no televised Airtricity League game last weekend, with RTE choosing to show a rugby match instead on Friday night. Yeah, that’s right - the same national broadcaster that has committed to showing a game every week throughout the season from 2013, would rather show the Irish U20s face Wales in rugby, a sport which has generally failed to capture the working-class imagination in every city except for Limerick.
You see, that’s the perception the big media outlets generally have. Broadsheets think it’s more beneficial to have 16 page supplements, and insurmountable inches reserved for underage rugby because they’ve more middle-class people buying their newspapers. In an economic sense, it’s understandable, but in this day and age, are we still at a stage where it is perceived that only us working-class folk attend soccer matches? Well, you’d be very far off the mark for presuming that.
So, therein lays the problem, the tabloids do a pretty good job of covering the Premier Division – the First Division argument is for another day – and it is the broadsheets where the league is punching below its weight. RTE will need to take a good look at themselves too. While the majority of those in place do a sterling job, more resources need to be dedicated from higher up the tree at Donnybrook.
Undoubtedly, we’ve moved on from the horrid days of Eircom League Weekly, which was aired after the bed times of anyone that wasn’t a student, and MNS provides us with a decent hour of coverage each Monday evening. But why the need to introduce the likes of Ray Houghton, when we have more than capable pundits, such as the likes of Richie Sadlier, who actually know player’s names and provide incisive and well researched judgment each week?
Give more air-time to likes of Sadlier, have proper commentary from each ground rather than voiceovers, and we’d be happy with that. For the meantime.
Just 3,174 are in attendance for such an apparently highly-anticipated joust. Over behind one of the goals, around 100 youngsters seem more perturbed by the serious business of a game of chase along the poorly maintained terrace. Welcome to the world of the Irish sports fan.
Around 160 miles away, 4,200 paying spectators are packed into a cauldron like The Showgrounds in Sligo to witness the home side suffer a 1-0 defeat to Shamrock Rovers. The atmosphere is certainly more heated than that in Cork; the kids in attendance are even interested in what happens on the field.
The following morning, the newspapers all dedicate space to the GAA game, which admittedly is entertaining until the latter stages, while the better attended soccer match is given little or no column inches in sport sections across the board apart from one or two exceptions.
Last week, Irish Sun chief sports hack Neil O’Riordan, working for, it must be said, a newspaper that dedicates more space to the domestic game than most, spoke on RTE about how the media gives its fair share of coverage to games in terms of the people coming through the gates.
In a way, his point was valid. The Sun, Mirror and the Star all dedicate reasonable amounts of coverage to the league each Friday and they should be commended for that. En route to the opening of Mervue United’s Fahy’s Field last Friday, I read through each newspaper’s coverage and came to the conclusion that there is a distinct pattern here – all three were tabloids.
So, in the red-tops there is enough space dedicated to the league when correlated between the amount of fans that click through the ‘stiles on a Friday evening. That is until you look towards the big pages. The broadsheets turn a blind eye to our league for the most part. Instead, absurdly, choosing to spend more time dedicating copy to the upper-class, Haribo Tangfastic induced licentiousness that is schools rugby.
Of course, the recent phenomenon of the oval ball also meant there was no televised Airtricity League game last weekend, with RTE choosing to show a rugby match instead on Friday night. Yeah, that’s right - the same national broadcaster that has committed to showing a game every week throughout the season from 2013, would rather show the Irish U20s face Wales in rugby, a sport which has generally failed to capture the working-class imagination in every city except for Limerick.
You see, that’s the perception the big media outlets generally have. Broadsheets think it’s more beneficial to have 16 page supplements, and insurmountable inches reserved for underage rugby because they’ve more middle-class people buying their newspapers. In an economic sense, it’s understandable, but in this day and age, are we still at a stage where it is perceived that only us working-class folk attend soccer matches? Well, you’d be very far off the mark for presuming that.
So, therein lays the problem, the tabloids do a pretty good job of covering the Premier Division – the First Division argument is for another day – and it is the broadsheets where the league is punching below its weight. RTE will need to take a good look at themselves too. While the majority of those in place do a sterling job, more resources need to be dedicated from higher up the tree at Donnybrook.
Undoubtedly, we’ve moved on from the horrid days of Eircom League Weekly, which was aired after the bed times of anyone that wasn’t a student, and MNS provides us with a decent hour of coverage each Monday evening. But why the need to introduce the likes of Ray Houghton, when we have more than capable pundits, such as the likes of Richie Sadlier, who actually know player’s names and provide incisive and well researched judgment each week?
Give more air-time to likes of Sadlier, have proper commentary from each ground rather than voiceovers, and we’d be happy with that. For the meantime.
About Alan Smith
Alan Smith works as a sub-editor for the Guardian newspaper in London. Originally from Cork, he freelances for several other newspapers and websites. Follow him on twitter @alansmith90. View Full Profile