Maybe the GAA is stuck with Rule 42

Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: They should shelve Rule 42 permanently now. Dip it in formaldehyde and put it on show in the Croke Park museum (open to sports enthusiasts of all kinds) until the planets collide. In the meantime, they could head north and borrow a banner from the Reverend Ian that would look just spiffy on the Hogan Stand as the crowd streams over the bridge on Jones's Road this summer. "NEVER. NEVER. NEVER."

There is no doubt the former presidents of the GAA acted judiciously and with foresight in pulling the rug from under the feet of Congress. There is no doubt they also ended up looking as subtle and democratic as a military junta. They might as well have just released a statement reading: "Gotcha".

In the immediate term, the blanket rejection of all eight motions to debate Rule 42 as technically inadmissible has placed current president Seán Kelly in a thankless and compromised position. It was he who had to face the music at Monday's impromptu press conference to reveal Rule 42 would not be a runner, despite the fact he had publicly gone on record to say he would like to see Croke Park hosting major international sporting events.

Of course, there is no reason the motions committee should be bound in solidarity of principle with Kelly purely because he sits in the chair they formerly occupied. Rule 42 is a matter of individual belief and opinion. Jack Boothman illustrated that independence of mind when his comments on the potentially catastrophic consequences of Rule 42 were published in newspapers here during the week Jack was touring Arizona in the company of Kelly and the hurling All Stars.

In his outgoing address at Congress last year, Seán McCague reminded the association that "realistically, the majority of our members are against Rule 42". Under his presidency, he pointed out, it had been debated at two consecutive Congresses and it had not been passed. McCague was among those who voted - reportedly by a substantial majority - to hammer those eight motions to erase Rule 42 and thereby incense the majority of GAA members.

The explanation for doing so was obfuscated by technical etiquette that many members are simply not deeply versed in. The result has been anger and confusion at the sensation they had been reprimanded from a height. All Gaels are equal but some are more equal than others.

And unlike the fiasco of 2001, criticism of the association has come from within. The FAI had not blinked, the IRFU is still basking in the feel-good factor that the win over England has wrought and the Government may well be swotting up on the association's rules book but it has said nothing of note.

Maybe that is because the unveiling of the plans for the latest state-sponsored stadium has taken some of the heat out of the perceived need for Croke Park. And maybe the politicians and nabobs of soccer and rugby have grown weary at the agonised grunts and gasps emanating from the GAA on the matter. The GAA holds the cards but who wants to play poker against someone who just sits staring at his hand all day?

In the last three years, the reason for removing Rule 42 has become irrevocably compromised. For some GAA members, it was a sensible matter of finance; Croke Park is a modern, corporate facility and it made good sense to open it to potentially lucrative customers like the FAI and the IRFU. To others though, deleting Rule 42 was more of a statement of principle; it was an enlightened and bold declaration that the native games could exist and thrive in the company of a world game like soccer. It was a demonstration of fearlessness.

For those who would preserve Rule 42, the reasons are deep rooted. On Prime Time this week, the terrible memory of Bloody Sunday was evoked. On Des Cahill's phone-in show, Joe O'Neill, a well-known Donegal Republican and Gael remembered the time his father had to beat his way through police cordons to attend hurling matches in Tyrone. While Joe celebrated the prudence of the ex-presidents' preservation order, a man phoned to say he was standing watching a rugby game in Limerick while hurlers trained on the adjacent rugby field. He wanted to know why the GAA could not reciprocate this gesture.

The viewpoints sound as cries from different centuries. To some people, the evocation of Bloody Sunday comes across as an unhealthy obsession with a sad and terrible event. But people cannot be denied the right to feel that way. There are some members of the GAA for whom the symbolic accoutrements that would accompany soccer and rugby in Croke Park would be like a betrayal. That it would taint the purity of the ground and the association.

It is a legitimate argument.

For others, showcasing soccer and rugby in a ground that is rightly the pride of the GAA smacks of hubris. There is a fear any small concession to those foreign games - and that presenting them against the breathtaking backdrop of Croke Park - could damage the association in a way that makes money irrelevant.

But money, dirty as it is, remains at the heart of the matter. The GAA's protestation that it will not be dictated to by Government whimsy does not wash. Nobody will forget that the promise of the Government shilling on the eve of Congress in 2001 was seductive enough to make a mockery of that year's vote on Rule 42. Slow-burning deliberation and moral intransigence and stubborn vision - traits that are supposed to make the GAA unique - were fairly flung out the window that night. The collective belief on Rule 42, be it for or against, was sold for a deal that has yet to be completed.

Perhaps that is why there has been an anxiety to talk about the thing at every Congress since. Among some members there is a desire to atone for the embarrassment of three years ago, a mistake that left the association financially richer but morally lost. Kelly would have liked to assent to the debate that at least eight counties desired in writing. It is a shame he has been deprived of governing over an issue that is central to his presidency.

By shelving the issue the motions committee has further dulled the shining egalitarian sensibility that informs Kelly's attitude on the matter. Rule 42 becomes more mired in the ambivalent debate over financial return and it remains the trump card in the national stadium debate. The more time passes, the sorrier the whole thing seems. At least the advocates of Rule 42 are absolute in their attitude. Shelving it as a bargaining tool for next year or further down the line seems to cheapen the philosophy behind the opening of Croke Park to the wider world.

The past three years have shown there will never be an ideal period for deleting Rule 42. Rule 42 is conservative, limiting and exclusive, and to remote observers perverse but it also enshrines a fundamentally cautious and narrow world view that the GAA holds. Soccer and rugby will not go away whatever happens to Rule 42. The GAA will not fall apart if it stays. So maybe the association should just admit it is stuck with Rule 42, for better or for worse and let its games go forward in splendid isolation on Jones's Road.