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.

The truth is that the GAA doesn't just exist in county conventions where delegates talk about Gaels; it also exists where people chat on the way to Munster rugby games or while supporting the struggle of the Connacht rugby squad to remain employed. The GAA can be found among players turning out for junior soccer sides or weekenders taking a Ryanair plane to Manchester to watch their favourite Premiership sides. The GAA exists in the discussions of cricket in the bars of hurling clubs, in the organisation of house parties to watch the Superbowl. In other words, they're not just GAA people, but sports people.

This wouldn't be one's first impression from the tone of some contributions in the Croke Park debate. To hear some commentators one would imagine a shadow Ireland exists, full of tweedy, Fáinne-wielding fanatics who foam at the mouth whenever soccer or rugby are mentioned. For those living in the real world for those who really follow sports this is an unrecognisable scenario.

Clubs in various codes have to get used to the idea of overlapping playing populations because no matter their location, the playing population is too small to be balkanised and segregated.

Note the term "get used to", however, rather than "enjoy". Before any reader frowns at the Finian's Rainbow depiction of Irish sport, I concede that by definition different sports are in competition with each other for players, for finance, for sheer survival and the big team games of football, hurling, soccer and rugby are always going to chafe when it comes to retaining choice specimens, given the roughly similar physical demands of the four sports. (What all four may be suffering as a result of a non-contact sport, golf, is another column's work.)

It's a mistake to ascribe an overly political hue to the GAA's objections to hosting soccer and rugby; the GAA foresees damage not to a nebulous dream of Irishness but rather to the culling of a generation of potential GAA players growing up watching the cream of the FAI and IRFU dominating the green field in Jones Road.

In this scenario the lesson of the Setanta Ó hAilpín case is not one of fear of Aussie Rules, as distance removes its threat to the GAA, but rather that the Cork hurler did not satisfy his dreams of becoming a professional athlete by reappearing in Croke Park next month as a tearaway flanker in a green jersey.

The other convenient accusation tossed at the GAA is simple anti-Englishness, no matter what the code. (According to this logic it could be suggested the France of Zidane and Henry would somehow be more palatable than the England of Johnson and Back; it may also be true this equation would not just be endorsed by the GAA.)

This is where the associated charge of "backwoodsmen" is tabled, though perhaps the opposite side of that coin, sophistication, is difficult to apply to the merry pranks played with the seating in Lansdowne Road in 1995 on the occasion of the English footballers' last visit; in addition, perhaps Martin Johnson's charming exhibition before meeting President McAleese early last year is the done thing in more sophisticated circles. Perhaps, but no matter.

The severe lack of lateral thinking on the issue is dismaying so I have decided to offer a solution to the GAA. If the accusations are true that the presence of English sporting teams in Croke Park poses a problem for some sections of the GAA, I advise adoption of the IRFU innovation with the national anthem, when it produced "Ireland's Call" so as not to give offence to those not minded to sing Amhrán na bhFíann.

Rather than having a national anthem that gives offence to those not minded to hear it, perhaps English participants would be sensitive enough to submit an alternative to their anthem. In such a scenario everyone would be happy as Larry, or as happy as people are listening to Ireland's Call at international rugby matches, where the opinion of the tune is as global and sophisticated as one could possibly wish.