The GAA is used to flak, but NEVER so loud and so angry... and from its heartland

FOR practically his entire 76 years on this earth, Jim Hayes gave and gave... and gave some more to the GAA. My late father played club and county football with Palatine and Carlow for a good 20 years. And as he reared his family in Meath, nothing changed. Skryne GAA Club became the chief beneficiary of Jim Hayes’s time and attention for the guts of the next half a century.

It did not matter what job needed to be done. He was prepared to be dogsbody one day, chairman the next. However, my father always lived with misgivings, doubts and suspicions, and a general unhappiness about how the GAA conducted itself at the very top.

Those same misgivings live in the great majority of GAA members.

It’s like the organisation has been ruled these last 130 years by a faceless gentleman who has had the support of everyone and the love of no-one. And a gentleman rather than a lady.

No more than the Catholic Church in this land, the GAA was built to think and act as a masculine form.

That’s one good reason why it makes as many bad decisions as good decisions.

And it helps explain why the GAA can be both good and kind, but also foolish, in equal measures. How it can be maddeningly stubborn, ridiculously slow on the uptake so often, and not disposed to changing its mind. And why the GAA can be a touch greedy.

‘THE GRAB ALL ASSOCIATION.’ My father would make this pronouncement in our home, religiously, but he was never angry when he uttered those words. There would be acceptance in his voice.

THE way in which the GAA has manhandled the notion of hosting, in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, a testimonial game for a young father of three who lost his life to cancer, has annoyed a great many people in this country.

This includes the GAA membership almost in its totality.

Dumbfounded that the Association raised its arms in the air apologetically – brazenly citing a rule book that it says will not countenance a soccer ball bouncing around its brand new stadium in Cork – people have been mad as hell with the GAA this past week.

The Association is richer at every level than ever before. Its annual turnover has steamed past the €100million mark. Its membership, when people stopped bothering to count, a decade or so ago, was over 750,000. Its games rule our sporting landscape. The GAA has nothing to fear.

A simple and natural display of humanity was what was expected on this occasion. Instead of being asked to give of Páirc Uí Chaoimh, the GAA, for once, might have stepped forward and offered its spanking new Cork home to the organisers of Liam Miller’s testimonial game.

GAA men and women feel offended that the ground with a capacity of 45,000 was not presented to the organisers of the testimonial.

They feel ashamed that the organisers, stymied by a capacity of 7,500 at Turner’s Cross, were turned down when they inquired about the possibility of staging their game in a stadium which might help raise a considerably greater sum of money for the Miller family.

Today, the GAA’s new director general Tom Ryan and its new president John Horan are meeting the same organisers, and if they fail to do the right thing, and see to it that the memory of the Cork son and the former Republic of Ireland international, is proudly celebrated in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, there will be an outpouring of anger and incredulity over the next few days.

THE GAA’s leadership, down through the years, has always been well used to resentment and general nastiness from people outside of the Association. Usually, the leaders have reflected that these critics were motivated by their own petty jealousies.

The difference now is that the genuine annoyance and absolute incredulity shown in recent times are coming from people within the Association. There has never been greater dissatisfaction among the GAA’s membership, as reflected in a survey released last week by the Club Players’ Association – a body created virtually overnight in order to fight for fair play for the hundreds of thousands of less talented footballers and hurlers – which found that a staggering 96% felt there was a disconnect between the Association at the very top, and at grassroots level.

Already this summer, the GAA hierarchy performed an epic U-turn when the Kildare senior football team refused to be cowed, and their manager stated that his team was refusing to turn up in Croke Park for a game in the newly formed Super 8s.

As was their right, Kildare demanded the game be played in Newbridge. And virtually the whole country rowed in behind them and backed their courageous stance.

This was a surprising and powerful example of GAA members deciding right from wrong, and informing its hierarchy what they wanted done in their name. ‘NEWBRIDGE OR NOWHERE.’

That was the cry that went up. But it was not just about support for the Kildare football team. That cry came from deep within the Association, from GAA folk who finally mustered up a demand that they should be listened to, and listened to sharply. It’s very simple today. When they sit down with friends and admirers of the late Liam Miller, Tom Ryan and John Horan know what they have to do.

They do not have to open the gates of Páirc Uí Chaoimh because of the anger and bitterness expressed on shows such as Liveline, they have to open the gates of the stadium because their own outraged members are demanding that they do so.

The Liam Miller Testimonial game should never have been used as a stick to leave welts on the backs of the GAA’s legs. That was wrong. That such a stick should be taken up with Liam Miller’s name on it was unnecessary and disrespectful.

It is the wish of the GAA membership that it never happened. And they never want to see anything like it again. Ordinary GAA folk are no longer suppressing their misgivings. They know the Association they want to represent them: and fairness, compassion and humanity winning over a rulebook every day of the week is their wish.