THE LAST POINT: Commodification of sport is a worry

Hard to imagine nowadays that there was a time when a live inter-county match on RTE was almost unheard of, the sort of occasion devoted only for All-Ireland Semi-Finals and Finals and maybe the odd All-Ireland Club Final on St Patrick's Day - but then again, maybe that is what made them so magical.

I'm showing my age when I wax lyrical about tuning into RTE for the 1977 All-Ireland Final between Dublin and Armagh, probably my earliest memory of watching a Gaelic football match on the TV. The Dubs and Kerry dominated Irish life in those days but back then, watching a game on the box that was a rare occasion.

What I still remember most about that game was getting a telling off from my Mam for leaving marks on the floor, jumping and leapin' around the sitting room as five Dublin goals rained into the Armagh goals and the improbable, almost fantastical figure that was Jimmy Keaveney had me transfixed, that was until the final whistle sounded and out the front door I bolted, ball in lands looking for my mates to re-enact what we had just witnessed from our heroes.

Sport on TV in those days was a rarity - I have a vague memory of the Montreal Olympics but it was the World Cup in 1978 that first grabbed my attention - Archie Gemill's goal, Johnny Rep and the Dutch, Mario Kempes and even the West Germans with their white tops and black shorts, the same our Area Community Games wore, got me entranced with the Teutonic team, a fascination that still exists to this day as, apart from Ireland, Germany are my team when it comes to the big tournaments.

1978 also saw John Treacy win the World Cross-country title in Glasgow and my memory of watching his race on Brendan O'Reilly's Sports Stadium programme was so strong that when I ran my first cross-country race seven years later, I fully expected that we would traipse up and down the blue man-made artifical hills that the Waterford great did on his way to victory.

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Even soccer across the water only rarely got the odd game on live - international tournaments and matches, yes, but regular League games, certainly not. It is probably why the FA Cup became such a prized tradition among generation after generation of casual sports fans, the Saturday in May and, if you were lucky, the replay the following Thursday, a must-watch.

Sport, regardless of what it was, became reality television long before the term was ever invented. Eddie Macken was a national hero in Ireland because he and his wonder horse Boomerang thrilled us all in winning the Aga Khan, so much so that one year, RTE failed to televise an All-Ireland semi-final because Macken and Boomerang were carrying the nation's hopes in the RDS!

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Nowadays, it is very different, and there are times I wonder if it is for the best. Back in the 80s, I watched NBA highlights on BBC of a young Michael Jordan hitting 63 points in a playoff game against the Celtics, but those came a few days after MJ's incredible feat. But now, if we want to, we can tune into Sky or log onto our computer and watch two or three games live each and every night, so small has the world become.

Television, streaming services and the internet are bringing us sport from every corner of the globe - want to watch Eilish O'Dowd and Aine Tighe in the AFLW, no problem, we have you sorted. A horse race in Kentucky, a Formula 1 extravaganza from Dubai or Japan, not a bother. Whatever your sporting passion, you can find it almost 24 hours a day in some part of the world, a never ending cycle of sport.

TV revenue has been the driver of so much that it is good for the sporting fan - players in professional sports are better paid now than they ever were and the sport medicine and strength & conditioning industries that have sprung up around our sports enables our heroes to perform much longer and at a higher standard they their predecessors in the 70s & 80s ever dreamed.

We live in a constant age of record breaking achievements, seemingly reinforcing the notion that today's athletes are in a different class to those who came before them but I'd imagine if they had the financial rewards and medical back-up there is available today, the greats of yesteryear would have held their own with the stars of today - 40 years ago, an ACL injury was a metaphorical death sentence for a sports person, now you can be back playing within eight or nine months.

Not all the advances have been for the better - if you're paying the athletes more, you've got to charge the customers more and then you've got to create more and more games to generate the revenue to keep the whole show on the road. I thought a 32 country World Cup was the limit but we're head to 48 and it won't be long before some genius in FIFA says why not 64! When Jack Charlton's team thrilled the nation at Euro 88, only eight teams qualified for the finals and what a collection of greats we saw in those finals. The next edition will feature 24 teams taking part out of just 55 member federations but it brings the money rolling in and TV is happy.

Rugby is in the throes of a battle for the future of the game - the Tier 1 nations are doing ok financially because they have the audiences and the TV revenue to flourish but if you fall off the gravy train, like Wales and Australia, all of a sudden we're reading about job losses and teams being culled in an effort to save the sport in those countries.

The GAA is not immune from the phenomenon either - I'm a fan of GAAGO, more games that I can watch live but I wonder if the falling attendances at inter-county championship games can be attributed to the incredible availability of games on RTE, BBC Northern Ireland and GAAGO. And the notion of having to pay for GAAGO seems to have gotten some mad as hell, the idea of having to pay to see a game you wouldn't see in a million years on our national broadcaster.

Just like soccer, broadcasters dictate throw-in times - Leitrim's first ever live televised game that wasn't the 1994 All-Ireland Final came a year later at the ungodly hour of 6pm on a Sunday evening - all because there was a soccer game earlier on in the day and the GAA didn't want to interfere with attendances at other games. Now, we have televised games dictating the start time of club games, anything to avoid a clash with whatever is on the box.

There is also a nasty side to the commodification of sport - gambling seems to be funding quite a bit of the expansion of sport and while it leads to better paychecks and more entertainment, we also have the epidemic of gambling that has ruined countless lives in this country alone with the ability to wager on everything from the amount of corners to yellow cards popping up on our screens.

It is not always wholesome - match fixing was in a long time ago but the scandals engulfing the NBA in America and a few other sports remind us that the more important the almighty dollar becomes to a sport's survival and success, the greater scope there is for misdeed, corruption and downright criminal activity - it wouldn't take you long to conjure up the memory of a game where decisions or performances leave you more than a little suspicious.

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It is a debate organised sport must have - nearly every sport started off at the amateur level but once the money starts rolling in, then box office considerations are taken into account. I don't know what the solution is but there are times, every now and again, I wish we were back in the good old days where sport on TV was a treat and a privilege and not a right!