I was sitting in my house a couple of Saturdays ago, idly thinking about the upcoming weekend of Gaelic football games. I was thinking, to be specific, about Kerry versus Meath, taking place in Tullamore later that day.
I was trying to convince myself of something. I knocked it around in my head. Hmmm … yes. Meath like two-pointers. They can rack up scores. Kerry have a few injuries. If they are complacent, they’re vulnerable. I texted my friend Mark Horgan and told him that if he had a fiver left over in a bookies app from the last time he placed a bet (almost certainly the Grand National), he should put it on his beloved Royals.
As Meath eased to a thumping victory, I could sense that after 22 years, the dynamic in our friendship had decisively changed. He finally respected me. And this wasn’t just about the €65 he won (there was a tenner left, and he’d put all his chips on the table). I was now the Seer of Seers, the Prognosticator of Prognosticators.
That respect may have dwindled somewhat when he asked me what came over me to arrive at this startling, Nostradamus-like conclusion. “I was just sitting in my favourite chair, looking out the window, and . . . thinking about football” doesn’t paint me and my life in an exceptionally interesting light, but I’d like to think it hasn’t disappeared entirely.
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As the updates came through, I was kicking myself that I hadn’t published this hunch more widely. I work on a podcast, I write a column for a national newspaper – why couldn’t I have broadcast these almost mystical match-predicting abilities more widely? You may feel obliged to point out that I have corrected the record today, at least.
Predictions are the stock-in-trade of the chattering classes and I had wasted my one good shout of the year on a Saturday morning text message. But this is a very narrow worldview. Because I’ve found myself making predictions everywhere this week. My family, the TV repairman, the man making my coffee . . . we’ve all exchanged our tuppence ha’penny worth about the four upcoming All-Ireland quarter-finals.
There have been years when this was not possible. There have been years when the TV repairman would have had no interest in talking to you about Gaelic football, and he would have been well within his rights. Your local barista would have had other things occupying their mind.
But this is a new dawn. There are many things we do not know or understand about Gaelic football, but there’s one sure way to advertise your knowledge and that’s by confidently predicting winners.
So when asked, I like to picture myself sitting at the bar in Mullarkeys in Milltown, Co Galway, beside my father. I imagine myself being quizzed by his friends, who are looking at me with a gimlet eye. “He earns a living at this craic, but does he actually have any clue what he’s on about? It’s one thing expounding at length in the coffee shops of Dublin 2, but in this crucible, who are you actually going to tip?”
The morally, intellectually honest answer to such a question this week is: “I really couldn’t say with any certainty.”
But, of course, that will not cut it. I dare not even mutter the phrase “shot efficiency” within two miles of Mullarkeys. I’ve noticed in the past that it’s better to lead with something like a team’s lack of a left-footed free-taker; something that is noticeable to the naked eye, but which shows keen observation, rather than a slavish, possibly deviant, obsession with statistics.
“Well lads, here’s how I see it” – I might pause here and take a sup of my pint, for dramatic effect – “Galway will beat Meath on Sunday.” This would appease the locals, notwithstanding their serious misgivings about Galway, which they would probably have been airing for the previous hour and a half.
“Donegal will have their arses out to beat Monaghan on Saturday.” That sounds like a bold statement, but it’s still a shout for the favourites.
“I think Tyrone will beat the Dubs, Con or no Con. They have big men around the middle on Cluxton’s kick-out, and they’ve forwards. Darragh Canavan, lads – Sunday will be the day we’ll see Darragh Canavan.“
Someone will lean in and inform the pub that Dublin v Tyrone is actually on Saturday, not Sunday, but I’m in my stride now. “And Kerry will beat Armagh after extra-time.” This is the point where I would really open my shoulders, rhetorically speaking. I’d mention Barry McCambridge’s calf, Paddy Burns’s struggles with Shane Walsh in the group game, David Clifford’s irrepressible form.
I would construct an entire argument – but it’s not a conclusion, in the same way that tipping Tyrone over Dublin isn’t a conclusion. What I am actually doing is retrofitting some opinions to the hunch I have, after the fact. “I just have a feeling …” isn’t good enough for Mullarkeys, or The Irish Times, or The Sunday Game. But maybe that’s all we have.
I can see myself slapping my pint down and saying I’d better be on my way. After that, silence would descend on the bar for 10 seconds. Then 20. Someone will say, as if to no one: “That lad now . . . that lad is the latest in a long line of bullshitters.”
And they would, as ever, be entirely correct.
