Emotive last words as Ryan steps aside

AN emotive Paddy Joe Ryan addressed last night’s Waterford GAA convention in Dungarvan as chairman for the final time.

The Fourmilewater clubman has been at the administrative head of affairs in the Decies for the last decade, during which time he has seen the county’s senior hurlers win the Munster championship twice and the junior footballers also win two Munster and two All-Ireland titles.

However, his publicly stated personal ambition to be chairman when Waterford won the All-Ireland hurling title for only the third time wasn’t realised, but in his address he told the convention delegates there was “every chance’ his successor would do so in 2005.

In a wide ranging address the retiring chairman reflected on many issues, calling particularly on the Association to take ‘a firm and fast’ decision on the most asked question of all - will Croke Park be opened up to facilitate other sports organisations including rugby and soccer?

Mr Ryan said it was ‘high time’ to decide on this issue once and for all. For a number of years, when the playing season is at an end or near to it, the media has been honing in on this one major question. ‘It is time’, he said, ‘for the GAA to give its answer’.

His own personal opposition to providing the Croke Park facilities to other sports bodies is scarcely a secret any more, but, nonetheless, Mr Ryan said the grass roots should decide now “one way or the other.”

“Let that decision be taken at the upcoming congress, and whatever the decision let it be binding on all of us, and let us get on with doing what the GAA has always done best - promoting its own games’, he said.

The chairman, not for the first time, has voiced his “deep concern’ that there is now such apathy among the general membership, with fewer people now prepared to serve in officerships either at club, divisional, or county board level than at any other time in the past.

Mr Ryan said this could be due in part to the fact that some people “at the top’ were being paid huge wages, while those down the line got absolutely nothing. He has warned too that it was of paramount importance that the amateur ethos of the GAA remained firmly intact as if they ever departed from that, the Association could come under a level of pressure that might make survival difficult.

Mr Ryan again voiced his opposition to the links between the GAA and sponsorship from the alcohol drinks companies.

“There is”, he insisted, “an inherent contradiction in a sports organisation as major as ours lining up alongside these drinks companies for the sake of the financial sponsorship they are only too happy to come up with. It’s time to make the break and that time is now’, he said.

The chairman also called for a curtailment of the training sessions for county teams at all levels, given the prohibitive costs involved and the hugely negative impact they were having on the club championships. Mr Ryan too warned against anything that would detract from the provincial championships or worse still lead to their eventual disbandment.

He went on to pay tribute to county secretary Seamus Grant, who has held that office without interruption since 1971 and during which time has served with no fewer than eight chairmen.

Convention unanimously elected a new chairman, Pat Flynn of Passage East, to succeed Mr Ryan.

A former club and county hurling goalkeeper, Mr Flynn has been vice chairman of the board for seven years, and, until last week, was chairman of the East Waterford divisional board.