Tommy Martin: A big day out - Irish sport has embraced the event junkie

Rather than having a mass sport-attending culture like a proper country, the charge went, we needed some element of the P.T. Barnum to turn up for things in significant numbers. It was a further sign that we were a silly people, easily hoodwinked, prone to go “oooh” at the sight of fireworks.

We started early, with the tendency to hire a bouncy castle to mark any notable event in a child’s life, and continued to the grave: the Irish wake, with its bottomless tea and sandwiches and late-night whiskey offerings meant that, even in death, the event junkie was catered for.

But it may be that a period of sustained prosperity has helped us come to an acceptance with this fact. We are the nation of fair days and monster meetings, of million-strong Papal visits and Garth Brooks residencies. Yes, we are, in our DNA, hard wired to love a big day out. And what of it?

In fact, no longer is the idea of the event junkie a source of self-abasement – instead it is the driving force in most of the interesting things going on in the business of Irish sport.

Acknowledgement of this fact seems to have led to a cross-pollination of genres which serves the event junkies and profits the teams and sporting bodies involved. Last Saturday’s Connacht v Munster game at a sold-out MacHale Park was just the latest example of this intrinsically human form of progress, with two tribes trading goods and services rather than throwing spears at each other.

Connacht Rugby needed a bigger venue with their own ground under renovation and fancied pushing their brand out into the, er, provinces. Mayo GAA have a big barn in Castlebar that is underused and saddled with debt. The result was to turn a run of the mill interpro with Munster into an event, one that saw Connacht sell tickets well beyond their usual fanbase and reportedly into a broader cross section of the provincial catchment area.

While the actual game was nothing special – struggling Connacht fall just short of comeback win against ill-disciplined Munster side – the town of Castlebar put up the bunting and made a day of it. They even allowed the rugby fans to bring pints into their seats, seemingly a prerequisite to sit through 80 minutes of URC action. You couldn’t do it every week – nor would the event junkie want you to – but the likelihood of doing it again in the future seems a no-brainer.

Munster Rugby have done similar by staging games in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, helping their GAA brethren fill a hole in their coffers and allowing Munster to cater for the fact that – Shock! Horror! – loads of their fans live in Cork.

Leinster Rugby have been at the event business for yonks, of course, and will cross the great divide into northside Dublin again this weekend. Having hosted a Champions Cup semi-final against Northampton and a league game with Munster in front of 80,000 odd at Croke Park last year, on Saturday the southside behemoths take on Harlequins at GAA HQ.

The unavailability of the Aviva Stadium has forced this one on Leinster and there is an element of diminishing returns given we are at the deeply unloved Round of 16 stage. But with 60,000 rugby-loving bums expected on the hallowed seats, it’s still a respectable day out even without the novelty factor. And it is no coincidence that Leinster Rugby are moving into Croke Park in the same week that Leinster GAA have said they are moving their provincial football semi-final out of it, further confirmation that these matches have long ceased being events.

All this comes just a few months after Bohemians showed the full potential of the Irish event junkie, when they took their opening League of Ireland Premier Division game of the season to the Aviva Stadium and attracted over 33,000 to pay for the privilege.

The notion that so many people would come to watch a domestic soccer match would seem like the ravings of a lunatic only a decade ago. Instead, Bohemians v Shamrock Rovers was the perfect confluence of timing, fashion and opportunity, that dream moment in marketing when the question is no longer why would you go, but why would you not go?

When the term was first being bandied about, there was the sense of moral panic about it. The event junkie was a symptom of fleeting popularity, their fickle natures likely to expose decay within when they moved on to the next thing. That still might be the case – you get plenty League of Ireland heads who question the current popularity when many of domestic football’s structural problems persist.

But now the event junkie is accepted and even catered for. My favourite minor detail of the event junkie revolution is the bar that Galway United have erected right behind one of the goals at Eamonn Deacy Park. So, you can kick off an epic night out in Galway with a few pints of craft ale, yakking about the week just gone while watching John Caulfield’s men launch projectile missiles into the opposition penalty box. What could be better?

It’s almost as if Irish sport is beginning to say, hey, it’s ok that you want to go to big sporting events with a group of friends, watch them in a great atmosphere, maybe have a few drinks and a bite to eat and, if you are a woman, urinate in comfort – no judgement here.

The realisation that people who go to sports events want to enjoy themselves is a breakthrough, and there is no shame in admitting that.