FAI insults GAA and memory of 1916

Before they even have their feet under the table, the soccer association of the 26 Counties have decided to change the name of Hill 16 to the ‘Northern Terrace.’ Not surprisingly this has caused not a little outrage among Dublin Gaels and there will be a few less votes for letting them in next year if we get a chance to vote on it again at Congress.

But even that is not certain as the Central Council will decide on Saturday whether to extend the “temporary” opening for a further year. Given that the IRFU is making twice what it normally does from Lansdowne, even after the rent paid to the GAA, not to mention the serious challenge that will be presented by local residents to the building of the new stadium in Dublin 4, it is likely that the temporary opening will become like the proverbial piece of string.

On top of that we now have certain people talking about how absolutely fabulous it would be to have a National Stadium. Mmmmm, I wonder where they might have in mind now?

Coming as all this does after it was reported that a soccer official described Croke Park as a “monument to bigotry” there are more and more people beginning to see the sense of outgoing Ulster Council Chair Michael Grennan’s remark about having been sold a pup.

Deciding to rename Hill 16 the ‘Northern Terrace’ (“formerly Hill 16”, according to the FAI but whether this is a misspelling or a misunderstanding of the word ‘formerly’ I will leave to students of that murky Sopranoesque or perhaps more aptly Chaplinesque body) is a calculated insult. First of all, if you are a guest in someone’s house you do not start off by changing the name on the door. Secondly, it is the way of the small minded, petty, incompetent — to give them the benefit of the doubt —  bureaucrats in Merrion Square to give the two fingers to the GAA.

More than that, it is an insult to the history of the place they are about to defile with their mediocrity and an insult to the men and women who fought in Dublin in 1916. They may have changed the flag that flew then over their grounds in those times but obviously not their mentality.

I am sick to the stomach listening to people talking about the GAA as if it was some sort of former fascist dictatorship that has to do penance for oppressing soccer and rugby in the past. Just to please the likes of Marian Finucane. Let’s put it all into perspective. Soccer and rugby players and supporters were never subject to constant harassment, internment and murder by the state and its agents. Their grounds were never occupied by foreign soldiers. Unless they were participating, of course.

And yet to listen to them you would think they had had to endure generations of torture and repression at the hands of pioneer-pin-wearing, hurley-brandishing, IRA oath administering, wild Christian Brothers. Sickening old cant, especially from people who used their influence for decades to ban Gaelic games in Catholic ‘elite’ schools. And whose sports were among the few to allow the participation of the Black and Tans — or rather their officers in the case of the IRFU — when they were grabbing some much needed ‘rest and recreation’ in 1920 and 1921.

The GAA may have made mistakes in the past but had it not been for the single-mindedness and determination and pride there would be no hurling or football or camogie or handball and no Croke Park and none of the fine clubs that are in every corner of the island. It is not the GAA’s job to compensate for the incompetence and corruption of others. GAA officials did not steal the money that has gone to building up the facilities that these people think they have some divine right to.

With the reality of the financial situation and the likelihood of an extended opening, many former supporters of allowing them in are changing their minds. Many are also coming to the view that, as Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann might have put it, we are being royally rogered without the common courtesy of a reach around.

Finally, congratulations to the Erin’s Isle Senior hurlers who beat Crumlin in the league final last Saturday.  It was a fitting return for a long year of hard training and hopefully a portent of further success at all levels for hurling in the club this year.

Isles are known as ‘The Parish’ despite the fact that Finglas has long outgrown the village it was in 1917 when the club was founded by local IRA Volunteers. It is now a huge vastly outgrown suburb of the city in which every available green space is being filled with high rise apartments. Places to store people when they are not at work. Places where no-one knows their neighbour and where there is nowhere for children to play.

Property developers and low wage employers can physically transform communities at their will; seldom, if ever, to the benefit of those who live in them. Against the tide stand the likes of Isles. The still beating heart of the Parish.