Kieran Shannon: John Horan's time as GAA president has finally earned a legacy

SHINING LIGHT: GAA president John Horan lights a candle at the Bloody Sunday memorial in Croke Park. Horan will also be remembered for helping to make sure we got to see the boys of summer after all — in the winter. Picture: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile 

For a long while there John Horan’s presidency seemed destined to be as underwhelming as, well, his predecessor’s presidency — and a good deal more gaff-prone.

Between himself and the new director-general Tom Ryan, the GAA kept stumbling from one self-inflicted jam to another in their first summer in their respective new jobs. The whole Newbridge or Nowhere farrago. Allowing the Liam Miller testimonial get stuck on red and amber for so long before eventually it got the green light to proceed in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

Much of the sheen of the new Super 8s vanished to the point of being tarnished by the controversy around Dublin having two home games in Croker and Horan doing next to nothing to correct it. The Club Players Association, and with it, the club game, was regularly treated without the respect both merited, leading to a real sense of disgruntlement and disillusionment in the GAA public discourse.

And even when he tried to be proactive instead of reactive, it came across as too forced and stilted. The second-tier championship which he craved was rammed through at a Special Congress in Cork without much debate about it there or beforehand; even those favourably disposed to the concept wouldn’t have been enamoured with the format.

It was around then that Malachy Clerkin of The Irish Times, not for the first time, succinctly and eloquently summarised what most of us were thinking. “His [Horan’s] legacy will be that he was a president desperate for a legacy.” 

Not now.

In the end, Horan didn’t have to force it. His legacy came to him, in the form of a crisis, a pandemic. And because of his steady and astute leadership during that time, almost everything that preceded it on his beat seems to fade away.

All those previous missteps he made, you’d probably forgotten, until we mentioned them there at the top, because of how he and the GAA barely put a foot wrong in handling Covid.

It turned out he was a war-time general, by making us more at peace, or at least more at ease or reassured.

Back in May only minutes after The Sunday Game opened with Elaine Buckley’s poignant montage and salute to the Boys of Summer that seemed out of reach for 2020, Horan spoke with empathy and clarity at a time when not all leaders in public life, especially the ones most immediate to us either side of the Irish Sea or Atlantic Ocean, were.

He laid out some kind of vision and hope. That there’d be no inter-county games until at least October. That there would be life in the club fields again in the summer, but no games until at least July 20.

Looking at it now, some of the words he spoke didn’t transpire; you could even claim that they haven’t aged particularly well. “If social distancing is a priority to deal with this pandemic, then I don’t know how we can play a contact sport,” he’d tell Des Cahill that night.

Of course, as we know, from July 20 on, every weekend there have been players, club or county, clattering into one another. But that again is testament to Horan — and Ryan — and the GAA as a whole. They’ve been suitably adaptable. Like with the wisest and best of people, as their information changes, so has their opinion and policies.

You could still have had the odd quibble with him and the GAA through these challenging times.

Requesting back in August that Ronan Glynn and NPHET explain themselves to the GAA came across as shrill and entitled in some parts, but to others it conveyed the frustration of tens of thousands of parents in the GAA and in other sports who for a 36-hour period didn’t know if they could attend their own child’s match at a time while they were free to eat and drink in a gastro pub.

Croke Park could also have been more proactive and strident in reducing the number of congregations and celebrations after county finals.

But at least they did act on that by pulling the plug on all other county championships and by putting in place extreme safety protocols for the inter-county game, to the point the Anglo-Celt Cup didn’t even make it back to Cavan last Sunday week.

And even just yesterday headquarters has satisfied the demands of multiple inter-county managers by seeing to it that for the rest of the championships entire panels, and not just the match-day 26, can be present in Croke Park.

The format of both this year’s championships has also been inspired. In fact, so exhilarating has the football been, there have been calls in some quarters to retain the do-or-die championship.

That’s obviously a rash, knee-jerk reaction. Such advocates are forgetting for one thing that if the same format applied in hurling Waterford wouldn’t now be just 70 minutes away from their first All-Ireland title in 61 years, not to mention that the Tipperary footballers wouldn’t have had the greater big-game experience over Cork without their run to the 2016 All-Ireland semi-final.

Some commentators argued that the GAA should have gone for an open draw knockout championship in football, and if the 2020 provincial championships draw hadn’t already been made, this column would have been inclined to agree with them.

But the way it had fallen — Kerry and Cork on the same side in Munster, freeing it up for a Tipp or Clare or even a Limerick to get to a final and possibly sneak it; Tyrone and Donegal pitted against one another in the first round in Ulster; Mayo having to win in Roscommon and Galway if they were to get back to Croke Park — the GAA’s conviction that the retention and lifting of as much silverware as possible would provide more joy in our lives was both justified and realised.

In an ideal world, it would have been great if a Dublin president, the first one in 96 years, grasped the increasing conundrum that is his native county’s status within the GAA, especially in football. But Horan hasn’t been that guy. That one is for the fella after him. It’s up to you Mr New York, New York, Larry McCarthy.

As it is, Horan will likely finish up next year as having the most impressive presidency since Seán Kelly’s, not least because the pandemic produced another remarkable legacy for him and the GAA — the split season. No longer will be the club be perceived as an irritant to county managers and the county game be viewed as the enemy of the club game. Room has been found for both.

What Horan might have to revise is his craving to split the championship itself into a chase for the Sam Maguire and another for the Tailteann Cup. Certainly for 2021 anyway. Call it The Cavan factor. There are only two or three teams in the country who think they couldn’t beat Cavan — and only two or three that Cavan couldn’t beat. 

The idea of them just missing out on promotion from Division Three and contesting the inaugural Tailteann Cup only months after playing in an All-Ireland semi-final doesn’t chime with these times. He should at least reconsider it, not least because his fixtures taskforce is doing precisely that and reviewing much more.

Again, you don’t have to chase your legacy, John. You’ve already secured it, by how you helped make sure we got to see the boys of summer after all — in the winter.