Last summer, An Moltóir had occasion to take a visiting New Zealand rugby coach to Croke Park to watch a hurling match. Upon entering the stadium the
visitor looked around and immediately asked, in some astonishment: ‘How come Ireland's rugby games aren't played here?’ An Moltóir replied that if the
visitor had a couple of weeks to spare, it might be possible to give at least the bones of an answer to that simple question. One wonders what our
Kiwi would have made of the shenanigans surrounding the GAA's infamous Rule 42.

An Moltóir should place his cards on the table. During a long, if unillustrious, playing career he played more soccer than any other game, simply because there were lots of soccer games available, in contrast to
hurling, An Moltóir's primary passion. He is still playing indoor soccer. An Moltóir also plays, or has played, tennis, table tennis, golf, pitch &
putt, darts, table soccer, squash, racquetball, badminton and various types of card games. Nobody associated with any of the latter ever queried An
Moltóir's involvement in soccer, a simple game that has brought great joy to zillions of young people all over the world. Yet, An Moltóir was victimised by the ‘Christian’ Brothers for playing soccer as a schoolboy. He even gave up hurling for almost ten years from his mid-teens when he was expressly excluded from his parish juvenile hurling team for the same crime (even though the Ban was not supposed to apply to under-18s). The eventual removal of ‘The Ban’ did not bring the GAA to its knees - indeed, Gaelic
games have never been more popular. However, thirty years later it is clear that the Ban Mentality, although thankfully in its death throes, can still
manage a hefty kick, as the events at GAA Congress demonstrated.

The debate relating to Rule 42 showed up the organisational and democratic procedures of the GAA in a very poor light, as the following litany of
observations illustrates. While some county boards consulted with their clubs (the ‘basic unit of Dis Great Assosheeayshun Of Ours’ as the GAA keeps reminding us) before adopting a position on Rule 42, some didn't. While some county boards mandated their delegates to Congress on how to vote on the Rule 42
motion, some didn't. Some delegates did not vote the way they were mandated. The motion required a two-thirds majority to pass, thus frustrating (in this case) the will of the clear majority of the delegates.
Despite the high media profile and far-reaching implications of the motion,it was voted on a show of hands (this is still hard to credit). For various
reasons, a large number of delegates were absent from the room when the votewas taken. No fixed time had been announced in advance for when the vote
would be taken, so delegates had no notice of when they should be present for the vote. And, despite the closeness of the vote, a recount was denied
by the GAA President. This is even more unbelievable than the decision to conduct the vote by a show of hands.

An Moltóir has noted, and not been surprised by, the role in the voting procedures played by the person who really runs the GAA - a person who,unlike current and past Presidents, had no qualms about making delegates
aware of his position on the motion. This is the same person whose generosity of mind and magnanimity were clearly shown in the last twelve months in his failure to grant at least a replay to the Derry minor football
team after one of his own county players was given two yellow cards but not sent off in the All-Ireland semi-final, and in his earnest (but, thankfully,
ultimately unsuccessful) endeavours to do away with the round-robin system for the weaker Munster counties which had begun to throw up serious new
challengers to Cork's domination of the Munster minor football championship.

An Moltóir was mildly amused by the kinds of argumentation put forward by those opposed to the motion on Rule 42. None of these was prepared to be so
politically incorrect as to stand up brazenly and state their real position: that soccer is the creation of the devil incarnate and the standard bearer
of British colonial domination of Ireland, past and present. So, instead we had specious arguments about the motion being the thin end of the wedge and
that before long, every GAA club in Ireland would be forced on pain of death or torture to allow the local rugby club play all their matches on its main
pitch.

In fact, all the motion proposed was to allow the GAA open up Croke Park to other sporting events at its own discretion. What is wrong with allowing similar discretion being applied to all other units of the association? Should the Limerick County Board not be allowed to make a few bob from the current success of the Munster rugby team (and make a generous gesture of
sporting solidarity at the same time)? If a local junior soccer club gets a home game in the final stages of the FAI Junior Cup, should a local GAA
club with better spectator facilities not be allowed to offer these facilities for the game in the community interest?

When An Moltóir first became involved in soccer administration as a teenager, he was very impressed that all correspondence among the soccer
fraternity ended with the words "Yours in sport". There was a broad-minded attitude to sporting endeavour in evidence here which is light years away
from the insular small-mindedness which still abounds in GAA circles. This mentality appears to be particularly prevalent among the more elderly
personnel who continue to dominate delegations to GAA Congress. Undoubtedly, it is a throwback to the time when the GAA was virtually the only sport
available to young people in most of rural and small-town Ireland. Those were the good old days when players were quite happy to go down to the hurling pitch for a puck around four or five evenings a week, play a couple of challenge matches and, if lucky, a similar number of championship matches
in July or August.

In many parts of Ireland, the GAA has still not come to grips with the fact that most young people aren't playing sports anymore. For those who are
interested in sport, there is a much wider range of options available, and many young sportspeople have a wide range of sporting interests which they
wish to pursue. Parents nowadays are increasingly anxious for their children to play sports (of any kind) as an alternative to less desirable
forms of social behaviour which are much more widespread now than they were thirty or forty years ago. They are not interested in has-beens preaching
about the purity of the GAA. While the same has-beens preside over competitive structures dating from the dark ages, soccer provides the kids with weekly games in competitions run by people whose primary interest is in the kids, not in some high-falutin and abstract ideals about national identity.

Typically, the reaction of these has-beens to the growing popularity of soccer (and rugby) is to plant their heads, ostrich-like, firmly into the
ground. Instead of offering the hand of friendship to fellow sports organisations and seeking to explore co-operative ways of encouraging more kids to take up sports (including the provision of better, shared, sports facilities), they shun these other organisations as if they were some form of pariah. An Moltóir remembers vividly some years back when his local community council sought to develop a sports centre to be shared by all groups in the community. The only sports club in the community which opted
out of the proposal was the GAA club which, typically, expressed its desire to go it alone. Today, neither the GAA club nor the community has a sports
centre…