But I ask you please, don't fence me in

LOCKERROOM:Why are the GAA demeaning and dehumanising its own paying customers by sticking an eight-foot fence in front of the Croke Park terracing?

IT IS 11 years ago next month since one of my favourite writers, Simon Inglis, visited Croke Park for the All-Ireland hurling final between Cork and Kilkenny. Inglis has a fascination and love for the great stadia of the world and his essay on All-Ireland day was published in his wonderful book Sightlines.

His words were one of those enjoyable chances we sometimes get to see ourselves as others see us. “A Great Mingling”, he called the piece and that’s as fine a description of a big day in Croke Park as I have come across. The essay, essentially a day in the life of Croke Park, captured all that is wonderful about the GAA. He describes the day as being thankfully free of the “ad agency view of the country” he writes of “passion cushioned by good manners and informality”.

Funny thing was that the day of Inglis’s visit was the day upon which the GAA first unveiled its obsession with keeping the peasants off the lawn. Again and again it was announced that the Public Safety Authority had advised that a biblical-style catastrophe was pending should anybody except players or devotees of U2 trample on the field.

And on that sodden wet day Plan A worked.

“Today is the beginning of a new tradition in Croke Park,” crowed the Croke Park official to Inglis as the clichéd red carpets were rolled out.

The GAA. You love it. You hate it. You admire it. It frustrates you. It nurtures you. It alienates you. It’s the most professional of sports organisations. And the most amateurish. It’s smooth. It’s turbulent. Your best friend. It’s own worst enemy. The best of us. The worst of us.

Eleven years on and the FAI and the IRFU have just opened a fine new stadium south of the river. All glass and sparkle and brand new novelty. And the GAA’s response is to disfigure Croke Park and demean and dehumanise its own paying customers by sticking an eight-foot fence in front of the terracing.

No longer my friends, shall we go a mingling.

We are told that the insurance suits won’t be placated without a fence. Short of shooting the peasants, they crave a fence. Now if the insurance suits favour the infrastructural solution which has brought disaster to so many sporting venues and which has been rejected in just about every major stadium in the world, it’s time for the GAA to get new insurance suits. Or maybe time for the Minister for Sport to open the ministerial gob.

Of course there are the cynics among us who don’t really believe that the actuaries yearn to see people teetering drunkenly at the top of an eight-foot high fence. The cynics believe that the GAA just wants to be able to sell TV and sponsors those antiseptic, spontaneity-free presentation ceremonies where the players are corralled in behind a large advertising hording to have their picture taken with the cup. But sure that’s cynics for ya. Value of everything, price of nothing.

There is no tradition of litigation in Croke Park. Not that I know of. I have seen no figures so I speak anecdotally. John Power didn’t sue when he lacerated his hand on the old fencing at the front of the Cusack. At a schools’ match I once saw a player go headlong down the concrete steps at the front of the old Hogan. He went to the Mater with his split head but not to his solicitors. None of the players who suffered serious injuries as Croke Park looked to get its surface right came back to Croke Park with lawyers so far as I know.

More significantly, when I spent 15 minutes tangled like a startled rabbit in the barbed wire above the regular fencing at the Canal End after the hurling final of 1976 I didn’t sue for the distress of having kept the crowd amused for that time. I sought no recompense for the many holes in my jeans, jumper and duffle coat; tears which I would later explain to my mother as supernatural phenomena.

She herself didn’t sue when she was carried in and out of the Hill without her feet actually touching the ground on the occasion of Down’s first All-Ireland appearance. None of us sued when the GAA seriously overcrowded the Hill on All-Ireland football day of 1983. Or for the panic of leaving the exit under the old Canal End on any big day. Or for the chaos every time the old gates at the back of the Hill were broken down in the 70s. Or for new brogues when we went slaloming down the grassy bank at the rear of the old Hill and into the sea of foaming urine below. Sure we were peasants and glad to be tolerated.

Now the GAA says that it has to bend over and take a pounding for insurance companies. It must submit itself to the will of those who are mightily concerned about the Croke Park pitch but care not a whit about the dangers under the main stand in Páirc Uí Chaoimh – well, so be it.

They might have made it a condition of buying a ticket that you waive your legal rights if you invade the pitch like a pillaging Viking. Or they could have introduced a system of fines. A few of them would soften our collective cough. Surely they could have trained sufficient stewards so that they might be able to perform the simple task of actually keeping happy and benign people off the grass.

(At the Hill end for instance I have never understood why the stewards end-of-match positions are on the grass rather than on the Hill itself. As it is they are having to deal with enthusiasts who have already launched themselves at the Promised Land. )

But no. Somebody decided to pick the only non-corporatised area in the ground and to dehumanise it. Single out the terrace and make a zoo of it.

Let us assume charitably (and hopefully) that the GAA’s orange-coated stewards are not representative of its overall competence when it comes to crowd control, or that the chaotic scenes which attended a club final a few years back aren’t representative either. Let us assume the Hill will never be inadvertently overcrowded, that we will never see familiar faces crushed against this fencing with impassive stewards gazing on from the other side.

What about the young fellas, though, who like me in 1976 just want to be on the pitch, who want a pleasure afforded to those well-fed heads streaming in from the seated areas?

What is the legal position about falling from an eight-foot fence? Why is something which is identified as a public safety hazard in most stadia in the world cheaper on the Croker insurance premium? Why is the rest of the stadium not being fenced off?

I have to admit I like wandering out onto the pitch after a game. I do it in Parnell Park all the time. And I did it after the club football final in Croker in 2008. Good it was. I think we like being on the pitch afterwards because we see ourselves as members and co-owners of the GAA rather than customers. We are a community. This is our hall.

I love Hill 16. The view is poor and the wit seldom lives up to its reputation, but I grew up on it when it was a disgrace and an eyesore and yet a beloved place. Des McMahon designed a wonderful stadium on Jones Road but the terraced end wound up with an unfinished look and that odd elevated portacabin thing on the Nally.

Now we want to further vandalise the place with fencing? We want to make caged animals out of members who have already being relegated to the status of customers?

I’ll never stand there again and wouldn’t want anybody I care about to stand there either. Not behind fences. I don’t want the worry. I don’t want to ever look across at the Chablis-breathed customers of the corporate sector and then stare at the throbbing cage of the Hill wondering if my daughters or my friends are okay in there. A new tradition blah blah blah.

Ah the GAA.

Can’t live with it.

Can’t drive it underground.

Grrrrrr!