Time for GAA to forgive and forget

IT is ironic that even as four very typical GAA units prepare for the most special of all GAA club days, the rank and file members throughout the considerable GAA world who make up those clubs will be denied a very basic right - the right to debate an issue that has risen to the forefront of GAA thinking.

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.