Cork Wants to Keep Croker Closed.

THERE hasn’t been as much division in Ireland since Michael Collins was shot in West Cork – and there’s a common thread running through the latest debate to split the nation.

Collins, if you believe the hype, was the man who should have dragged Ireland through the 20th century, an honor that fell instead to one Eamonn de Valera thanks to a stray bullet in the Rebel County.

And today, as the GAA settles into the convention season, it is the rebels down in Cork who threaten to throw the biggest spanner into the bid to drag their association into the 21st century.

County boards the length and breadth of Ireland are currently debating the most vexed issue in the GAA since congress took the brave decision to let RUC men play the national game.

Led by President Sean Kelly and backed by such luminaries as former chief Peter Quinn, a campaign is gaining momentum to open Croke Park up to non-GAA sports.

It is, if you have a level head, a wise move. The GAA will owe a small fortune by the time Hill 16 is redeveloped in time for next year’s championships.

And many wise men within the association can see the merit in leasing the finest stadium this country has ever seen to the likes of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) and the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU).

Great men, like Kelly and Quinn to name just two, are prepared to forget the past, to forget the centuries old rivalries between the three games that dominate sport on this island.

They argue, rightly as I see it, that we are now living in the 21st century, that the GAA needs to minimize the debt it owes on Croke Park, that the association would be wrong to ignore commercial reality.

Sadly, not all their colleagues see it their way. And the GAA, being the greatest democratic body on this island, has thrown the debate open to the great unwashed.

Every county convention will have a say on this issue before it goes to a vote at congress next Spring.

And the debate is currently as hot as the discussions on what to do next with Saddam Hussein. Cavan and Dublin passed motions in favor on Monday night, Waterford rejected it. They are not alone, on either side of the fence.

Some county boards have come up with ingenious ideas, the best of them from the Wicklow delegates who want the GAA to rent Croke Park to the government, then allow the government to decide who uses it. 

This stroke of genius removes the possibility of the GAA itself letting Croker to soccer or rugby – the government would do it instead and give the GAA back a huge amount of the money it morally owes them.

The Wicklow proposal would appear to appease both sides of the argument – but not if you’re from Cork. Their convention, last Sunday, produced some of the vilest abuse yet on this subject, most of it directed towards Kelly.

Midleton delegate Sean Keohane said he was annoyed that the president was “issuing personal statements in relation to Croke Park being opened up.” 

Munster Council treasurer Dan Hoare went one better. He said, “I myself have one major problem; I would not let anybody into the car park not to mention Croke Park.”

And that old chestnut called Con Murphy, a former GAA president himself, added, “I would be saying that our properties are not for sale, they are not for leasing, they are not for renting and, as some would wish, they are for not hijacking,” he said.

Thankfully Kelly is ignoring the Cork jury. He knows that congress and congress alone will decide this one.

My hope is that the GAA accepts the need for change and the need for revenue and opens Croke Park up to Brian Kerr’s soccer team or Eddie O’Sullivan’s rugby outfit.

I accept that the FAI have done little or nothing to build their own stadium – I have been one of their biggest critics on the subject.

I acknowledge that there are elements within the IRFU who won’t even sing the “Soldier’s Song,” something that continually annoys me.

But we should be bigger than the past in modern day Ireland. We are a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic population now, so let’s not live with our heads buried in the sands of the past.

Open Croke Park and show it off to the world for what it is – a wonderful stadium built by the honest endeavors of the greatest amateur sporting body on the planet.

That is something to be proud of, not something to fall out over. Even in Cork.