ON GAELIC GAMES: The decision to stage the men's county football final in direct opposition to the women's game at Croke Park showed a lack of respect, writes SEÁN MORAN

DURING A victory speech notable for many things, if not its brevity, Cork football captain Mary O'Connor, landed a sharp jab.

"For some people, in the greater scheme of things, ladies football is not important. But for us, this is the greater scheme of things."

In the first flush of the team's huge achievement of winning five All-Irelands in a row, this was an understandable rebuke, presumably aimed at the Cork County Board, which had persevered with its decision to stage the men's county football final in direct opposition to the women's big match against Dublin.

It won't have been the worst admonition the Cork board has ever had to put up with - in fact O'Connor's goading of the Kilkenny hurlers probably caused more consternation, given Brian Cody's legendary ability to cultivate grievances - but it did highlight a recurrent irritation in relations between the men's and women's organisations.

The county board had pleaded inability to postpone the St Finbarr's-Clonakilty match (although the winners wouldn't be required for provincial duty until the second weekend in November) or to challenge the traditional disinclination to attend county finals on a Saturday evening (which was the course taken by the Antrim and Fermanagh county boards to facilitate their women's teams in the junior and intermediate All-Irelands).

It is an unfortunate fact of life that the women's games generate nearly as much publicity from controversies that arise from the interface with the GAA as they do from on-field exploits.

It's a long time since, in a shameless bit of band-wagoning, then Fine Gael TD Frances Fitzgerald denounced the GAA for not allowing the Laois-Monaghan women's All-Ireland replay to be staged on the same bill as the Meath-Mayo men's equivalent (the women didn't actually want to be relegated to the undercard and lose their VIP facilities), but how the associations - GAA, camogie and women's football - co-exist and interact remains a grey area.

You could be forgiven for wondering what has happened to all the high aspirations that flared so brightly nearly a decade ago, apparently signalling a way forward for women within the GAA.

It's nearly 10 years since the National Forum on Women in Gaelic Games first raised in a coherent, considered fashion the question of women's interaction with Gaelic games.

It's not always appreciated that neither the camogie nor women's football associations come under the aegis of the GAA.

"It is one of my dearest and fondest ambitions that there be a strategic alliance under the one umbrella which would facilitate reaching a greater potential,"said then GAA president Joe McDonagh in his address to that conference in January 2000.

The theme of the forum was Alliance, the consideration of how the development of women's sports might be assisted by closer links with Croke Park and vice versa.

Increased funding, greater access to facilities and streamlined administration were to be among the most prominent of these benefits, but the GAA would also benefit from the introduction of fresh talent into the administrative and coaching spheres.

Although the Alliance project continues, the enthusiasm and sense of conviction so evident at that meeting has long receded.

Just under a year ago, at the launch of the GAA's Strategic Vision and Action Plan 2009-2015, it was obvious the project as originally understood had been discreetly shelved. There were a couple of lines about camogie and women's football, an undertaking "to work closely" and "to the mutual benefit of all games".

This was certainly a change from the Strategic Review Committee report of 2002, which had forcefully put the case for Alliance: "Formal integration of Gaelic football, women's football, hurling and camogie is necessary if the task of promoting Gaelic games to 50 per cent of the population is not to be left entirely to two very committed and energetic bodies which, as things stand, have too few resources and very little finance."

When asked about what had happened to the integration ideal, then president Nickey Brennan said: "In terms of absolute integration, I don't see that happening and I don't think they want it to happen, although they do want to participate and dovetail with us in certain areas of administration."

It's not that Brennan had spearheaded the retreat; that had become obvious during the presidency of Seán Kelly and in particular the report of the integration task force, set up in 2002.

Its key finding was dishearteningly conservative.

"We all came to the same conclusion," said Kelly, "that amalgamation was too big and too unwieldy, and just wouldn't offer the same sort of opportunity at national level, in areas such as sponsorship."

This wasn't a simple case of the GAA getting cold feet. Both of the women's organisations supported the call for what, in comparative terms, was an arms-length relationship. Compared to the evangelism of 10 years ago it's all rather safe and conservative.

The women's games work hard for their exposure. Although there was some negative comment about the size of the crowd at last Sunday's finals, just over 21,606, anything over 20,000 isn't bad. Unfortunately, the big support from Ulster had gradually dispersed before the senior match concluded, but viewing figures on TG4 showed the finals to be the station's third-largest audience event of the year with a reach of 466,000, peaking at 230,000.

Although even the minimalist ambitions that govern the current vision of women's role within Gaelic games advocate co-operation at national level, the entry-level courtesy of not permitting a clash between men's matches and the women's finals was not extended. Nor was this a first - the same thing happened when the Galway final took place on the same day the county's women were winning the senior All-Ireland in 2004.

This shouldn't be merely a matter of optimising attendances at showcase events. The 2005 report, The Social and Economic Value of Sport, produced by the ESRI, identified the extent of women's involvement in Gaelic games. Statistically (the data dates back to 2003) the games provide 42 per cent of all volunteers in sport and, within that impressive total, the breakdown between men and women was a reasonably equal 23 to 19.

The GAA cannot guarantee big crowds at women's matches any more than they can guarantee Dublin football supporters will turn up to support the county's hurlers. Had Cork played the county final on a different day there's no certainty that the crowd in Croke Park would have substantially larger.

But what message does the casual belittling of a major sporting achievement by the county send out to all of the little girls, whose right to aspire to All-Ireland greatness should be equally encouraged, to say nothing of the women who show such commitment to the GAA in clubs up and down the country?

Hardly one of respect, let alone alliance.