Confronting bigotry - GAA leads by example

IN WHAT has been a tremendous year for the GAA, the organisation is once again copper-fastening its place at the very centre of modern Ireland.

The news that Fermanagh County Board is to launch a campaign to confront bigotry is welcome. The development is to ensure that players like Darren Graham, a Protestant who quit his club Lisnaskea Emmets after he was the subject of sectarian abuse, can continue to enjoy his chosen sport.

In a year when the Union Jack flew over Croke Park without any consequences other than the derision directed at the protestor wearing a Glasgow Celtic shirt while decrying the arrival of “foreign games” at GAA headquarters, the assurances and apologies of Fermanagh County Board chairman Peter Carty are precisely what was needed in an ever-changing Ireland.