The Homecoming
The King James Bible had it right all those years ago. It’s difficult to be loved at home. From musicians, to athletes, to business leaders, and even the Son of God, the people that know you best are often the hardest to please and the first to pounce on your mistakes. Another King James has suffered all too much at the hands of the hometown prophet syndrome. Despite the inspirational play he delivered in his first seven years of professional basketball, despite being true to his Iowan roots and reinvesting in the community that had raised him, LeBron James couldn’t escape.
When James put on that purple and white plaid shirt and announced to the nation on the ill-fated ESPN special that he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers, he was immediately dethroned and became a figure of hate and ridicule. Not only by the Clevelanders who were most acutely affected by this decision, but by a basketball public who seemed amazed by the arrogant independence of his decision. The rhetoric became that It was cowardice that led him to leave his home team to join an expensively and artificially assembled Miami squad. It was a shockingly public breakup even James’s inner circle now realise what a mistake the live programme was. It still left many in shock as to the speed and level of vitriol that was directed towards James who had an exemplary record to that point.
All over the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, thousands of Gaelic footballers, hurlers and camogs lie in a parallel universe to the one they have left, having made a ‘decision’ of their own. While they continue to play their national games, continuing in a different jersey as if almost nothing has changed, the pitiful sound of weeping Club secretaries can be heard all over the country. They go to bed every night punching the pillows, thinking about the players who have left in the past 4–5 years. Admit it, we all know someone who has uttered these words repeatedly in the past year or two :
“If we could get them all back, jaysis we’d have some team now”
The impossible reverie remains but an irresistible daydream. In my own club, we have 5 top level players that surely would do serious damage to any championship we would care to enter. These players toil away in drier, sunnier climes, having left home for a wide range of reasons, and with varying levels of legality. I wonder how many managers have thought in the darkest moments of despair with only 7 players turning up for training, of googling ‘department of homeland security’ attempting to expedite the return of the star forward.
Like the people of Cleveland, these clubs sit in wait for the return of happier times, when they finally get the band back together. All the plans made at juvenile level, all the projections made and all the hope invested might eventually see a return and bring winning ways back to the club and a full squad to training. Cleveland’s wait however is over, their prodigal son has returned, Lebron James the greatest basketball player on earth, is going back to Ohio.
You wouldn’t think the two situations have much in common, one of the richest athletes in the world, and a half back from County Down bricklaying in New York, but allow the writer a small degree of latitude. Many of these sojourns abroad are for the type of lad (or lass) that never really got the chance to blow off a bit of steam in their younger years. Tradesmen, who watched in envy as the student group tramped off to the bus every Sunday night armed with their freshly ironed laundry, a tray of chicken fillets and a tenner to cover the bus. Meanwhile they were getting into bed for 10 because they had to be in the van for 6 heading down to Dublin. The best of times, the worst of times. The worst time came and stayed, and while the Belfast crew were still living life large squeezing as many nights in the Bot as possible out of the last loan instalment, the stay at home crew were getting fed up of mum’s rules and getting 40p a brick.
Let’s go back to Lebron. He went straight from high school to the NBA, avoiding the now obligatory and perfunctory one year gap between high school and professionalism. He never got to enjoy the adulation of a raucous collegiate crowd. Not once was he able to stroll from the student centre to the gym as BMOC (Big Man On Campus). And he would have been big. Instead he went straight to work on the family business, the Cleveland Cavaliers. The better he got, the better he played, the worse the recriminations when championships did not arrive to the most tortured sporting fan base in North America. And like the joiner doing odd jobs around the area for pittance, James was toiling away with a lacklustre supporting cast of average players who simply did not have the ability to match him and play the type of team basketball he so craved.
That is the remarkable thing about James. While he is so often compared to Michael Jordan, one aspect of the two will never coalesce. While Jordan was unabashedly egotisical and made huge demands of those around him, James seems always willing to make the best basketball decision on the court, regardless of whether it meant deferring to a lesser player. In his early and even recent career this was construed as cowardice, as a flaw in his character where he was unwilling to make the most important shots. In the documentary about his St Vincent and St Mary high school team ‘More than a Game’, James continually makes an effort to deflect attention onto his teammates. How appropriate that that in the height of his senior year the games for this high school team had to be moved to the Cleveland cavalier’s stadium to cope with the demand for tickets. It had only sold out twice all year, once for the arrival of Michael Jordan, and once for another ‘23’, LeBron James.
Even so, off James went after seven years of toiling at home for his time in the sun. Away from the parochial environment of the Midwest, eastbound to the coast to a better climate, better wages and better views, to the Miami Heat. James’ decision to ‘take his talents to south beach’ was construed as a player who had failed in his hometown, now seeking the help of two elite players Dwayne wade and Chris Bosh to help him climb the NBA mountain, his reputation vaporised. Vaporised like the jerseys burnt in trash cans all around Cleveland. Like a manager reading online that his captain is off to America.
“ Just booked the states !!!! Can’t wait !!!! NYC here I come !!!!!!!!
Sure you would be away yourself. Who can blame them. There’s nothing for them here. They might as well go where they can get a few pound gathered up.
The wrath felt by coaches and committee members at the best players lost to their clubs is both understandable and inevitable. There is still an ‘A’ in the GAA which still stands for Amateur, but like any organisation it is part of a world where finance is an undeniable obligation. There is real money that goes into developing juvenile teams, and the spoils that some of these players enjoy, the jobs that offered are often garnered by the abilities in Gaelic Games that have been fostered by volunteer coaches back home. Equally for many players the financial climate that Ireland has recently endured eventually made the economics of life here too unfair an equation to balance.
No-one would deny the appeal and the thrill of life in the big cities of America and Australia. They offer a freedom and a lifestyle that is unattainable at home and simultaneously make parish life all the more sedate. The fact that you can take your games with you has supported the homesick soul of many an Irish Immigrant who didn’t have the choice to stay, or the means to return. Many do, and profit from a few weeks in the states in the summer after their county side’s championship involvement ends. Lebron’s four year stint in Miami made him a better person and a more complete player. The same can happen our young players. Some will stay and will make lives for themselves in their new surroundings.
However for those who decide not to stay, let’s hope they return to pay back the investment that was made in them, that they enjoyed their time, and got to enjoy that bit of harmless mischief the student crew got to enjoy. The loss of a few players to sports clubs around the country is in no way the worst thing to have happened Ireland in the last 8–9 years. There are families still struggling with debt, businesses bankrupted, pensions that vanished overnight, and widespread taxation on the masses to remedy the greedy crimes of a few. The GAA is itself a family like many that has been split apart once again by a mass tide of emigration. Let’s see if this family reunion can come together over the next few years along the undoubted backdrop of recovery at home. Those players, brothers, sisters will get to enjoy the homecoming that will surely be waiting for them.
