Dublin clubs farce embarrasses everyone

Locker Room/Tom Humphries: A grand time it was. Sure, it was tinged with sadness, sure, with the hard-core the subject had to be broached with respect.

But last spring was generally a fine time for those of us who have friends who believe in domestic soccer. Most of us lost the faith years ago, and the annual debacle that is the domestic league has strengthened us in our agnosticism since.

I know somebody who wants to write a book, essentially a comedy, about a season in the domestic league. Every year when the league putters to a finish he chastises himself. This was it. This was the year it should have been done! God bless it, but the league will never be as hilarious again.

Of course, it is though, there's always a row, a disaster, an iceberg lurking. And so last spring we had the registration debacle, the war between Pat's and Shels. We chuckled. Best of times.

Of course, stuff goes around and it comes back around. The Dublin Gaelic Football Championships have been reduced to a similarly tattered state of disarray, a depressing comedy of innumeracy, indignation and incompetence. And somehow it's just not funny.

It had been going this way. Times changed. Twenty years ago if you took a poll among Dublin clubs as to which was the least popular, St Vincent's would have won by a country mile. And rightly so. Being virtually unbeatable is the wholesome route to unpopularity.

This summer, last summer and recent summers, had you taken the same poll UCD, Na Fianna and Kilmacud would have finished top five. The game in Dublin is changing. If Vincent's were pioneers in the Dublin-players- for-Dublin-teams movement, then UCD, Na Fianna and Kilmacud would be seen as leaders of the backlash. The three of them are involved now in the most unseemly row which has already disfigured this season's championship and threatens to derail it altogether.

Many in the county (not this column, though) would ban UCD altogether, they being a Harlem Globetrotter-like assortment of talents who have the potential in their young legs to cut up any team they meet. And then they can go home and each do the same in their domestic county championships.

It seems sensible, however, to just change the rules rather than ban UCD. Make them play in the Dublin league if they want to be a club, make them play a certain ratio of Dublin players. If players get another chance back with the clubs that reared them, well, okay. They're young.

Kilmacud Crokes and Na Fianna are different kettles of fish. Crokes are one of those clubs who have reached out and asked the world to give them their huddled, their poor, their culchies. Their All-Ireland club win in the mid-1990s was distinguished in several ways. They had a sprinkling of non-Dubs in the vanguard, but they had also grown the club from the bottom up. Crokes' work in the primary schools of their catchment area, in developing their mini-leagues and under-age structures, was something of a model.

Na Fianna have attempted to grow their club from the top down, and the sense of unease people feel about the process is mitigated mainly by the quality of the people involved. Dessie Farrell, Pilar Caffrey, Jason Sherlock, Mick Galvin, Kieran McGeeney. They are sincere, intense sort of people with a shared desire to be the best. They've come together in Mobhi Road and produced a senior football team which has won three county championships in a row. People look and see the imported players (Mick Galvin, now coach, and Senan Connell even joined from Oliver Plunketts).

SO that's it. UCD, Na Fianna and Kilmacud. Varying degrees of popularity there, but from each lessons which other clubs could take. Now, with St Vincent's (beloved, talented, young and blameless) sitting waiting to play the county final, these three clubs have begun playing silly buggers. UCD and Crokes, southside neighbours, have been appealing against each other's appeals all week.

UCD beat Crokes in the quarter-finals playing with John Divilly in their ranks. Not that Divilly was great or anything, but afterwards, in the dim glow of defeat, Crokes decided to appeal his presence. Divilly was apparently properly transferred, but Crokes maintained that this year he was only eligible to play championship for his home club in Galway.

Things got worse. Crokes lost. Then they appealed the decision not to award them the game. UCD lodged an appeal against the decision to hear Crokes latest objection. Leinster Council appears to have sorted this one out.

The other quarter-final, between Raheny and Na Fianna, produced even more farce. You will remember Na Fianna's embarrassment last winter when they played six subs in the Leinster final against Sarsfields of Kildare. The game was awarded to the Kildare champions who graciously (well, they'd been whupped, but gracious it was nonetheless) offered Na Fianna a replay.

This year Na Fianna made almost the same mistake. This time with a blood sub. With five substitutes used they also used a blood sub.

Now the rule about blood subs is a crock to start with. It should be possible in a 15 man game to let a game proceed while a player gets treatment. The number of incidents relating to misapplication of the blood subs rule is bringing the game into far more disrepute than just scrapping the rule would.

Having said that, however, the rule is there, and having made a virtually identical mistake last winter one would expect that Na Fianna would be employing census takers, toll gate attendants and chartered accountants to monitor how many people they had permitted onto the field of play.

They didn't. Their semi-final place was awarded to Raheny. And so Na Fianna brought the professional people in belatedly and this week they will be found huddling again on the steps of the High Court preparing to fight their way to a fourth successive championship. On Friday they secured an injunction preventing a Raheny/UCD semi-final from proceeding. Sweet.

There's no dignity in it. People are laughing. People are annoyed. And people, of course, are blaming the sleeveens from the Munster Council who decided last summer that a rule wasn't in fact a rule and that Cork should sail on by having breached the blood subs rule.

Worse. Time is running out. If Dublin are to have representation in this year's Leinster Club championship, well, the county final has to be played next weekend. Is the provincial championship devalued by not having the Dublin champions in it? Of course. Should everyone be asked to wait while Dublin sorts out its own mess? No.

Serious football people making themselves look foolish. The only way to progress with dignity is on the field of play. What had been a good year for GAA in the capital has turned into a debacle. Damn thing has gone like the soccer.