Time for GAA to forgive and forget
In what has become one of the biggest days in the Irish sporting year, Newtownshandrum, Dunloy, An Ghaeltacht and Caltra will have the privilege tomorrow of playing in Croke Park, the GAA cathedral, in the All-Ireland hurling and football finals.
The debate, which should have been held at the annual GAA Congress in about a month’s time, is whether Irish elite sportsmen in other codes, rugby and soccer specifically, should also be allowed to display their talents on that same sacred turf.
On a technicality, that debate has been denied. For shame, for sorrow.
I will not get into why exactly the motion to Congress from eight counties was denied, because as far as I’m concerned the reason given by the vetting committee is just smoke.
I believe that had the will been there to allow this debate, the motion problem would have been surmounted, as it had been in previous years.
The argument against opening up Croke Park to rugby and soccer that most upsets me is the one that brings in the Easter Rising of 1916, the rubble on the famous Hill, and 1920, Bloody Sunday and the multiple murders by British Army forces at the Tipperary/Dublin football game.
Two words for those who, over three-quarters of a century later, would still be offended at the thought of the Union Jack flying over Croke Park. Forgive. Forget.
London suffered horribly at the hands of Hitler and his henchmen during the Blitz in World War II. Just over two decades later they got revenge of sorts in a fashion most sweet, when they beat Germany in the World Cup final at Wembley in London.
It is good to remember here too that many times in the past three decades, the Union Jack has flown at half-mast in many an English city, in deference to the dead and mutilated from many an IRA explosion. Forgive. Forget.
I can even get personal here, bring this down to a more local albeit less lethal level. Over the years, no GAA club rivalry has been more bitter than that between my own club, Ballyhea, and Newtownshandrum. A lot of blood has been spilt, bones broken, disputes left unresolved. Yet even in a year in which they stripped us of much of our pride, a bad beating on their all-conquering journey through Cork, I wish them the very best this St Patrick’s Day as they attempt something, still a distant dream for us.
That feeling, while not unanimous, is general throughout our parish.
Hate is a poison, a cancer that can destroy those who harbour it, feed it.
I don’t hate Newtown and I don’t hate England, I don’t measure how much of a Ballyhea-man or an Irishman I am by how much I deride Newtown or disparage the English.
I was as uplifted by the recent rugby win over England as any Irish person, but felt no urge to crow and to rub English noses in it.
If anything my admiration for English manager Clive Woodward and his captain Lawrence Dallaglio grew, with their grace and magnanimity in defeat. I would love to welcome them to Croke Park next year, then beat the bejaysus out of them again.
There is a GAA argument that perhaps by opening up Croke Park to rugby and soccer, somewhere down in west Kerry or north Cork, or up in the glens of Antrim, there will be a talented young GAA player swayed towards rugby or soccer on the basis that he will still be able to display his wares in Croker. I don’t buy that.
If a guy is going to turn away from GAA to soccer or rugby, his dream will be about playing in Old Trafford or the new Highbury or Celtic Park, in Thomond Park or Ravenhill or Lansdowne Road. Croke Park in the equation? Perhaps, though highly unlikely, but even if it is, not enough to deny access.
There’s money to be made here by the GAA, but I don’t even see that as the defining argument.
It’s about expansion, growing up, about self-confidence, confidence in our own games; it’s about generosity, opening your door to a neighbour in need, opening your heart to a doughty opponent. It’s about bloody time.
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