Banner to proceed with Croker proposal at Congress

CLARE will definitely proceed with the motion at next month’s GAA Congress in Cork to give a “permanent" entitlement to Central Council in rule to decide on any future requests for the use of Croke Park for rugby and soccer.

Instigated by the St Joseph’s, Miltown Malbay club and spearheaded by long-time campaigner Noel Walsh, it seeks to prevent the rule from reverting to its pre-2005 format, which gave the Council such authority during the period of the Lansdowne Road redevelopment.

After the last of the rugby and soccer internationals in Croke Park next Spring the old rules will apply unless Congress agrees to give the Central Council the authority to decide on such applications on an ad hoc basis.

“The rule (44) should be amended in such a way as to be as a continuation of the way the amendment was made four years ago in the best interests of the Association,’’ Walsh insisted yesterday. “There is no question of us withdrawing our motion.”

Outlining the recent history of various efforts to amend the rule, he recalled that a year after a Roscommon motion was defeated, a number of other counties which had submitted motions didn’t re-submit them to the following Congress “for some strange reason”. However, he went ahead and tabled a Clare motion.

“It was said at the time that I would have to withdraw it. The way things were indicated to me, it wasn’t going to win the second time. But, in the interests of freedom of speech — that people shouldn’t be precluded from putting a motion to Congress and having it discussed — it went ahead.

“There was an element of danger in it too because if we didn’t get the (required) one-third of the votes it would have been finished for three years and Croke Park would never have been opened. But that didn’t arise and it got well over the required vote.”

In terms of the proposal Clare are putting forward, Walsh rejected the view that it’s a year too early — because the 2005 amendment is still applicable (until the new Aviva stadium opens for business in Lansdowne Road).

“What’s going to happen when the new stadium opens is the old Rule 42 will be operational again,” he said.

Walsh accepts that there is little possibility of either the IRFU or the FAI making an approach to the GAA for the first few years of the operation of the new stadium. At the same time he feels it’s “inevitable” this will happen at some time in the near future, for example if the IRFU were to be offered a Heineken Cup final to host or if the Irish team was to be involved in a Triple Crown or Grand Slam decider. That way, an additional 30,000 supporters could be accommodated in Croke Park.

“Without the change in rule being made permanent, the Central Council would have any such application to Congress and we’d have to go through the same rigmarole we went through four years ago,” said Walsh.

“We don’t want to see it die, but that the Central Council would have the authority to continue to make the decisions on the use of Croke Park for other games. It’s the best interests of the Association.”