LOCKERROOM SPECIAL:As the GAA championship starts to roll for another year, the reasons we love the games have never been so apparent, writes TOM HUMPHRIES.

1 THE LEGEND of Kilkenny's training games. The last time any of those boys heard a whistle blow was when their team bus pulled in at a level crossing. The train backed off by the way.

2 CHUCK NORRIS/Francie Bellew/Noel Hickey jokes.

Noel Hickey uses open-top buses as roller blades/ when Noel Hickey goes swimming he doesn't get wet the water gets Noel Hickey/ Noel Hickey keeps full forwards on his key ring. There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures that Noel Hickey has allowed to live.

3 JOE CANNING. Hurling's everyman. Don't ya love the first sight of him in early spring having been too well fed and watered over the Christmas. And then watching as he shrinks by instalments but grows with every game.

4 LOVE HIM or hate him it's hard to take your eyes off the inscrutable face of Mr Frank Murphy. Ever wonder who'd be president if himself and Pat Hickey were stranded together on a desert island?

5 THE APPLIANCE of science. From the days when Jimmy Keaveney or Bomber Liston would bring an overnight bag if they thought they'd be asked to do a lap at training the modern player is tending to his core fitness, his SAQ, his plyometrics, every passing fad.

6 KNOCK, KNOCK. Who's there?

Panther.

Panther who?

Panther no panth, leth pthlay pool boys.

The Roscommon footballers of course.

7 GAELIC GAMES has the real matinee idols. Wayne Rooney looks like he tried a 100-metre sprint in a hall 90 metres long, most rugby forwards look like they go bobbing for French fries. But the Gooch, ah the Gooch.

8POST-MATCH quotes from top intercounty hurling managers. They never say, well Marty I didn't actually see the incident. There's a something about the game but there's hardly a dull or a sane manager out there.

9 KIDS INVADING the pitch at half-time to play hurling any time there is a game in Parnell Park.

10 FITZGERALD STADIUM on a sunny day.

11 RUBBING SHOULDERS with the enemy. Okay, it's not the Algonquin Round Table all the time on the terraces or the stands but being herded in with your inferiors from a rival county gives you some perspective and some laughs. Segregation has made English soccer like that restaurant on the moon where the food is great but there is literally no atmosphere.

12THAT TINGLING you get in Semple Stadium at that moment when the referee is holding the ball in his hand waiting to throw it in. The maximum amount of pleasure plus time added on for injuries awaits you.

13 THE MOCK concern of certain Ulster defenders as they lean over their victims after the "accidental" collision! Like the old joke about what you get when you cross a pitbull with a collie? The answer being a dog that rips your leg off, then goes for help.

14 THE JUNIOR Bs. Slow as a wet week in Dundalk, they're permitting a film crew to remake Gorillas in the Mist in the showers after their games, they're smoking like chimneys, they're cursing like troopers, they're drinking enough to finance two clubs. And that's just the camogie girls.

15 THE SOAP opera disciplinary system. Where else does every disciplinary verdict finish with the words To Be Continued.

16 LANCE ARMSTRONG and other fairy tales of inspiration.

17 WE HARDLY blink anymore when a sideline cut goes over the bar.

18 CROKER!

19 AFTER-MATCH quotes. So much better than the wheel's spinning, but the hamster's asleep Gary, genre (see, for instance, Johnny Pilkington, The Anthology, or Watching My Words! A Babs Keating Collection.)

20 THE DECLINE of Leeds United makes all professional sports suspect.

21 THERE ARE few things more enjoyable in life than taking a batch of new hurls out of a car boot and talking bullshit to your mates about balance and grain and lightness and moisture content and linseed and banding and double banding and seasoning before giving the hurls out to the under-11 Bs.

22 BARRY BONDS. Michelle Smith. Linford Christie. Ben Johnson. Marion Jones and the gang.

23THE IRREPRESSIBILITY of GAA clubs, the unspoken philosophy that if you stand still you die. So you embrace debt and build the clubhouse, Pruntify the pitches, redo the dressingrooms, build a gym, put floodlights in, tear up one of the Prunty pitches and lay down an all-weather, put up a hurling wall and, well, it's time to redo the clubhouse. It goes on and on and on.

24HOW MANY rugby followers does it take to screw in a light bulb. Eighty two thousand. A thousand to screw it in while singing Ireland's Call. The other 81,000 to pretend that even though they wouldn't have known a year ago if the bulb was hand blown, blown up or solid, that they have always been passionate followers of the old light bulb installation game but this? This is history in the making, roysh.

