It’s official, God hates the GAA and all it has become...

GOD hates the GAA. He used to love it. Sun-kissed September afternoons, watching the Psalm of hurling being played in the cathedral on Jones’s road.

Now he hates it. Because of the Pharisees of HQ who are so focused on protecting the traditional club that they have failed to recognise that they are missing a chance to spread the gospel to new promised lands.

The split season isn’t the only reason for this divine schism.

Fly goalkeepers, and incessant hand-passing have played their part in the almighty’s loss of faith.

And, as everyone accepts, God is a Corkman. So the SuperValu Páirc Uí Caoimh controversy was the tipping point.

How has God displayed his wrath? Well how about the wettest March on record, only for storm Kathleen(!) to arrive on our western shores just in time for the start of the Connacht Championship. If Synge wrote the script it would be scarcely believed. Modern football is hard to watch. It is not made easier in poor conditions.

Ah but, tis just the League, I hear you say. Yes, but now that the League immediately precedes the Championship, we have Sligo set to take on Leitrim in the aftermath of what is not even guaranteed to be the last winter storm of the season.

The reality is, whether player welfare zealots wish to realise this or not, the GAA had the trademark to the entire Irish summer – and they let it go.

The GAA was the summer in Ireland. I’m old enough to remember. It was only five years ago. Of course the club is important, of course players need structures that protect them from being overplayed.

But that can’t mean sacrificing the real estate that the GAA used to command in the

Irish pysche from May to September.

This may be popular with clubs, but how much has it really done for player welfare? Meanwhile every sport with aspirations of global relevance are saying decades of the rosary to have Netflix shoot a documentary to crack open the US market – a market already predisposed to what Croke Park are selling.

The GAA was founded as a cultural revival – taking back a traditional form of games, protecting and nurturing it, helping it thrive. First and third Sundays of September used to ring out on the calendar like the Angelus, or the Islamic call to prayer. The Galway Races, the Rose of Tralee, the kids back to school and down to business. Things still happen on those Sundays. Only now the whole country isn’t watching. Isn’t talking about it. Even a decent League final, hotly contested

‘THE GAA IS PANDERING TO ITS INTERNAL TALIBAN’

(on Easter Sunday!) can’t rescue that fact.

One of the great Irish sports documentaries is Pat Comer’s ‘A Year til Sunday’. The sequel would now be called ‘Four Months to July’. And the sports the GAA was founded to counterbalance simply fill the void. Rugby is on the march, and there’s a European Championship to enjoy. Yes these things are outside of the GAA’s control, but God helps people who help themselves. And the GAA is not helping itself. It’s pandering to its internal taliban rather than taking up the mantle of cultural relevance in the modern global world. When they do dabble in streaming, they make a hames of it with GAAGo – around which fresh controversies are sure to emerge again this year. And youngsters dream of scoring a try in the Aviva, rather than a point in Croke Park.

How is that progress for the organisation?

God knows.