An apology to the GAA every now and then would do no harm
ALITTLE apology would have been a good thing this week. The ‘thank you’ came from the chairman of the Liam Miller tribute committee, Michael O’Flynn, who praised the GAA for its generosity in opening the gates of Páirc Uí Chaoimh to the Republic of Ireland, Manchester United and Celtic legends at the end of September, but a great number of others have failed to speak up.
Amongst them, sports people and politicians, and a ramshackle crowd who always turn up in a formidable number to rip into the GAA and roundly abuse the association.
We were all more than a touch frustrated by the slowness and usual guardedness with which the GAA at first addressed the need to help the people of Cork amass as much money as possible for the Miller family.
I wondered why the leaders of the association were not hurrying up to shush a public outcry, and swiftly offering a steely reassurance under their breath that in sport, in tough times, we are all brothers and sisters — that there are no padlocked turnstiles.
In the end, the GAA did more than anybody to see to it that €1million is now in a trust fund for the Miller children, and that €250,000 is destined for the Marymount Hospice and a similar valuable sum is to be broken up between seven other charities.
The men who instigated the tribute game, O’Flynn and Roy Keane and the people they represented, made it happen in the first place. They deserve the highest praise. But… the GAA saw to it that it
happened on a giant scale. It’s interesting, but not at all surprising, that no apology was issued at the tail end of the thank you.
Is the GAA thought of as an entity too big, simply too ignorant and dumb, to be worthy of a ‘sorry’.
LAST week, as schoolchildren and their parents in Tyrrelstown in north county Dublin found themselves facing a school building that looked like it might be locked up for the foreseeable future because of worries about its structural integrity, the GAA also found itself in the story.
Local politicians pointed at GAA facilities as the handiest of temporary local dwellings to house the hundreds of students.
The GAA, of course, was not disagreeable. Like everyone else alarmed by the uncertainty, the association understood what might need to be done.
And, the GAA has a long history — a trusty habit if you like — of doing right by its people and its wider communities. Within those communities the association is the central pillar. In every parish in the country greater number of GAA folk work harder and longer than any other grouping to foster a strong sense of place, and fuel that same place with worthy ambition.
It’s regularly overlooked or simply forgotten, but as we close in on the year end and a year in which the GAA was presented as a lumbering giant that could do nothing right, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the association’s base values, and its magnificence. Why not? We know full well what we dislike about the GAA. We know of the association’s paranoia. The monstrous greed that rears its head occasionally. An inability to unshackle itself from far too many muscular committees. Or free itself from a rule book that carries the weightiness of too much history.
THIS same year Páraic Duffy stepped aside as the official face of the GAA. The former schoolteacher vacated his position as Director General after 11 years and took the lift down from the sixth floor of Croke Park, and got onto the M1. He was going home to Scotstown.
In recent weeks we’ve seen him on the sideline with his fellow parishoners celebrating madly.
He missed home during those 11 years, and confessed to finding the evenings in his Dublin apartment, with no GAA clubhouse and therefore no big chat about righting the world with his best friends, especially lonely. Duffy gave it his all, and got blamed for it all; the damned Sky deal, the fixtures’ chaos, the whole sorry motherload of alleged GAA indiscretions and miscalculations.
If he had been director general during the Liam Miller shouting match he’d have received the greatest share of the blame for the association’s inability to switch in its decision making, in an instant, from first gear to fifth. Those of us who know Duffy know him to be a gentleman, and a deeply caring man.
He worked so hard during his 11 years that he brought a can of Red Bull with him when he went out most evenings in order to try and keep awake. Even when he escaped to the Gate Theatre three or four times each year he had a can of the ‘wakey wakey’ stuff in his jacket pocket, he confessed in one of his final interviews.
We don’t yet know what Duffy’s successor, Carlowman Tom Ryan is made of, or how he will fare as a leader. But we know he’s got the toughest job following in the footsteps of one of the association’s smartest and fairest of bosses, and perhaps the best boss the association has ever had in its hectic and rousing history.
I had an opportunity last week to personally thank Páraic Duffy for what he did for the association, and for all of us. But I didn’t apologise to him — not for giving him a bashing in print occasionally, and definitely not for demanding every single year that he tell us his full salary.
However, the man would not have expected an apology. He knows better than anyone that such a thing does not come with the territory he held down for over a decade. But it got me thinking.
When was the last time an apology was placed at the GAA’s door?
The GAA has a long history of doing right