When An Moltóir was growing up, hurling was king in the village and soccer the only other game in town. Rugby was played in boarding schools by the sons of the local elite and gaelic football was played out in the country by guys who had brawn and finesse in inverse proportions. We played hurling all day in a local field and played soccer at night under the street lights in our council estate.

In the course of time, we graduated to the local Christian Brothers school where they were fanatical about hurling, which was fair enough. However, it turned out that they were fanatical about other things too, and when they found out that some of us were starting a youths soccer team, there was hell to pay. When An Moltóir fell foul of a hurling coach in the village club who had similar views about “foreign games”, the hurley was thrown under the stairs and that was that for nearly ten years. Your scribe was duly appointed secretary to the new youths soccer team and had occasion to write to the league secretary. The reply was signed off with the lovely phrase “Yours in sport”. There was an openness to this simple phrase which contrasted starkly with the inward-looking and narrow-minded preoccupations which seemed to dominate in GAA circles.

Back in school, in sixth year we were introduced to a topic in religion class which was called “apologetics”. This was all about learning arguments with which to defend our religion. It wasn’t obvious why we had to do this, as there certainly didn’t seem to be any threats to its all-pervading dominance in this country at the time. Perhaps they were preparing us for emigration. Looking back now, it is easy to see the link between the attitudes of those who controlled the GAA and those who controlled the Catholic Church (who were very often the same people). They were basically paranoid. Even though the community ate, drank and slept hurling, these people were terrified of the threat of “foreign games”. And even though there was 100% mass attendance and queues out the door for confession, they were scared of the threat of communism and godlessness. The irony of it all, of course, was that this repressive attitude gradually alienated more and more people, thereby achieving the very opposite of what they were aiming at.

This closed, insular attitude also dominated politics and economic policy for the first forty years of this state’s existence. We tried to keep out foreign goods and foreign investment, thereby creating another narrow-minded group of people – businessmen who were happy to carve up a tiny market between themselves rather than take the risk of opening up to the outside world and competing for a bigger market. Eventually this course of action was more or less forced upon us, but even after thirty years of membership of what used to be called the “common market”, many of these old monopolies are still with us – publicans, lawyers, medical professionals etc. etc.

While Ireland, thankfully, has become a much more open, broadminded and prosperous place compared with forty years ago, unfortunately we still have many people who remain stuck in the past and are still fighting yesterday’s wars. Even more unfortunately, they still hold a position of considerable influence in what could be this Great Association of ours. Some of the views which have been expressed about opening up Croke Park to other sports sound like something out of a prehistoric movie. Jack Boothman’s broadside against letting in the light was perhaps not surprising in itself, but as an exercise in twisted logic it takes some beating.

Gaelic games have never been so popular. We couldn’t have built Croke Park in the first place if this hadn’t been the case. All over the country, stadia are being rebuilt to cater for the growing crowds. Yet Jack seems to think that our national games are being submerged under a flood of rugby and soccer. Perhaps he should put away his primer on apologetics and come down from the Wicklow Mountains some time. Of course soccer and rugby are gaining in popularity too, but this is not a zero-sum game. People want to play multiple games, and they want to support multiple games. A large proportion of the people in Thomond Park last Saturday will be found in Semple Stadium and Páirc Uí Chaoimh during the summer. An Moltóir remembers being at the World Cup in 1994. Dublin played Kildare in the Leinster Championship on the same day that Ireland played Italy. Hundreds of people turned up at the local Irish pub dressed in their Dubs and lily-white gear to shout on their favourites, then quickly changed into green shirts afterwards and headed off to Meadowlands. This open and eclectic attitude seems to be completely beyond the grasp of the likes of Jack Boothman.

Mr Boothman and his ilk presumably have never heard of the phrase “co-operative competition”. This is an idea very popular in modern business circles where firms co-operate with each other in areas of mutual benefit (such as joint training or research) and at the same time compete against each other for markets. This is the approach the GAA needs to take. All sports need to work together to promote active sporting pursuits among our young people. The biggest threat to the GAA is not soccer or rugby, but drugs, home entertainment and bad diet. We need to celebrate sporting activity and create great sporting occasions. Ireland playing England in rugby, or Brazil in soccer, in Croke Park is exactly the type of thing we need.

Trying to keep soccer and rugby out by keeping the door closed will have the same effect as trying to keep out different ideas fifty years ago. People get alienated and go out through the door themselves, never to come back. Just as the Irish economy opened up to the outside world forty years ago and ushered in unprecedented prosperity, so the Jack Boothmans of this world need to open up their minds and build a great organisation on the basis of well-run facilities and competitions. When An Moltóir took up soccer forty years ago, the local club did not have a pitch of their own, but there was a game almost every week from September to April. The local GAA club had the best of facilities, but you were lucky to get more than two or three competitive games in the whole summer. In some parts of the country things haven’t changed a whole lot since.

The people who dominated the Church, the GAA and Irish business in the past were largely drawn from the same class – a class which was preoccupied above all else with acquiring property. This thinking still permeates the GAA. We have the ridiculous position in Munster where there are now four stadia which can accommodate crowds of over 40,000 people, despite the fact that, in an average year, there will be at most only four games capable of drawing a crowd of this size. This is crazy. The money wasted on these white elephants should have been used instead to build a string of coaching centres around the province, and to hire coaches to get into the schools. Most important of all, the GAA needs to get to grips with the terrible competitive structures which remain a feature of the organisation after all these years. The failures in these areas is a testament to the ability of the men of the past to hang on in positions of power and to resist change for the very sake of it.

Jack Boothman thinks that Gaelic games cannot compete with soccer and rugby. Why not? Is it because the people who have run the organisation for over a century have been preoccupied with property and power, with little thought for the players or the supporters (just look at the length of the queues for the women’s toilets at any of our grounds on big match days)? The fact that the games have not only survived but prospered despite the people who have been in charge is surely proof that we have here a rich resource which is capable of capturing and retaining the imagination of