A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The sportswear manufacturers, O’Neill’s, reported a fifteen per cent drop in revenue for the year just ending – a result they blamed in part on the condensed inter-county All-Ireland Championship season.

That was borne out by the fact that the firm’s biggest selling replica jersey of the year was the Clare top, on the back on the Banner hurlers’ great run to All-Ireland glory – and therefore the jersey with the greatest longevity this season.

But otherwise they had six weeks less in the spotlight than heretofore as Croke Park lashed through the championship series like a fella anxious to finish up work early so as to maximise their time in the pub.

Whatever about the quick-fire championship affecting sales, however, they can still thank Paul Mescal for coming up with the concept of football togs as a fashion item on the high street as opposed to just on the GAA pitch.

It was Mescal who started all this by wandering around in his Kildare shorts on Normal People – or at least modelling them for the few minutes he wasn’t buck naked with Daisy Edgar-Jones.

Strangely his predilection for gold chains didn’t quite catch on to the same extent – but O’Neill’s should stick a statue up to him for singularly revitalising the football togs sector.

The ripples can still be seen in and around every third-level college in Ireland in particular, where – whatever the weather – there are lads dressed like they’re heading for the championship or the beach.

Even in the recent cold snap, you’d see them coming over the Quincentenary Bridge towards the college in their togs and runners as though this was a balmy summer’s day.

The only concession to the plunging temperatures was that they wore a jacket; some of them even boasted that Canadian Goose jacket beloved by Dublin drug dealers as a status symbol of their ill-gotten gains.

And the awful irony is that you – the old guy in the coat, with the cap and the gloves but still with teeth chattering like you were naked in the snow – felt you were the odd one out.

It was a throwback to when you were very small and your mother made you wear the gloves that were stitched to the sleeve of your heavy coat as well, as the hat that covered your ears and a fair proportion of your face.