The deceased British Prime Minister, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, is not someone who figures favourably in the hagiography or annals of the GAA, reflects An Fear Rua …

There’s many the club proudly carries a name like ‘Na Piarsaigh’, ‘O’Donovan Rossas’ or ‘Thomas Davis’s’ but you’ll find n’er a club nor ‘unit of Dis Great Assosheeayshun Of Ours’ bearing the name of the same Mr Churchill. (Though, no doubt, more acute students of GAA history will recall that Churchill’s protégé and Minister of Propaganda during World War II – a Mr Brendan Bracken – was a grandson of no less a personage than JK Bracken, from Templemore, county Tipperary, one of the seven founders of the Association back in 1884, in Hayes’s Hotel, in Thurles.)

Churchill was no great friend of Ireland nor of the Gaelic traditions. He was prominent among a group of British politicians who fomented armed Unionist opposition to Home Rule for Ireland in the second decade of the last century. His dismissive and disparaging attitude to Ireland was amply illustrated by the vindictive comments he made about this country’s neutrality in his victory speech at the end of the War.

In his autobiography, he recalls how, after a late night sitting of the House of Commons, in 1922, a small group of MPs were reflecting on the major international political changes wrought following the Great War in the previous decade: ‘whole empires had disappeared in that great cataclysm… the boundaries of many countries have been re-drawn… But when the floodwaters have subsided and we look across the landscape, we see again in all their glory, the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone. Only the integrity of their quarrel remains undiminished…’

Whatever about Fermanagh, it seems a controversy is now beginning that may yet see the powers-that-be in the GAA haunted in a similar way by ‘the dreary steeples of Tyrone’. The good folk who toil and dwell beneath those steeples are not happy with the way the GAA has treated their county in their reaction to the Foot and Mouth crisis. Having reached the semi-finals of the League, they were forced out in favour of Roscommon, because of the confirmed outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease at Ardboe, in the county Tyrone. As a result, they lost their chance to progress to a chance of a shot at their first ever NFL title. Neither Galway nor Mayo can entirely be happy that the NFL final they contest is not devalued currency. By contrast, Tyrone’s Under-21 footballers have been treated differently. Their Ulster final against Fermanagh has been deferred until the end of next month. There also seems to be agreement that the Under-21 All Ireland final should be deferred until the Autumn to facilitate Tyrone. All of which action AFR strongly supports.

Very unhappy too are Donegal – forced to play Louth a second time in a relegation play-off while Dublin, with fewer points from play than Donegal, stay up without the bother of having to play the Wee County at all! Also in the closing stages of the competition we had the farcical situation regarding Longford and Kildare. Other counties affected in one way or the other by FMD cancellations and ‘point swapping’ included Down, Wexford and London. So, we end this League campaign with as many as a quarter of the counties involved feeling aggrieved to some extent and perhaps another handful getting trophies and promotions that they know in their hearts may not rightfully be theirs.

‘I told you so’ is not a phrase that features in the vocabulary of An Fear Rua. Yet it’s the only appropriate comment on the way the Allianz National Football League of 2001 has panned out. In Chronicle # 89 Was Bill Shankly Right After All ? we warned that tinkering around with points and tables would only lead to dissatisfaction and we have been proved right. In our ‘Vote On It!’ Poll linked to that Chronicle we put forward several sensible alternatives for the GAA, including the complete scrapping of the League at that stage, rather than persevere blindly to a devalued conclusion. Only 29 per cent of the fans taking part in that Poll so far favour the option taken by the GAA in finalising the Leagues.

More importantly, the plain fact of the matter is that we are not yet out of the woods as far as the baneful effects of Foot and Mouth disease on the GAA’s inter-county fixtures list this year are concerned. With the thirty to forty five day ‘clock’ until disease-free status in restored still running on a couple of confirmed outbreaks in the North, a further confirmed case anywhere in the North over the next few weeks would effectively put an end to the participation of some Northern counties in this year’s Ulster and All Ireland championships.

If that ‘doomsday scenario’ looms, then let’s hope the senior ‘ofeeshals of Dis Great Assosheeayshun Of Ours’ will follow the precedent set for the Tyrone Under-21 footballers rather than for that county’s seniors. If they do, then perhaps another famous phrase of oul Churchill’s might become appropriate: ‘This was their finest hour …’