Trial and error: more surrealism in Leeside sporting politics
A man goes looking for justice and eventually finds the magic door that leads to judgement.
However, he can’t go in; his way is barred by a fearsome guardian, so he settles down and waits. Years pass and as the man is dying, he asks the doorkeeper why, in all that time, has no-one else ever come to the door for justice?
“Because the door was meant for you and you alone,” says the guardian simply. “And now I am going to shut it.”
Connoisseurs will recognise the above from The Trial by Franz Kafka, but even the poet laureate of administrative frustration would shake his head at the goings-on during the week in Cork, home of the surreal.
The Cork County Board Convention is on tomorrow, and motions have been submitted for discussion at same. Some of the motions have been rejected, which is where the fun starts.
One club was told by the board that a proposed motion contravened a by-law; the board later told the club that it had cited the incorrect by-law.
Another club was told that it had the right to appeal the decision of the motions committee to rule its motion out of order, but was advised by the board that the management committee would hear the appeal, and the membership of the management and motions committees were the same.
Yes, somewhere Franz Kafka is slapping his forehead and saying: “Why didn’t somebody tell me about this? My last book should have been simply entitled: The Board.”
The motions to which we refer have been the work of the Cork clubs forum, a body which was organised during last year’s stand-off between the Cork hurlers and Gerald McCarthy. The forum is not staffed by firebrands or radicals, but by genuine club members trying to help the GAA in Cork.
They have already done the board some service, with a terrific root and branch examination of the organisation in Cork. The forum’s report would have done credit to professional consultants and cost the board nothing, if you discount the mortifying embarrassment of realising that you created the situation which needs that kind of report in the first place.
The clubs which have been frustrated in their attempts to table motions are unlikely to go further, which is a pity. If they had gone to the Munster Council, Croke Park or – the mind boggles – to the Disputes Resolution Authority, then the Cork County Board would have had to oppose them.
Then there would have been the wonderful sight of a county board arguing against such dangerous measures as recording votes, delegates consulting clubs before voting on issues other than fixtures and term limits for members of the executive.
As it is, the clubs still have an ace to play. They are entitled to full representation tomorrow, which amounts to two delegates per club – four for dual clubs – plus their usual club delegate. Five votes per club would amount to a considerable number.
Not that the board will be concerned. The secretary’s report surfaced this week and anyone reading it would see little wrong with the world. But wait! What’s this fly in the ointment?
“Some of the reporting on the workings of the board was... often much personalised,” we’re told in one section of the report, but: “we are fortunate in Cork to have a very strong core group of diehard GAA reporters from the print media who do an excellent job in promoting our games.”
Mmm. Tricky: it might come as a surprise to those diehards’ bosses that they don’t actually report on matches but are, in fact, games promotion officers.
Still, it’s good to know that somebody is promoting the GAA, no?
* michael.moynihan@examiner.ie Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
