The days when a World Cup was GAA’s biggest problem are long gone

AWORLD CUP is traditionally a trigger for a spell of existential brooding in the unquiet soul of the true Gael. There was a time when the threat to the association from the lures of the foreign game was seen as real and potentially irresistible.

The damage to Mother Ireland’s boldest sons from exposure to Jackie’s Army caused anguish and prompted some ridiculous, overwrought warnings about the dangers to come.

This was in an age when the possibility of people entertaining an interest in more than one sport was not regarded as normal, but in some way as a moral failing, an unpatriotic indulgence in the pursuits of others.

Much has changed. Jack Charlton did not bring down the GAA. It turned out, dear reader, that grown human beings, who had been exposed to English and European soccer for decades before Euro 88, could be transfixed by what happened in Germany that summer, or Italy two years later, and in the United States in 1994, and still be moved by Gaelic games.

The fear that watching soccer could finish the GAA was not a widespread one, but it did spring from a more widespread suspicion of the sport that had lingered stubbornly from the sad old days of the Ban.

Yet the most useful power that the GAA has been able to call upon through its history is pragmatism. This has been especially evident in some of the leaders of the association, the best of whom understood the value of bending with the times.

If principle was prized, adaptation guaranteed enduring strength. That ability to navigate times of flux has rarely been so badly required.

A morally repugnant winter World Cup starts today, but it will not spread panic through Gaeldom. Instead, events in Qatar might provide some distraction from the glut of difficulties now confronting the GAA.

The violent scenes in Parnell Park last weekend, in a Leinster IHC quarter-final between Naomh Barróg of Dublin and Wexford’s OulartThe Ballagh, obliged us to summon more outrage.

This is after the outrage over referee assaults in Roscommon and Wexford, and the incident in Mayo that saw a confrontation between an adult and an underage player.

Once more, words like scandal and disgrace were paraded to signal our disapproval.

And what happened in Parnell Park deserves those tags, but now one wonders: to what end?

It would be bigger news if someone thought it wasn’t a disgrace.

Until rigorous sanctions that fit the offence are introduced, this dreary charade will go on.

We are entitled to wonder if there is an appetite for appropriate punishment.

Evidence from other sports, as well as from the admittedly sparse levels of academic research into this area, suggests that one of the most effective ways of addressing violence of this nature is through high levels of sanction.

Long bans that are promptly applied and, crucially, wholeheartedly defended by the GAA, can help to tackle this sickness. Until then, we’re wasting our words.

If this is the headline problem for the GAA leadership, there are others. The tensions between the popular, income-generating inter-county game, and the longstarved club game have not eased since the introduction of the split season.

It was an honourable move, inspired by the privations of the Covid seasons, but defending it and protecting it will become more challenging.

In fact, it seems likely that this will be an area of dispute that only grows in the coming years.

A director at O’Neills this week blamed the shorter inter-county season on a significant drop in the sale of replica jerseys, which will only fortify the position of those opposed to the split season.

The narrower window in which to feature the biggest names in football and hurling comes at a cost. It then becomes a question of whether that is a cost the GAA leadership is willing to accept in the long term.

This also raises the old, but unavoidable question of who the GAA is for, and the most convincing case for the split season is that it is an effort to accommodate the needs of as many as possible.

A third problem, largely but not solely confined to football, is the issue of competition quality. Even in a tighter schedule, the championship season is deadened by mismatches and games that simply fail to catch public attention.

Problems abound, some in need of urgent attention even as winter encroaches.

The World Cup isn’t one of them.