Why Croke Park is ideal for Rugby League

AS an exiled Irishman now living in the north of England I have had the pleasure of discovering the sport of rugby league, perhaps the most community-orientated and physically demanding sport in these islands.

Can I ask, what with the opening up of Croke Park to ‘alien’ games, whether the GAA would welcome through its doors a sport which until the 1990s was banned in the British armed forces, discouraged by British universities and frowned upon by the British establishment?

Socially, historically and politically, the 13-man code arguably has much more in common with the ethos of the GAA than it ever will have with that pillar of British society, the Rugby Football Union, and doubtless many supporters of the rugby league game would agree with me.