Amidst all of the really important things that are besetting the country and causing our political party – parties, apologies – to focus on issues of immediate concern on which they are all basically share the same position, they must surely be grateful for any kind of “Oh. Look over there!!!” opportunity that presents itself.
For some this has arrived in the apparent refusal of “the Gah” to facilitate a London entertainment company that was planning to stage a boxing match between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano in Croke Park.
Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom company seems to have baulked at the GAA not agreeing to pick up the €500,000 tab for security. They also appear, cheekily, to have suggested that the state might devote large and increased Garda resources to facilitate all of this.
Which, it seems, people in both the GAA and on the Government side eventually decided they were not prepared to do. In my opinion, that the fact that they had been even prepared to discuss this with Matchroom boss Eddie Hearn does not speak highly of them. And it raises other questions as to why the GAA had previously said that they had “ring fenced” dates at the height of the new curtailed championship season – which used to be the centre of the GAA – in order to allow Croke Park to be used for something else other than what it was intended.
Hearn has cleverly used the fact that many people would like to see Katie Taylor in Croke Park as a negotiating ploy to increase his expected take from the event. And of course, he is singing to the choir given the gullibility of many of our own, especially those for whom “the Gah” and other disparaging monikers like the “Grab All Association” are triggers for mumbling inanities passed on through their genetic code.
You might expect that politicians, especially those who rest on past historical republican lore, might be wide to Del Boy proposals, but apparently not. Thus, Sinn Féin spokesperson on Bread and Circuses, Darren O’Rourke took to Twitter to declaim that
The Gubbermint. Ah, yes, that mysterious entity who will look after you “from cradle to grave” – lefties somehow believe that this is not a sinister dystopian project – and ideally in return for your surrendering personal autonomy will guarantee you the life of a battery hen. As several of the responses to O’Rourke pointed out, organising boxing matches and covering the costs of the promotor have absolutely nothing to do with the Government. Nor, in this context and others, is the “Government” anything apart from people who pay tax in one form or another – which is every Irish born person who earns or spends a euro
Not to be outdone, the man who once delivered an excruciatingly embarrassing homily on mask wearing and taking vaccines to those who watch the Late Late Show, has stuck his oar in. Taking a break from saving us from the Plague and racism and transphobia and whatever you are having yourself, Ryan Tubridy has suggested, demanded really, that “the Gah” provide a “patriotic dispensation” to enable the fight to proceed on Hearn’s terms.
Now, I’m going to go all Joe Pesci in Good Fellas mode here and ask “What the f**k is patriotic about paying the costs of an English boxing promotor?” No doubt Hearn and the boys in Romford will be rubbing their hands together and anticipating that this pile on against the “gah” might even at this late state result in the usual jibbering collapse whenever the “green jersey” is waved in support of any oul nonsense. Lovely Jubbly. If the GAA were a brother in The Godfather, it would be Fredo.
I shall leave the final say to the Tipp men.
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