Words like ‘historic’ and ‘momentous’ are frequently bandied about by ‘ofeeshals’ and mentors of ‘Dis Great Assosheeayshun Of Ours’ (DGAOO) writes An Fear Rua …

Often, they are used without justification, like when some Junior C football or hurling team regains a county title after fifty-nine years and hardly anyone else notices. AFR himself hesitates to uses to them, if at all. However, one decision facing this year’s Annual Congress of the GAA – if it goes a certain way – will almost certainly deserve the tags ‘historic’ and ‘momentous’. That is the decision on the motion, proposed by Roscommon, Laois and Longford, to change the Rules to allow Association property to be used for ‘the playing of games other than those under the control of the Association’. In another over-used phrase, the outcome of the vote on that motion will be a ‘defining moment’ in the life of the modern GAA.

Much of the recent debate on this question has centred around questions like the spiralling cost of completing and running Croke Park, the need to spend further millions of pounds on new, high quality provincial stadia, the ridiculous fiasco surrounding Eircom Park and the Goebbels-like insistence of the Cutest Dub of Them All, Bertie, and his elegantly turned out sidekick, the Minister for Tourism, Sport, Saunas and Whatever-Yer-Havin’-Yerself – the hapless Dr Jim McDaid – to plough ahead with Der National Sports Kampus in Dublin.

However, the debate so far has missed one fundamental point, which has always informed the way many in the GAA have looked on this question up to now. It is that the GAA hierarchy have never regarded themselves as a ‘mere’ sporting organisation, on a par with the likes of soccer or rugby. Ah no… The GAA is ‘a national movement’. And ‘movements’ are on a much higher level of existence than mere sports organisations.


It’s quite clear the founders of the GAA saw themselves as setting in motion an association that would free young Irish men from the grip of malevolent foreign influence and thus be one more stepping stone on the road to an independent Irish republic. It wasn’t that the likes of Cusack thought hurling was, in some way, inherently better, or even more enjoyable than, say, cricket. Indeed, if memory serves correctly, Cusack himself had wielded the cricket bat from time to time, before his Damascene conversion on the way to Hayes’s hotel in Thurles. No, what was wrong with cricket, rugby, hockey and soccer was that they were ’English’ sports that would lead our young people astray from the path to Irish freedom.

While hundred of thousands of GAA men and women have turned out to play games over the years since 1884 fondly thinking they were just playing a game, the ‘ofeeshals’ and ‘mentors’ in positions of power have long been clear in their minds about the Association’s ‘political’ role. This was the kind of thinking that led to the infamous ‘Ban’ (Rule 26) and the continuing ban, under Rule 21, on membership by personnel of the ‘Crown’ forces in the North. Don’t kid yourself folks! Prohibitions like these are not the normal stock-in-trade of ‘mere’ sporting organisations.

The real question at the back of all this recent debate about opening Croke Park and/or other GAA venues to other sports is ’Have the political purposes for which the GAA was founded in 1884 been achieved?’. If your answer to that question is ‘Yes!’, then AFR’s response is ‘Open Up!’ to your heart’s content. Because if the GAA is just another ‘sporting’ organisation, then the questions like who uses its grounds, when and for what purposes, resolve themselves into simple day-to-day issues like availability, frequency of games, conditions of the pitches, rent, insurance and all the other myriad practical questions that arise in any normal commercial transaction. It becomes no longer a question of principles, but of practicalities. And, in those changed circumstances, the GAA probably has a better call on a fair share of the commercial loot going than any other sports body in the country. (By the way, the logic of this position means you open the facilities to all sports once the promoters of the event meet all the criteria you lay down. Restricting the use to ‘32-county’ organisations – that don’t even fly the Tricolour or play Amhrán na bhFiann, while the ‘26-county’ soccer crowd do both! – is nonsense, no more than a theological fig leaf to keep the likes of Páidí Ó Sé and Peter Quinn happy).

On the other hand, if you believe there is still some unfinished political business in this country, or on this island, you may prefer to hold fast to bulwarks like Rule 21 and to the exclusivity of Gaelic sports grounds. Don’t under estimate the powerful appeal this line of thinking holds for many delegate to Congress and, to bear this out, those strongholds of the GAA ‘conservatives’ – Cork, Waterford and Down – have already indicated their strong opposition to any change.

This debate in the GAA between the ‘politicals’ or ‘conservatives’ and the ‘realists’, ‘progressives’ or ‘pragmatists’ is as old as the proverbial hills. It has been fought over the years on a number of key issues, with the advantage ebbing and flowing to either side depending on the wider political circumstances. In 1970, on the wave of the general liberalising influences of the Sixties, Dublin’s Tom Woulfe led the ‘progressives’ to the signal victory of the abolition of the ‘Ban’ – at a Congress in Belfast, of all places! Events in that same city, and elsewhere in the North, over the next three decades or so, put the ‘politicals’ back on top and there were no further dilutions of Rules. Now, in the wake of the Cease-fire, the Good Friday Agreement, the Downing Street Declaration, the Patten Report and all these other positive developments, the political sands are shifting again.

In an era when ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘respect for each other’s identity’ are increasingly the foundation stones of peace and prosperity in Ireland, it will become increasingly more difficult for the GAA to defend ‘exclusive’ use of its property on other than practical or commercial grounds. In addition, by opening up Croke Park, at least, to house soccer and rugby internationals the GAA might be doing all of us a favour. It would remove most of the flimsy case for the construction of that jumbo, white elephant construction Der National Sports Kampus in Dublin. At a stroke, it would save the Republic’s taxpayers a billion pounds, thus freeing up more than enough taxpayers’ money to give every under age GAA, soccer and rugby team in the country decent facilities for the first time ever, and still leave enough over to the help the GAA complete Croke Park properly and leave it debt-free.

Whether it comes at this Congress or not, the time for a change is probably not too far away. In a sense, the ‘conservatives’ lost the debate in principle on this one the first time Neil Diamond, James Last, the Pittsburgh Steelers – or whoever it was – in their gold lamé, rhinestone-studded and star spangled costumes strutted onto ‘the sacred soil’ of Croke Park. After those guys, giving a free run to the likes of Roy Keane or Keith Wood seems like a much better idea.

If it happens, so be it. But AFR believes he will not be the only rank-and-file GAA person who will feel a twinge of regret and feel Croke Park will never be quite the same again …