To some casual observers it must seem like Gentlemen's toilets in plush hotels are playing an increasingly important role in the off-field activities of Dis Great Assosheeayshun Of Ours (DGAOO) muses An Fear Rua …

First, we had the amazing goings-on in the Gentlemen’s’ toilet of the Prince of Wales Hotel, in Athlone, county Westmeath, on the celebratory evening after the this year’s final of the Ashbourne Cup in Colleges camogie when – it is alleged – certain ladies were prepared to go to any lengths to accommodate the desires of some of the ‘gentlemen’ using the facilities late that night. That episode is still being mulled over in the Camogie Forum of the ‘Speak Out!’ Discussion Board and AFR has no desire to add to it here. Read all about it at: Ashbourne 2001


Now, if some reports are correct, the gentlemen’s’ toilet in the plush Dublin hotel where this year’s Congress of DGAOO was held may have played an unwitting role in determining one of the most important decisions made at Congress for many a long year. That decision was, of course, the rejection by Congress of the Roscommon motion to amend Rule 42 to allow other games to be played at Croke Park, by the narrowest of margins – only a fraction of one vote! Afterwards, some of the proponents of the change were heard to complain that a number of their voters had been delayed outside the hall – presumably while responding to a call of nature in the Gents - just as the vote was being taken. Having climbed all the way to within site of the peak of the Everest of a two-thirds majority, it must have been galling to be foiled in this way, only inches from the summit. However, that decent man, Seán McCague, rejected their argument and refused their demands for a recount or a second vote. Thus, the Gents’ toilet in Dublin’s Burlington Hotel takes its place with that of the Prince of Wales in Athlone in the annals of GAA history.

The decision at the Burlington is probably about the worst possible outcome for everyone – the GAA itself, the Government as proponents of Der National Sports Kampus at Abbotstown in county Dublin and the other sporting organisations. On the surface, the weekend outcome looks good: the GAA gets another IR£60 million from Bertie, The Cutest Dub of Them All, the Government finally entices DGAOO into using Der Kampus in Abbotstown, and the soccer and rugby fraternities also get a shot at using it.

Yet, an even more satisfactory scenario for everyone has been unravelled by the votes of a couple of Congress delegates stuck in a ‘jacks’ in the Burlington Hotel! AFR wonders why that normally shrewd man, Seán McCague, chose to announce the Government’s sixty million to Congress the evening before the vote, and thus caught the newspaper headlines on the morning of the vote? It certainly weakened the ‘economic’ arguments for the opening up of Croke Park and may well have turned some ‘Yes’ votes into ‘Noes’, thus ensuring the rejection of the Roscommon motion. Who knows? Maybe, in some Machiavellian way, that’s exactly what an tUachtarán and his top brass colleagues wanted to do?

No doubt, if your focus is solely on balancing the books on the spiralling cost of completing Croke Park, the IR£60 million from the Government was almost impossible to refuse. But look at the downsides of this weekend’s ‘package’ of decisions: The GAA now commits itself to playing games at Abbotstown, with a detrimental effect on gate receipts and revenue in Croke Park. The Congress decision means the Association has foregone the opportunity of earning significant offsetting revenue in ‘Croker’ through renting it out for other major sports events. The soccer and rugby crowd lose the chance of using a large capacity stadium. And, of course, Bertie’s National Kampus project steamrollers ahead unchecked.

Now look at the alternative scenario if those Roscommon delegates, or whoever they were, had managed to free themselves from the Burlington Gents in time to help carry the motion at Congress. Croke Park would be opened, - at a stroke, making it the de facto National Stadium - paving the way to millions of pounds in extra revenue, thus offsetting any costs of the switch of games to Abbotstown. The soccer and rugby fraternity could happily fix their major internationals in a superb venue with a capacity of 80,000, getting the benefit of the significantly higher revenue potential over Abbotstown. The beleaguered Irish taxpayer, now facing an increasingly faltering Celtic Tiger, could have benefited from a greatly scaled-back plan for Abbotstown because – without losing face (apparently, his primary objective in life) Cute Bertie could have quietly cut back on the specification for that jumbo, white elephant project on the basis that we now had an almost completed National Stadium. And DGAOO would still have its sixty million. Indeed, Cute Bertie’s surprise offer of IR£60 million to DGAOO would have been a very cheap price to pay for saving, maybe, some hundreds of millions by scaling down Der National Sports Kampus. Ireland would have ended up with literally the best of both worlds – a world-class city centre 80,000 seater stadium for all major international and GAA sports events and a 40,000 seater out-of-town stadium for lesser international events and less important GAA games. Talk about a ‘Win, Win’ all round!

But, for the moment, at least, it is not to be. Unfortunately, it looks like both Seán McCague and a handful of delegates at the Burlington threw the script away and got it horribly wrong. Now, it’s back to the drawing board and the challenge of seeing can a further assault on Rule 42 be mounted at a future Congress. After all, the Abbotstown Campus won’t be completed for another five years, so there may still be time. And the hostile reception accorded to Cork’s Own, Frank Murphy, suggests the margin of support for change among delegates may have been wider than the final vote indicates.

If, as AFR argued in Chronicle # 90, ( From Gold Lamé Trousers to Sweat Bands ) the decision on Rule 42 was to be a defining moment in the life of the modern GAA, then perhaps DGAOO could be defined as yet another Irish example of a body ‘not knowing its arse from its elbow’… An appropriate metaphor, given the role played in this outcome by a Gents’ toilet