DUBLIN GAELIC GAMES DEVELOPMENT: Dublin's county board and the clubs within its jurisdiction will have to decide whether resources should be focused on immediate intercounty success or a long-term participation policy, writes Tom Humphries

THAT DUSTING of snow which sent us two solid weeks of bank holiday paralysis means that January is half spent and the hibernation period for intercounty GAA is just coming to a close. Of course, wink wink, no intercounty team indulged in any sort of collective training before the Christmas period, it was just them ghosts that did linger.

This weekend sees the belated start to that dawning we might call intercounty lite. Those fumbling, half-reported games which mean nothing to those men who have been shaving for a few years but which make or break the careers of younger players getting their first break into sides.

It’s the time of year when managers whose teams are in “transition” showcase just how serious they are about transition. The Dublin footballers and the Cork hurlers, for instance, field sides this weekend who have trouble identifying each other.

The big guns stay home and watch Super Soccer Sunday. As Darragh Ó Sé used to say the more games you miss in the spring the better they remember you as being until finally you become the answer to all the ills of the world.

In Croke Park, though it will never be explicitly conceded, a close eye will be kept on the progress of Dublin’s footballers who, despite their lack of national success stretching back over a decade and a half now, remain not just a significant cash cow for the association but bring a glamour and mass popularity which the games would sorely miss if the capital were to become a GAA backwater again.

The Dubs step out tomorrow in the drafty precinct of Parnell Park against a Wexford side who were the soup du jourthe jour before last but have since drifted into obscurity. It's a frightening precedent. On February 15th the Dublin County Board and Croke Park will sit down to a strategy day and see how everybody who wants a slice of the pie ends up with a slice.

When Liam Mulvihill departed the office of Ard Stiúrthóir Pat Gilroy was among the final three interviewed as a replacement. Instead the job he has ended up doing for nothing is of more strategic importance than anything else within the GAA for the next year or two. And the crux he faces is an improbably difficult one.

The Dublin team of the last few years has achieved a recognition factor beyond the realm of their achievements and faced with exit margins in the championship of 12 points and 17 points the case for radical overhaul is just about irresistible. Last summer’s thumping had the emphatic effect of a punctuation mark putting an end to one era. Dublin start with a blank page in Parnell Park tomorrow. That bravery will have to survive the demands that better weather brings.

Logically this summer it would be better to be a Kildare fan than a Dublin fan. In Kildare the trajectory is clearly up while in Dublin the terrain ahead is unknowable. Gilroy needs the luxury of not winning Leinster and instead taking a young team on a decent run through the qualifiers. He needs a good league this year and next year. From the Hill, though, the only acceptable reason for not winning a provincial title is to set oneself up to win an All-Ireland title later in the same year.

For Dublin, though, long-term, incremental development may have to be what is settled for.

That will be a hard sell. It is tedious certainly for people from the 31 other counties to hear the GAA needs Dublin and it is difficult for the casual Dublin GAA supporter to accept that the county team may have to take a step backward before it moves forward again. There is a broader GAA environment in the city which has equal claim at least on limited resources.

Dublin’s time in the light rough of provincial respectability but off the fairways of national irrelevance has coincided almost entirely with a time of prosperity for the GAA and the nation as a whole.

The county hasn’t reached an All-Ireland final since 1995 (a win in the Dubs’ third final appearance in four years) and to all but the most diehard of supporters the drip feed of provincial wins since then has begun to conspicuously lack nutritional value.

The wash of money and the refurbishment of Croke Park which have allowed Dublin’s championship games to retain a sort of event status which brings, hype, excitement, high attendances and good media coverage is starting to dry up, however.

As the famine stretches into record breaking territory the fascination with being beautiful losers is beginning to pall. The competition for the hearts and minds of young athletes has never been more intense. Suddenly there is less of everything and a need for more of everything.

And Dublin as a county has to take some harsh decisions.

The games in the city face into a different competitive and economic environment now. On the latter point Dublin did well to replace the long running connection with Arnott’s with a highly visible and lucrative deal with Vodafone but the €6 million coming in over the next six years won’t provide any change at all after the county teams in football and hurling are trained and provided for. The hurlers this year are off to La Manga for a training camp and exist in a post-apartheid era where they are treated as equals by the county board when it comes to funding.

Sponsorship etc will leave the flagship teams paid for but the remainder of the county needs tending in different ways.

