GPA should be driving debate on second-tier championship

Congress comes but once a year and when it does, it brings good cheer. Really? Perhaps in days gone by, this was the case. Nowadays, it is perhaps less colourful and more serious, but it has evolved and changed for the better. The faces and personalities are different, and we have left behind the all-male set-up from years gone by, to be replaced with a more diverse range of perspectives. Thankfully, we now have a strong female presence among the assembled gathering. Faces change quicker nowadays too, with the five-year limitation on officers, championed by people like Sean McCague, Donal Fitzgibbon, Peter Quinn and myself, really kicking in.

I was sitting this year between Christy Cooney and Nicky Brennan — between us we held the Presidency between 2003 and 2012 — and I don’t know how often we asked each other who the speaker was, only to find out it was a chairperson, secretary of a county, or key officer at provincial and national level. Changing of the guard takes place much quicker now, and that is not a bad thing at all.