Can it really be only three years since the then president of the GAA, Joe McDonagh, had to abandon plans to force through the abolition of Rule 21 in the face of implacable opposition from a rump of Ulster counties? Was it actually as recently as 1998 that those same Northern counties could use their position and influence to cast a dominant hand over the entire shape of GAA policy? How things change and how they resolutely refuse to remain the same.
One of the most striking elements of the gathering debate in advance of next weekend's GAA annual Congress and the proposed rule changes with regard to the use of Croke Park is the muted nature of those same Northern voices. Of course the odd county secretary or chairman from Ulster has been mentioned in dispatches but it is fascinating to see that they are no longer regarded as holding the casting votes. That is the true mark of the GAA's modern evolution.
It was all dramatically different as Joe McDonagh tried to seize the initiative in the aftermath of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and move on Rule 21. The president's intentions were nothing other than laudable but he misjudged the Northern mood. GAA officials from outside Ulster regarded the Agreement in much the same way as almost everyone else in the Republic - an unequivocally good thing that could not fail to deliver the North into the land of milk and honey.
Within the Ulster counties the view was a little more phlegmatic. Many of those who held positions of influence had seen their fair share of false dawns and had lived through enough negative experiences to be a little sceptical at the prospect of genuine change. Their none too subtle message to Joe McDonagh in the spring of 1998 was that they would not be party to the dismantling of Rule 21. Far better, they reasoned, to let things take their course for a while and then reassess the situation later. Hence the commitment to jettison Rule 21 when "effective steps" had been taken to implement the police reforms of the 1998 Agreement. It may have been a fudge, but it worked.
Three years later those police reforms are still limping towards some sort of conclusion but the overall landscape has changed dramatically. As one year of generalised peace follows another there are increasingly reasonable grounds for believing that the very worst days are part of the past. That in turn makes it more tenable to look tentatively towards the future.
And as the political situation here continues to cast a less dominating shadow over GAA life on the island as a whole, it is inevitable that the Ulster influence should wane a little. When the violence was at its height here it is impossible to imagine that the debate taking place just now about playing rugby and possibly even soccer at Croke Park and other GAA grounds would have been countenanced. The vagaries of the political situation would quite simply not have allowed it and any voices raised in favour of change would have summarily ignored.
But as normality has edged in bit by bit since the ceasefires and then the Good Friday Agreement, attitudes have softened a little around the edges. There is a new pragmatism to the way life is lived here now and that has in turn had an effect on some of the implacable GAA attitudes of old.
THE most incredible thing as Congress approaches is the way in which so many GAA people seem to have developed an awareness of the bottom line. Could that really have been an Antrim official in one of last Sunday's papers saying that "when we hear stories of the size of the Croke Park debt we get frightened"? It is obvious that the spiraling costs of the great Croke Park project have made many of those same GAA people a little jittery. The old notion of self-reliance has taken them so far but it is becoming increasingly apparent that with Croke Park there is first of all going to be a shortfall and, second, considerable annual running costs to be met.
That the GAA, an amateur sporting organisation after all, has travelled so far and has a modern city centre stadium well on the way to completion is a fantastic achievement. And if you're not sure about that take a quick glance across at what exactly the IRFU and the FAI have to show off. That the GAA is now seriously looking at ways in which its Croke Park project can now be finished without being yoked to a crippling debt for decades to come can only be a source of wonderment to those of us who have cast a critical eye over years of inactivity.
The new possibilities this opens up are endless. Could we really be facing a future where public relations disasters like the refusal to allow the playing of the fundraising soccer games for the Omagh Bomb appeal on its ground are a thing of the past? Will we be able to point proudly to the GAA as an example of everything a modern, outward looking and self-confident sporting organisation should be? Is it possible that much of the old scepticism and plain, old-fashioned anti-GAA feeling could be consigned to history? Those are the high stakes the delegates at Congress will be playing with next weekend.
With the two-thirds majority that is required, none of this can be guaranteed. The long drawn out Rule 21 saga proves that when it comes to GAA rule changes you don't always get there first time around. But if it doesn't happen now, it surely will at some point in the near future.
Make no mistake, this is progress and significant progress at that. Many of the old partitionist elements of the GAA are melting away to be replaced by structures that genuinely include opinions from all sides and place them on an equal ideological footing. Regardless of what happens at Congress next weekend we are moving in the right direction. Ulster has moved far beyond just saying no.
