A Pandora’s Box is defined as ‘a process which once begun generates many complicated problems.’
The GAA will understand that this morning after an official request from Donegal GAA to review the staging of their match against Dublin in the All Ireland Quarter Final Series at Croke Park.
The County Board will either have felt emboldened to put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, by the stance of the Kildare board last week or they will feel pressure from fans to make a stand rather than having them go all the way to Dublin.
They want the game to be played at a neutral venue though that concept was never part of the ‘Super 8’ make up. The rules were clear from the outset, that each team would play one game at a home venue, one at an away and one at Croke Park. Not a neutral venue, at Croke Park, the home of the All Ireland Finals by and large since it was built.
There are those conspiracy theorists who argue it is to give an inherent advantage to Dublin. If that needs to change then perhaps using the same logic, the All Ireland Final’s should be moved to Portlaoise or Tipperary. Or maybe Newbridge. Or Maybe not.
Croke Park is to all intents and purposes the national stadium for our national games. The fact that it is in the capital city and main area of population is hardly part of some dastardly plot to keep Sam Maguire in the capital.
The fact that Dublin can attract a large enough audience for every game they play to have them only accommodated at the stadium is a fact of life that may change with the completion of a new stadium on the south side of the city in the next decade. But that will be then and this is now.
Donegal may feel they had to ask the question and they are perfectly entitled to do so. It needs to be replied to though with a polite but firm letter starting ‘Thank you for your correspondence…”
