Kelly: I’m still criticised for opening up Croker

Former president of the GAA and Munster MEP Sean Kelly has said he still receives vicious abuse over his decision eight years ago to allow soccer and rugby to be played in Croke Park.

Ahead of tomorrow’s All-Ireland football final between Dublin and Mayo, Mr Kelly told the Irish Examiner people still come up to him — in front of his family and even at funerals — to abuse him over the GAA’s historic decision in Apr 2005 to relax Rule 42 which banned ‘foreign sports’ from GAA headquarters.

“While it’s a tiny minority who resent the fact it was opened, they are still very negative towards me,” said the Fine Gael MEP. “‘You’re the fucking so-and-so that let the Anglo-Saxon game into Croke Park’ is typical of the type of tirade directed at me.”

Mr Kelly, 61, who was GAA president from 2003-2006, said he does not let the abuse bother him but noted “you are inclined to remember those that say it”.

“These people are very passionate about their views and they see me as being responsible for it and they take their frustrations out on me,” he said.

He said he was most concerned about the effect it had on the people with him, either friends or family. On one occasion, he was verbally attacked at a graveside: “We were standing by the grave and a man was introduced to me. He then turned around and said there was no fucking way he’d shake hands ‘with him because he opened Croke Park’.”

Mr Kelly was widely praised when GAA congress secured its two-thirds majority after almost 70% of delegates voted to open up Croke Park. In 2007, the first soccer and rugby games took place, the first being Ireland’s Six Nations clash against France. Two weeks later, the Irish rugby team beat England in Croke Park when the British anthem was met with deafening silence.

Mr Kelly said that while the move made millions for the GAA, “another profit was the profile and goodwill directed at the GAA from all over the world”.

He also welcomed the commitment by Fine Gael earlier this week to provide outside counselling services for members coping with verbal or online abuse from the public: “I thought it was a very good idea. People don’t understand that, especially when it comes to local issues, politicians can receive an awful lot of abuse.”