RULES

They moved from not being able to break a rule, to talking about breaking a rule, to ‘considering’ breaking the rule… until they finally broke the damn thing!

ALL’S well that ends well, then? Not really, because the reputational damage which the GAA has suffered over the past week has tarnished a community who deserve so much better.

From Newbridge or Nowhere, to the designation of Croke Park as an ‘away’ venue for Dublin, and now this latest pitiful, awful mess which was brought to an end at yesterday’s Central Council meeting.

The past month working the GAA news beat has been like being locked inside a padded cell where the only thing on the telly in the corner is David Brent’s (below) The Office playing on an unmerciful loop.

You end up laughing because it is the only way of dealing with the mortification.

You find yourself screaming at the ceiling – ‘please don’t say that’ because you know, buried beneath the buffoonery, these are well-intentioned people who never signed up to taking part in a mockumentary.

Or at least some of them didn’t, but this is the road they have allowed themselves to be led down by the nose.

Let’s not get bogged in the rights and wrongs of it because that arguup ment has long been laid to rest once the GAA chose to make a stand over a benefit event for a widow and young family.

But it is the ham-fisted manner in which the GAA leadership has mismanaged this and those other issues which have exposed the glaring chasm which now exists between it and the community it pays so much lip service to.

Just take those eight whirlwind days when the position shifted from last Friday week to not being able to break a rule, to the Saturday where they agreed they could talk about breaking a rule to the Tuesday where they revealed they were ‘considering’ breaking the rule, to yesterday when they finally broke the damn thing.

Now roll back to last Friday week, when the toxic cherry on top of the cake was their qualification they had taken ‘legal advice’ which confirmed they were not in breach of any funding stipulation – the state having coughed €30million to funding the redevelopment of Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Apart from how cold and clinical that sounded, the real wonder is that they did not ask their legal briefs, once they had them in the room, to cast an eye over the rule they were so intent on not breaking. After all, one huge loophole first exposed by Jack Anderson, the former secretary of the DRA, was the stipulation that Central Council reserved the right to consider using its facilities for ‘such other purposes it considers not to be in conflict with the aims of the association.’

Had the GAA then showed the conviction to go down a route paved with good sense and humanity they would have avoided the last week, where they allowed the Association become a political punch-bag, for every opportunist crank out there.

But they chose to cower behind a rule book, and instead let the wider GAA community take a battering.

Damien Duff’s labelling of ‘Gaelic people’ as ‘f**king dinosaurs’ got quite the traction and there is no disputing it was sauced with ignorance.

That was a vile slur on a community that is generally progressive, open minded and community spirited. Those are not just glib words to shower the GAA’s grassroots, go into any parish and you will find that community at the heart of every positive social initiative.

Big hearts and open minds, everything that the GAA leadership revealed itself not to have this past week.

But if Duff’s remarks were off target, his ire is not without basis given the GAA’s lack of tolerance has poisoned communities in the past.

This is not the first time that Miller’s Éire Óg club has been caught up in such a controversy.

Back in the early Noughties, even

Like The Office, it’s so embarrassing all you can do is laugh it off

prior to the decision to open Croke Park was taken, the local Kilumney United soccer club were drawn at their home in an FAI Junior Cup match.

The soccer ground and the GAA club in Ovens live cheek by jowl with an obvious cross pollination in membership, but the former would not be as well-heeled in terms of facilities.

Without changing facilities for what would be one of the biggest days in their history, they requested if they could use the GAA dressing rooms to tog out in – a facility which the local community had fund-raised for – but despite the best will of the majority in the club, word drifted up the line and the request was swatted with a hefty swipe of that rule book.

You would like to think that those days belong to a depressing past but they are still with us.

This has nothing to do about rule books, or GAA democracy – something that is notional rather than real and which was never more brutally exposed than the Cork County board’s gagging of its own clubs when they sought to support the opening of Croke Park in 2005 – but about bigoted and blind mind-sets by a tiny, extreme minority.

There are those out there who still see the world as Gaels and non-Gaels, true Irish and Irish lite. That is pathetic but the bigots on the other side were the ones laughing this week and they will be for a long time.

You can be certain a motion will be passed soon, most likely at Congress next year, which will give Central Council the right on request to open provincial venues to other codes, but it won’t feel like progress.

Instead, it will come against the backdrop of government threats this week that any future support for infrastructural support will stipulate such developments have to be for communal rather than exclusive use. It will be seen as an exercise in pragmatism rather than in principle.

The accusation will be thrown at the GAA that they could not open their hearts to a good cause, but can always open their gates for a good grant. The Association’s membership deserves so much better in terms of leadership, and the wonder is that yesterday the GAA did not follow up a positive vote by sticking its feet back in its mouth.

I swear we were back shouting at the ceiling as we imagined the press statement hitting the airwaves. The GAA has decided that game can go ahead in Páirc Uí Chaoimh after being furnished with upgraded traffic management plans and extra stewards…

Laugh or cry, choose your poison because they both taste the same.