The nature of the games are changing fast in Dublin. Traditionally the GAA has never really offered anything for or catered for the casual social player who just likes to keep fit and play with his friends. But the success of underage drives and the development of bigger clubs has meant clubs fielding up to five adult teams in football and in hurling, laying a huge stress on facilities just in terms of matches and training for adult teams. Below that, entire juvenile sections catering for boys and girls in each sport have to be looked after as well.

That costs money. Participation costs. In a county with serious hurling ambitions as well as a demanding football constituency the sheer cost of keeping all the balls in the air is staggering. The county board hopes to avoid any significant cut backs in the number of GPOs which it sends into schools and clubs to promote the games and improve the general standard of coaching.

“I think long term we would cut a number of things, training budgets, some development schemes before we would allow cuts to the GPO system,” says Kevin O’Shaughnessy, the county board’s strategic development manager, “that’s the future, the interface with the customer.”

So Dublin may have to choose. Intercounty success or a participation policy. Which is more in line with the aims of the association? Does one depend on the other? Can Dublin afford to take the risk of finding out? Can they afford not to?

That inevitably will mean that cutbacks will have to be made in other programmes and initiatives. Even that sort of snipping won’t cure the facilities problem. The solution as suggested by John Costello in his report to the county board before Christmas may be the purchase of cheap lands from Nama over the next few years but the near northside of the city is already dense with GAA clubs and even if the funds were available it is difficult to identify any suitable tracts of land for clubs in the area to develop.

So resurfacing with better quality grass pitches and the proliferation of all-weather pitches is a priority. After the floodlights boom, the hurling wall craze came and went. Clubs are now prioritising the development of all weather facilities to help them cope with numbers and the inclemencies of Irish weather. Ballymun were first up and running but now St Brigid’s, Lucan, Thomas Davis, Ballyboden, and UCD all offer fully artificial surfaces, while many clubs have added in smaller all-weather training areas to take the pressure off their grass pitches.

Craobh Chiarán have made a largely successful move to Clonshaugh while retaining their Donnycarney membership, O’Toole’s have long since moved from Seville Place, the rest of the northside of the city is an intricate patchwork of clubs and border lines before you hit what should be the bigger empires that lie further north, Naomh Mearnóg, St Sylvester’s, Fingallians etc.

On the south of the city the landscape is different, massive powerhouse clubs draw from huge tracts of population, and while facilities are less of a pressure point high participation numbers mean there is constant stress on pitches as well.

“We have to think outside the box a bit” says O’Shaughnessy. “A GAA pitch is expensive for a local authority. Compared to a soccer pitch the cost is enormous. If you manage scarce resources in a council you will probably get three, maybe four soccer pitches for the price of two GAA pitches. What we are going to have to do is do deals which will maximise use of pitches, get in and show the value to the community and make it in everybody’s interest.”

This all means altering the pressure points. The progressive Clontarf club is an example often pointed to by those working on the ground in Parnell Park. Membership in Clontarf has mushroomed in recent years despite the overcrowding of clubs in the area. Clontarf would compete for players with Raheny, St Vincent’s, Scoil Uí Chonall and Craobh Chiarán, yet membership has swollen to almost 1,500 in the last decade.

The challenge of that success as opposed to the sort which brings trophies is infrastructural. Clontarf started by upgrading their old pitch in Seafield road to a floodlit all-weather training facility, funding the project out of the club’s own resources as an investment in the future.

More interestingly, three years ago the club entered into partnership with Dublin City Council to develop the pitches upon which they had a long-term tenancy agreements in St Anne’s Park.

The relationship between the city council and the clubs which use the city council pitches has for a long time been unnecessarily complex, with clubs being told when their pitches are playable and when they aren’t playable, and being dependent on the city council for all maintenance.

Clontarf entered into a partnership and have developed two all-weather natural grass fields with floodlights, proper dressingrooms and an ambience which brings a proper club feel to what was previously a windswept end of a public park. A members covenant generated one third the €1.5 million cost.

Clontarf through sheer length of vision have built for the future. Short term a smaller club could have poured its resources into winning silverware. Instead Clontarf decided to serve the aim of participation and to fulfil community obligations. Silverware will come.

What happened in Clontarf mirrors the challenges facing Dublin. You can have participation without success. It is doubtful if you can have success without participation. The ideal for the GAA is to have both, the cake and the eating of it.

In that regard Dublin is going to need as much support and nurturing as ever in the next few years.