All sides get ready to play hardball

IN THE fevered build-up to Saturday’s Rule 42 vote, many newspapers chose to illustrate what a yes vote might mean by superimposing an image of Roy Keane over a picture of Croke Park.

It had the feel of a fantasy football vision then and, even now, after the GAA arrived at its historic decision to make the ground available to soccer and rugby, it still looks like a case of what might have been.

For a Cork man who loves his Gaelic games, that would be down to practicalities not principle. The country’s most famous soccer player has already hinted he will hang up his boots at the end of the 2005/2006 season - and since the FAI made clear that it expects to be using Lansdowne Road until at least the end of 2006, it’s therefore unlikely that we will see Keano in action at Croker.