Paul Rouse: Whatever about nostalgia we can't travel back in time with football 

Indeed, our sporting lives are soaked in nostalgia. The enduring memory of a past sporting experience holds a power to draw people back in time and evoke feelings of love and loyalty to a team or a moment or a place. This then colours how we see and feel about sport in the present.

It is something that has rightly been considered in the just published interim report of the GAA’s Football Review Committee.

Deep in an appendix, which offers a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the public survey and correspondence received from people interested enough to shape Gaelic football.

This analysis was undertaken by Dr Michael McKay, Dr Peter Horgan, Dr Paul Donnelly and Catherine McKay. It a seriously impressive undertaking, given the scale of the submissions on the future of Gaelic football.

What they have produced is a study that is both insightful and humorous. For example, there are the words of the Clare supporter who asked: “Who wants to watch 30 adults playing “ring a ring a rosie football” (i.e. going around in circles)? I’m sorry to say about a sport that was once a pillar of Irish culture.” 

It’s this idea that something has been lost that runs through many of the submissions of the public. So much so that the authors felt it necessary to include a section called ‘Nostalgia’.

The authors explain their rationale in including such a section, because of the number of submissions which call for the return of football of a bygone era: “The context was very definitely that of a nostalgic call or hope to return football to a (usually described as ‘better’) era. Often, these would have consisted of brief and to-the-point statements such as ‘1979 football’, ‘1990s style’, or ‘1970s Kerry versus Dublin 1975-80’.” 

The reasons ordinarily set out were a desire for “moving the ball at pace” or for “direct and hard football” and a game where “the ball was kicked and there was no handpassing”. Ultimately, this was a promised land where “players were able to express themselves”.

The submissions which were printed in the report were anonymised, but fascinating to read. There was, for example, the 61-year-old Offaly supporter who wrote: “Return to traditional game of football. Get rid of what’s on the sideline with their large egos, pushing a particular type of football, and allow players and spectators to enjoy the game of football again.” 

There was also the Cork coach in his 30s who wrote: “Growing up my father brought me to club and county games, and this is where I fell in love with Gaelic football. A game then where contests were fought on an individual basis, where an accurate kick pass was played without consequences and where forwards and defenders engaged in battle on 1v1s. The game then was manic and played with reckless abandon compared to today’s mundane defensive minded contests. Times and sports science have changed, the game requires a balance where fast front footed football is required to capture the imagination of the public again. This is the game I want my son playing.” 

These sentiments recurred time and again. And yet there is an enormous difference between “nostalgia” and the reality of “the past”.

The term ‘nostalgia’ was first coined at the end of the 17th century by a physician who used it to denote a neurological condition among soldiers who were fighting in places far removed from their homes. It basically was an extreme form of homesickness, in which memories of home are almost only pleasant and positive. Nostalgia is about affectionate remembrance of the past – it is memory with the painful and disappointing bits taken out.

And the only relief from the condition of nostalgia came from the return home, or the promise of a return home.

In time, of course, the idea of nostalgia spread into wider discourse from medicine and it is now a word that is widely used, well beyond a medical context.

The way we remember past joys is fundamental to sport. The search for experiencing once again this joy helps explain the power of modern sport to capture our imagination.

In terms of this report, the difficulty is that it is extremely difficult for people to pinpoint that sweet spot in the past which they deem as the highpoint of Gaelic football. It all seems to depend on the age and geography of the contributor.

This is, of course, deeply problematic. It is the kind of thing that is revealed even now when the recent survey conducted for the Football Review Committee outlined that Munster football supporters were much more likely to be disillusioned with Gaelic football than Ulster ones.

But is there not every chance that this is conditioned by the fact that Ulster teams won the whole shooting gallery this year and Munster teams fell away in a manner that destroyed expectations and not just hopes?

What is also fascinating is that one of the staples of television and of sports broadcasting apps is the retransmission of previously played matches. This is often filler but it has a capacity to pull you in for extended periods. The existence on the NBA and NFL and MLB apps of season after season of old games is a great example of their lure.

And in terms of Gaelic football, there are magnificent compelling matches to watch on old videos or on YouTube.

But you wouldn’t want to be expecting a classic every time you press play.

Indeed, sometimes watching old games is a really serious mistake.

To the point where there is nothing quite like watching a match from the past to strip it of much of what you believed to have happened it – and of the illusions of quality that it held. This is a reversal of nostalgia and instead destroys the past by looking at it through the present.

The basic point is that field games change all the time. That’s the way it should be. Rules must both reflect and shape such change. Managing that balancing act is never easy. Indeed, it might be considered impossible, even though it must always be attempted.

What is certainly impossible is time travel. And this means the imperative of rejecting any notion of going back to the future.

Paul Rouse is professor of history at University College Dublin