It’s time to bury Seamus Brennan’s famous analogy for the high-stakes political face-off. It took Jim Gavin’s hapless foray into the arena to nail the idea that senior hurling – or football in Gavin’s case – is any preparation for the modern political trenches.

The only surprise is that some bought into the idea in the first place.

It’s over three-quarters of a century since senior hurler Jack Lynch became the poster child for the GAA celebrity-to-candidate route, a time when “a complete lack of a political pedigree was compensated for by having won six All-Ireland hurling and football medals,” as professor of politics at Dublin City University Donnacha Ó Beacháin put it.

But the short version of the story rarely includes the boring detail where Lynch, a practising barrister, had the humility to decline the initial invitation to stand, insisting he needed some experience first.

There is a skill to politics that is rarely acknowledged, partly because it threatens the popular view that anyone can do it.

Aspiring Fianna Fáil leader Jim O’Callaghan alluded to it during the party’s emotional reckoning last week. Everyone thinks they can be a politician, but it’s a hard job, he said, one where you have to see around corners – and not everyone can do it. Whatever one’s views of politicians in general, it takes a particular kind of individual to remain courteous while being called “corrupt” or “a c**t” while picking up the milk on one side, and being accosted by a distressed constituent on the other.

It’s difficult to fathom how a taciturn political naïf like Gavin would have coped with the demands of a full presidential campaign.

The blurry narrative about “a........

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