Nolan ‘appalled’ by motion withdrawal

THE GAA’s commitment to democracy has been called into question by a Longford club official whose motion on match bans was withdrawn from the clár at last weekend’s Annual Congress at the behest of president Christy Cooney.

The request was made due to the fact that a similar motion is currently being prepared by officials in Croke Park who intend to bring their own proposal to next year’s gathering.

Derek Nolan, a member of the Grattan Óg club, has branded the move a “joke” and a “disgrace” after his motion, unbeknown to him at the time, was not debated or taken to a vote last Saturday afternoon.

“It’s just shocking disappointing,” said Nolan. “The feedback I have is that the president met with the Longford delegates on the Friday and asked them to withdraw my motion, which I am absolutely appalled at.

“I’m appalled in the sense that they didn’t even have the decency to contact me. That wasn’t a motion from Longford, it was a motion from the Grattan Óg club. They hadn’t the authority to withdraw the motion in the first place.

“They have no business agreeing to the withdrawal at all. It is just an indictment of what they think of the people doing the voluntary work at grassroots level,” said a disillusioned Nolan yesterday.

“The amount of time that we put into that motion, and the wording of it, and for that to happen is just appalling.

“I would have travelled to Newcastle at my own expense for a serious motion like that. Half of the delegates that go up there, I think, are just treated to a junket. It seems to me that if motions don’t come directly from Croke Park they just aren’t taken seriously. That’s the way it looks.”

Prior to Congress, Nolan was under the impression that his motion calling for time bans to be replaced by match-specific suspensions would, at the very least, be debated but the failure to do even that has been a bitter blow.

Like dozens of club officials up and down the country, Nolan devoted a huge amount of time and effort and jumped through all the relevant administrative hoops to ensure that his motion would make it to the clár.

The first hurdle was his own county convention last December, followed by the GAA’s Motions Committee, a member of which made contact to inform him that the wording required a number of alterations if it wasn’t to be struck out of order.

“I literally had two hours to do that. I got it done as best I could in the hope that it would be acceptable to them and it was because it appeared on the programme. Then they pull it on the eve of it because the president asks them to and because he wants to take it to another committee. I think it’s a disgrace. What they could have done was let it through.

“If they wanted to tweak the motion over the next few months, they could have done so and if change was necessary it could have been brought in by way as an amendment to the rule at next year’s Congress. That is the normal protocol and that is the way it should have been done. Unfortunately for voluntary officials at club level, we are only too well aware of the time it takes to come up with these proposals and then you see the little amount of time it takes for them to be shot down at Congress.”

He added: “The moral of the story is that if a motion does not come from headquarters it has no chance of getting through. The whole democracy thing is scandalous.”

A spokesman for Croke Park pointed out that it was more a matter for Longford GAA chiefs who had agreed to Cooney’s request and said there was a feeling that the issue required a more comprehensive and wide-ranging motion.

“The reality is that there were 123 motions on the clár for the weekend and if we went through them all individually we would still be there,” said Alan Milton. “Certain counties said they were obliged to put a motion to the floor even though they were bound to lose.”