The Media Room at Croke Park has banked seats that look down on those seated behind the microphones, lending a gladiatorial air to how the questions are thrown and answers put forward. This is especially so in the heat of a fresh won or lost contest but yesterday, when GAA Director General Tom Ryan faced the media for an hour of questions and answers on his first annual report in the role, there were longer-term issues on the agenda.
Ryan is a ten year veteran of similar encounters when sitting in the same environment to deliver the Financial report but since last April he has been in the bigger office with matters more than money on his daily list of priorities.
That’s not to say that money wasn’t to the fore yesterday, particularly in relation to Cork GAA and to ticket prices but it was only a part.
The headlines across the mainstream media lie in a lingering sense of unease over the process that led to Pairc Uí Chaoimh being used for the Liam Miller Tribute Game. It is worth stressing that the Association found a way because it was the right thing to do. The problem lay in how the pressure to do so became so intense from those beyond the group staging the match or those who would ultimately benefit.
Writing in his report Ryan said that “the purpose of the game was charitable; all involved were doing things for the best of reasons and the main thing is that the Miller family benefited from the event.”
“Everything else is secondary, and any reservations I have about the episode should be seen in that light.”
“My problem with how events unfolded concerns not the playing of any particular match (or sport) in any GAA venue, but the blatant disregard that was shown for the Association’s governance.”
“We try to conduct our affairs well. Much of the clamour that arose amounted to demands for us to just ignore our own standards, and indeed our decision makers. To ignore the rule, or find a loophole and host the game.”
“As a governing body charged with trying to uphold standards we should not be in the business of finding ways around our own rules. I personally should certainly not be. Nonetheless, as the days progressed it became evident that to not “find a way” would only do the Association more reputational damage, however unjustified. So that is what we did – we found a way around our own rules. That is something I am still very uncomfortable with.”
“I know that the Liam Miller Organising Committee were certainly not making things difficult for us. Quite the opposite in fact. Events just seemed to take on a momentum of their own, with ever more influential people expressing ever more unhelpful and unsolicited views.”
“There was an inference at the time that the GAA should be under some moral, if not legal, compulsion to allow the use of our pitches for other sports because the Association, or the specific pitch, had received public funding. This is not factually correct and is not morally defensible. Any funding we receive is, and should continue to be, predicated solely on the intrinsic value of Gaelic Games.”
“I am not aware of any other sporting organisation being assessed on the degree to which it promotes rival sports.”
In part therein lies the main issue, that the GAA has never been considered, nor considered itself, as merely a sporting organisation. It is as much about club and the network of community that is woven from the pitch to the hall and the homes of almost one in three people that live in Ireland.
It is the biggest civic grouping on the country and while the playing of games is the obvious central point it is not the only one.
To those on the inside, we get that. We will gripe and moan about certain things but if it were to disappear overnight it would leave the most enormous gap in lives beyond the training and the matches.
To those on the outside though, that is not really understood. There are some who see the GAA as a threat, to other sports yes but also in some way to their own sense of ‘Irishness’.
Ryan concludes his report by saying that one of his key challenges for the year ahead is to “reaffirm some of our values.” Putting words and thoughts around what that means will not be easy but neither will it be impossible.
Knowing what’s important is perhaps one of the greatest gifts that any administrator can have. The fact that it is on Ryan’s agenda is a strong positive and will hopefully make issues like that which exercised so much of the GAA community during that period of time around the Liam Miller game, less fractious the next time around.
Read extracts from the Report on a range of key subjects.
