STRATEGIC VISION AND ACTION PLAN 2009-2015: Tom Humphrieson how those charged with promoting the GAA in Dublin looked in vain for enlightenment in the GAA's latest blueprint

THE GAA launched its strategic vision for the next six years on Tuesday in Croke Park. The roll out was impressive and the document got a heavyweight send off with the top guns contributing to a multi-media presentation.

Down the road in Parnell Park, from where a fifth of the island's population has its GAA needs catered for, a group of men were thumbing through the document looking for some hint as to the association's plans for Dublin.

The names of John Costello and Kevin O'Shaughnessy, the two key figures in Dublin in implementing urban strategy, aren't mentioned in the list of people consulted.

Even on the pages dealing with urban strategy, there was little or no mention of the city and what mentions there were set a few alarm bells flashing.

Dublin GAA is in an unusual position. Different but the same. Special but equal. The county football team and the much maligned hordes who follow them are a massive contributor to the GAA's wellbeing.

In terms of bodies coming through the turnstiles, the Dublin senior footballers are probably the most watched team on the island in any given year. They are a huge brand and a key part of the association's TV deals and merchandising arrangements.

That alone creates resentments or in many cases, little pockets of denial. Dublin are perceived as getting too much attention in the media and in GAA budget plans.

The difficulty is that without Dublin the GAA loses out massively all over the place. Dublin are the most reliable cash cow there is. What is the common denominator between the three ordinary league games played in Croke Park in recent years, Dublin v Armagh, Dublin v Tyrone and, at the end of next January, Dublin v Tyrone again.

So what goes back into Dublin and how it is husbanded is of key importance. The worry in Parnell Park is that, with all the vagueness, Croke Park may be positioning itself to administer to Dublin's rather unique needs centrally once more by imposing a template which fails to recognise the differences between areas with GAA needs.

For instance, the GAA's strategic document proposes to launch urban development initiatives within four specific groups . . .

Group One:Major Urban Development Project Areas have a population of more than 100,000.

Group Two:High Priority Development Project Areas have a population of more than 50,000.

Group Three:Priority Development Areas have a population of more than 30,000.

Group Four:Urban Development Project Areas have a population of less than 30,000.

The document goes on to talk about volunteer training, about establishing GAA club boundaries and developing club identities in each area. The remainder of the aspirations are a mix of key performance indicators, which will be monitored by steering groups and general platitudes.

In Dublin, where the level of consultation with those responsible for the city's current plan was minimal, there is a worry that the point is being missed.

"What is the upper limit, or are they intending to break Dublin into different urban projects with an upper limit of 100,000?" asks Kevin O'Shaughnessy, strategic programme manager with the Dublin County Board. "With social mobility in Dublin, line boundaries mean nothing. As regards Dublin clubs, many of them grew out of trades and today there are a couple of things which determine the club. Players go to their parents' clubs often. Or players go to the club associated with the school they go to."

Dublin learned some time ago there is no template which can be lowered into a place on the basis of population size alone. A rural community which has grown in size will still have the geographic features which tied it together in the first place. The schools the church, the pubs, etc. Its boundaries are easily delineated, its focus point easily found.

The Dublin County Board is involved in a number of different projects at the moment in attempts to grow GAA clubs.

Out in Tyrellstown last year, Cumann na mBunscol brought 25 kids to play games over in Albert Park. One child on the bus had Irish blood, the others were new Irish.

Tyrellstown is what might be informally called a force feed situation. There is nobody in Tyrellstown demanding a GAA club. The local school is an Educate Together project with no GAA background other than that the principal, Maurice Hurley, is a former Erin's Isle player who sees Gaelic games as a way of tying his nascent community together.

There are no adult volunteers, no normal measures by which a GAA club might measure its own progress. Nobody knows when Tyrellstown will be able to stand alone as a proper club.

Adamstown, a burgeoning offshoot of the ever burgeoning Lucan, is a different kettle of fish. There are GAA people who have moved there but the instinct is to join Lucan rather than get involved in the young, struggling GAA club. To complicate matters, Lucan Sarsfields' fine clubhouse and grounds are closer to Adamstown than Lucan village.

Most clubs can see when they get too big or reach optimum size. Persuading them to sever their connection with certain schools or to leave certain talented players in the pond is a different matter, however. Adamstown will be a different type of challenge again.

As will the Shankill and Shanganagh areas in the hinterland of Cuala, the thriving Dalkey club. This is what the Parnell Park strategists call a chapel of ease project.

