Joe Brolly ends 2016 much as he began it. Lamenting the fallen state of the GAA.
There once was a Garden of Eden, populated by inter-county players who enjoyed the craic and club players who didn't lie idle all summer.
But we've left that long behind, ever since Eve (successive GAA Presidents) took a bite out of the apple of corporatism.
When Eamon Dunphy, depressed at the state of English football in the mid-1980s, wrote an updated introduction to his 1974 masterwork 'Only a Game?', he suggested that they could probably now remove the question mark.
Likewise, in Saturday's day early edition of the Sunday Independent, Joe Brolly returned to his 12 year old quote which adorns the walls of the RTE Sports department.
"Some things in life are more important than money and the GAA is one of them."
Now, he says they can probably paint over it.
The tone is one of despair. He quotes Paul Rouse as saying that we'll never undo the damage caused by the commercialism of the past decade. If some like-minded GAA President were to come to power with a mission to restore the soul of the GAA, Joe Brolly would probably advise him, in the manner of that apocryphal farmer, "well, I wouldn't start from here if I were you."
To illustrate the alleged joylessness of modern Gaelic football, Joe launched into one of his anecdotes. In Boston a few weeks back, attending a fundraiser for Wolfe Tones GAA, he was in the company of Dean Rock, James McCarthy and Meath legend Bernard Flynn.
The stories and anecdotes came tumbling out of Bernie and, presumably, Joe as well. The two Dublin lads laughed their heads off but hadn't a single anecdote to tell themselves.
We were treated to an anecdote saluting the cartoon hardness of the Meath team of the late 1980s, the manliest team that ever graced Croke Park. At least in the colour television era.
And the manliest of them all was one Mick Lyons, the man who should been selected to play James Bond when Cubby Broccoli and co. were casting around for a Meath man to do the job in the mid-1990s. He'd retired from Meath at that stage and all.
Bernie Flynn referred to a training game back in the mid-1980s, before Meath were in the business of winning All-Irelands.
"Mick Lyons was on me. I was very young at the time, maybe 22. The first ball he hit me hard into the ribs. I told him "Don't fucking do that again Mick, I fucking mean it.
But I was shitting myself. The next ball he went right through me and after I got up and hit him again. I knew I was being tested. In my mind I had to hit him to earn the respect of the group. So I drove him in the face as hard as I could. I split his nose straight down the middle down to the white. The blood came pumping out. He didn't even go down. Just stood there, shook his head and started wiping the blood away. Boylan was refereeing and didn't blink. Just let it go.
Afterwards, Flynn made for the shower and got a fright when Lyons strode up to him. He steeled himself for a blow and was determined not to go down.
As he approached me, he lifted his hand and just as I was about to pull on him, he put his arm around my shoulder, looked me straight in the eye and said "That's the stuff Bernie. It's more of that we want here." I was so relieved, I nearly feinted.
The column appeared in the Sunday Independent. This equally worthwhile article on why Mick Lyons should have played James Bond can be found here.
