February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
It might not be politically correct to say so, but for many people, the sight of Rule 42 in a newspaper headline now elicits the same type of yawn as phrases like “Violence in Middle East” and “Peace talks in Northern Ireland.” We know we should care and take more of an interest. After a while, though, it just becomes difficult to summon up any sort of enthusiasm for the discussion.
Of course, the next month and a half will see newspaper columns and the radio airwaves crackling with the indignation of various rent-a-quotes. There will be a preponderance of ill-informed opinion from the usual Dublin 4 suspects, the people to whom the GAA is a strange, curious organization that is apparently very popular in rural areas beyond the pale. Somebody, most probably in the letters pages of the Irish Times, will no doubt inform us that the failure to play professional soccer and rugby matches in Croke Park smacks of sectarianism and of an old Ireland that they thought we’d all left behind.
This kind of balderdash will be difficult to stomach. There may be a few hardcore members of the GAA who regard soccer and rugby as garrison games, but for the majority, opening or refusing to open Croke Park is not a political issue and doesn’t involve bigotry or prejudice. It is a question of private property. As Irish people, we may all think we are part owners of the third-biggest stadium in Europe, but we aren’t.
“Obviously, it’s a debate that has been going on for a while,” Irish rugby international Shane Horgan said recently. “It’s something the GAA have been looking at, and they are going to make a decision at the next Congress. It would be great. Most of the Irish public would like for it to be opened up, but of course it’s a decision for the GAA.”
It’s a decision for the GAA because it belongs to the GAA. One of their members bought the land, built it, revamped it and rebuilt it again. Arguments that public money was pumped into it and therefore the wider public have some claim on it are facetious at best. Public money has also been pumped into the Shamrock Rovers’ hole in the ground in Tallaght, to Dalymount Park, to Tolka Park and to a boathouse in Killorglin that should turn Minister for Sport John O’Donoghue’s constituents into the finest rowers in the world some day. But we have no claim on those facilities unless we belong to those clubs or get the permission to rent them from the owners. So it is with Croke Park.
The GAA reserves the right to refuse admission. They are willing to rent the facility out to U2, and at this Congress they may yet decide to lease it to the IRFU and the FAI. But if they don’t, and a couple of Five Nations’ games have to be held at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff, and a few soccer internationals take place at Anfield or Old Trafford, that’s just tough. The IRFU sat on huge cash reserves for a long, long time and thought better of updating dilapidated Lansdowne Road. The FAI have bungled from one failed attempt to finance their own home to another. Why should the GAA be criticized for the incompetence of their rival associations regarding their own stadiums?
And just because officials from Croke Park, Merrion Square and Havelock Square seem to get along better on a personal level than their predecessors, it seems almost churlish to point out that the GAA, the FAI and the IRFU are still actually rivals for the imaginations of youngsters and the euros of the casual fans. Requesting the opening of Croke Park is akin to asking the owner of the swankiest supermarket in town to hand over his premises to a competitor on the days when he’s not using it.
The only legitimate criticism that can be made of the GAA on this issue is that a plebiscite of all 500,000 or so members is a fairer way to decide this debate than Congress, that annual gathering being too often the preserve of the association’s more bureaucratic and hardcore element. Should Congress keep the gates shut again this time round, the calls for a plebiscite will go up again and, hopefully, will be heeded. On something as emotive as this, the largest democratic process available should be invoked so that at the finish, it can be pointed out that this is what the members really wanted.
“Visitors must have rubbed their eyes in astonishment and asked themselves were they in the right place. The new proprietor had spared neither expense nor architectural skill in the laying out of the grounds and, as an athletic arena, it is not second to none, and the many that assembled must have felt sincerely proud of the headquarters of the gaelic sports in Ireland. The grounds have been so arranged that, no matter how large the attendance, every individual can see the play with comfort.”
In a defunct publication called Sport magazine, a journalist present at a game in Jones’ Road in April 1909 gave that account of people’s reaction to the new venue that had just been purchased and refurbished by Frank Brazil Dineen, a former president and general-secretary of the GAA. Dineen paid over