Wrong question on the table; payments will continue under it

WAS I in Croke Park Saturday? Go figure. There are none so blind as those who did not wish to hear the barking of a dog.

When I bow-wow-wowed 23 years ago, they pinched their noses.

Our committee met for six months. Typically, Croke Park wanted a volume so thick no-one would bother to read it. It’s an old tactic of theirs.

Me, I wanted brevity, clarity, a cut to the chase: not surprisingly, my committee were swayed by my argument.

When dealing with Croke Park, I start from the same position as Dwyer: the whole place is against me.

It keeps me vigilant.

My report was launched in the Dergvale and it contained just three sentences: “We have scoured the country and, yes, we have discovered incontrovertible evidence that a small minority of managers are NOT being paid over and above. Too far east is west. We propose that every club in the country be levied a blanket £5,000 per year, and counties £25,000 – and to get it back, they must make a case that they are not greasing the palm.”

It shook the GAA to its core. It was mould-breaking, pioneering, pragmatic: and, so, of course, it was doomed.

I could have made fortunes. Everyone knows why we need to replace our backyard gravel every three years: great big northern reg jeeps and people carriers swinging in day and night looking to lure me to their shores.

Four of them in the vehicle. Three of them I will recognise from their playing days with the county. The fourth one will do the talking.

“First let’s talk money, Noel”, he will start, “and the first thing we can assure you is that we won’t even have to talk money.”

I assure them of the same thing. They never get to the soft chairs, let alone first base.

Like Dwyer, I love driving. Like Dwyer, I love influencing teams, taking a gathering of well-intentioned, harmless pullers and draggers and turning them into a gathering of well-intentioned, harmless pullers and draggers with provincial and All-Ireland medals.

Like Dwyer, I know that no money can compensate for that thrill. Send me a money man and I will send him packing. But send me an enthusiast, a dreamer, a man who solos an imaginary ball on the spot every time you meet him, be it at a removal or during the interval of a school concert, and I will play ball. I can never resist a man like that. Nancy either. “Oh, Noel,” she coos, “did you see the way he dummied left, and went right, around the cat? He’s a lunatic Noel. He’s the same kind of man as you and me. Oh, I am so looking forward to working with him.”

We have to go back to basics in the GAA. I’m with Seán Fogarty on this one, though, of course, that should read the other way around. Seán Fogarty is a man who talks sense. He knows what the ordinary man is thinking. That’s why he’s doomed as a GAA politician.

There are some things in life you can’t buy. I’m one of them. The best managers are. Cody. Boylan. Tull Dunne. These men know riches beyond compare.

If Páraic Duffy were serious about stamping out illegal payments, he should have done the honourable thing and dusted down my report. There would have been no need for the current options one, two or three. Allow for inflation — €2,000 would be enough to sink most clubs today, so pitch the levy €500 above that. Hit them where it hurts.

We all know everyone will vote in favour of ‘sorting this mess out for once and for all’ and ‘restoring the good name of the Association’ and ‘doing the right thing and being seen to do the right thing.’ Trusting that that was one more piece of nonsense that will go away two days after Congress, they would have voted en bloc in favour of the levy — not realising they had signed their own search warrant.

It’s a proposal Ballybore will be bringing to the county convention next winter. Did Ballybore ever go outside? Outside? They never went outside my family. And, last time I looked we’re not short of medals around this parish.

This latest dance will finish soon enough. Delegates will weigh it all up and vote fearlessly for nothing to change.

The right question isn’t on the table: and so the payments will continue under it. And the dogs will continue to bark in the street, though not around Ballybore.

* As always, the Irish Examiner has paid an upfront fee of €4,000 for this column. As always, the money is paid in two even parts, at Noel’s insistence: €2,000 to Ballybore GAA Club, and €2,000 to the Nollaig Gaels GAA Club in the Cayman Islands.