25THE DUBLIN hurlers.

26 JOEY BARTON.

27 LA NA gClub! Hundreds of thousands of people yesterday running around doing stuff for free and for fun in the sunshine.

28 A FECKIN' farmer'd make a fortune on the land it takes him to turn.

29HERE'S A thing. As a way of meeting people and making friends it beats Bebo, Facebook, MSN and Twitter combined.

30 FOR AN association riddled with Fianna Fáilers, teachers and padres, the GAA operates on socialist principles. Take the money in and share it out as needed.

31HAIRY BABY T Shirts.

32 PAUL GALVIN. Never has one man been loathed by so many and coveted by so many.

He's a scut.

You'd love to have him though.

Ah jaysus ya would.

33 FAT LARRY. Gooch, The Rock and Fraggy Hero. Ricey . . . Cha. And Taggy. The Bull. Geezer. Gorta, Gah. Sparrow. Growler. Chunky and Star.

34 ROMAN ABRAMOVICH could buy the Prem. Nobody can buy Sam or Liam.

35 WINTER SYMPOSIUMS on just how the National League works this year.

36THE LITTLE man in the black coat who knows all the rules. And all the bylaws. And is on the comm-it-ay.

37 MODERN IRELAND. A church, a post office, two pubs, a school, a graveyard and the mother of all GAA complexes.

38 TWO STRANDS of braided wool in your county colours is the very definition of minimalist chic.

39 MICHEÁL Ó Muircheartaigh. Polite laughter at Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh impersonators.

40 THE GAA is still about where you're from. Pro sports is about whose laundry you like to follow.

41 HOW MANY GAA fans does it take to change a light bulb. One. But 45,000 to run on to the pitch afterwards.

42 SPEAKING OF which. Plan B. All stewards Plan B. Plan B.

43 THE FINE art of getting games called off.

44 THE LOST romance of the dual player.

45 WHERE ELSE can you have a breed of player good for nothing else really but able to go in and "bust up the play"

46 TWO SURE things about the footballer whose skills your companion has just admired. Ah he's a better hurler. And his brother was better but couldn't keep away from the drink.

47 EOIN QUIGLEY'S point against Kilkenny in 2005? Quick thinking without the speed bumps. Or the Rock's point against Limerick in '01? His finest moment of many or Carey's winner against Clare in '96. Ah, sit back, put them in order of merit and get back to us after a grand evening . . .

48 WET-DAY repartee. I didn't pay to see your effin' umbrella.

49 NO MATTER how much you know about the GAA you're only a bar stool away from a fella who knows twice as much.

50 LAR FOLEY stories.

51 JBM. Still and forever.

52 CLONES. IS there anything like the satisfaction of getting through the impregnable roadblocks and surly stewards and lock-and-load maors and making it to your seat. It's like breaking into Colditz.

53 LADS HAVE ye de slip. Have ye de slip. De fuckin' ref wants de slip. He won't take it after. Have ye de slip. Yerra warm up again.

54 BRIEGE CORKERY.

55 THE CORK hurlers. Say what you like but everyone benefited from 2002 and we'll miss them when they're gone.

56 CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS. If ya really want to get to the heartbeat of Irish sport it's those days when the prawn sandwiches are nowhere to be seen but when everybody trudges along to see the club play championship. Nobody is ever really happy afterwards. The losers decide "we're worse than we ever were and that's saying something". The winners note flatly that "five points from play will be no good the next day".

57 CUMANN NA mBunscol finals. Honest to god. Take a day off and go along. Put the grin back on your fretful old adult face.

58 APART FROM the aberrant Mr Brolly, who threw kisses to the crowd without taking precautions, the average goalscorer in Gaelic games comports himself with the excitement of a young lad making his Confirmation in a suit that is slightly embarrassing for all the attention it draws. We have yet to see a player run to the flag out the corner and get jjggy jiggy with it. For that small mercy much thanks.

59 I WANT ya to stick to him like shite to a blanket.

60 GAA PLAYERS don't manufacture rumours of moves to other counties.

61 LAST MAN Standing. Hurling, the Revolution Years. House Of Pain. Kings of September and so on. The great Irish sports books these days are all GAA books.

62 HEY 14, ya wouldn't get a kick in a ****ing stampede.

63 YOUR GAA hero doesn't live in a gated community quarantined from the rest of the world. He's there doing the same jobs as we do (well, usually something more dignified than this job), going to the same shops and driving the same cars.

