Why are so many in the GAA stuck in time?

IT’S TAKEN eight years, but I’ve finally joined the 21st century – today, I’m launching my own website, originally located at www.diarmuidoflynn.com.

It’s not a homemade effort, but has been very professionally constructed by IEG Design, an Irish firm based in Kilmallock, Co. Limerick.

It’s a very useful tool, the internet. For years I’ve been outside the loop, confined here in the hut in the hills to a dial-up connection that was so slow, there were times I could make myself a cuppa while the e-mails were downloading.

Not any more.

A few months ago I got one of those plug-in USB wireless broadband connections and it has worked wonders. Now, regardless of the piece I’m working on, I can do instant research. Frank Cummins of Kilkenny, you want to know how many All-Stars he’s won, how many All-Ireland titles? Plug it in and up comes the answer, almost instantly; these days, any time I’m on the laptop, I’m also on-line – wonderful.

It’s a rapidly changing world we live in, isn’t it? At the turn of the previous millennium we were just entering the new age of transport; trains were already popular but the plane and the automobile were on the way, slowly but surely. Then came moving pictures, followed by TV. For nearly nine decades change came as it always had, slow and gradual. But lately, the last couple of decades, the advent of the computer and the internet? Whoosh. It was time for me to catch up and so, here I am, on the web at last.

Why then, do so many in the GAA insist on being stuck in time? The last few months of last year was convention time in the various counties, and from all over came the moans and groans, the complaints about loss of values, loss of traditions, loss of principles. There are people in this association who would love to see us all back in the 1880’s, holding hands with the venerable founding fathers, doing things exactly as they were done in the years immediately after that meeting in Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles.

Why? Do these people not recognise that time moves on, that things change, that everything progresses?

There are so many debates at the moment, so many useless debates. The grant payments to GAA players is probably the main one, the traditionalists claiming that this is the first step to full-blown professionalism, the door being wedged open – some even claim that this is actually professionalism already, that by taking this money the players are somehow transformed into professional hurlers and footballers.

How? Are they any more professional than the boys who sailed off to the good old USA over a hundred years ago on an all-expenses paid tour, playing hurling, gaelic football, taking part in athletics events, a tour which totally disrupted the home championships in the process, all with the full blessing of the association?

Are they any more professional than those who took part in expenses-paid training camps with various counties in the early decades of the GAA? Are they any more professional than all those who over the years have been given the occasional brown envelope before various trips abroad with touring teams? More pertinently, perhaps, seeing as these are often the guys pointing the accusatory finger, are they any more professional than those county board officials who are paid expenses for doing what those in every club do for nothing? I mean, why should county board officials be treated any differently to club officials? If we’re all in this purely for the love of the game, why is ANYONE getting expenses, other than for purchased items such as stationery etc?

The reality here is that things have moved on. Players nowadays are putting in a greater effort than ever before. Many more training sessions, many more matches, much more sacrifice, and all this at a time when their peers are finding more and more diverse ways of having fun (including on the aforementioned internet). The people who are endangering the GAA on this, the people who are making us a laughing-stock, are the nay-sayers; back up lads, and pipe down.

We have those who are complaining about the style of the games, the changes in the way both hurling and football are played. They may as well complain about the tide. This is life, this is evolution, this is the way things have always happened. Hurling was waiting for someone to come along and open it up, forensically analyse it, discover new ways of defending, new ways of attacking. Football likewise.

I could go on, but space is running short. What I’m trying to say is this; don’t be so fearful of change. Without it we’d all still be in the caves, knuckle-dragging, eating raw meat, communicating in grunts.