GAA focus on the wrong Rules

CHANCES are you didn’t expect another disagreement in Cork so soon. You’re not alone.

The latest row on Leeside revolves around the process of re-appointing Gerald McCarthy as Cork hurling coach, with those players on the committee appointed to find a manager withdrawing from the committee’s deliberations.

Oddly enough, procedural trouble isn’t confined to Cork this winter.

In Wexford we had the messy removal of John Meyler as manager. The actions of a delegation of Wexford players, who approached the county board about the manager, came under scrutiny, and at least one delegate told the county chairman that he had failed to follow the correct procedure.

Up in the northwest for the last few days there’s been a game of musical chairs involving John Joe Doherty, Declan Bonner and Charlie Mulgrew, all of them trying to occupy the Donegal football manager hot-seat (we know Bonner-Mulgrew was a joint ticket; ‘occupying the hotseat’ is a figure of speech).

That’s yet another mess, with conflicting reports about a telephone conversation between county chairman Sean Kelly and prospective manager Doherty, all of which resulted in the non-ratification of the Bonner-Mulgrew ticket the other night, then their call on the county executive to resign last evening...

Come on, keep up at the back. Let’s move west. Although former Waterford boss Justin McCarthy is now Limerick’s senior hurling manager, it surely escaped nobody’s attention that former Limerick manager Tom Ryan held up the appointment process because he sent a solicitor’s letter to the Limerick board.

Ryan outlined his reservations about the process being used to fill the Limerick manager’s job — the membership of the appointments committee was his target.

There are other muddles going on in the GAA world. There’s a vacancy in Galway hurling with the removal of Ger Loughnane, and this week Galway county board delegates were due to meet, not to appoint a new manager, but to agree on the process for same.

It would be incorrect, of course, to paint all of the above situations with the same brush — wrong but dangerously inviting, like an enormous chocolate muffin — but the slew of appointments and near-appointments, of backtracking and headhunting, all seem to share one common feature which goes beyond localised power struggles or personal animosity. The flaw in the process relates to the fundamental workings of the GAA.

The structure of rules within the GAA has long been a punchline for observers both passionate and semi-detached. On an annual basis we see the proverbial coach-and-four driven through various regulations to get players freed from the disciplinary sanctions imposed upon them, but this is slightly different.

You would think that at this stage the GAA would have decided to remedy the situation by trying to foolproof its legislation. Certainly it would be a few bob well spent if a couple of savvy barristers or parliamentary draftsmen could be induced to take a busman’s holiday and go through the GAA rule book.

However, there seems to be greater interest within the GAA in perpetuating some kind of unloved mongrel — the International Rules Series — than in getting its own house in order. If the money, energy and effort devoted to parading some of Ireland’s best footballers before Aussie Rules recruiters were put into ironing out loopholes in the GAA rule book, then everyone would be a lot better off.

Everyone except the Aussie Rules recruiters, maybe. But even they couldn’t complain if you went through due process.

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