64 THE MINI leagues on a Saturday morning. Hundreds of kids in little helmets, clutching sticks and running around like a startled colony of ants.

65 LOOKING AT the mini leagues on a Saturday morning and saying things like "ah it's great to see" and "the little fella with the red helmet, he's a dinger so he is".

66 GAA TEAMS have hangers-on but no security personnel or bodyguards.

67 (SLOWLY AT first but getting quicker) Come. . . on . . . ye . . . boys . . . in . . .blue, come on ye boys in blue, comeonyeboys come on ye boys in blue.

68 BECAUSE WE don't need any external validation to know that Sheff or the Gooch or Ro Fallon are special. And that's just three gingers who came to mind.

69 BECAUSE IN the GAA there is no such thing as obesity. Merely the size to do a bit of damage in at full forward.

70 THE MAN with the vintage radio surgically welded on to his ear giving reports from other games. Meath is two points down. No, goal Meath. No Kildare. No square ball. Meath is two points down.

71 THE SUSPENSION of all parking laws and the sheer creativity of the parking at rural GAA games. Stop your tut-tutting, there should be grants for this sort of thing.

72 NO MATTER how naff your county jersey is, no matter how tightly it fits some days you have to wear it because you love it and you love where you are from.

73 ALL STAR posters. Part of what we are.

74 WHEN THE show trials start and the bankers are pleading for clemency there shall be indeed be mercy shown to the AIB person who came up with the "One Life, One Club" campaign. Other than that we are very sorry lads . . .

75 SITTING IN the club and working out exactly where all the good minors did go.

76 THE BEST under-15 going in goals for the under-21s.

77 MONDAY MORNING in school if your county has won the All-Ireland the previous day or if the parish won the county championship. Monday morning in school if the teacher's county won the All-Ireland the previous day or if the teacher's club won the county championship the previous day. Monday morning in school if the teacher's county lost the All-Ireland the previous day or the teacher's club lost the county final the previous day.

78 BY JESUS if they'd All-Irelands for being ugly ye'd be the dream team.

79 THE GAA museum at Croker. Some of the stuff they have even pre-dates the Heineken Cup.

80 THE GAFFER. Never would have happened if Steve had stuck with playing for Louth.

81 THE POLICE don't hold the away fans back in the stadium for up to an hour after games. Even in Cork.

82 THE SORT of body contact that would put Cristiano Ronaldo in intensive care for a week takes place during the warm-up for most teams in Croker now.

83 THE WAY the GAA saves us from the curse of global homogeneity. So what if we play something different.

84 THE WAY the GAA saves us from the curse of internal homogeneity. Would Cork and Kerry have separate identities were it not for the GAA. Would Meath and Kildare and Wicklow be anything other than the home counties with Dublin playing the role of London.

85 PADDY'S DAY has been saved by the club finals.

86 SEEING HOW many kids you can get into a car going to a match.

Yes, I know Garda but it's a county under-12 semi-final and they're late.

Okay. I'll put the siren on. You follow.

87 FÉILE NA nGael

88 BEING OF a certain age which entitles you to sentimentalise about Wavin hurleys and crepe paper caps and unoffeeeeshal match programmes and to just know that the 1977 All-Ireland football semi-final was the high point of 20th century civilisation.

89 SEEING THE old greats who once stilled your own childish play, men who you pretended to be in your hurling or football dreams stalking the sidelines coaching the under-13s.

90 BALL WAS there ref, bleedin' ball was there.

91 DID THEY ever bring the Champions League trophy to your school. Sam and Liam spend more days in school each year than most teachers.

92 WATCHING BRIAN Dooher, wondering when they will find the off switch.

93 THE GAA is the most effective welfare body the country has. Ask anybody just fetched up in New York or Chicago or Boston. It's like the sporting wing of the Freemasons, the drinking arm of the Mafia.

94 KEVIN HEFFERNAN. A one-man Mount Rushmore.

95 RULE 42 is gone. Rule 21 is gone. Croker is open. It's not even a guilty pleasure anymore.

96 ALL GAA assassins have the most harmless names like Francie and Sylvie and Ricey. In pro sports they'd be called things like the Terminator, The Mean Machine, Judge Dredd (okay, stretching the point a little there but we've 125 of these suckers to get through).

97 THE CHAMPIONSHIP is in tune with our natural rhythms. Summer comes, sun shines, we play championship. The other stuff is just diversion on the dark nights and wet days.

