Sideline Cut:So, the revolution will not be televised - even on TV3. The prospect of a spring freeze-out of the new GAA season has been averted, with a perfectly timed announcement affirming that, as Captain George immortally put it in Blackadder, "the big knobs have finally gotten around the table and yanked the iron out of the fire". There will be no strike by the top players in Gaelic games.
The agreement between the Gaelic Players Association and the GAA and our august men of Government could not have come at a more felicitous time. On Thursday, the crème de la crème of the nation's hurlers jetted off for the All Star break to New York City, where they will mingle with the top brass of the GAA and generally have a well deserved knees-up. It would have been a bloody awkward state of affairs had they not sorted this thing out. You can imagine the scenes for the cheery "Gaels in Manhattan" photographs at the Bethesda Fountain or an impromptu spot of hurling on the Rockefeller ice-rink.
Think of the sheer awkwardness if, for speculation's sake, Nicky Brennan and his Croke Park associates were strolling through the Guggenheim and banged into a bunch of GPA lads at the Jackson Pollock section, two tribes of the same brotherhood staring at a bewildering riot of colours and neither side willing to admit that, on the whole, they would rather head to Rosie O'Grady's. The ferocity of the silence would cause extreme discomfort to other tourists.
Think of the awkward small talk between Páraic Duffy and Donal Óg if they happened to be queueing together in the Starbucks in Times Square. Or imagine if the group headed along to see the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden to see a bunch of basketball players who earn tens of millions of dollars per year for being truly terrible at what they do. The Knicks are deplorable and yet their heroes saunter into the most famous indoor sports theatre in the world, stand for their anthem, go through their nonchalant warm-up, generally lose, change into their Armani suits and jewellery and motor into the ether of the city that never sleeps without a care in the world. Because either way a big fat pay cheque will arrive.
The New York Knicks' universe is the antithesis of what the GAA has traditionally meant. They are a world-famous sports team; they (theoretically) have the most-knowledgeable followers in the NBA; and they have a legacy; they have the biggest payroll in the league and a bone-fide local hero in Stephon Marbury, the point guard from the tearaway streets of Coney Island who used to stalk the Garden in his days as a teenage prodigy with dreams of one day leading the city team.
But the Knicks are lost. They have not won an NBA championship since 1973, and the way things are going another 30 years will pass before they bridge that gap. The Knicks will never become obsolete, because as a city attraction they are as permanent as the Statue of Liberty. And for the uninitiated, obtaining good seats to watch even a bad New York team means getting to see athletes of astonishing power and speed at first hand. But something intangible is missing. The whole spectacle - the lights, the music, the incessant huckstering, the incredible brightness - is such a fantasy it can be difficult to understand what, if anything, is at the heart of it all.
This is not to denigrate professional sport - other NBA teams can offer gripping, heartfelt games week in, week out. The Knicks, though, are an example of a big and once-proud sporting organisation trapped in a seemingly perpetual nightmare of playing merely to exist, to make money and to never feel too good or too bad about things.
Greed, vanity, shortsightedness, money, scandal, the marketing men, the agents, ego and ineptitude - all have contributed to the ongoing downfall of the Knicks club.
The magic of Gaelic games lies in the fact it has, for over a century, managed to ward off those very failings. You think of the GAA brass and Ireland's best hurlers munching the popcorn on the crushed-velvet seats in the Garden, taking in all the hoopla and manufactured energy, and thinking, "What we have is just as good."
But Gaelic sport is changing. Mark it. Those in charge of taking the GAA through the coming decades have started to think about it in a different way. It has become common to hear the championship, the games, being referred to as a "product". That is surely a term dreamed up decades ago in the boardrooms of Madison Square Garden. Now it is slipping into the GAA lexicon.
Perhaps it is dangerous to think of Gaelic games as a product. Maybe it is important to keep saying they are more of a miracle, based on a complex system dependent upon honour. Gaelic games have prospered because of the principle of honour - in every sense, the most obvious being the honour of getting to play for your county, of having your talent recognised in that way.
Things have gone crazy. The demands made on players have become foolish and nonsensical and there are mixed messages emanating from all quarters. Recently the Louth manager, Eamonn McEneaney, complained that imposing a rule whereby November and December would be free of challenge games would result in boys rushing off playing soccer to fill the void.
Surely, if exhaustion and burnout are as problematic as alleged, recreational soccer would be the last thing Gaelic games players would worry about?
On the radio recently, Mick O'Dwyer chuckled wryly as he spoke of the obsession with weights among players he had managed in recent years. The old fox strongly hinted it was a vanity issue as much as a football thing: a quest for the body beautiful.
Outside forces have crashed in on the pure, chaste world of the GAA and things have become mixed up. Of course, there must be change. The GPA represent what they see as the best interests of the players and good luck to them. The GAA are happy to roll with the new payment scheme, and hopefully this will lead to a new era of rapprochement.
The role of the Government has, in keeping with the tenor of their overall administration, been bereft of explanation or vision. The observation by Minister Séamus Brennan that "these are young people who give enormous amounts of time to sport and do so on a voluntary basis" prompts the question: so what? We all know long-distance runners who spend hours beating the roads in isolation and in all weathers. That is how they get their kicks. Is the Government going to reward them too?
Mickey Harte, the Tyrone manager, has surely been something of a hero in all of this, clear in his viewpoint and willing to speak out when it would have been easier to keep his mouth shut - and adamant that, strike or no strike, he would be picking 15 players to wear the Tyrone shirts. Mickey is no firebrand but he sees how ruinous and poisonous all this could become. Others may not have said as much but you can be certain they were thinking it.
It has been a close shave and the feeling here is a hardening of minds, on both sides, could kill for good whatever concoction of spirit and belief and - let us not forget - enjoyment has made Gaelic games what they have become at the elite level.
So, no strike for now and the GAA family can be happy together in the Big Apple.
And, hey, how about those Knicks?
