Horan can hold his head high and say he did the GAA some service
Outgoing president pushed the change agenda and showed class during Covid
IF it is true that a nickname is the heaviest stone the devil can throw at a man, John Horan will have no difficulty identifying the boulder fired in his direction over the past three years.
It is the one painted in blue lettering which proclaimed him to be ‘Dublin John’.
What was the biggest selling point of his election — he was the first Dublin president in 96 years — inevitably also became a stick to beat him with.
It can be argued that circumstances were not his friend in that his reign — which ends this afternoon when he is succeeded by New York’s Larry McCarthy -— coincided with his county rubberstamping their status as football’s greatest ever team and in a land where the tribe is king even associated success tends to be a magnet for begrudgery.
Horan’s difficulties, though, were magnified by the fact that he headed an association which strategically invested in giving Dublin the kind of central funding that dwarfed everyone else.
That was not an issue he created and it can be argued during his time Dublin’s percentage share of the games development budget has got smaller, but not to the point where it needs to be as his county moves every closer to the kind of financial self-sustainability that is but a pipe dream for the rest. But what rankled to most outside eyes was the lack of leadership shown when a Donegal motion in 2019 sought fair play by ensuring that Dublin, like everyone else, would have been limited to one home game in the Super 8s was rejected.
Its intention was to end the practice where Dublin got to play two games at home in the Super 8s, meaning that in consecutive years two of their opponents, Roscommon and, as a result of its defeat, Donegal, had to play two away games.
On natural justice grounds no one could argue against it for the simple reason it was indefensible but yet it was opposed by the GAA leadership -a weak argument on finance was mooted and, as a result, was voted down by two votes to one at Congress.
‘It all depends on which side you’re coming from and no matter what I say in that debate it’s always going to be seen I’m going to say something with a bit of a shade of blue on my back,’ said Horan at the time.
It was a puzzling position to take unless, perhaps, he failed to grasp the significance of home field advantage.
After all, that had also emerged as an issue in his first year in office after the GAA’s CCCC tried to deny Kildare a home qualifier game by moving it to Croke Park before Director General Tom Ryan intervened to ensure that the game was played in Newbridge.
Even allowing for the clumsy wording of Donegal’s motion, had Horan intervened at the time to agree that every county should play one home, one away and one neutral game, it would have been a bow to fair play and there would not have been a shade of blue in sight. And yet within a year, this time after being recommended by the GAA leadership, that motion was passed unanimously.
One still unanswered question hangs in the air; what had changed inside 12 months apart from Dublin winning five-in-a-row?
It is an episode that cannot but leave a stain – and there is no need to guess the colour – on his presidency in which he got more right than he got wrong.
His greatest legacy will undoubtedly be overseeing the resolution of the club/county fixture war that has raged for a generation.
Fortune – if such a word can ever be used as a by-product of a pandemic – played its part in that the GAA’s hand was forced to introduce a split season model last year when club preceded county in what proved an illuminating and rewarding experience for all involved.
It is quite remarkable that an issue which has proved so problematic and divisive – the latter to the point it gave birth to the CPA whose leadership Horan has had a testy relationship with – will be resolved with a motion today that will hardly invite heated debate.
And while he may not have planned for such a radical overhaul of the GAA’s fixture calendar, he has been a president who has pushed the change agenda in establishing a Calendar Fixture Task Force, whose proposed reforms of the football championship will be debated later this year.
The likelihood is that changes from that Special Congress will be conservative – perhaps a realignment of eight-team provincial championships - but Horan has broken with his predecessors in arguing that the provincial system has no long-term future even if politically that is an observation easier to make heading out the presidential door than heading for it.
And there has been other work, not least in seeking to produce a talent pathway for developing young players as something more than cogs in the developmental squad model that may bear fruit in time.
Above all he has pushed for and succeeded in establishing a second tier championship in football, and while there might be kinks to
be ironed out, it represents an opportunity to give many of the game’s disfranchised something to play for.
The irony is that the widening gulf at the top, driven by Dublin’s brilliance but also fuelled by advantages conferred which have been allowed go unchecked, suggests two tiers may not even be enough.
More than anything, though, Horan’s final year in the role hinted at a leader comfortable in his skin in the most challenging of times. In an evolving crisis, under his leadership, the GAA was sensitive in tone to the needs of its grassroots members and wider community, while staying ahead of the government – or more precisely NPHET – when bringing down the curtain on club competitions when post final celebrations became an issue for communities last autumn.
In the end, he saved his best for last.