Emmet Moloney writes for the 'Farmers Journal' and is a former sports columnist with 'The Kerryman'.

Are we spending too much time watching sport on TV? Emmet Moloney thinks so, though he’s looking forward to a bumper sporting weekend on the box...

Going into an Irish rugby match in Croke Park this year, I got a text from a friend of mine asking where I was going to watch the match. I wasn’t being smart when I answered “the Canal End”. He was expecting Power’s, Navin’s or Sully’s, a few of the hostelries I am acquainted with. When the fourth person this week asked me where was I watching the rugby match this Sunday, I stopped in my tracks. This is happening far too often for my liking.

Everybody is talking about the bumper weekend of sport we have ahead of us. From Thursday to Sunday night, we have the golf from Augusta. Our own Padraig Harrington is aiming to win his third Major in a row. Perfect television. The BBC cover it, so it is done properly – RTÉ used to throw Myles Dungan into a room in the attic out in Montrose and tell him to spoof his way through the countless American ad breaks. It looked as cheap as it was. Thank God for the channels.

Of course, this weekend is about rugby as well. Both Leinster and Munster can make the Croke Park fairytale of an All-Ireland final come true if they win at the weekend. We all know Munster will. It mightn’t be as forceful as the beating they gave to Leinster on Saturday evening, but the Ospreys will be beaten. It’s in Thomond Park, for God’s sake!

Leinster travel to London to take on Harlequins, and on the evidence of last weekend in Thomond, they will struggle. Watching Shane Horgan and Rob Kearney being handed off with ease by smaller Munster men in the act of scoring tries was character confirming. Leinster just don’t seem to be able to match the intensity of the serious sides in Europe, and expecting the return of Brian O’Driscoll to cure all is naive. They will lose in London.

Munster’s 2pm start on Sunday will put pressure on mammies up and down the country. Easter Sunday used to mean spring lamb in our house, about an hour after coming home from Mass and followed by Easter eggs and the ritual of some child getting sick from too much chocolate. This Sunday, the window for dinner will be under pressure. Plenty will want to see the match, and young children could be left to gorge on some variety of Cadbury’s long before any dinner is served, while parents try and keep one eye on them and the other on the match. Not ideal.

After that, TG4 will offer us two National Football League games, fair play to them. But after the intensity and drama we know will be on offer in Thomond Park, the NFL Division One games will seem tame by comparison.

Of course, we are talking about television. The Masters, the Heineken Cup and even the National Football League are all television pursuits nowadays. A lucky 27,000 will get to see Munster; only millionaires (and we are fast running out of them) will be in attendance at Augusta, and – let’s be honest – there won’t be any crowd over 5,000 or 6,000 at any Gaelic football match this weekend. At least Kilkenny folk turned out in numbers last Sunday. Over 14,000 came to watch their hurlers dismantle the Rebels. That’s more like it. They got value for money, too. Forget the scoreline – just look at the quality. The Cats had a little point to prove to Cork, and they proved it with interest. Someone will beat them eventually, but on last weekend’s evidence, it won’t be for a while yet.

Sport on television isn’t all bad, but too much sport probably is. Our kids aren’t playing half as much sport as they watch, and that balance needs to be adjusted. Far too many of them are being brought to pubs on Sunday afternoons to watch games, and that isn’t right either.

Adults have become soft on this front. “Sure we’d see more on television,” is an excuse I hear far too often when people are asked if they are going to Munster championship matches. This is how our sporting interests are satisfied in the 21st century. Actually attending games seems to be an occasional pursuit. A big game maybe? Croke Park or Thurles maybe? Down to the local field for a game on a Sunday? But there’s rugby, soccer or GAA on the telly. Very often it’s all three.

Of course, it’s only going to get worse. Economic circumstance will hammer attendance figures for the championships this summer. But the TV contracts have been agreed to, and most of the money paid. Our games will mostly be watched on the small screen.
Our children will get fatter and their parents will get lazier. This bastardized school of TV analysis (Dunphy, Giles and third wheel) that passes for entertainment will slowly but surely infect the coverage of GAA games.

Congress is on in a week. We have a new president and he needs to deliver some vision for his three years in charge. A decent start would be the concentrated effort to fill our stadiums this June, July and August. Bravery and imagination are needed. I wouldn’t consider myself an old man just yet, but I’m going to sound like one now. In my day (once you hear those words, you’re in old man territory) kids came home from school, threw the bag in the corner and disappeared. We went to the closest garden/field/GAA pitch and we hurled, played football, rugby, tag, whatever took our fancy. We only went home when it was dark or we were hungry.

Back then, the Masters was still on the telly, along with the odd Irish rugby match. We had two channels, and that was enough. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, there were no conflicts of scheduling. We simply didn’t have a match to watch live apart from about five or six weekends a year. As adults today, we are planning our lives around sporting events we are only going to watch on the television. It is more than bizarre.

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