LOCKER ROOM: In the last week the Cork hurling crisis has revealed its essence: it's not really about a team and its manager but is rather an inquiry into the singular practice of democracy in Cork GAA

ON THURSDAY night Seán Óg Ó hAilpín drew a line under his day’s work and drove back to Cork city. Just time to make training with his club, then get showered off and into the car again. He got to spent some time with his girlfriend who had been sick all day and at close to midnight he had headed off to a hotel near Cork airport to help the lads who had been there since two in the afternoon trying to find a solution to a mess which Cork hurling should not be in.

It was a long, hard and futile day but you’ll find people in Cork or elsewhere this morning who will breezily discount the lifetime of commitment given by a Seán Óg or Donal Óg or whoever. Spoilt! Troublemakers! You’ll meet people and read their words in chatrooms, words which in years past would have been scrawled angrily in red crayon, words which in an instant evaporate the oceans of blood, sweat and tears which fine players give, words that state confidently that players in their all too fleeting prime would prefer to be causing trouble than to be out hurling.

Yep! They would prefer to be sitting in meetings with men who are as animated and as intellectually flexible as the statues of Easter Island than be out doing that bloody hurling they are so good at. Sure who wouldn’t?

In case you have been living on the planet Mars or you had a vote at the last meeting of the Cork County Board, here’s the skinny. Imagine your club had a good gang of seniors. A new mentor took them over. And, lo, it didn’t work out. Lads lost interest. The team just began losing matches. Intervention was needed to keep the whole show on the road till the end of the season. What would your club do? They’d tell the mentor he was needed to revamp the mini-leagues, they would ask him would he be a selector for the 21s, they’d say “Listen don’t be wasting your immense skills on those ingrates, here’s the job for you”.

In Cork, though, the confederacy of dunces who make up the county board decided to get a whole new bunch of seniors in. Took the Junior Cs and said, “Here ye go, lads”. The confederacy opted to force the careers of some of their greatest servants into the blender. Then they rounded up some novices and sent them on the road to nowhere.

In doing so they have brought the Cork jersey into disrepute and they are bringing great competitions into disrepute. In doing so they are insulting not only their own players, who so recently were delivering All-Ireland titles, but they are also whittling away the legacy of poor, deluded, ill-used Gerald McCarthy, and they are offending a succession of county teams who are in effect being asked to play league games which have no more worth than winter challenge matches.

In the world occupied by Cork’s confederacy of dunces it is fine to do this because after 2002 the Cork hurlers were always going to be the unforgiven. Cork is like a cartoon universe. Krusty the Clown and Sideshow Bob may endure all manner of humiliation but they always survive to the next episode.

You felt some sympathy for GAA director general Paraic Duffy, a good man and true, as he walked reluctantly into this hand-drawn universe last week. Behind doors he said much in trust and confidence that made sense but the confederacy long since de-recognised “sense” as a currency. Spin is king. Paraic was no sooner on his way back to Dublin than the confederacy were spinning like spiders working to a piece rate. To pre-empt last evening’s meeting between players and club chairmen board delegates were hauled in yet again for a full confederacy gathering.

(There is a perception that when the board is in full session at least every village in Cork knows where its idiot is. That is unfair. Every village and club in Cork sends forth its delegate to extract what can be extracted for the gang at home. There is a time-honoured system for not having your club blacklisted and cold-shouldered and a time-honoured way of keeping things smooth for your lot at home. It’s confusing and a change of work practice for many delegates to have people asking why they didn’t consult or why they ignored consultations – and you can see them thinking to themselves that when the Junior Bs are sent to West Cork for a championship first round next summer we’ll all know why! )

Anyway, they assembled again, many of them newly-chastened by their clubs and their hearts were gladdened to hear a statement from Gerald McCarthy being read out by Frank Murphy, a statement which claimed the players had expressed a willingness to play for Gerald under certain conditions, none of which were “when hell freezes over”.

The delegate from Blarney chipped in that he had been told by players they wouldn’t mind playing for McCarthy if three of his selectors were thrown overboard and three mutually agreed new faces were brought in. It had been that simple! Hurrah!

Of course it was all piffle and spin.

For a long time in Cork it looked as if the hurlers had been hoist with their own petard. Last year’s agreement on the way forward had been used to ram through a new term for Gerald McCarthy and they would have to stick with it. The players were outflanked early on in the dispute but have since shown fine judgment in knowing when to hold and when to fold.

And the crisis has changed in its essence. It is, as of this Monday morning, not a crisis about a hurling team and its manager but an inquiry into the practice of democracy in Cork GAA. It is about the most fundamental aspect of Cork’s GAA future, power and the way it is exercised. And suddenly in that light, being the ones who with the assistance of a PR company are doing all the spinning doesn’t reflect so well on the confederacy.

The “vote” to head off the fall-out of last year’s meeting of chairmen and players was a sham but the announcement that it was the vote to end all votes on the matter will certainly have set alarm bells ringing in clubhouses around the county.

These are the same people, after all, who blocked an eminently reasonable motion from Cloyne which suggested that any vote on the hurling management issue be duly notified in advance so that clubs could debate its merits and mandate their delegates. The leaking and distortion of confidential details of the Paraic Duffy talks looks now as grievous as the intentional leaking of the group work done with last summer’s facilitator.

Cork GAA isn’t facing a hurling problem anymore it is facing an administrative crisis and a credibility deficit. Every day which passes alters the nature of the struggle and in Cork they are now reaching endgame.

On Friday night when the poor bedraggled confederacy was rounded up yet again to hear the bizarre version being offered about players suddenly being content to go back to play under Gerald they must have felt that they are now being used as human shields. It has taken a long time for the day to be seized by people not packing megaphones or an intimate knowledge of the arcane bylaws of Cork GAA but at last that day is coming and a scary time in GAA politics will be left behind.