Positives remain compelling

Croke Park debateSeán Moran argues that fears for the long-term integrity of the great stadium - and even the very ethos of the GAA - are largely misplaced

At an informal media lunch in Croke Park at the end of 2004, one high-ranking GAA official gloomily prophesied that no sooner would Rule 42 be relaxed than the association would be assailed by loud voices demanding payment for players and highlighting the anomaly between well paid rugby and soccer internationals trotting out onto the field at Jones's Road and their counterparts in inter-county competition doing it for free.

According to the same source earlier this week, "the two biggest fears among those opposed to this are (a) forcing the amateurism issue and (b) that we'll end up bankrolling the other organisations".

So the association top brass won't have been too surprised at this week's statement from the GPA making that very link. The players' union were a little ambivalent in their argument, referring both to the "ongoing negotiations with the GAA over inter-county player reimbursements", presumably expenses, and "further pressure from players to address the remuneration issue", by definition reward for services rendered.

But the thrust was clear. The GAA could take in up to €10 million, depending on how attractive the soccer fixtures prove, and players feel the additional revenue makes it now possible for them to receive a cut.

It's not of itself a hectic argument. Leaving aside the pros and cons of the pay-for-play issue, either the GPA believe in it or they don't, and the fact that Damien Duff and Brian O'Driscoll will share the same pitch as Stephen O'Neill and Seán Ó hAilpín shouldn't influence the issue any more than it did when Bono played Croke Park a week before the Leinster hurling final.

Even on the practical side of increased revenue streams, the GPA doesn't appear to place much weight on the temporary nature of the deal with the FAI and IRFU.

On the other side of the coin, officialdom wouldn't want to reproach itself too much over having opened a Pandora's box by allowing professional sports organisations to rent the stadium. The drive for player remuneration has been well under way since the Amateur Status report of 1997 even if it was until recently an underground rumble rather than an overt demand.

The GAA is well down the road of concessions and no other sports (cycling, athletics, rugby) have been able to draw the line this side of semi-professionalism. Maybe Gaelic games will be different but if they're not, it won't be because the Irish rugby team played France at Croke Park.

This week's developments do, however, have implications for the GAA, some good and some indeterminate at this stage. The suggested revenue of between €6.25 million and €10 million should be regarded positively. To put it in context, the most recent figures for Croke Park Teoranta, the stadium holding company, show an operating surplus for the whole of 2004 of €12,995,100. The projections for 2007 show the GAA taking in between 50 and 75 per cent of that for just five matches.

In fact the main financial gambler in this is the FAI, who are now committed to expenditure of over €1 million for matches against opposition the identity of which won't be known for another week.

The new seedings for the Uefa championships mean Ireland could be in a box-office group with France, Italy and Denmark but equally could suffer the east European meltdown so feared by National League clubs and end up hosting the Czech Republic, Romania and Ukraine.

Conversely the IRFU know they can sell out their scheduled France and England matches. But for both organisations there are major revenue advantages in the additional seating and the availability of a corporate level.

But this potential revenue for its rival organisations doesn't necessarily confer even a short-term disadvantage on the GAA. The association is believed to have negotiated a percentage of the corporate packages and anyway, the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff would have provided similar facilities at a cheaper price with the likelihood that attendances would have held up for the two years in question. In other words the FAI and IRFU would have made comparable revenue, with the fans bearing the brunt of relocation.

Obviously this wouldn't have been a long-term option but the question now, for the GAA as well, is what happens after 2008? The permission for rugby and soccer to be played at Croke Park is explicitly for the duration of the Lansdowne Road redevelopment, scheduled to be complete by 2009.

As has been frequently noted the planning process is by no means guaranteed to conclude within the allotted timeframe and the GAA has tacitly accepted this by interpreting "the closure of Lansdowne Road for proposed development" from Sligo's successful motion to last year's congress as including the period during which planning permission is being processed.

There is a common assumption that the transition from temporary accommodation to permanent will be merely a matter of course. That's not necessarily the case.

Aside from nasty but outside possibilities - like drawing England and having Combat 18 jeering the dead of Bloody Sunday before wrecking Drumcondra - there is the prospect of the arrangement going too well for the GAA's liking.

There remains the apprehension already mentioned that their rival organisations will be rolling to the bank with deposits obligingly placed at their disposal by the GAA themselves.

Within the organisation there is already considerable annoyance at how the government is seen to have underwritten the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road whereas it only swung substantially behind Croke Park when the project was well under way.

There is also what is being referred to as the settling of the "principle argument" - the fact that by extending their facilities to rugby and soccer when the two sports were homeless, the GAA disproved the allegation that objections to the accommodation were driven by dogma.

This would enable Croke Park to revert to the exclusive use of the GAA without recrimination once the new stadium was open for business.

Maybe the assumptions underlying this potential outcome are naïve, not least because it's based on the smooth progress of the Lansdowne Road project, but the indefinite extension of this week's arrangements are not a formality.

The biggest headache for the GAA is what to do if the IRFU and FAI fail to secure approval from the planning authorities. That would trigger the end of the arrangement but it would hardly be an easy decision to send rugby and soccer internationals back to a decrepit Lansdowne Road.

There is a fear among those GAA members already jittery about the whole enterprise that their tenants could become quite comfortable on their hefty gate receipts and lack the incentive to see their own stadium completed.

Yet the positives of the past week remain compelling for the GAA. Whatever the precise progress of the Lansdowne Road development, the sporting infrastructure requires a smaller stadium, which will certainly be built, and in the meantime Croke Park is generating a good income out of the difficulties of its rivals.

Reservations are also being soothed by the relentless hype attending the opening up of the stadium. Each step of the way has been greeted by massive media coverage: last year's congress decision, the endorsement by Central Council (which was hardly going to refuse to give expression to a decision of congress) and now this week's nailing down of the detail.

There'll be more: before the first match, before England arrive for the Six Nations and before the first soccer match. But as each wave of publicity crashes on the shore, it does so with less force and in a couple of years all the current concerns may well appear overly anxious.