GAA own goal: Organisation felt ‘bullied’

GAA director general, Tom Ryan, has said that the association felt “bullied” into hosting the hugely successful Liam Miller tribute match at Páirc Uí Chaoimh last September.

“Much of the clamour that arose,” he writes, “amounted to demands... to ignore the rule or find a loophole and host the game... So that is what we did — we found a way around our own rules. That is something I am still very uncomfortable with.”

That sad, revealing statement is laced with hypocrisy.

A characteristic of the GAA is the almost weekly, high-season meeting to find a loophole to overturn a disciplinary ruling made by one brave referee or another, so a misbehaving inter-county star might not be suspended.

It is impossible not to see it through the prism of the €30m grant, which, under EU regulations, should lead to the widest community access to the stadium.

Mr Ryan should be reminded that during that controversy, the position of the GAA authorities ran counter to the views of most of its members, suggesting that the GAA hierarchy is yet another Irish executive lagging behind today’s changing Ireland.