We have asked the question before, and we’ll ask it again, and we will continue to ask it … what is this perverse obsession of Feenya Fawl and De Man Dey Call Ahern with foisting useless, costly, so-called ‘prestige’ or ‘elite’ sporting white elephants on the misfortunate people of Ireland, writes An Fear Rua …

Is it something akin to the activities of the Roman emperors who, when their power was in decline and the Vandals were knocking at the gates of the city, preferred to give their people circuses rather than bread? At least, in the case of the same emperors, they paid for the circuses with their own money and didn’t add insult to injury by taxing their citizens to pay for them. Or is it an attempt to emulate the French emperors, from Napoleon onwards, who foisted grandiose architectural projects on their citizenry, in the vain hope that they might perpetuate their mortality beyond the grave?

The original idea of squandering more than a billion taxpayers’ Euro on an 80,000 seater ‘national’ stadium was crazy. If they didn’t believe AFR on that point, the report by the independent international consultants, High Point Rendell, has put it beyond a shadow of a doubt. But, not content to foist this monstrosity on us, like a drunken bull in a Drumcondra china shop, De Man Dey Call Ahern proceeded to torpedo the FAI’s plans for their own stadium, Eircom Park, and inveigled the Rugby crowd out of their stadium plans as well. Next came the €75 billion bribe dangled before the GAA to ‘open up’ Croke Park, but thrown back in the politicians’ faces by a margin of a single vote – or more, if you count in all the Congress delegates who suddenly felt the urge to dash to the ‘jacks’ when the vote was called.

Along, then, comes Comrade Charlie MacCreeveyvich with his Soviet-style proposal to hand taxes back to ‘elite’ professional athletes who bring ‘prestige’ to the country, but trampling over the rights of GAA stars, just because they’re amateurs. The final indignity comes with the ludicrous joint Scotland-Ireland bid to host the European Soccer Championships of 2008, resulting in the GAA having its arm twisted once again to ‘open up’ Croke Park to soccer, so that it could be listed as one of the venues in the preliminary bid. The fact that this leaves the putative joint applicants, the FAI, very much in the lurch – and the IRFU grieveously unhappy - seems of no consequence to Bertie, MacCreevyvich and the Minister for Sport, Recreation, Saunas and Whatever-Yer-Havin’-Yerself, Dr Jim McDaid.

If De Man Dey Call Ahern and his Feenya Fawl and Aggressive Democrat acolytes want to pursue these egotistical chimera let them do so. But let them not destroy the GAA in the process! Once again, the PD tail has wagged the Feenya Fawl dog in government, with Mammy Harney insisting that she would support the Euro bid only if it included pressuring the GAA to ‘open up’ Croke Park. And, subsequent ‘meeja’ reports and reported comments of all five candidates for the GAA Presidency, suggest these gents queueing up to bow the knee at the altar of government mammon.

This latest attempt to ‘open up’ the GAA to soccer is part of a wider agenda that has been pursued relentlessly by the Aggressive Democrats and their trendy Dublin 4 ‘meeja’ allies… the Irish language … Article Three of the Constitution … Irish neutrality … Anything that is distinctively Irish or nationalist has to be shamefacedly watered down, or better still, jettisoned entirely and replaced with a mid-Atlantic cut throat capitalism.

An Fear Rua is no fool. (Jays, ye might have fooled me on dat wan, sez you!). He can read the hieroglyphics on the wall as well as any Feenya Fawl or Fiy-en Gale politician. Sure, there will be soccer played in Croke Park within the next five years. Sure, there will be soccer and other field sports played in some provincial and county venues within ten years. Even more sure is that, within five to ten years, there will be an elite cadre of inter-county players and mentors who will be fully professional, with part-time professionals at senior club level. There will be inter-club and inter-county transfers involving money changing hands and the so-called 'Parish Rule' will be the subject of a special, albeit highly inter-active, digital display in the GAA Museum.

All of these fundamental changes and challenges are manifested superficially by the recent debates and controversies about ‘pay-for-play’ or the ‘opening up’ of GAA fields to other sports. AFR believes that, left to themselves, the ordinary members of Dis Great Asssosheeayshun Of Ours will gradually, flexibly and democratically, evolve towards new policies and new structures that will try to accommodate the major demographic changes that are taking place. But they should not be blustered or bludgeoned into change for change’s sake by a bunch of spendthrift politicians whose egos have become too big for their Armani suits and Gucci shoes. They should be allowed to do so at their own pace and in their own way and in harmony with their own traditions.

The GAA project was a daring and noble attempt to preserve, revive and popularise a set of field sports that are unique anywhere in the world. But it was more than that. It was an attempt to use the organisation of those distinctive games as a vehicle for the expression of Irish nationalism and the achievement of freedom from British rule in Ireland. It might not be palatable or popular to say that nowadays, but that’s how it was. For many years, right up to the early Nineties of the last century, the experiment was a major success. But it is gradually breaking down now in the face of increasing globalisation of the media and professional sport and it is becoming increasingly more difficult to manage successfully what are essentially – in global terms – obscure regional games. Changing demographics at home – for example, the inexorable shift from a rural to an urban Ireland – are also adding to the challenges. What is particularly galling, however, is that it is polateeeshans of the Feenya Fawl variety - 'whose lives are pledged to Ireland' as Peadar Kearney's oul ditty puts it - who are in the vanguard of smashing the struts out from under the GAA!

But, let's not forget, if Croke Park is finally ‘opened up’ to soccer players it won’t be the first time a bunch of them have run across its green sward. As Ned 'Machine Gun' Stapleton reminded some of the Gowlnacalley-John Redmonds lads the other night in Ma Molloy's 'shnug, there must have been a fair few among the Black-and-Tans who showed up there on November 21st 1920, killing two players, Mick Hogan and Jim Egan, and thirteen other innocents – including Jeannie Boyle who was to be married five days later, fourteen years old John Scott, so badly mutilated they thought he had been bayoneted, and two other boys aged ten and eleven.

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