For GAA director general Páraic Duffy, implementing the association’s Strategic Plan would be the perfect 125 celebration

IN A way the GAA might wish that Michael Cusack and his colleagues had held their meeting a few weeks earlier. A foundation date of mid to late September would better fit in with the natural rhythms of the season, as they were to develop.

Anyway, they didn’t so the GAA has to shut down its ceremonial years, when they arise, in the gathering bleakness of winter’s onset. Those who felt the wind-down of this year’s 125 celebrations in Thurles on Sunday was a bit low-key would do well to think back to this month 25 years ago.

As one of the 4,363 who were present in Croke Park on November 25th, 1984 for the formal closing of Centenary Year, I can still remember the biting cold at half-time during the Dublin-Offaly NFL Division Two fixture. On to the field marched a few dozen kids carrying an assemblage of flags, representing the counties, provinces, et cetera.

During an interval that far exceeded the time laid down in the association’s match regulations – a contemporary account has it at 20 minutes – the children turned blue, with many of them having to spend Advent in a hot press to be right for Christmas.

At one stage the valedictory oráid of the then president played out to an audibly growing and irascible chant from the Hill: “Paddy Buggy is a w ****r, Paddy Buggy is a w**** r. Na naah na naah.” Buggy, who had a distinguished record of service to the GAA both as a popular and far-sighted administrator and also as an All-Ireland winning hurler with Kilkenny in the 1950s, looked as if his well-attested affability was being stretched to the limit by thoughts of what he might care to do to whoever had organised this indignity.

By such standards Thurles last Sunday was a triumph of tasteful understatement. But how will the 125 be judged in future? Centenary Year after all, despite its conclusion, is remembered as a time of great renewal within the GAA.

Then director general Liam Mulvihill recalled 20 years later how he had fretted over a debt of around £1 million that had been necessary to fund the centenary project of building the former GAA headquarters, Áras Daimhín, behind the old Hogan Stand.

There was also a wave of club developments and cultural activity, principally the publication of local histories, throughout 1984.

It hardly seems like 10 months since the whole 125 jamboree took off with the risibly realised Late Late Show"dedicated" to the association. Even though the anniversary picked up with the fireworks and Dublin-Tyrone at a packed Croke Park at the end of January, the GAA was keeping it in perspective.

“I certainly would not be in favour of over-celebrating,” said director general Páraic Duffy at the time. “One-two-five is a landmark but it’s not the same as the centenary.

“Its importance should not be over-emphasised. The value I see in it is it’s an opportunity to evaluate where you are – and this ties in with the launch of the strategic plan (at the end of 2008) – and set new goals.

“But I would have a concern that you could very easily spend the year saying what a great organisation you are. It’s important to respect the role of the GAA in Irish life and all of that but there’s a danger that could be overdone and you end up with a back-slapping session. For me, implementing the 2009 targets of the plan would be the perfect 125.”

So far, the targets are being met, with two provincial plans (Ulster and Munster) complete and Leinster and Connacht due by the end of the year. The county plans have been slower but 20 will have been completed by the end of the year with the remainder due early in 2010.

Croke Park is “very happy” with progress to date and impressed with the extent to which the planning culture is being embraced around the country in the various units of the GAA. It could be the economic downturn has concentrated minds and brought home the importance of planning for the future but the response has been good, with, for instance, 150 and 175 attending meetings in Carlow and Offaly, respectively, to expedite the project.

Finances nationally in the face of the worst economic climate in decades have held up well. Attendances have risen slightly and even if the various discounts made available to stimulate interest have meant a slight fall in revenue that’s not bad during a deflationary cycle.

Croke Park continues to generate substantial revenue and may even top last year’s profitability figures even if the failure of the AFL to fulfil the scheduled international rules series has meant a loss of one full house – albeit one that because of ticket reductions wouldn’t earn as much as other capacity events.

The rugby and soccer business may be coming to an end next spring but the accumulated fighting fund of nearly €40,000,000 from four years of hosting the FAI and IRFU will be a useful kitty for the National Infrastructure Committee to initiate capital projects in an environment when public funding for such ventures has completely dried up (at an estimated cost this year of €30,000,000) and also at a time when building costs have tumbled.

Although relieved that finances are so relatively buoyant, the Croke Park secretariat is apprehensive that with the recession projected to continue if not intensify next year and next month’s Budget expected to take more money out of circulation, discretionary spending by members and the wider public may be further depressed in 2010.

Furthermore, the growth in Croke Park stadium revenue will be affected not just in the absence of soccer and rugby internationals but with the presence of a competing venue across the city in the redeveloped Lansdowne Road.

All in all, however, it’s not a bad picture after a year that came in amidst so many – largely fulfilled – apprehensions. There are major challenges ahead. Socially, the cost of unemployment and emigration is already evident and will have to impact on the GAA at local club levels.

But in a way, meeting challenges has provided the engine for the GAA’s growth over 125 years.