Die hard!

With many people now pretending to like Gaelic games because they think it’s cool (which it is) and it’ll help them make new friends (which it won’t) and meet interesting people (depends on your definition of interesting), it’s become increasingly difficult to tell the wheat from the chaff. In a manner of speaking. Who are the true-blue, old skool GAA heads, those doughty soldiers who stood on draughty terraces freezing their tender parts off for the meagre reward of spotting some future county talent? And conversely, how can we tell the kind of people who now include GAA alongside MP3 technology and teaching TEFL in Barcelona in a list of their ‘interests’…and thus eliminate them?
Here’s how – fill in the patented Supportex 3000 Questionnaire below, tot up your score and discover exactly which kind of GAA fan you are. Then act accordingly, using the helpful step-by-step guide to self-annihilation. Good luck!

1. What is your earliest memory of GAA?
a. Wondering vaguely what the point was after suffering a bloody nose whilst playing in an U7 tournament
b. Wondering vaguely what the point was as Fr Consumption, the U12 trainer, forced you to run backwards up the school hill with a bag of cement on your back
c. The opening of the new Hogan Stand

2. How do you celebrate an important victory?
a. Four days of drinking and absenteeism with constant verbal abuse towards opposition fans and some resolutely heterosexual bonding with your ‘mates’
b. Four days of drinking and absenteeism accompanied by a good, healthy dose of guilt
c. Four days of drinking and absenteeism spent talking loudly in pretentious bars about the game while getting all the players’ names wrong

3. What is your definition of the ideal match?
a. Beating the crap out of the team you lost to last year, ideally with their most loathsome player sent off as the icing on the cake
b. A whopping thirty-point victory achieved with style, character and panache – and their most loathsome player sent off as the icing on the cake
c. An exciting game played in the right spirit, with the underdog coming out on top in the end

4. Which of these are the most crucial things to bring to a big game?
a. Straw cowboy hat, tray of Smithwick’s, large store of ‘terrace wit’
b. Old newspaper to sit on, red lemonade and chicken legs, biro to note down each scorer on the programme
c. Mobile phone, sunblock, bottle of Evian

5. How do you refer to Association Football, i.e. what Man United and Celtic and them play?
a. Soccer
b. That foreign game! (accompanied by trembling and slavering at the mouth)
c. Football (real football then referred to as ‘Gaelic’)

6. Where is your preferred vantagepoint for the action?
a. Wedged underneath the scoreboard with 500 like-minded people, having the craic while trying not to pass out from a combination of the heat and a hangover that could sink a battleship
b. A good seat in the Hogan, up next to the Bishop
c. Experiencing the game through a virtual reality full bodysuit in Holodeck 7 of the McCoca-Donalds corporate box…on the moon

7. What is the most common utterance to pass your lips during the hour?
a. ‘Will ye get into them, for the love of fuck!’
b. ‘Pull on it, pull on it!’
c. ‘Watch your house, lads… Aw, come on, referee. That was never a penalty puck. Why didn’t he consult with the fourth official?’

8. What is the best treatment for a player whose head has been busted open by a wild hurley?
a. A slap on the face and some water poured on the wound from the magic bottle
b. Arrah, he’s grand, he’s grand. He’ll run it off
c. You are unable to suggest anything as you’ve fainted at the sight of blood

9. What do you read between the minor and senior matches?
a. Nothing – you’re too busy slagging off your buddies and getting psyched up for the ‘big wan’
b. The programme from cover to cover, Ireland on Sunday (or whatever it’s called now), your notes from the minor match
c. The Observer, the latest Chuck Palahniuk novel, the operating manual for your new Gizmotronic mobile phone with its own satellite dish and platinum aerial

10. What is your opinion of the national league?
a. ‘The league’s only a heap of ould shite, but it’s a good laugh. And the pubs are never as packed afterwards either’
b. ‘I haven’t missed a league match since I contracted tuberculosis and nearly died…and even then my wife and the doctor had to tie me down to the bed’
c. ‘The what?’

‘Are you champ – or did you flop at the first round?’
You’ve searched your soul and dredged your memory banks; now here come the payback. Work out your score using the sophisticated testing system below –

Mostly As and Bs: You are the quintessential die-hard – if you died any harder, you’d be dead already. Hey, it made sense when it first came to me. You are either a boorish ignoramus in a cowboy hat and too-tight jeans, living proof that alcohol really does kill braincells; or an Olympic-level anal-retentive who needs to broaden their range of interests just a smidgeon. Either way, you’re one of the true servants of the Association, you’ve been around for years and you’ll stay around for ever, and we love ya.
Your fate: life, so long as you keep going to matches.

Mostly Cs: Bzzz! Close, but no doughnut. You almost had everyone fooled there, but ultimately tripped yourself up with a few fatal mistakes. A crack team of all-in-one judge/jury/executioners noticed these little anomalies: Evian water? Holodeck 7? Fainting at the sight of blood pouring from a head wound!? Only a fake would have answered C to those ones. Hang your head in shame. Lower. No, lower again. Okay, that’s low enough.
Your fate: extermination!