Limerick furore the GAA’s latest storm in a teacup

When you’re explaining, you’re losing. Which, these days, basically means the GAA is losing all the time. It appears that no decision coming out of Croke Park is proof against a storm of Pavlovian outrage whipped up on both old and new media and alleging the GAA to be guilty of everything from incompetence to chicanery and greed.

Kerry and Mayo provided the best championship match of the year on Sunday, a fact that became increasingly referred to only in rueful references to the football being overshadowed by the "furore over the venue".

RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland at around 8.30 on Monday morning – during one of presumably the most listened-to sports bulletins of the week – didn't dwell on the match but in an item devoid of editorial balance had two of the station's pundits Tom Carr and Colm O'Rourke taking turns in giving out about the replay being fixed for Limerick.

Were Croke Park caught on the hop by what happened? Undoubtedly. An American football match was booked in for a date, on which the GAA now had a competing fixture. Bad luck or bad planning but clearly the Penn State v UCF match couldn’t be changed, having been arranged more than a year previously.

Was there something unseemly about the replay being fixed for six days later? No. That’s when the vast majority of replays take place. So the only question became one of venue. One recurring theme of all the “outrages” for which the GAA is responsible is that the denunciation is multi-faceted. The current clamour features the principally following arguments:

a) It’s unfair on the players and supporters.

b) Dublin getting special treatment.

c) The increasingly unacceptable commercialism of the GAA.

There was an immediate argument that six days would be an insufficient turnaround for amateur players.

As mentioned above in the age of the qualifiers the standard turnaround for replays is six days and all through the summer, teams a lot less exhaustively prepared than Kerry and Mayo, among the fittest and best conditioned teams in the country, have been turning out and replaying matches six days later.

Slight on players

The idea that not playing Croke Park is a slight on the players and supporters is particularly dubious in the case of Mayo and Kerry who have played at the venue on countless occasions in recent years. Ideally they’d play there but circumstances aren’t ideal.

The special treatment of Dublin is implicit in the GAA's statement that Saturday week in Croke Park was being kept in reserve in case of a Dublin-Donegal replay. This has mutated into a charge that Dublin are receiving unfairly advantageous treatment.

The GAA is lucky to have a couple of stadia with capacities in the 45,000-50,000 range but they're in the south of the country and as it happens suitable for a match between Connacht and Munster counties. There's nothing north of Dublin that would cater for those crowds so would the idea be to bring Donegal to Thurles or as has been suggested – more one imagines in order to emphasise indignation – Dublin to Clones, where the capacity is just over 30,000?

Limerick on the other hand is almost perfect for Kerry-Mayo: closer to both counties than Dublin is and as central to the two of them as could reasonably be wished (Talk of Kerry’s familiarity with the venue is overplayed, as the county have played one senior championship match there in the past nine years, when 11 of last week’s team played).

The GAA hasn’t helped itself though by trying to make a virtue out of moving a big match out of Dublin because everyone knows that it’s only happening because Croke Park isn’t available.

Yet in the circumstances Limerick isn’t a bad alternative. And circumstances are what this is all about. Recent semi-final replays have been luckier in that the following Saturday was free.

Six years ago the last time this happened Cork and Kerry even managed to get back to Croke Park on a Sunday as part of a double bill with the other semi-final, Tyrone and Wexford, simply because demand for the matches was sufficiently low to accommodate both.

Over commercialism

The over commercialism of Croke Park and the GAA has become an issue this year with the Sky deal and the fiasco over the

Garth Brooks

concerts creating previous uproar.

It’s no secret that the stadium is one of the organisation’s chief revenue engines but is it now being exploited in such a way as to undermine the association’s values?

There is certainly unease about this but one central truth remains. Croke Park is run by the GAA and for the GAA. Members are entitled to voice their unhappiness and presumably will at next year’s congress in respect of the above issues.

Does the membership want to leave future August Saturdays free in case of what are very occasional All-Ireland replays? Would extra-time be a good idea up until the final or would the loss of replay revenue be under-commercialisation?

Does the balance between revenue and values need to be re-struck?

These are matters that could be discussed but for all the talk the GAA needs to be funded. For instance, the Leinster Council voted against a proposal to move some of Dublin's matches out of Croke Park because the counties in the province didn't want to lose the revenue.

If the Dublin odyssey to Cork 31 years ago is any guide, Saturday’s semi-final in Limerick will live on in the memory. No one talks now about the contemporary outrage that the GAA wouldn’t allow the 1983 match to be televised.

The fuss was soon forgotten and the football remembered – which is how it should be. smoran@irishtimes.com