Tickets, please!

The attendances at All-Ireland finals often contain fewer fans of participating counties than their semi-finals. If this seems weird to you, don’t worry, because it’s weird to me too.
Every year this gnarly subject finds itself at the forefront of public affairs. It’s debated at the UN, protested about on urban battlegrounds, discussed by pretentious tossers on late night arts programmes. Families have been cleaved apart, fortunes squandered and reputations ruined in a vain attempt to secure access to the day of all days.
You see, All-Ireland tickets are divvied up between the whole country. This is because the final is seen as a Great Social Event and National Occasion, as well as a sporting contest. The President greets the teams, some bull-throated tenor gets wheeled out for the anthem, the match is broadcast internationally for mournful ex-pats in bars across the world. It’s part of our cultural heritage, like Paddy’s Day or the hung-over day after Paddy’s Day. Thus, everyone should have the chance to experience this great moment in Irish life.
Now, I can sort of see the point in allowing a few tickets for counties like Monaghan and Carlow, who will probably never reach that level themselves (not in this dimension anyway). It’s a pleasant trip to Croker, a taste of the atmosphere and colour. But not half of them, for God’s sake. That’s madness. Like, basic logic will figure out that if you give all the tickets away, there are none left for the counties involved, and the atmosphere for which neutrals are paying won’t be there in the first place. It can’t be much fun sitting in an enormous amphitheatre filled with 80,000 people chatting politely about what a grand day it is, eating ice-cream and asking when the bull-throated tenor is on.
Why can’t there be some balance in ticket distribution? Fine, give a few thousand to weaker counties. Spread it around a little – I’m a generous guy. But not three or four to every club in every weaker county. Let ’em find their own All-Ireland to go to. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to resort to extreme (and sometimes illegal) lengths to get our grubby little hands on some of that cardboard gold. If I had a dollar for every time some desperate soul has phoned me in the middle of the night, pleading for tickets, I’d be off down to the bureau de change to get $6.50 converted into euro. The breadth and creativity of bribes I’ve been offered is mind-boggling: cash, classified substances, sexual favours of a distinctly non-Canonical nature, at least fourteen stellar constellations named after me, a secret treasure map which provides directions to a buried chest of pirate treasure, the works.
Indeed, I was often that soldier myself, trawling the underworld for a hint, a sniff, a rumour of a ticket. One year there were about ten of us itching to go to the final and, of course, fewer than ten tickets to go around. My dad had to show commendable ingenuity in procuring admission for all of us, including (but not limited to) relatives up the country, well-connected friends and torture. I don’t really want to go into too many details, but suffice it to say a darkened bunker, two electrodes and a hungry alsation were involved. Thanks, pops – we’ll always be grateful.
Until next year, anyway.