Seán Moran: How the GAA strove for normality in Covid pandemic times

GAA presidents tend to have a fair idea of what the big challenges will be during their term of office. This point is made by Damien Lawlor in his new book, After the Storm, which comprehensively deals with how the GAA navigated the global health crisis of Covid-19.

It is, of course, a counterpoint to highlight the scale of the task for incumbent John Horan when the pandemic hit, with unknowable timeliness on the weekend of the association’s annual congress at the end of February 2020.

Within weeks, everything had changed. Coronavirus struck at the very heart of society: its ability to congregate or the coming together of people to socialise, play games and visit family.

The author, well-known as a sports broadcaster, spoke to many of the principals involved in what was a crisis for the GAA, wrapped in the national crisis for society at large, from Taoiseach Micheál Martin to the less obvious people who did their bit to keep activities ticking over in the association’s many communities.

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Lawlor’s book is snapshot social history, micro rather than macro. The subheading is, “The GAA, Covid and the Power of the People” as the author was insistent that “the people” should feature on the cover.

That is well-illustrated from the community interactions of clubs organising shopping errands for older members of the community to former Mayo player David Brady’s telephone conversations with anyone isolated who wanted to talk football. It extends as far as this year in its terms of reference so the substance of the material is retrospective.

Decisions taken can be contextualised and their impacts at least adequately approximated. As a result, something of the contemporary uncertainty is soothed and the perspective is useful.

The most obvious legacies are well covered. The split season arose as a necessity in 2020 to allow recreational activity that summer. Of course, the precise model wasn’t followed because in the two years since — even with the enthusiastic endorsement of the previously unflagged split season — the clubs no longer go first, which dilutes the impact but is probably unavoidable.

Feargal McGill, who was essentially the GAA’s lead on Covid, makes an interesting point about the current experimental calendar with its July All-Irelands and obsolete Septembers: that it will take five years to settle fully.

McGill’s unflappability became a hallmark of the pandemic, as when he responded to disappointing news on what were hoped to be eased restrictions. “Look, at the end of the day what we do is organise games. We’re not getting carried away with that in a public health crisis.”

The absence of crowds or at best their severe limitation unintentionally revealed the size of the market for streaming services. Vast schedules, from the universal coverage of the national league when it resumed in 2020 to a bewildering array of county championship fixtures, became available.

There were other impacts. The centenary of Bloody Sunday fell in November 2020, in the middle of the winter championship. Lawlor reminds us that the original commemoration was to have had players from Dublin and Tipperary complete the abandoned match, which had stopped around 10 minutes.

Instead, a haunting ceremony in a virtually empty Croke Park, soundtracked by the actor Brendan Gleeson delivering writer Michael Foley’s words of commemoration for those who had died combined with the flickering into life of 14 torches on Hill 16, flaring into the night sky, to leave an indelible impression on the few of us present as well as the live television audience.

We also learn that Covid communications were the first time that the GAA and the women’s organisations had sent out jointly branded press releases.

Yet Covid wasn’t just about pushing the GAA’s best foot forward. There were less welcome traits on view, such as the occasional tendency to exceptionalism: like the shrill demand that acting CMO Ronan Glynn provide “empirical evidence” to justify putting matches back behind closed doors in August 2020.

The relevant contention was that matches were acting as an opportunity for reckless behaviour now that the so-called “wet pubs” had (briefly) reopened.

What impressed us was that the GAA knew what was realistic in terms of the 2020 championship, what was possible and what was not

—  Taoiseach Micheál Martin

John Horan says in retrospect that he wouldn’t apologise for the reaction because of frustration and the need to keep the membership on board with restrictions by challenging what they saw as unreasonable edicts. Within a few weeks though, rumours of Covid clusters with championship-winning parishes at their epicentre began to circulate.

Horan and McGill acted possibly a week or so late but it was a decisive intervention. No further county finals were to take place.

The GAA’s attempts to categorise what happened on the field and at the venue as their responsibility and what happens in the community as a societal matter flies in the face of the work done in those same communities under the banner of the association’s clubs.

Bringing shopping to the isolated can’t be a characteristic GAA service and drunken shenanigans after county finals purely a societal issue.

Ambivalence in the observing of rules is a less comfortable thread that links the above misbehaviour and other pandemic embarrassments, like the lockdown breaches in 2021 — Dublin’s high-profile one coming just a fortnight before a return to training had already been sanctioned anyway by Government going out on a limb to facilitate an intercounty season.

The book is in a position to pour oil on what were at the time troubled waters. In his interview Taoiseach Micheál Martin acknowledges that for all the sporadic problems, the Government thought highly of the GAA and had no issues with bankrolling the winter championship in the absence of gate receipts.

“What impressed us was that the GAA knew what was realistic in terms of the 2020 championship, what was possible and what was not.”

He also acknowledges the association’s role as a firewall in mediating unpopular restrictions, such as the use of club premises, with the membership and standing firm. “They shielded the Government well, put it that way.”

Amusingly, he reacts to Horan informing him of the plan to suspend county championships. With his club Nemo Rangers due to play Castlehaven in the following Sunday’s football final, the Taoiseach falls silent, wondering like Michael Collins and the Treaty, how will that play in Cork?

“Are ye sure about this?” he finally asks the GAA president before going home to his footballing sons with full deniability intact.

After the Storm — the GAA, Covid and the Power of People, by Damian Lawlor, is published by Black and White Publishing.

email: sean.moran@irishtimes.com