I was at the wedding of two proper stalwarts of my Dublin GAA club last Friday. Diarmuid and Caitríona are both current players, have both been executive committee members, incredibly hardworking, incredibly popular – the real deal.
I had a game the following day so I wasn’t drinking, but I couldn’t help but notice that the club chairman barely had time to put his hand in his pocket to buy himself a pint. The flow of drinks in his direction was almost constant.
Denis is a popular man, but this seemed a little excessive. Might our fellow club members’ anxiousness to buy him a pint perhaps have something to do with the missive sent around the club earlier that week for expressions of interest in All-Ireland final tickets?
I couldn’t possibly say.
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But when I mentioned this theory to him, reiterating of course the far likelier explanation that Denis was in fact just a man beloved by all, he good-naturedly told me it had nothing to do with him. For he had left the ticket allocation in the hands of a steely-haired Cavan man (every club should have one).
“Oh don’t worry, he’s the man in charge. I’ll tell you this though, he was telling me this morning about some of the emails he got looking for tickets. Some people in this club have a neck like a jockey’s bollocks.”
Having sent a fairly cocky email myself, I felt it best not to comment any further. Our Cavan man had a sense of humour though, because I got my ticket after all. And there’s something reassuringly pure about getting one from your club. There’s no glad-handing, no obsequiousness, no recognition that a return favour would have to be delivered.
You earn it the same way everyone else earns it. If you put the hours in with your club, you stand a chance of getting a ticket. With Dublin in the final, the increased supply comes nowhere close to meeting the increased demand in my club up here.
I was given a run-down of how our Cavan man attempted to divide his initial allocation, and it was extraordinarily meritocratic. They are still under-subscribed massively . . . but further details are redacted at this time.
For my ticket this week I was sent an email with a password, picked my seat and paid my way with a credit card, which at least removes the utter hell that is dealing with cash, which was for a long time the only way that club chairpersons were able to operate. Credit card payments are far cleaner, and far more convenient for everyone involved.
A decade or two ago, I got a late offer of a ticket from a prominent former GAA star of my acquaintance, who begged me to pay him with a cheque. Not having a cheque book, I enquired as to why he preferred that method. We were in a snug in a bar in town on the Sunday morning, where he’d appeared to have set up a temporary ticket office. He took one look at me and said – “cash, in Dublin, on All-Ireland final day? Do you think there’s any chance in hell I won’t spend that?”
Transparency is to be cherished in ticket-land, because there’s really so much room left in the process for cloak-and-dagger stuff. Each county board is left with a set number of clubs, a set number to be delivered to each club, a set number to be given to each player, and each member of the backroom team. But there also has to be a contingency pile. And in each club, there will probably be a contingency pile as well. There will always be a hard case.
In Dublin, former players, even All-Ireland winners, aren’t guaranteed a ticket. And given how many former All-Ireland winners are still probably alive down there, you can be sure Kerry don’t guarantee anything either. Players of that stature can usually be relied upon to find a ticket somewhere themselves . . . but the county board will reserve the right to keep a couple on file, for that hard case.
When a rigorous system only brings you so far, and with plenty of tickets doing the rounds in the offices of main competition sponsors, into the margins pour the wise guys, the wheel-greasers, the people who never seem to be short of a ticket. It is not enough for you to tell them they can actually only sit in one seat, hence the need for no more than one ticket.
It is important for everyone to know that they had a few spare on the Sunday morning, to dole out to those most in need of their beneficence. It becomes almost a status symbol. Your ability to get a ticket becomes almost a proxy for one’s place in the GAA firmament. Are you even to be taken seriously if you couldn’t get one?
No such worries for me this week. I’ll be sat in a line in the Cusack Stand with my fellow Dublin Gaels, celebrating another year in a club with 82,000 lucky members.
