As an association founded in 1884, with more than half a million members throughout the world and some millions more of contented fans, the GAA is always a soft target for anyone coming along trying to attach the tag ‘conservative’ to it, reflects An Fear Rua...

The charge of ‘not being open to change’ is an easy option for some of the newly-arrived ‘meeja’ commentators who are stuck for a column of a weekend or who lack a snappy headline of a slack Monday morning. This Gadarene rush to paint the GAA irretrievably into the ‘conservative’ corner reached its nadir a few months ago when one young scribe of The Old Lady of D’Olier Street - who shall remain nameless - ventured to suggest that the proposals from the Football Development Committee were so radical and innovative that they couldn’t possibly have emerged from a GAA body! Talk about prejudice! The late Brendan Behan wasn’t too far wrong when he once described a strike in ‘The Irish Times’ as ‘The National Union of Journalists versus The National Journal of Unionists’...

This alleged conflict between change and tradition in the GAA is a false dichotomy that can be reconciled, with a deal of commonness and patience on every side. It is, in the end, always possible to reconcile the two satisfactorily. And it makes no sense to be trying to force anyone - be they player, official or fan - to make some kind of half-baked choice between alleged progress and so-called conservatism.

Sometimes what looks like change or progress in the GAA is unnecessary and impetuous. A good example of this is the experimental abolition of the throw-in at the start of hurling games during this year’s National Hurling League campaign and its replacement with a puckout. According to the lads and lassies beyond in Croke Park, this change was made to prevent ‘unseemly incidents’. Now we all know that the only ‘unseemly incident’ at a throw-in in recent years was Colin Lynch’s flaking across Tony Browne’s legs in the drawn Munster final of 1998, Waterford v Clare. There was no logic to the experiment. For one thing, referees - quite rightly so - continued to use the throw-in to resolve various incidents in NHL games once they were started. But, more importantly, the decision to experiment showed a total lack of empathy with one of the most distinctive and exciting features of hurling. For the sake of one so-called ‘unseemly incident’ a vital aspect of our hurling heritage was to be jeopardised.

The FDC proposals themselves are another good example of fuzzy thinking dressed up as ‘progress’ and paraded onstage to the approving clatter of ‘meeja’ keyboards. Every couple of years, the GAA manages to tie itself up in knots with various ‘reforms’ of the leagues and with stratagems to help so-called ‘weaker’ counties. When will they learn that ‘a league is a league... a knockout championship is a knockout championship... and ne’er the twain shall meet’? A honourable exception, was the sensible introduction of the so-called ‘back door’ in Munster which has done so much to re-vitalise hurling there and to raise standards. This year’s Munster hurling championship will be a true definition of champions. This is one ‘experiment’ that might profitably be looked at by other provinces and in football as well as hurling.

Examples of other issues where so-called ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’ line up on opposite sides of the clubhouse are the status of the Gaelic Players’ Association, ‘pay-for-play’, the Parish rule, corporate boxes versus tickets for the ordinary fan, camogie versus womanise’ football. Even on the popular on-line GAA discussion boards you find people wanting to keep them ‘pure’ and ‘non-commercial’. Somewhat ruefully, however, An Fear Rua must assert that the approach currently being taken by Dónal O’Neill and his Gaelic Players’ Association (GPA) is not the correct way forward. They have focussed on the wrong issues. They have opted for confrontation, not consensus. And their latest cunning stunt is a commercial sponsorship for a new monthly and annual awards scheme, voted on by members of the GPA, and in direct competition with the GAA’s long-established All Stars Awards. The obvious questions here are will the awards be open to non-members of the GPA and why not let non-members cast a vote for the awards if they are to be truly representative of the players’ choices?

An Fear Rua is much happier with the approach being taken by the new President, that shrewd Armagh man (sure, aren’t they all?), Seán MacCague. He has cleverly defused the Football League ‘reforms’ hot potato by setting up a tightly-deadlined committee composed of ‘progressives’ from the FDC and ‘conservatives’ from the Provincial Councils, to bring forward workable proposals to a Special Congress. Essentially, he’s applied former US President Lyndon Johnson’s dictum that he’d ‘rather have them inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in... ‘

Even better is the Strategic Review Committee set up by MacCague to review the role and function of the GAA and make recommendations on how DGAOO (Dis Great Association Of Ours) could be run better. The Committee includes some heavy hitters from the worlds of Gaelic games and big business who should know a thing or two about these topics. The last time this approach was taken was in 1969.

For An Fear Rua, however, the most intriguing member of the Review Committee is the former Labour TD, Dame Eithne FitzGerald herself. Dame Eithne is a former Minister of State for cleaning up government. She wielded a fair oul camán herself in her days at the renowned Scoil Chaitríona in Dublin and is a member of the Camogie Commission. When one of the bright sparks of the Gowlnacalley-John Redmonds heard Dame Eithne had been appointed to help reform the GAA he blurted out: ‘Jays, the Association is in bigger trouble than I thought so!’. Dame Eithne is, of course, married into the family of the former Taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald, who spent most of his time during the Eighties trying to wreck the country. Garrett, he of the odd shoes and socks and the tax on children’s shoes, was the man who was reported to have commented on a particular government proposal: ‘Yes, Yes, I know it works in practice... but will it work in theory? ‘

Whatever about the merits or demerits of individual members of his teams, MacCague has underlined that the way to move the GAA forward is to get people of widely differing views and backgrounds together and to keep them dialoguing until they come up with broadly-supported, practical changes.

Although if Dónal O’Neill continues on his present track, Dame Eithne Herself might have to take out d’oul cam*n to him...