The UCD controversy: Brian Mullins, the director of sport at UCD, defends the college's participation in the Dublin hurling championship.
I'm not sure if Karl Marx has ever been quoted as an authority on GAA matters - it's doubtful - but one of his sayings comes to mind again and again as I wonder at the column yards devoted to UCD hurling in the past fortnight: "History repeats itself, the second time as farce." Irish Times readers will not, I am sure, shy away from a short history lesson.
Dublin last reached an All-Ireland hurling final in 1961. Guess which club won that year's Dublin county championship. Yes - UCD. Guess which club had to face a motion proposing their expulsion from the Dublin championship a short time previously. Again - UCD. The motion was defeated after being well rebutted by a young UCD club secretary, Dick Dowling from Kilkenny - subsequently a TD and Senator and still a distinguished member of the UCD Governing Authority.
Dublin GAA clubs including St Vincent's had in the late '50s a capacity for reasoned thinking for the benefit of hurling in the capital city, as evidenced in Dublin's participation and close defeat by Tipperary in the '61 final.
Now fast forward a decade to the early 1970s, a different code of the GAA with UCD again dominant, this time in Gaelic football.
The response of Kevin Heffernan, and others in St Vincent's and Dublin football to a dominant UCD at that time was brave, and indeed telling, given what followed for Dublin on the intercounty stage. It is positively painful to contrast their spirit of determination and leadership with the misguided stance taken earlier this week by the captains of seven Dublin senior hurling clubs. What passed this week is no launch pad for welcoming Liam McCarthy.
In hard-fought on-the-field battles back then I had bones broken by UCD rivals but one thing I cannot take away from them: Dublin football would not have achieved what it did in the 1970s without the catalyst of an outstanding UCD team of all the talents which put it up to the rest of us, and raised the bar for all.
For me the hurling club captains might have spent their time better by coming to talk to UCD - we'd be delighted to share our ideas and experience - or even by formulating a plan to break a few hurls off us! It'd be time better spent than having their agenda set for them by a minority of media cranks with typewriters/microphones, wed to a loser mentality.
Dublin hurling needs to get a grip. Nobody under the age of 50 can remember a Dublin county hurling team win a Leinster title or participate in an All-Ireland final. Put this side-by-side with the farcical spectacle of the chairman of the county board turning up to take a training session with a managerless Dublin team and being told where to go by the players. Surely no one can argue that we are within the same solar system as the best. And yet, we are to believe that UCD are the source of all the woes in Dublin hurling.
A little-known fact is that in the year 2000, when UCD were county champions, Dublin senior hurlers had no management structure in place. UCD, when requested by the Dublin players, provided training personnel and facilities in support of Dublin hurling until the eventual appointment of Kevin Fennelly. Actions - not just words!
The UCD debate is a harmful distraction from what should be the preoccupation of all hurling lovers in Dublin: how do we get a more successful county team? If the solution proves to be "by eliminating the most successful club team from the county championship", it's more than the sports textbooks that'll have to be rewritten.
To borrow from Jane Austen, "it is a truth universally acknowledged" that if a country is to be successful in sporting terms, its institutions of higher education have a key role to play. Far from looking to find fault in their role and value, Irish sport should be embracing our universities.
The benchmark for sport at UCD is excellence, measured by the highest international standards. In that respect we are unique among European universities in having teams competing at the highest level domestically in soccer, rugby and, obviously, GAA competitions. We have facilities and practices which cater for a constituency which runs from Olympic athletes to senior colleagues on campus struggling with what might be termed weight-management issues. We are passionately committed to service and success - and we have neither the need nor the intent to apologise for this.
Our commitment and support for sport is not a solo mission. Sport is already and will increasingly be a part of Ireland's national agenda. It is now being taken seriously as an important dimension of our lives at the highest levels of Government in a way that wouldn't have been dreamt about in the 1960s. This reflects an increasing appreciation of the benefits of sport and active recreation. It is now accepted as a contributor to the physical and mental well-being of the individual and the general population, as a strategically important commercial undertaking and as a defining element of the Irish character - part of who and what we are.
What is needed, in this new climate, is the mentality of carpe diem. We must seize the day. We must recognise the difference between what is right and what is easy. We must not accept the habit of losing and of allowing lazy thinking and prefabricated excuses to carry the day - that is easy.
The mission of UCD is to serve Ireland in the wider world; we can do a fair bit for Dublin hurling along the way if we are only let.
