When the NFL season starts over in America, you often get the two teams who played in the Super Bowl squaring off, all kinds of pyrotechnics, world famous pop stars singing the national anthem, F-16 flyovers...the works.
Yesterday, the GAA opened the summer in one of its remote stadiums, in recession-plagued Donegal, before 7,000 people (tickets were an exorbitant 27 euro) who turned up to see Donegal and Antrim. The match was suitably burly.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUHWhgUEQv4[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntHRpxA-feA[/youtube]
I'm glad the GAA is so confident in its product that it doesn't have to bend to the hype-peddlers and the PR dogs. Still it would be nice if they harnessed the spectacle of the sport, just a little bit, to remind us lazy people why we care so much about it. Anticipation is half the battle in sport. We keep hearing the players train and play like professional athletes. Why can't the organization promote itself like its rivals?
