GAA delegates all over Ireland must have packed their cases and polished their brogues with the hangdog expressions of condemned men last night.

As a famous Corkman once observed, nobody wanted this.

There was a time when the annual gathering of the clans, a ritual known as Congress, was regarded as a mysterious and complex GAA tradition best left alone. In the good old days, nobody cared less what the GAA did or did not put on its clár for debate. During the quiet years of the 1970s they might well have spent the weekend voting on the hottest of Charlie's Angels and nobody would have been any the wiser (the story goes that Cork prevented a Jaclyn Smith landslide with a technicality).

Those happy years of anonymity suited the GAA's delegates just fine. Of all the GAA creatures, the delegates are traditionally the most humble and selfless. They never minded that the crowd did not cheer for them. They never felt jealous or poorly treated because there was no such invention as the Delegates All Stars, with fancy banquets and singing and maybe an exotic trip to the EEC headquarters in Brussels.

Cars never joined in cavalcade to beep the night away in the town of the delegate who pushed a motion through at Congress. Rare indeed is the delegate who has been carried shoulder high to the village pub, the crowd singing, "We bate them with our motion in the end." No, the delegates were never in it for the glory. Let the county men have the wine and the women. They were happy to devise an effective method of administration and to study the legal and technical minefield that is the association's rule book.

It takes a special sort of individual to dedicate a life to grappling with the dos and don'ts that bind the association together, Lord. They all said Bobby Fischer went crazy over an obsession with chess. But in GAA circles, there is a theory that poor Fischer was browsing through a second-hand store in Greenwich Village and came across a dog-eared copy of the GAA Rule Book left behind by Eoin "The Bomber" Liston during one of Kerry's whistle-stop tours of the world. Intrigued by the explosive guide he discovered, Fischer inevitably mistook the copy for a chess manual and slowly drove himself demented by trying to apply the laws of Rule 21 to his favourite kingside manoeuvre with bishop and knight against the French defence.

In many ways, Congress strongly resembled those mass meetings of chess masters that were so in vogue back in the 1970s, with pale, solemn types gathering in a smoky room in some city hotel to talk in hushed tones about rules, clauses and the chances of getting into the Pink Elephant.

Congress was the only perk the delegates called upon in all their years of sifting through mountains of paper work. It was not perhaps as nakedly glorious as starring in an All-Ireland final but the concise and legally flawless drafting of a motion could guarantee a man certain coy and admiring glances, eyelashes fluttering. So what if the flutterer was Frank Murphy?

In the good old days, Congress meant a few jars and a sing-song in Barry's on Friday night, a hearty fry in the morning and then a long, satisfying day of inserting and removing rules that were generally ignored on the field of play anyway. Generally, the delegates were back home in time for the Sunday roast.

Over the years, though, that has begun to change and like the Amish community, Congress has felt the prying eyes of the outside world fixating on their little ways.

It has to be said the way of life for the delegate changed forever back in 2001 when the long-standing, and often much-loved, Rule 42 was up for a bit of an inspection. It was a dark day indeed that the simple fact of a few delegates feeling the need to attend the bathroom at a given moment became the butt of such derision. It was all very well for the newspapers to get smart about it and make sly suggestions that the delegates had, in fact, avoided voting on good old 42 by cowering inside the cubicles of the jacks. It was a slur that enraged the delegates then and continues to enrage them now.

There was, of course, no point in explaining to the newspapers that having enjoyed a Charlie Landsborough concert the night before, several of the delegates made the mistake of stopping by a local Chinese takeaway for a late-night treat.

As a kind of private joke (the delegates' capacity for humour is often overlooked) they all ordered a number 42 with fried rice. It just so happened that the chemical reaction of that delicious kung-po prawn concoction to the dozen or so pints of stout swallowed earlier was reaching critical mass at the very moment the vote on the clár was about to be taken.

Many delegates moved through the Congress room with an urgent, light step their comrades had not seen since their long-forgotten and ill-fated under-21 days. As one of the stricken delegates noted ironically afterwards, they all got rid of 42 in a more stressful way than they would ever be given credit for.

Since then, the public perception of Congress has changed. The airwaves have been filled with nothing but discussions on the ways of Congress as the public became more and more fascinated with this clandestine, powerful and even sexy group of GAA shakers and movers. Today's gathering at Croke Park is bound to attract maximum interest and has the feel of the denouement of a Martin Scorsese epic. The delegates are made men. It will be no surprise if the various counties arrive at Croke Park today in stretch limousines, Prada shades hiding the murder in their eyes as they kiss other delegates on the cheek.

For this is the day of days for all GAA delegates. Not since the era of Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins has the country been so divided on a single issue. GAA delegates head in to vote today under no illusion - the future of the country rests upon their shoulders. Who can guess at the internal conflicts that are ripping their very souls apart? Vote to keep Rule 42 and they will stand accused of plunging dear old Éire back into the dark ages, with hedge schools and faction fights and great Eurovision songs. Vote Yes and before they can sing the first verse of Rule Britannia, their daughter will have shacked up with Lee Bowyer.

After the vote there will be television interviews to conduct and VIP passes into Lillies to be activated. There will be autographs to sign and autobiographies to pen. Rule 42: My Hell is known to be the provisional title for the life stories of at least 10 delegates.

In years to come, they will build bronze statues in the honour of the brave delegates of the year twenty-hundred-and-five. But their valour cannot be measured now. As the saying goes, they signed their death warrant today, Kitty.