The most depressing aspect of the past seven days has been the reversion to peasant sleeveenism of those old accomplices, Fianna Fail and the GAA. Like a pair of native rogues codding the Anglo folk in an episode from Somerville and Ross, they have made us endure the hammy lines of a pair of clumsy chancers.
When it was announced at GAA Congress in the Burlington last Friday night that the Government had given £60 million to the GAA in order to take a few games away from Croke Park, that was all the signalling that was needed. The following day, 43 delegates abstained on the biggest motion of the weekend. One leading exclusionist stood up and said quietly that not wanting to embarrass the Government was a good reason to vote No. Three past presidents of the association spoke against the Roscommon motion. Peter Quinn, the past president who had first floated the possibility of Croke Park's expanded usage, spoke not at all. A probable future president left the hall on personal business as the vote was about to be taken.
They added a touch of Florida politics and a dash of Tammany Hall. The decision was made by a show of hands, a recount was asked for, a recount was denied. The trustees who counted the votes are evidently unimpeachable. Yet when the presidential election comes around next year, independent auditors will be used to count the votes. So almost everyone went away whistling. The Government announced that it was "disappointed" the GAA wasn't offering a home to the very sports the Government is so keen to offer a home to. The GAA announced that, well heck, it was close, and expressed bafflement at all the fuss. Both sides knew the vote had given Bertie Ahern a year with which to have his colossal vanity project set into contractual concrete. By midweek the heat hadn't quite gone away. Ahern, in best Flurry Knox mode, was telling people that, having failed to interest the GAA in the thin end of what they perceived to be a wedge, his main concern all along had been getting them to consume the whole wedge and share not just Croke Park but all their grounds. This is an insult to the intelligence of taxpayers.
Ahern knows that this will never happen (local GAA facilities have not just been built on sweat and blood and tears, but are overused as they stand), but it is a nice stick with which to muddy the waters.
In reality, Ahern, who made his grant to the FAI conditional on them abandoning Eircom Park and made his grant to the GAA conditional on them bringing fixtures to the BertieBowl, didn't attach any other conditions because he didn't want to. It would have been wrong to coerce the GAA into ground-sharing, but there were ways of leaving them to their own devices. He could have pushed the GAA a certain way by asking that, in all propriety, the announcement of the £60 million be delayed till after the vote. Instead, he gave a nod and a wink to the backwoodsmen.
We need only examine the case of the Dublin vote to be assured that the Taoiseach got his way. The Dublin County Board had a meeting on the Monday night before Congress. The use to which Croke Park was to be put didn't figure largely in the discussions, but a board member raised it briefly late in the night. Some of the problems inherent with the motion were immediately evident when Finbarr Donovan, a Corkman attached to the St Brigid's club, raised the matter. Donovan was surprised to find that one of the main voices suggesting the thin end of the wedge scenario was coming from a club colleague of his. It wasn't exactly brother against brother, but still . . .
Most of the speakers had questions about the financial implications of renting out Croke Park. It became clear a large majority of Dublin clubs were in favour of transforming Croke Park from a drain on vital resources into an asset. It was agreed informally that the 11 Dublin delegates would support the Roscommon motion.
Most of the Dublin delegates met again on Tuesday, the following night, and in a run through the motions once again agreed to support the Roscommon motion. That was how matters rested until Friday night at the Burlington, when the GAA announced that it had struck a gusher.
The following morning the nature of the Dublin vote had changed radically. From being 11-0 in favour, the vote had become 7-4 in favour - a swing of eight votes. Con Roche, Sean O'Mahoney, Noel Murphy and an Under-21 delegate from the Erins Isle club all voted No.
There were cracks in the Limerick and Galway delegations also. The top table spent the longest time totting up the votes, and while the addition was being done the feeling went around the hall that this was going to be one of those absurd, Kafkaesque GAA moments. So it proved.
In the aftermath, the peculiarly cackhanded opportunism exhibited by the Progressive Democrats missed the point as it conveniently rode the wave of festering resentments which the GAA decision stirred up. The junior Government party continued to keep quiet about the proposed £1 billion being expended on the BertieBowl, despite complaints from the Department of Finance that the manner in which the Cabinet had approved the project had been a breach of procedures. As it stands, it is virtually impossible to get an accurate figure on the costing of one of the biggest capital projects ever undertaken by the State, let alone a decent rationale for proceeding with it.
