Letters to the Editor: The GAA should put our minor finals on the big stage
Some 12,000 spectators enjoyed the minor hurling final in Nowlan Park on June 29, at the same time as the Dublin v Galway football semi-final at Croke Park. Picture: INPHO/Ken Sutton
Am I a voice crying in the wilderness? Sometimes it feels like that and all I merit from those that should know better is scorn, sneering, and dismissal. Be that as it may I will continue to privately and publicly express my strongly held views in regards the direction the GAA is going. As a card-carrying member for more than 50 years I feel entitled — even duty-bound — to make my views known.
I must say I think it’s absolutely disgraceful what has been done to the GAA minor hurling and football championships. Clubs, indeed counties, often tossed for the venue for a league game or maybe a championship first round but tossing for the venue for an All-Ireland final — can we demean the minor competitions much more?
For decades, the minor or U18 competitions were second in importance only to the senior championships with both finals in both codes, hurling and football, being played together in Croke Park. A few years back minor was changed to U17 and then ’twas said it was too much pressure on these young players — some maybe only 16, to play in front of 80,000 spectators on final day.
Now I’ve been to most finals since 1972 and I never, ever saw a full house for the minor final — you might have 20,000 in at the start and maybe double that by the end. That argument about “too much pressure” is pure drivel and codswallop.Â
Where would any minor player in the country like to play the final? Croke Park of course — now we can have games of all codes played in our national GAA stadium but we ban our very own minors — is that promoting Gaelic games?Â
Last Saturday week, 12,000 enjoyed the minor hurling final in Nowlan Park — no crowd pressure there and the game was played at the same time as the Dublin v Galway football semi-final. Keep it private, keep it low-key seems to be the policy.Â
Next Sunday, the All-Ireland minor football final between Derry and Armagh is on — now there’s a well-kept secret. Two Ulster teams so fair enough the final is in Omagh.
Would it have been a sporting sin to play the minor final before one of the football semi-finals or even before the All-Ireland Football final itself? Then we in the GAA could justify charging €100 per ticket for a grand double-header.Â
My God, our GAA administrators down the years had built up the two senior All-Ireland final Sundays in September as the two very best sporting occasions, spectacles and events in Ireland — the envy of everyone. Now look at what’s been done — Yeats was right: “All changed, changed utterly.”
Now that Sinn FĂ©in is the largest party in Northern Ireland, and with its success in the Westminster elections, is it about time that Sinn FĂ©in representatives take their seats at Westminister to serve the people who elected them.
That way they can best serve the people who voted for them.
Thank God the politics of reason and respect have won over extremism.
With the far right gaining more influence in Europe, and Nigel Farage’s Reform party making gains in mainland Britain .
Surely let’s hope that the days of one community lording it over their opponents are well and truly gone .
Let us hope that both unionist and nationalist parties can work for the greater good for the people who voted for them. Hopefully
the centre ground will hold , and keep the politics of extremism and hate at bay.
Going forward let us hope that the relationship between Dublin and London, will become more productive, and that unionist and nationalist can live side by side , and work for the greater good .
Unfortunately, US president Biden cannot find the grace to accept his age means he can only be a successful, one-term president. If his Democratic party colleagues cannot find the cajones to remove him from the ticket it suggests that the party is as deluded as the individual. It, sadly, also suggests that, like America’s Republican Party, it is in dangerous thrall to an individual rather than a set of principles. What a terrible, frightening prospect this in a darkening world. What a comfort to those who deride and undermine democracies.
As Dylan warned: “It’s not dark yet but it’s getting there.”
How has it come to this?
After last month’s local elections, two successful candidates who stood on anti-migrant platforms immediately spoke out against the right to abortion in Ireland.
Other, unsuccessful anti-migrant candidates made the same pivot. Many of the same people have been involved in shutting down the country’s libraries due to their objections to LGBTQ+ issues.
These far-right bully boys who have used the vilest language against migrants and LGBTQ+ people were welcomed with either open arms or blind eyes at last weekend’s anti-abortion protest in Dublin.
The lesson should be clear to all of the 1,429,981 voters who repealed the Eighth Amendment in 2018, to the thousands of activists who carried the campaign, and to the politicians tasked with protecting reproductive rights in Ireland: The far-right will not stop at just attacking migrants.
The lessons of German priest Martin Niemoller’s 1946 poem
First They Came have never been
so pertinent. Reproductive rights and anti-fascism are the same cause.
There has been so much discussion about our weakened Defence Forces and the numbers lacking to fill vacancies that have occurred, we are exposed to further security frailties by the number of unmanned airsrtrips/aerodromes and airfields that dominate our state.
While we have five major airports that are manned by security and customs, there are many dozens of other airfields, airstrips and aerodromes, mostly unmanned.
The recent conviction of a managing director who flew from Dieppe aerodrome to Abbeyshrule in Co Longford in 2022, with a large consignment of cocaine, exposed the lax security or customs measures at these places.
The judge’s comments that there “should be a significant upgrade in security” with “24 hour checks” which left the country “unacceptably exposed is a warning this Government should heed.
Apart from those who legitimately use these airstrips for pleasure purposes, what do we know about those who use them for nefarious purposes, like human trafficking, illegal migration, guns and drug importation, or criminals, terrorist or intelligence services using it to bypass security at our main airports and ports?
Once again this Government, and those whose jobs are the security and defence of this nation has left us exposed to any number of dangerous outcomes and unwanted activities by those who use our weaknesses against us.
Those in charge, whether it be Revenue, gardaĂ, defence or the aviation industry itself, should be drawing attention to our exposure and at the lack of security and defence in a country which has been exposed as the soft underbelly of Europe.
Whether it’s offshore or on land this example of unmanned airfields/aerodromes is a typical example of the lazy and careless approach this and other governments of the day have towards our safety and security.
