Paul Rouse: Do we misunderstand what makes a sporting genius? 

In a fascinating article in the New Statesman magazine recently, Tracey Thorn considered the nature of genius.

For those who do not know her, Tracey Thorn was celebrated as the lead singer of the English music group Everything But the Girl. The highpoint of their career was in 1988 when their cover of ‘I Don't Want to Talk About It’ reached No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart.

As well as being a great singer, Thorn is also a brilliant writer, both as an essayist and a memoirist.

In the New Statesman, she opened her article writing: “The word genius is overused – most of us are minor talents”.

As well as being really interesting, the article had the kind of sting in it that made it compelling reading.

This came when she considered the career of the singer ‘Lawrence’ who fronted a band called ‘Felt’ in the 1980s. ‘Felt’ never really made it and despite a range of other bands and sole projects, ‘Lawrence’ never really made it either.

Despite this, as Thorn writes, “in the last 15 years, an entire industry has grown up around the idea of him as a thwarted genius.” 

Thorn notes how there is a new biography out which depicts ‘Lawrence’ as a “street-level superstar”, there has been a feature film made about him as “the greatest pop star Britain never had.” Thorn continues: “A quick glance at the streaming figures for his various projects will show that his music isn’t popular – in fact, it has become less popular the longer he has gone on – but the argument in his favour is that he’s misunderstood: it’s not the music that’s at fault, but the audience.” 

Nonetheless, ‘Lawrence’ has been described fairly regularly in print as “a genius”.

This is what Tracey Thorn cannot accept. She makes plain that she was a fan of ‘Felt’ and was interested enough to read the book and watch the film.

It is at this point she says that she considers ‘Lawrence’ to be just “a minor talent, who has been fortunate enough to have gained so much media attention”.

The point of the article was not to have a go at ‘Lawrence’ – after all, she describes herself also as just a minor talent.

Instead, the point is to call out the repeated use of the word ‘genius’ when it is not merited.

To further illustrate this, she considers the case of Paul McCartney. She had just watched the film ‘One Hand Clapping’, where McCartney and his band ‘Wings’ had performed songs from the ‘Band on the Run’ era and “came out believing very strongly in Paul McCartney as a genius.” 

She defined this by reference to his capacity for creation and the way music flows through him: “We all live in the shadow – and the light – of those kind of artists. Most of us are really not geniuses.” 

And so it is with sport.

There are few areas of the modern world where words proclaiming someone’s abilities are as misused as in sport.

This is not necessarily a bad thing; it can easily just be said to be part of the whole fun of games. And certainly it would be wrong to blame anyone swept up in the emotion of a moment who proclaims the greatness, the majesty, the magnificence, the splendour, the heroism, and much much more – including inevitably the genius – of particular sports people.

This happens in sport after sport, on broadcast after broadcast, from bar stool and couch and social media account.

There is a fascinating book by Tim Adams called On Being John McEnroe, in which Adams depicts McEnroe as a genius, albeit a “wayward genius”.

While there are those who have argued that McEnroe is best remembered for is on-court tantrums, rather than greatness in his play, Adams saw McEnroe as being in pursuit of perfection.

McEnroe was a great player, fantastic to watch, and a brat – but a genius?

This is a reminder that the whole thing is subjective and – most importantly – it ultimately doesn’t matter in any serious way which superlatives are bestowed on whom; it all probably just adds lustre to the entertainment on show in modern sport and the way it captures the imagination.

But if we are to look for a moment at the frame set out for musicians by Tracy Thorn and apply that frame to Gaelic football, it is quite the challenge to separate out those whom we might consider to be geniuses.

An interesting exercise is to take the first quarter-century of this millennium. To reduce the sample still further, let’s stick with the letter ‘C’.

With a small bit of poetic licence, we can quickly come up with a list of potential candidates that runs to Canavan, Cooper, Cluxton, Clifford and Con.

Do you consider all or any of these to be geniuses at Gaelic football?

And what if you were made to pick just the one?

Where there is a problem with Tracey Thorn’s article, it comes in the absence of a category between ‘Genius’ and ‘Minor Talent’. It seems logical to introduce the category of ‘Major Talent’. And all of those five players listed are more than minor talents.

If I have to pick a ‘C’ as my genius, it is one from the last quarter-century of the last millennium: Matt Connor. The bottom line is that there was no stage on which he did not reveal his talent; those fortunate enough to have seen him play for club and county know the depth of his qualities.

But to head off accusations of cowardice when it comes to this millennium, I’d have to go with Canavan.

The rest of the A to Z may wait for another day.

Paul Rouse is professor of history in University College Dublin