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2010 wasn’t a great year to do a Paul Galvin documentary. Xpose story aside, Galvin didn’t play one full match in the Championship. 2009 had the redemption arc we all love so much. By the end of 2010, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Galvin was sick of the sport, which seems to be conspiring against him.
On Paul Galvin’s dress sense. For a reputed fashion expert, Galvin was shot on camera wearing a sports coat over a track suit top and then red football socks over skinny-legged jeans as he trained a youth team. Just saying.
The production team let Galvin down. I had been hoping for a ‘Zidane – A 21st Century Portrait’ kind of documentary that would ultimately repudiate Galvin - capturing the off-the-ball winding-up and violence that Galvin is constantly subjected to. (Zidane is probably the closest sporting parallel to Galvin and I don’t think anyone would be surprised if there was some monumental implosion lurking around the corner for Galvin). Other than some needling from Noel O’Leary, we didn’t really get that. Even the Cadogen incident in the National League – which was an outright assault on Galvin – was underplayed. ‘Galvinsied’ did take the gloss off of Cork’s All-Ireland win and captured the “Trial by Sunday Game” pretty effectively. Anthony Tohill is a gobshite.
Paul Galvin is Satanic in a Miltonian sense. Watching Galvin hanging around his parents and his godson, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he had been beamed down from space, or at least some London department store. It was interesting to hear him talking about his problems with the establishment while he was a teacher. There are not many GAA players that could fill an hour of television without the show becoming some sort of advertisement for parochial Irish life. Galvinised offered no real theory on the origins of Galvin’s dress sense. An arm-chair psychologist might say it’s Galvin’s way of expressing his own individuality in the face of the droll conformity of GAA culture. Or perhaps it is outright vanity. Who knows where the future will lead Galvin: TV3? London? It seems like football needs Galvin more than Galvin needs football.
Randoms: The bits about North Kerry hurling and Galvin’s time playing hurling with Lixnaw were thoroughly enjoyable. John Kelly sounded hugely disinterested in his narration duties. The New York scenes, which had the most potential for greatness, amounted to Galvin walking around Times Square and watching the Munster final on TV scored by the xx. Underwhelming. We still don't know enough about Galvin's tattoos.
