The empire strikes back: Dublin GAA chief takes capital critics to task

Dublin GAA chief executive John Costello may be one of the few remaining pulpit-pounding county secretaries who believe annual reports can still have a state-of-the-nation edge to them. An opportunity to set the record straight, to right a few wrongs, to take down a sacred cow or two. 

Dublin football’s inexorable rise to an exclusive plateau has unquestionably made them the envy of 31 other GAA counties and a media industry in the capital that feels short-changed by an absence of genuine engagement.

But some of the potshots at Dublin this year were ‘puerile’, Costello writes in his 6,000 word-long annual report to be presented to Monday’s capital convention. And such issues and inaccuracies can’t go unchallenged.