The Danny years

HE was called an urban terrorist, and his name featured on a banner hanging from a plane over Croke Park.

In 20 years as chief PR man for the GAA, Danny Lynch saw it all. Now he can reflect on the obvious manifestation of change in the GAA during his two decades with the Association.

“It’s difficult now to envisage just how archaic and old-world Croke Park was. If you saw Lansdowne Road before its redevelopment, it was something similar.

“The old Croke Park was dilapidated, and a number of people had been seriously injured and one killed just before I joined, when a toilet collapsed in the old Hogan Stand. Hill 16 was the site of quite a few near-fatalities with crushing and so on. The Hysel and Bradford stadium incidents had concentrated minds, and when I came into Croke Park and one of the reasons I was brought in was to help with the redevelopment.”

Lynch joined the GAA from the civil service, and was soon plunged into red tape all over again, dealing with residents and planning issues as Croke Park expanded.

“That could be quite trying. There were disparate groups around the stadium, and it’s well publicised that a politician described at one meeting — and to my face — as an urban terrorist.

“Still, the stadium was brought around on three sides without one planning objection. That took a hell of a lot of building up relationships. The only planning objection was to Hill 16 which, given the circumstances, would have arisen anyway. But the relationships we forged with people in the area over the years helped, and I was delighted with the cards and bouquets I got from local residents when the news came out that I was retiring.”

Lynch’s responsibilities away from the stadium redevelopment extended to fire-fighting when there were problems.

“I had to explain why there were empty seats at an All-Ireland final recently — that was human error, the tickets just weren’t sent out — but I would have spent every Monday after an All-Ireland final dealing with the media inquiries about issues that arose out of the game the day before.

“For instance, the time Meath captain Tommy Dowd was stopped going into the All-Ireland function by security guards was another tricky one. I walked into a media frenzy after that.”

A regular feature of Lynch’s job was dealing with journalists, though that didn’t get off to the greatest start.

“When the GAA built the old Hogan Stand they brought up the journalists, Pádraig Puirseal and Paddy Downey and so on, and they were saying ‘it’s a credit to ye’ and so on to the officials. Then someone said, ‘where will we sit?’ Sean O Siocháin and Padraig Ó Caoimh looked at each other and said ‘we forgot about that’. That’s how innocent the times were.

“The seating for the old press box was numbered one to 99, so I naturally assumed there were 99 seats and issued accreditation accordingly. No-one told me that 22 to 32 didn’t exist, so that caused a little embarrassment when the journalists arrived.”

The media was far more compact at that time. At Lynch’s first press conference there were five journalists and one of them — from an established broadsheet — asked if the new newspaper, the Daily Star, should be accommodated.

When Lynch later refused the irrepressible Peadar O’Brien accreditation, The Sun retaliated by flying an airplane over Croke Park with the banner, ‘Lynch Won’t Gag Peadar O’Brien’ streaming behind it.

“Back then you had the Examiner, the Times, Independent, Press and the Irish News,” says Lynch. “Now you have the new Sunday papers, tabloids, British-based papers with Irish titles and so on.

“Add in the fact that back then the only televised games were the All-Ireland semi-finals and finals as well as the St Patrick’s Day Club finals. I remember getting together with Tim O’Connor, who was with RTÉ sport then, and we decided that it was a travesty that the product wasn’t getting more tv exposure.

“We met the provincial councils — who met us reluctantly in places like Knock in the middle of winter, when we were usually the only people staying in the hotel — but they came round and live coverage became more widespread, which is now a major feature of GAA coverage.”

So much for terrestrial television. Satellite coverage had its own challenges. “One Sunday the coverage wasn’t getting through to overseas, and it turned out that the way it worked was they bounced the signal off a satellite over Argentina, which relayed the signal to the US. We found that one of our handymen had put two cement blocks up on a wall in Croke Park, so the signal was being bounced off those blocks rather than heading over Argentina.”

The GAA and modern Ireland have both evolved together, says Lynch.

“When we started developing Croke Park, those were bleak economic times, with mass emigration; they used to say you could play the New York championship in Shannon because the players were all going over from Ireland. The GAA has been a huge influence in Ireland for over 100 years. Now, though, the GAA is seen as more inclusive and influential than at any time in its history.

“The country has shed much of its old baggage of necessity, but while people can be simplistic about Rules 21 and 42, there were very sound reasons for having those in place. The fact that they went meant a lot of the animosity towards the Association — among people who wouldn’t understand the GAA’s raison d’etre — has gone.

“The evolution of the club and county infrastructure around the country has been phenomenal in that 20 years.

“In the 80s rugby clubs were the only organisations with half-decent facilities. Now you see GAA clubhouses like Mallow and Nemo in Cork, those are superb, and generally the first thing now you notice in a rural area particularly — rivalling the church spire — is the GAA club.”

Lynch doesn’t agree with the perception among other sporting organisations that the GAA is the most politically adept sporting body of them all.

“I suppose in every walk of life everybody thinks the other guy is doing better than he is. The GAA has about a million members and there are others who aren’t formal members but are avid supporters. I’ve often said membership of the GAA isn’t a piece of paper, it’s a state of mind.

“In that context, because of the overwhelming number of GAA members and supporters, the Association must, de facto, be a mirror image of Irish society and is entwined in every community. Obviously it’s aware of the pulse of these communities and understands what they need. But when people talk about the GAA being political, it’s only political in terms of practical patriotism. It’s non-profit making, 90% voluntary apart from the necessary full-time support, and the funding it secures doesn’t go into anyone’s pocket. It should be seen as an organisation that’s provided a sense of place and community at home and abroad.”

Lynch points to the creation of GAA clubs in Dublin — “which 20 years ago was mostly a GAA wasteland” — as an example of that. For the future, he sees different challenges that must be faced.

“I think for the 125th anniversary the GAA should refocus, and concentrate on promotion of the main games. Coming from a quasi-Gaeltacht area I have a huge interest in the Irish language, my kids are involved in it, but there are a multiplicity of highly-funded State agencies dealing with the Irish language, and I don’t think we should be taking on the amount of responsibility in that regard that we do.

“There are other peripheral issues, but I think the two main games should be our main focus. I think sometimes we get too deflected into other areas.”

Lynch also acknowledges that the number of provincial stadia could have been handled differently: “I think that two major grounds in each province would be sufficient. I’m not saying every county shouldn’t have a quality ground for its own games, but in an island the size of ours I don’t think it’s prudent to have the number of major investments we have. It should be more condensed and concentrated.”

The major issue for the GAA, however is professionalism. “An issue I feel wasn’t addressed was professionalism and ensuring the GAA remains an amateur organisation,” says Lynch. “If it doesn’t the GAA will crumble in a short space of time. I believe that the issue of professionalism, in terms of what it’d do to the GAA, hasn’t been debated. You wouldn’t have a Cork hurling team, for instance. You can’t stop movement of workers, and if someone wanted to fund the Fermanagh hurlers then he could employ the best hurlers from Cork, Waterford and Kilkenny.

“Leaving aside the simple fact that the GAA couldn’t sustain professionalism, the club and county rule would be gone. That issue is something that needs to be carefully monitored, but it’s not to say that player welfare can’t be progressed at the same time. That issue has moved forward hugely in my 20 years, for club and county players alike.”