They are speaking with Cuala about letting a separate nursery develop in Shankill and Shanganagh. The real debate will come in more than half a decade down the road: will Cuala be ready to permit the board to take a slipping and plant it as a separate tree, allowing a full club to grow from the nursery? It's a model which, if it works, could be very useful on the southside of Dublin which, for various reasons, has developed with a few "super" clubs dominating the scene.

Big clubs mopping up everything in an area is one matter. In Blanchardstown and its surrounding district, St Brigid's looked to be growing to a massive size a few years ago but several thing happened organically, which is how the board finds many developments occur. Castleknock spring up as an offshoot (resisted at first) of Brigid's and have put down their own roots.

St Peregrines, on the other side of the Blanchardstown shopping centre, have developed their own identify. Erin go Bragh are growing slowly but steadily. Westmanstown Gaels, out at the Garda club, are developing. Tyrellstown may take root yet.

Oliver Plunkett's exist and thrive down the Navan road from Brigid's and their excellent underage system has expanded in recent years by sending a bus in to the Markets area of the city and drawing young players out from there.

The county board are happy with how an area whose population has exploded has developed. For different reasons, Tallaght and Swords haven't grown in the same way. Both for different reasons.

"What is the best practice in each situation?" asks O'Shaughnessy. "People talk about new clubs in Dublin, they happen by accident nine times out of ten . . . fellas arrive in an area with an interest in GAA, they go in and set up a club. We are there to support that. But the model that applies outside Dublin doesn't apply here. Social mobility has taken away any boundaries. People will travel anywhere to go to school or to go to mass or to have their kids in the GAA club they want."

There are some unusual quirks. Why is Blanchardstown outperforming Tallaght and Swords. Why is that? Erin go Bragh are starting to do a lot of work, Westmanstown Gaels, Peregrines. Activity happening in Tyrellstown. Castleknock breaking from Brigid's made it very competitive.

Everything is held in delicate balance. Relationships with the four municipal authorities are conducted increasingly through steering groups comprised of the chair people of clubs in the relevant area. The days of new clubs buying 10 acres of land upon which to place two pitches and a clubhouse are gone.

If the GAA still aspires to place its clubs at the centres of new communities it needs to accept the reality of using municipal pitches and perhaps sharing brick and mortar facilities and even using soccer pitches for juvenile activity. A modest clubhouse adjacent to municipal land will be the height of most aspirations.

In the modern world, Dublin GAA represents something of a miracle. It should be a soccer city, hosting a large professional club. Instead, even without an All-Ireland title in the last half decade, rates are massively increased in Dublin.

In the cohort up to 12 years of age there has been phenomenal growth. Twice as many mentors on the ground now as five years ago. Six thousand kids in nurseries every weekend. In 2003, there were 619 boys teams between under-eight and under-16.

Now there are 1,300 playing some 20,000 games a year. Parnell Park and its staff are out there providing a massive social service operating nurseries and integrating people.

They want to know if there is a quid pro quo. Keeping activity at that level let alone increasing it depends on constant support and attention. They can show where they are making the difference. They need to be able to see between the lines of the GAA's latest strategy and see they will be enabled and helped with physical structures and support staff.

The two biggest limiting factors are mentors and facilities. That applies to the clubs as well as the county as a whole, but Dublin's argument is that it gives value for money (games promotions officers made contact with 40,000 children last year) and provides a huge chunk of the money anyway.

Any attempt to wrest control back and treat Dublin the same as 31 other units of the GAA will be detrimental.

"Where is Dublin now?", wonders Kevin O'Shaughnessy. "Does it still have its own funding structure agreed four and a half years ago? They seem to be drawing a line, county, province, national.

"Dublin is a huge urban group with lots of different competing needs. It doesn't fit neatly into that model.

"As a framework, the report is very hard to argue with but how will it be implemented in the different circumstances throughout the country? Will the flexibility be there? Or will the GAA be saying 'you are Dublin, one of just 31 counties'. From a focus point of view, the needs of Dublin have to stand alone."

It's a huge question. The GAA in Dublin pleases the local authorities because it offers so much that ticks the boxes on the health and education and integration agendas.

But Dublin and its nurseries and its delicate social economic nuances doesn't necessarily equal the superstars running out in Croke Park. Not yet anyway. And for the GAA that may be a distraction.

One feature of the strategy model launched this week was that everything trickled down out of Croke Park and performance everywhere was designed to meet Croke Park's needs.

In Dublin, they learned long ago that the pyramid is inverted and if the GAA is to get anywhere, the needs of the 12-year-old in Killinarden are the key thing as are the very differing needs of the 12-year-old in Swords and the 12-year-old in Tyrellstown.

Parnell Park is there to serve them. This week they could see no place where that model fitted into the GAA's version of the brave new world.

They wait and wonder.