On GAA: Maybe the GAA should keep the championships going all year. There can't be a sporting organisation in the world that gets into so much trouble during what passes for the close season.

Whether it's the crimes against humanity that traditionally take place in winter club matches or the shafting of managers or even the permanent exasperation of Circuit Court judges, the association's PRO Danny Lynch must dread the lengthening evenings.

There he was yesterday, slugging it out on RTÉ Radio One's Liveline, where the GAA had somehow ended up centre stage in the grim drama that the killing of a Traveller in Mayo has become.

Lynch was, as is frequently his lot, trying to defend the GAA with one arm tied behind his back.

Comments by Mayo county secretary Seán Feeney on Morning Ireland had landed Croke Park in the mess but Lynch could hardly scold a senior official in public - much though that course of action might have appealed to him during the heated exchanges.

The GAA had appeared to get off the hook of association with the ill-advised Athlone protest scheduled for next Sunday. There was no organisational link to the event, only the involvement of members, principally county vice-chair James Waldron, a close friend of Pádraig Nally, the man sentenced to six years for the manslaughter of John Ward.

Feeney's interview yesterday morning changed all of that. In the course of the broadcast he formally linked support for the protest to the county executive meeting of the previous night.

Pressed by RTÉ's Áine Lawlor as to what the GAA were doing getting involved in the matter, he replied: "We are a sporting organisation but we are a political organisation as well. We are not party political but we are a political organisation as well. The main issue here is the right of a person to defend their property. It's not a question of the GAA versus the Travellers. It's a question of the right to defend one's property. The GAA is at the heart of every community in Ireland.

"We run sporting events but we are also very much involved in social events, we are also involved at youth level and at every level of Irish society. That's what the organisation of the GAA is about."

Technically Feeney is right. The better to embroil itself in the Northern Troubles, the GAA added the suffix "party-" to the prohibition on political involvement in Rule 8 of the Official Guide. It now reads: "The Association shall be non-party-political" rather than "The Association shall be non-political".

But that hardly justifies a county officer dragging the GAA into one of the most inflammatory situations on the interface between settled people and Travellers in a long time.

To maintain, as the organisers of the protest strenuously do, that the event is not intended to be anti-Traveller flies in the face of reality. Already the deceased's family and Travellers' groups have asked for the protest to be called off and Fine Gael MEP Jim Higgins's extraordinary intervention on Liveline made no bones about the matter, saying the intention of the proposed rally was "to apply a pressure point on the Government and the Travelling community".

It might have been a good idea for GAA president Seán Kelly to enter the fray at some stage and firmly distance the association from the Nally support group.

Ironically, Kelly was on the radio just last Sunday taking issue with Judge John Neilan's characterisation of the GAA as being soft on indiscipline.

Now the association is being linked to a campaign against a custodial sentence that many feel is inadequate to punish a deliberate killing.

Tom Humphries in his book Green Fields, published in 1996, talks to the coach of a Traveller football team, Martin "Major" Joyce. In between organising his under-13s during a match, Joyce talks about the difficulties facing his community and poignantly outlines the typical future awaiting the kids in his charge.

"It's hard for a Traveller to get jobs. The future's not too bright for the boys. They'll make a living the way their fathers done it. A bit of scrap here, a bit of something there, anything that'll turn a few bob.

"It doesn't look too bright for them. Travellers always get the worst end of the stick. They'll learn that the hard way. I tell them we're second in line for anything.

"They'll end up scraping a living, pulling scrap out of heaps, maybe sifting through garbage with the seagulls and the smell out in Dunsink. They'll end up dead too early, or depressed too easily."

Of course there are issues for Travellers to deal with in their relations with the settled community but is the root of the problem the career in petty crime that some Travellers, including the deceased John Ward, pursue, and all of the fear that engenders particularly in older people living on their own, or is it the sort of life prospects described above by Joyce and the consequent alienation from society?

Whatever individuals' views on the matter, can anyone seriously say that the callous disregard for Ward's life, however he led it, as evident in the killing and the response last week of many, including some in the media, to the death does anything except intensify that alienation?

One happier link between the GAA and yesterday's Liveline was Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe, the former Clare hurling selector. His unease at the whole unfolding situation and the danger of community conflict was both humane and sensible.

The whole issue may well be hard for the GAA to handle.

Pádraig Nally was one of their own, his fears and apprehensions shared by others in the association. One of the very communities the GAA does so much to enhance sees Nally's cause as its own.

But at national level Croke Park will hardly want to become associated with stirring up antagonisms towards marginalised people largely not fortunate enough to be part of the mainstream community so diligently served by the GAA.