Ryan and Horan must make a stand against opportunists seeking to serve own agenda
TIMING has hardly been Tom Ryan’s friend in his four months as the GAA’s most senior official.
The flip side to that, though, is that he has not helped himself. Yesterday’s Central Council meeting drew a line under an episode which has left the Croke Park leadership battered and bruised… again.
Croke Park officialdom has never seen a summer of rancour, dissent and discontent like this one. Ryan could argue that it is his misfortune that two huge controversies came tumbling down the road while he was only still getting his feet under the desk which Páraic Duffy had occupied for 10 years. But controversies and crises come with the job. Reflecting on his time in charge, Duffy fingered the aftermath of the 2010 Leinster final, when referee Martin Sludden denied Louth the Leinster title, as the most ‘difficult’ of his reign. Had that happened under Ryan’s short tenure, it would barely scrape inside his top three. The difference between that, ‘Newbridge or Nowhere’ and the Liam Miller charity event is that both were crises which originated in Croke Park.
In short, this was trouble of their own making. It is hard not to have sympathy for Ryan in that he has taken charge at pretty much the same time that a new president, John Horan, was setting out on his three-year plan.
With hindsight, the GAA might have been better if it ensured that either Duffy (right) stayed on for an extra year or, alternatively, had left a year earlier to ensure that there was not the deficit in experience and political nous, as has become so evident in recent months.
Both the Newbridge and Liam Miller sagas were similar in how they played out. In a hole, the GAA leadership’s first instinct was to reach for a shovel to go and dig some more, while on both occasions ignoring the lifeline thrown to them which would have hauled them out.
In both cases, Jack Anderson, the former secretary of the DRA, outlined in the early stages plausible legal-based arguments as to why the GAA should draw in their horns.
In many respects, the Newbridge or Nowhere campaign dwarfed the Liam Miller saga in that had Croke Park stuck to their ill-advised guns it could have been calamitous.
Had the GAA thrown Kildare out of the championship, and then successfully brought their case to the DRA, this year’s football championship could have been delayed with the GAA found to be in breach of its own rule.
What really spooked was the lack of understanding and muddled priorities. Denying Kildare precious home advantage because it could not cater for Mayo’s large travelling support left the GAA looking like bean-counters rather than protectors of their championship’s integrity.
That may not have been their intention, but that is how it looked and felt. To be fair, it was not a mess of Ryan’s making -– he could thank the CCCC for that one – and the Kildare manager Cian O’Neill made it clear afterwards that it was the new Director General working behind the scenes who intervened to resolve it.
But if that was his finest hour, he would have been well advised to make the most of it.
He should have been the voice and face of GAA reason as well as the deal-maker in the background. Instead, his best moment was sabotaged by a disastrous communications strategy which tried to suggest that ‘upgraded traffic management plans’ furnished by Kildare had facilitated the GAA’s change of heart.
It was an appalling error, whereas had Ryan come out and said that the CCCC got it wrong and were happy to put it right, his stock and profile would have gone through the roof.
It has been that lack of instinct that has betrayed Ryan to this point. That was never more evident than in the Liam Miller/Páirc Uí Chaoimh saga, when he chose to initially stand behind a rule book which provided all the cover of a fig leaf.
The public may not always get this but the GAA has to be guided by its rules rather than by sentiment. Ryan inherited one that would have been kinder had Congress not rejected – twice in the space of 12 months – a motion that would have allowed Central Council the jurisdiction to open provincial grounds to other codes. He did not have that but he did have, again advised publicly by Anderson, the opportunity to deem that a soccer game is not a soccer game when it is a charity event, and allow Central Council open it on that basis.
They finally got around to that yesterday, but it was more than a week too late. The question is why last Friday week, when the GAA sought ‘legal advice’ on its initial position, did it not seek to explore the stipulation which yesterday gifted them relief?
And that begs another question. Is the deficit of experience of leadership at the top now being exploited by those seeking to serve their own agenda?
If that is the case, Ryan and Horan need to start making a stand, not against perceived enemies on the outside but against the opportunists within.