GAA:Liam O'Neill's position as the president-elect of the GAA was confirmed this evening as the association's annual congress got underway in Mullingar. O'Neill was put forward uncontested after all of the other candidates pulled out of the presidential race.
The formal withdrawal of Leinster chair Sheamus Howlin followed a similar move by Ulster chair Tom Daly and GAA management committee member Con Hogan, from Tipperary leaving O’Neill as the only candidate for the GAA’s top job. He will succeed Christy Cooney when his three-year term begins next April.
The Laois man, a school teacher from Trumera in Laois, will become the second Leinster president in three terms, after Nickey Brennan who served in 2006-09, and will be just the second Laois person to hold the office.
In keeping with modern tradition, the new president-elect lost the previous election in 2008, but attracted 112 votes in the process. In the meantime, he has been busy as chair of the Coaching and Games Development Committee.
He was also the driver of two contentious reform projects, the disciplinary proposals that were backed at the 2009 congress, but not by the required, weighted majority and the Go Games initiative for developing juvenile participation in games, which was approved last year.
“I said the day before the election in Sligo that I didn’t like elections and wished we’d a better way of selecting a leader,” he told a press conference yesterday evening. “I didn’t think when I made that statement that the GAA would take it so much to heart that they would elect me unopposed the next time. If all of my requests in the future are met with the same positivity I’ll be a very happy president.”