All to play for as Croke Park agreement receives boost

THE GAA may have welcomed rugby and soccer to its hallowed headquarters, but the Croke Park deal more closely resembles a boxing match with the opponents repeatedly falling and picking themselves up.

The knock-out punch seemed to have been delivered more than a month ago. At that point the executive of the largest solely public service union IMPACT jabbed below the belt of its own outgoing general secretary, Peter McLoone, and said it could not endorse the deal to which he had been chief union contributor.

A lack of certainty that the December budget pay cuts would be restored and a distrust of guarantees of no more pay cuts until 2014 were blamed.