TIPPING POINT:Quite what Mickey Harte and the others believed they could achieve by threatening to not play ball with RTÉ and not give post-match interviews in support of Brian Carthy is hard to guess, writes BRIAN O'CONNOR

‘GAEL,” as in Fine, not Clichy. In itself it’s a perfectly worthy piece of our language, as in Is Gael Mé, or I am Irish. But this otherwise unremarkable word has a resonance when it comes accompanied by a GAA voice, often, though not exclusively, one from the North. In the midst of the twisted tribal hatreds that scarred the top bit of our sacred isle for so pathetically long, Gael has always said plenty about what you “uuuurrrrrrrr” but as much again about what you’re “naaaaaaaaattttt”.

A viable piece of language has had more baggage hoisted on its back than a Himalayan pack mule. It’s all very loaded, and not in a fun way. You especially get it when GAA types start paying tribute to each other. Well-upholstered county board types, usually, with arses like comfortable old sofas and elbows that could skin a cat through a skylight.

Such and such is a “true Gael” or a “great Gael”. I’ve heard high-profile Gaelic games pundits on the telly prattling about this “real Gael” stuff too, especially, again, the Northern ones.

As subtexts go, it’s hardly subtle.

There’s a nationalist thing going on, a chippy expression of supposed Irishness, all sliotars, set-dancing and sean-nos whining, bad poetry, shtory-telling and hating the Brits, puck-outs and getting togged out by the side of a ditch, determinedly learning bits of Irish and feeling the warm green self-satisfied glow of the cupla focal: a Dev-like piece of 1950s hokum, an uber-Irishness, maybe even – whisper it – true Irishness.

Best of all, though, a “Gael” is resolutely inside the Gaelic games tent, securely part of the GAA family, a family that looks out for its own. It has been looking out recently for Brian Carthy, RTÉ’s Gaelic games commentator, who appears to have been enveloped in an especially warm GAA duvet right in the middle of said tent.

Swathed in the managerial embrace of Mickey Harte Co, he has achieved a prominence in the last week that has evaded him for years. Previously best known for a speaking voice that to some ears can sound like a dentist’s fast drill – a not irrelevant consideration given he is a broadcaster – Carthy has not been piked up through RTÉ’s commentary ranks as he would have wished.

Desirous of Michael Ó Muircheartaigh’s old gig, he has instead been perceived to have been relegated to strictly second-division stuff on RTÉ’s radio coverage. This is understandably not very pleasant for Carthy, but to anyone whose employment doesn’t include sitting inside a warm incubator, it is no great revelation that career ambition can sometimes be thwarted.

Quite what Harte and the others believed they could achieve by threatening to not play ball with RTÉ and not give post-match interviews in support of Carthy is hard to guess. Unless the RTÉ authorities actually wished to remove their editorial testes, place them in a brown paper bag and post them to Tyrone, they could not under any circumstances be seen to give in. In fact, as threats go, this is one of those that should always be kept in reserve. It’s useless once it’s out of the bag, so to speak.

But the sorry episode illustrates what at once is the GAA’s great strength, and also its weakness. It is an organisation built on the club and the personal and which provides an unparalleled service throughout Ireland in terms of games, facilities and an inherent sense of identity. But it is that same focus on the parish, the local, the glory of the little village that can make it desperately inward-looking. An argument can be made that what else can be expected when the games are so unique to Ireland that even a compromise football variety with its cousin in Australia is a bastardised piece of nothing.

But it can come across as desperately little Irelander sometimes.

The course of action taken by the county managers has been a strictly small-time move in a much bigger game where RTÉ pay the GAA a lot of money for rights and in return provide a profile for the games that is at an all-time high. It’s the kind of move that gets a county player a job. It is what a county board Gael does, unseen and unheard. It’s what happens in-family.

A very different kind of family will be the focus of attention at Royal Ascot this week.

In fact for true Gaels pictures of the British royal family parading around a corner of Berkshire full to the brim of braying, preening toffs will reinforce prejudices that will only ever dissipate should Prince Philip stand up in the carriage with a new hurley in his paw, roaring for Prince Charles to “whip on de f**kin’ bawl”.

But yet again there is going to be a distinct Irish flavour to this most British of occasions. It goes without saying that many of the top jockeys will be Irish. Remove them and the weighroom at every race meeting across the water would be considerably more roomy. Johnny Murtagh and Pat Smullen will be among other riders venturing across the Irish Sea for what is the most concentrated week of racing excellence in European flat racing.

Elite trainers like Dermot Weld and John Oxx, recognised as being amongst the best of the best worldwide, will also be there as will the almost omnipotent power of the Coolmore-Ballydoyle battalions trained by Aidan O’Brien.

It’s just three years since O’Brien emulated Vincent O’Brien, his predecessor at the world’s most famous training establishment in Co Tipperary, by saddling six winners during Ascot week, four of them in the very highest class. This week only the very brave or the very foolish would bet against him doing something similar.

His outstanding hope is the ex-Australian superstar So You Think, who will be ridden by the Englishman Ryan Moore. Neither horse nor jockey come with any especial Gaelic blas coursing through their DNA, although So You Think is by an Irish stallion, High Chaparral, and Moore didn’t come about his surname without some rub of the green along the way.

But there will be an Irishness stamped on the whole event by O’Brien and the Coolmore boss John Magnier in particular. The Coolmore empire has established itself as the most powerful in world bloodstock, determinedly looking outwards at a racing world that recognises how this otherwise broke, wet rock remains a centre of equine excellence. The suffix “Ire” is prized around the world, whether attached to horses or the people who work with them. And that’s something to be proud of, with no resort to hokey Gaeldom necessary.