‘Democrats’ block path to sporting ecumenism

THE GAA is often touted as a most democratic organisation.

Why, on the odd occasion I've even reckoned it was probably too democratic, with its vaunted annual Congress, where every individual club member through every individual club through every individual county, through its county delegates to that big meeting, got to have their little voice heard.

Oh, such annual bullshit. All of that reckoning on my account was before I got to actually attend Congress. Not, I hasten to add, as a delegate, but as an observer from the media. What I observed was this: the GAA is democratic, but not related to democracy as we are supposed to know it. It was the Congress of the famous non-political non-interference non-committal offer of tens of millions of badly-needed punts by our innocently altruistic Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, co-incidentally on the eve of a crucial Croke Park usage vote.

In pursuance of his own worthy dream of a National Stadium, Bertie particularly, his government perhaps (at least those who wanted to remain on the front bench), did not want to see even the possibility of Croke Park being opened up to other sports, a possibility that would very quickly have become a probability if a motion before that Congress got the nod.

In the run-up to it, with the development of Croke Park running over by many millions, the GAA facing a difficult prospect in servicing the mounting debt, there was a very strong feeling even among the delegates, the most dedicated but also the most aged and thus most conservative wing of the GAA, that something would have to be done. That something would be to hand over the final decision on Croke Park usage to the business-friendly Central Council, out of the slow and cumbersome hands of Congress; if cash could be raised from rental to the FAI, IRFU, then so be it, as long as Croke Park didn't become a burden to the already financially-pressured club and county units.

In doing so the GAA would also be doing the country at large a big favour, removing with one simple vote the need (if one ever existed) to spend hundred millions on a second massive stadium in Dublin. The Taoiseach's dream would of course be scuppered, but business is business, GAA needs came first.

Then came that offer.Tell me it wasn't a bribe, blatant and brazen. Tell me the GAA didn't succumb to government pressure, latent or blatant (the principal speaker against the motion, Cork's Frank Murphy, did at least have the honesty to refer to the thirty pieces of silver, bluntly stating it would be a slap in the face for the government to now open up Croke Park).

Tell me the voting process wasn't a farce. Several hundred delegates, a show of hands, one count only, a single counter for each section of the huge auditorium, the results whispered to the guys on the top table, then the announcement failed to achieve the two-thirds majority by a single vote.

The outcry, the calls for a recount, even for a paper ballot, the refusal. "It would be unprecedented!", said the man from Cork, master of that stage, silencing the nervous majority. Afterwards, in the sanctuary of the foyer, they weren't as silent, many remembering several other far less critical occasions over the years when recounts had in fact been held.

DEMOCRACY? My eye. I blame one man above all others outgoing GAA President Sean McCague, chairman of that historic meeting. Despite master-minding the overdue deletion of Rule 21 (an outrageous political statement, banning members of the RUC and British Army from joining the supposedly apolitical GAA), to my mind, his presidency has been a backward step.

McCague has been the John Paul II of the GAA, barring the path to the ecumenism so espoused by his immediate predecessor. The GAA should be working with the IRFU and the FAI, not against them; in such a small community, we should be pooling our resources (and with more resources than either of the others, the GAA has most to gain), not splitting them.

McCague was mired in the past, mired in the myopia of supremacy; the supremacy of all things Gaelic over all else. Soon he will be gone, but even at the death, there was a kick.

There was no debate allowed at this year's Congress on Croke Park, despite the fact the motion (backed by far-seeing Clare delegate Noel Walsh) was worded exactly as it was last year.

Ruled out of order, t's not crossed, i's not dotted. Good riddance, and under Sean Kelly, here's to a more enlightened era.