God be with the days when lads and lassies - quite separately, of course - togged out for hurling, football or camogie under the most adjacent blackberry bush, often with a bitter, black Easterly gale billowing around their nether regions, recalls An Fear Rua …

That was long before the arrival of your Fancy Dan hot and cold showers after games, with rub downs from masseurs and masseuses (not both at the same time, of course), special drinks, Neutron diets, psychologists and all the other paraphernalia that clutter up the back room of the modern GAA team. In a further modernisation of Our Great Games, how often nowadays do we see grown men taking to the playing fields with some class of skintight Lycra pants underneath their shorts? Some of them look as if they're not sure if they're bound for a GAA match or a continental cycling tour. Even in the great game of Camogie, the players have taken to wearing what are described as 'skorts'. Now, AFR is no expert in the matter of women's sporting apparel, nor has he studied this in great detail, but he understands that a 'skort' is some class of a cross between a skirt and shorts. So, it appears after all that a skort is not, in fact, how a Montenotte-based camogie player (if you could find one) would pronounce 'skirt'; as in: 'I've just bought a beautiful new skort and top to go to the Yawht Club dance with Algernon Crosbie...'

The Lycra-clad males would probably aver that they wear these new-fangled garments to protect them from the cold or as some form of added 'protection' - in other words to protect their 'family jewels' from being damaged in some way. And they are quite correct in that aspiration, up to a point. However, we know from history that when Setanta and na Fianna took to the fields around Armagh to play hurling they did so entirely in the nip! You can imagine the scorn they'd pour on their modern successors prancing around in Lycra underpants.

Of course, we do not expect to see a return to nude hurling at any time in the near future, despite the increasing liberalism in these matters in Ireland. Nevertheless, many's the male GAA fan (and, indeed a percentage of female fans) who might fervently hope that the cailíní in An Cumann Camógaíochta might revert to this revered custom, if only to mark their Centenary Year. It would work wonders for attendances at their games, ensure widespread satellite TV coverage - possibly even on the Playboy Channel - and make their job of securing a major corporate sponsor that much easier. The Ann Summers chain of shops would be one such option.

However, An Fear Rua is pleased to report to his readers that are still some manly stalwarts of the GAA who are not prepared to have any truck with new-fangled items like Lycra underpants. While shoneen elements in the national 'meeja' and elsewhere are perennially taking the mickey out of the GAA, these men are more than prepared to put it back in. So long as there are men like the two Gaels pictured below playing our native games, we need never fear for the heart - or, indeed, any other part of the anatomy - of Dis Great Assooosheeayshun Of Ours …

Getting in a good tackle ...


An chaid ina ghlaic aige ... nó cad tá ina ghlaic aige?

Related Topic:
A Real Gaelic Tackle...

* An Fear Rua is grateful to that well known citizen of GAA cyperspace, LimerickNomad, as the source of the first photograph above.