February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The way Mick McCarthy’s least favorite defender tells it, a trio of international soccer stars who have graced some of the most impressive venues in the world over the last few years were blown away by the sight. Their sense of wonder turned to bewilderment, though, when O’Shea, fresh from spending his summer holidays following the Waterford hurlers, explained that this wasn’t actually the home of the Irish soccer team.
As a nation, we should be down on our knees offering thanks this morning for the GAA. Last Friday, they hammered the final nail in the coffin of the risible bid to co-host the 2008 European soccer championships with Scotland.
A product of a taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, whose ego obscures reality in matters sporting, and a governing body, the FAI, which seems to have no embarrassment gene, this mortifying venture was doomed from the off. Still, the stubbornness of those involved meant we had to suffer the ignominy of a puzzled UEFA delegation being brought to Dublin recently to view a piece of land where a stadium might one day be built, and Croke Park, a world-class facility that the organizers of the bid have no claim on.
Of course, the best part about the GAA putting the kibosh on this debacle is that knowing pundits will now tell us that this refusal to open up Croke Park in time for the Euro 2008 bid is somehow a blow to our modernity. The new, progressive Ireland is, they claim, not a place where the GAA should build such a stadium then refuse to allow second-rate chancers to borrow it in order to impress their friends.
What balderdash! While the FAI were raking in the cash in the late 1980s and early ’90s, the GAA were busy putting together a plan to rebuild their faltering headquarters. Whatever happened to the money that Irish soccer made back then — and conspiracy theories abound on that score — the GAA have every right to tell them where to go now.
That they have apparently done so doesn’t make the country any lesser a place, either. Indeed, far less becoming of the much talked about “New Ireland” than the GAA’s intransigence is the manner in which the government has tried to put the heavy-handed squeeze on the them to open the gates. To this end, Ireland’s minister for sport, John O’Donoghue, announced last week that the GAA will now have to reapply for euro 38 million previously promised to them.
This is classic. The only one of the major sports organizations in the country that has got up off its arse and helped itself — the IRFU have hoarded their money and allowed Lansdowne Road to become one of the most dilapidated stadiums in western Europe — gets slapped down by the politicians.
Even allowing for the way in which the fiscal responsibilities of the government have changed since the general election (something to do with them not actually telling the truth about the kind of cuts that might be needed, apparently), this is ludicrous stuff. This money was earmarked for the reconstruction of Hill 16 and the Nally Stand in Croke Park and would be used for exactly that. A construction job on that scale generates serious employment, and it’s not like O’Donoghue would be handing the money over to some shower who may or may not get around to using it like they promised.
The GAA is far from an infallible institution. Players are not paid a red cent for their efforts and have to squabble over basic expenses while, according to the latest live rumor, one intercounty manager is receiving a six-figure salary for his troubles. Anybody who has kept a weather eye on the scene — and managers at club level are having their pockets lined too — will easily believe a sum of money that large is being paid. But, like the prison governor who allows a certain amount of marijuana into the jail in the hope of keeping the convicts calm, Croke Park also turns a blind eye as those players fortunate enough to get past the INS receive envelopes of greenbacks for spending a weekend in the U.S.
And yet, for two days last weekend, the denizens of the GAA gathered to consider the recommendations of a Strategy Review Committee. By all accounts, it was a disappointing affair where the delegates eschewed the opportunity to make fundamental changes to the organization. In voting to endorse just a few of the motions before them, the administrators frustrated their own committee and garnered quite a few negative headlines in the media. Although justified in part by the fact that a raft of sensible ideas were shot down by stick-in-the-muds, some of the criticism seemed to miss one salient point.
Coming off the back of a summer during which each week seemed to herald new superlatives about the atmosphere and crowds at Croke Park, the most successful sports organization in the country met to consider a root-and-branch review of its working operations. Rather than sitting back admiring itself, they were having a public discussion about how they might improve and that they didn’t enact wholesale changes at the meeting shouldn’t detract from the essential wisdom of having it.
“Those who control the GAA’s affairs must try to differentiate between genuine constructive criticism,” wrote Breandan O hEithir in “Over The Bar,” one of the finest Irish memoirs, two decades ago, “from those who wish the Association a long and improved life, and the crepitations of the Humpty McDumptys who, apart from being little squalls in search of teacups, are very often second division mice attempting to be first division rats — and failing.”
Thankfully, we know exactly what the second division mice look like.