A Government presided over by a man who once boasted happily of his abilities to consume a gallon of Bass without impairment now speaks out of the corner of its mouth about drink culture in this country and the possibility of removing drinks sponsorship from sporting events. A billion pounds would build a lot of leisure centres in a lot of towns as an alternative to drink culture. A billion pounds, if spent wisely, could actually inject some life into that jaded catchphrase "sport for all".
That's the Government's business, though, and even if the PDs did pile in for the kicking, what happened at GAA Congress last weekend was almost unique among the litany of self-inflicted wounds which the association has administered to itself in the last decade or so. For once the GAA had arrived at a junction when the interests of the association precisely met those of the society it exists in. It was a time for graciousness and pragmatism. Both were spurned.
Instead, the decision taken grows more absurd the more it is examined. If the Government is convinced (rightly) that it would be wrong to coerce an amateur body like the GAA into opening up its ground to rival professional sports, but is at the same time disappointed that it declines to do so, why dangle a £60 million solution on the eve of Congress? Why add to the costs of the great white elephant of Abbotstown by purchasing events with which to fill the thing? Those who study the economics of stadiums have long since noted that as businesses they are only productive when they make sports an export industry, i.e., if they attract outsiders, or if they prompt the sale of new rights in terms of broadcasting and merchandising. Stadium Ireland so precisely lacks what a major stadium needs for viability that it seems like a criminal misuse of funds.
Most of what will be spent in Stadium Ireland, on the rare occasions when it is full, is money which would have been spent anyway. Just less of it. The profit derived from GAA games played there will inevitably trickle down into the pockets of the Government's private sector partners in the business, rather than into the clubs and schools which built the GAA. Bertie Ahern should go and take a look at Toronto's ailing Skydome facility before he goes any further. In a city of 3.5 million people, with a professional baseball franchise which plays 81 Major League home games a year, and with a serious Olympic bid behind them and a serious Olympic bid ahead of them, Toronto's 12year-old dome is a disaster.
The cost overruns which are inevitable with such a project led to the dome costing $600 million instead of the planned $150 million. After five years, private interests had to bail the government out.
So take a look at Toronto, or take a look even at the model for Abbotstown, Homebush Bay in Sydney. A suburban ghost town, struggling for viability. Virtually none of the reliable revenue generators which a major stadium should have are present in Stadium Ireland. There are insufficient events there to attract big deals from food, beverage and merchandising concessions or car-parking operations. The infrastructure for Abbotstown in terms of the road network is disastrous. Imagine regular Wednesday evening traffic on the M50 with another 14,000 cars (the Government estimate) added in heading to a soccer international. The facility merely replicates another one several miles away and brings nothing new in terms of franchise teams, historic resonance or a niche capacity.
Nor will the BertieBowl contribute an iota to urban development. Stadiums work best when set centrally in a pedestrian friendly environment near restaurants, bars, hotels, parks, shops, etc. Visitors and fans spend more money, bring more life, and have a better quality of experience. The only modern rationale for the remote location of stadiums is to maximise parking and concession revenues. The BertieBowl doesn't have a fixture list strong enough for that. Ideally, Croke Park should be open for business now, and realistically such business would be minimal. Most international rugby games would fit into a 50,000-seat stadium if the Government had a mind to build one. Ditto almost all Irish soccer fixtures. At most, Croke Park would be asked - at its convenience and usually out of season - to hold three or four extra fixtures a year. It would still have its £60 million. It would have cauterised a cash haemorrhage and turned it into a money-maker.
For this it would reap goodwill and positive exposure. Last week's decision brought opprobrium, division, a loss of income and credibility and, one assumes, a slew of questions from box holders bemused to see the GAA agreeing to strip fixtures out of Croke Park. Last weekend was a chance lost amidst a welter of embarrassing cutery and poor leadership. All week it has been easier to get Beverly Cooper-Flynn to see the funny side of lawyer jokes than it has been to get a figure of any weight in the GAA to come to the telephone. The GAA should expect more of itself, even if nobody else does. As for the man they went so willingly into cahoots with? Well, the populace may hiss, but when Bertie contemplates his Bowl, well, Bertie applauds himself.
