KILLINAN END - Change in consumption of GAA

With the enormous coverage afforded to hurling on television in the present day it is hard to imagine that there were ever days when hurling, and indeed Gaelic football, had a much sparser presence on television.

Of course, we have the famous footage of people sitting around a ‘wireless’ back in the day listening to matches which reminds us that it’s not all that long ago since there was no television coverage at all. RTÉ television was launched on New Year’s Eve 1961 so prior to that there was essentially no television outlet for the national games though it has been pointed out that BBC coverage was available on the east coast of Ireland and at least one All-Ireland final was shown on that medium. In 1958 there were an estimated 20,000 television sets in Ireland though this must have been a very niche audience and not just in numerical terms if they were moved to get a television simply to have access to BBC.

By the time the 1962 All-Ireland finals came along; Tipp-Wexford in hurling and Kerry-Roscommon in football – it is remarkable how low-key the televising of the matches by RTÉ appears to have been. Looking back now these may appear to have been seminal events as the first of their kind, and indeed – strange as it might seem – it can be assumed that people in many parts of the country got their first glimpse of hurling when television arrived. I recall hearing, in my youth, talk of people going to Thurles to see Mick O’Connell play for Kerry footballers. Research suggests this was likely the 1964 Munster semi-final between Tipp and Kerry, but it brought home the fact that many household names were lesser spotted in many parts of our island. The crowd sitting around the radio might be considered a cliched image at this stage but was very real. A Dublin supporter recounted on the day of the 2015 football final, listening as a child to another Dublin-Kerry final on radio in the open-air in Killoscully village back in 1955, which as he pointed out at the final whistle had the same score as the game six decades later, though happily for him it was a different outcome in the here and now.

The low-key aspect of the first televised All-Ireland finals derives no doubt from the extremely low ownership of television at the time. It was not really such a big deal for the overwhelming majority of the population. Just because RTÉ was on air did not necessarily mean that a television set was available, affordable, or even desirable. Hurling and football had debuted on television in March 1962 with the Railway Cup finals and its slow-burner status in the GAA’s heart was understandable. It is often thrown at the GAA, as presumably a sign of extreme conservatism, that it was slow to embrace television in all its potential. It is only fair to point out that the IRFU was just as circumspect, and in the early years refused to allow home internationals to be televised live. Strange looking now indeed when you consider that professional rugby is, in essence, a television-funded entity. Across the water, soccer took its time to give television its head even though its whole prosperity too is now based on the power of television.

By 1971, RTÉ was almost a decade on the road and the GAA commission of that year was unimpressed by the evidence of its impact on attendances. Further evidence of the 1970s did little to abate such suspicions. In his history of the GAA published in 1980, Marcus de Búrca pointed out the decline in All-Ireland final attendances through the later 1960s into the entire 1970s. Of ten hurling finals between 1952 and 1970 which attracted over 70,000, seven were played before 1962. By the 1970s the All-Ireland final attendance topped 65,000 just once. To an extent there are alternative explanations, potentially at least – the Cusack Stand was fully seated in the mid-60s which reduced capacity, and no doubt a more prosperous society with more disposable income might have explored alternative pursuits. The large attendance figures of the 1950s are staggering when you consider the scarcity of money at the time, as well as the huge emigration of, you would imagine, many young people at the perfect age to have a good All-Ireland weekend. But the correlation of television’s arrival and decline in attendances was certainly striking. All the more so when it was pointed out in the 1971 GAA commission report that non-televised games such as Munster (hurling and football) and Leinster/Ulster finals had actually increased in attendance.

The television genie is surely out of the bottle in the present day, but the question of attendances might again raise its head. The All-Ireland hurling and football finals both had some tickets on general sale this year which is very rare. While the poor support for Tipperary has been lamented, it is less common to hear, but no less true, that Nowlan Park has vast unoccupied spaces for the Kilkenny-Wexford match in the Leinster championship. It is unclear if attendances are as significant for the GAA as they once were as they seem content enough when revenues are solid, yet it is a big ask for someone to attend all championship games of a county in the manner that once was a given for many. John Considine, former Cork hurler, has questioned the potential impact of the pandemic on attendances. His point looks at the possibility that many will become television spectators once the match-day experience has been forgotten. Worse still maybe a younger generation will not acquire the habit of going to games as previous ones did. Maybe this is an unrealistic worst-case scenario, but you would wonder if the possibility of the GAA ever speaking along the lines of their 1971 predecessors regarding attendances is really unimaginable.