98 UMPIRES LOOKING at each other blankly. Linesmen shrugging. It's good for sport not to let technology rule out the factor of human error. Reminds us that there are more important things in life.

99 THE SHEER loveable eccentricity of a sporting organisation which gets itself into knots because a few young lads every year choose to try the sand and cash of Australia for a bit while they are young but thousands, and good luck to them, try their hands at other sports. Where is the angst over Pádraig Harrington and Paul McGinley, over Tomás O'Leary or Shane Long. There isn't any and nor should there be.

100 THE Ó Sé brothers.

101 GETTING THE ferry on the way to a hurling game on the Ards peninsula. You really feel as if the game has an international dimension!

102 THE TRAGEDY of people who follow counties with less or more than two syllables in the county name. How delightful are those chants? Mee-eeeth. Caw-ork. Wah-fuh!

103 JAYSUS IF they won't take you off, have the decency to come off yourself. It's not your fault son, it's the gobshites that picked ya.

104 THAT STORY. A dispute has split a hurling parish in Galway down the centre. We all know which one. Anyway there is an egm called and when things get heated the parish priest walks up to the podium and reminds everybody of what the GAA can be and should be and pleads for the good of the club for the factions to lay aside their differences and pull together and for everybody to move ahead together as a united force. And the chairman stands up and says: "Thanks a lot for that now Father, but that's the kind of shite that sickens my hole."

If it isn't true it should be true.

105 KNOCK KNOCK

Whose there?

Vaughan

Vaughan Who?

Vaughan day yis might win an All-Ireland. The eternal optimism of the no-hopers.

106 FIRST THERE. Looking out over the club's field in the early morning. Bit of mist, sun coming up. Second home.

107 THE MEMORY of great mentors you once had. Funerals with the jersey hanging over the coffin and stories being told.

108 THE WEIRD way in which neither you nor the people beside you break off into a guttural roar a couple of lines before the end of the national anthem and yet the entire stadium seems to do it at once.

109 THE ARTANE Boys Band. The older you get the more their musical stylings grow on you. No really.

110 THE MOTHER of all derby games? Dublin and Meath. Cork and Kerry. Down and Armagh. Galway and Mayo. Cork and Tipp. Kilkenny and Wexford. These are Balkan feuds, things you grow up with, conditions of living. Not triumphs of hype.

111 THE WONDERMENT each year as like the list of the fallen in the Great War the names of the casualties in the early rounds of the Tyrone county championship are read out and Mickey Harte's panel shrinks almost to single figures.

112 The Seán Ógs. Ó Ceallachain and Ó hAilpín.

113 THE GAA makes the world a smaller place. Every September people who you thought you would never see again or hear from again contact you in the spirit of friendship and wondering about tickets.

114 RUPERT MURDOCH still doesn't own the GAA.

115 BELFAST CÚCHULAINNS.

116 WHY IS the FAI still trying to make us sing We're On The One Road by the Wolfe Tones. Rugby has moved us past all that!

117 VOLUNTEERISM IS the fancy word for it, but putting it back in is what people do and a professional sport will just never have that same spirit of pay-back, of returning to the game what you took from it, because the GAA asks you to measure the reward in something other than euro and cent.

118 WATCHING ANTHONY Daly ref a training game. (Memo to self: idea for TV series. Viewers bet on Dalo's pulse rate in various scenarios)

119 HANG SANDWICHES and tae. Still the staple of royalty.

120 IRELAND'S CALL. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Can see what people see in Paul O'Connell and yes he'd a done some damage in around the square but Ireland's Call?

121 IS THERE anything as viscerally stirring, as boneshakingly exciting and quintessentially part of us as a great comeback in a great game of hurling on a fine summer's day. There is not!

122 FLAGS FROM the houses. Bonfires on the roads. Speeches from the backs of lorries.

123 HURLERS AND footballers always bring their A game. Sometimes it just looks like their B or C game.

124 FROM EDDIE Moroney to Glengooley we can laugh at ourselves. And we'll laugh with those who sit down to pick apart every single one of these 125 reasons.

125 A CENTURY and a quarter and still rolling, rolling, rolling.

AGUS FÓGRA AMHAIN:George Hook will be generously submitting himself for a Q&A session at the Donahies Community School, Streamville Road, Donaghmede, Dublin 13, on Thursday at 7.30pm. Tickets are €10 (available at door also).

The evening is being run for the Romanian Childrens' Fund and many of the schoolkids in the Donahies are involved. Further info from the school at 01-8473522.