We're not all tweedy, fáinne-wielding fanatics in the GAA

EVENTUALLY someone will talk sense about opening up Croke Park, but you probably shouldn’t hold your breath.

At some point in the recent past the stadium became one of those issues on which everyone has to take a position, and people have done so enthusiastically, particularly those who dislike the GAA often referred to abstractly as "the Gaah" for being backwoodsmen who won't let global games, or more accurately, the English, into their bright new stadium.

Immediately, however, the terms of reference are wrong. Inverted commas don't have to be put around the GAA anywhere in the country apart from a few benighted and backward areas of Ireland, many of which are to be found in Dublin. In the country at large those who play and follow gaelic football, hurling and handball can often be encountered in diverse sporting contexts, though you wouldn't guess that from the depiction of the GAA as knuckle-dragging xenophobes.