Kieran Shannon: Jarlath Burns will bring new school of thought to GAA presidency

Burns has shown he is willing to lead. To take a stance. To put his head above the parapet. To speak his mind and for the association

BEAUTIFUL DAY: Jarlath Burns stands with his sister Bronwin Traynor as he blows kisses to his mother Helen Burns and sister Helena Burns on a call after he was voted as the GAA president elect at the GAA Annual Congress at Croke Park. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

He won’t be your normal run-of-the-mill GAA president, just as he hasn’t been your usual school principal.

Back in 2015, a few days before Kieran McGeeney’s first championship game as Armagh manager, this column took an exit off one of the many roundabouts on the outskirts of Newry to minutes later be walking the corridors of St Paul’s High School, Bessbrook, and into the príomhoide’s office.

Before that encounter and audience with Jarlath Burns, we would have had a certain impression of him, as would many others. That he was a Croke Park man, committee man. Gaeilgeoir. Catholic. Fíor Gael. And decidedly straight-laced.

That though was before we heard and saw him trying to recreate the sound of U2’s rhythm section and the intro of MOFO and talk to us about mother sucking rock and roll. The next thing he was momentarily bouncing on his toes – more like Bono himself than cringingly a Tom Cruise or David Brent – to the memory and intro of Elevation.

“I remember [his wife] Suzanne dragged me to Madonna in Slane,” he recalled. "She [Madonna] just walked on and sang. On the way home Suzanne said ‘I thought she was good.’ I said ‘No. She never connected with the crowd. When we got home I popped in the DVD of U2’s [2001] Slane concert. And from the first beat, Bono has the crowd going bananas, right up to the top of the hill. ‘Woo-ooo! Woo-ooo!’ 

“Rock ‘n’ roll is the one true language of the world. And the biggest band in the world is from Ireland. People give out about their taxes. Look at all they’ve given this country! For me U2 is possibly singularly the biggest achievement of Ireland of the last 100 years.” 

Well, them and perhaps the GAA, he might add. A crowd whose kingmakers he was able to sufficiently connect with, not least because of his capacity to reach out to those within and outside its community.

A clip from an interview he recently gave the BBC’s GAA Social podcast went viral in which he spoke about his eagerness to understand and empathise with the British tradition in the north of Ireland; the Orange Order are frequently invited into St Paul’s to talk to his students about their faith and rituals and traditions.  

Such tolerance was only in keeping with other practices he and the school have exhibited through the years. Nine months before my interview with him and the Republic passing the equality referendum, he and members of his staff marched with senior students at a Gay Pride march in Newry, making St Paul’s the first school in the country to make such a gesture. He took some flack both in person and online from religious zealots claiming he couldn’t choose both the cross and the rainbow flag but Burn was unperturbed. “Our pastoral care policy is light on dogma,” he’d say at the time “and heavy on compassion and celebration of diversity.” 

In his school, there’s meant to be no trepidation knocking on his office door – it’s already open, yours as much as his. Whenever there’s been a shortage of computers around the school Burns has vacated his office to allow the students free use of it. “It’s just important to send out the signal that while I might be the principal, as a person they have the same value as me,” he’d tell me. “In a Catholic school that’s what we believe. Every person is unique and special.” 

Such approachability, accountability, and inclusivity is going to be vital in the GAA in the coming years. The LGFA and camogie association will be fully integrating into the GAA. There’s the prospect of a united Ireland poll which Burns envisages the GAA endorsing while it simultaneously being a home to the unionist community who wish to play the games. And what’s more, he’s willing to lead. To take a stance. To put his head above the parapet. To speak his mind and for the association.

There has increasingly been a deficit of such leadership in recent years, especially so under this presidency and director-general; too often the public have been left wondering who or if anyone is in charge. It’s possibly one of the reasons why when we spoke to Burns eight years ago he was unsure of whether he should seek the presidency, a role many had earmarked him for shortly upon his retirement as a player at the turn of the century.

“I have opinions which are not necessarily in keeping with people on whom I would be relying on for votes,” he’d say to me in that interview back in 2015. “For example I feel the biggest obstacle to the development of hurling is Gaelic football. Nothing else. I feel we should almost welcome counties like Kilkenny who say to hell with football. Because you can’t marvel at the artistry of the best hurlers in the world and don’t think it comes at a price, which in counties like that is being competitive in football.

“But if you want to progress in the GAA world, very often you’re better saying nothing really, just speak in platitudes. Praise everybody and offend nobody. Some of my opinions might be divisive.

“A president has to be a safe pair of hands. And I sometimes ask myself ‘Does that mean I’m the right person so?’” 

In recent years, though, he obviously recognised that his type of leadership was precisely what was required, even if he may be more politically astute now; he’s admitted that he was naïve in his lack of canvassing, or at least consultation and engagement, with various voting blocks in his presidential bid three years ago. It’s interesting to look back on those 2015 comments on hurling and if he will so duly revise the GAA’s failure to replace or renew Martin Fogarty as national hurling development officer.

He is likely to keep a vigilant eye over the state and health of the big ball. He was the chair of the playing rules committee when he tweeted about the “death of football” while watching an infamous NFL stalemate between Dublin and Derry, but that was more a case of exaggerating for effect and a couple of years later he saw through the one rule change there has been universal approval for with the midfield mark. Will he now get rid of the forward mark? Or address serial fouling out the field, especially as someone who wrote about the Stopman policy his Armagh teams observed and even adhered to towards the end of his playing days?

Either way like another front man he knows, his capacity to sing songs of innocence and of experience will elevate the GAA.