Kelly reveals he manipulated seat plan to influence historic Croker vote

Former GAA president Seán Kelly has recalled how he rearranged seats at the 2005 Congress to ensure the vote to open Croke Park to international rugby and soccer had a greater chance of succeeding.

The historic decision in April nine years ago came by way of 227 delegates supporting the Roscommon motion to make the stadium available to the rival sports on a temporary basis.

In an RTÉ documentary to be screened tonight, the Kerryman tells of how he shifted the positions of expected yes and no speakers on the floor.

“The first thing I did was I went up to the top table and I looked at the names and the positions and I wasn’t happy with them. So I moved them around judiciously so that those who would be in a good position to influence would be in the right place and those maybe that mightn’t would be in a different position.”

Another former president, Christy Cooney, who greeted Queen Elizabeth II in Croke Park in 2011, admitted he changed his mind about opening up Croke Park after seeing the good it did. “My views on it may have been wrong,” said Cooney.

He saw the vote as paving the way for the royal’s Irish visit three years ago. “Little did the GAA think at that time in making that decision the Queen would visit Croke Park a decade later. I believe the impact Ireland created to the world in how it respected England and its anthem in ways helped the Queen’s visit to Ireland years later.”

On the day of the Ireland-England rugby game in 2007, Cork County Board delegate John Arnold, an ardent opponent of the amendment to Rule 42, visited the grave of Michael Hogan, who was murdered on Bloody Sunday. He maintains his views. “It wasn’t anti-British, it wasn’t anti-rugby, it wasn’t anti-soccer. I don’t go to cricket matches — I’m not anti-cricket. I’m just a hurling and football man and they’re the games I think the GAA should be worried about.”

Former Ireland rugby international Conor O’Shea also recalls how he was asked by then England coach Brian Ashton to brief his players on the history of the GAA, Croke Park and Bloody Sunday. O’Shea, whose father Jerome won three All-Ireland senior medals with Kerry, quoted to them passages from Máire Cruise O’Brien’s “The Same Age As The State”.

“I think some were slightly stunned,” recounted O’Shea, “that that would ever happen on a sporting pitch but that got across the significance and understanding of what went on in this ground.”

* Insiders will be shown on RTÉ1 at 7pm.