SIDELINE CUT:Seán Kelly, known as the man who opened up one famous Park, has joined the race for the big job in another Park, wrutes KEITH DUGGAN
IT SEEMS there is a concerted move afoot to install a bearded gentleman in the Áras. Added to the list of hirsute contenders jockeying for position with an eagerness that could be construed as un-presidential is Seán Kelly, Fine Gael MEP, former president of the GAA and popularly known as the Man Who Opened Croke Park.
On Sunday last, just a few hours before the All-Ireland football final, Kelly was asked about the idea of running for the Áras on the Marian Finucane show and he admitted he had begun to take the idea seriously.
He had tweeted on the subject days beforehand: “Now it is getting serious and so am I.”
Listening to Marian gently quiz the Kerry man on his presidential ambitions was like a refresher course in just how skilled Kelly is in the art of subtle persuasion.
The marketing men would probably call it product placement but in this case, Kelly himself is the product. And that radio conversation in turn brought to mind a conversation I had with a friend when the whole debate over Rule 42 was dominating the airwaves and headlines.
My friend was one of those banging the drum for not only keeping the gates of Croke Park shut but installing a very high tech security system whose security code would be known only by like-minded Gaels. As such, he was naturally suspicious of Seán Kelly and his motives for orchestrating the removal of Rule 42.
He said something so outlandish I never forgot it. “He’ll have his eye on the presidency some day.”
My friend has a gift for spotting things long before they appear on the horizon but he said this back in 2005.
Furthermore, he made the prediction in print that December when reviewing Seán Kelly’s biography in The Kilkenny Voice. Only Seán Kelly knows whether he entertained any such thoughts about the Áras five years ago but listening to the Finucane show I was forced to send my friend a text message admitting he had been proven right. I am always right, he confirmed by way of reply.
Seán Kelly will present a serious challenge to the other gentlemen of bearded splendour who are being tipped as front runners.
He is organised and efficient, formidably energetic and not only has he proven his ability to win votes in the European elections, he has the masterful knowledge of the latticework of local connections that make up the GAA in this country: there is no more powerful lobby group.
And – a prerequisite for any president – he can quote poetry and folk songs at the drop of a hat. But the big question concerns the extent Kelly will be able to rely on the support of “the association”. For even as Rule 42 was swept (temporarily) away in a wave of euphoria in April 2005, the extent to which Kelly was lionised for his role must have made some fellow Gaels uneasy. That Kelly believed in the principle of opening Croke Park is beyond doubt. As he outlines in his engaging memoir – Rule 42 And All That – he first mooted the idea in his Chairman’s Address to the Kerry County Convention in 1991. But there is a passage in that book concerning Rule 42 which leaps off the page.
It refers to the GAA Congress of 2001, when the Roscommon motion proposed by Tommy Kenoy was debated at Congress. It all seems so innocent now but you might recall that the night before that Congress, GAA president Seán McCague had announced that Bertie Ahern and the government had made a generous grant of €60 million (Those Were The Days, My Friends . . .) for the development of Croke Park.
In the immortal phrase of Tom Humphries, Ahern, still harbouring dreams of the Bertie Bowl, was “in best Flurry Knox mode” that weekend. Forty-three GAA delegates abstained from the vote and the two-thirds majority required failed by a single vote.
“As always in these closely run votes, there were some crucial voters missing, including myself,” Seán Kelly writes in Rule 42 . . .“I had attended Congress on Friday night but had to go home to Kerry early on Saturday morning for personal reasons. I informed the Kerry delegation of my dilemma and they willingly covered for me. I headed for Kerry at 6am and was back in Dublin again by Saturday evening but alas I was too late for the debate on Rule 42. If I had been present, I would not only have voted in favour but would have spoken in favour of the motion as well. I’d surely have swung one vote in the hall. Well, if I had, it would have saved me an awful lot of bother and hassle later on as president – and a good bit of fun too, may I add.”
Kelly’s reasons for returning to Kerry that day were undoubtedly important and genuine. But it was unfortunate he had to miss a vote on a matter he had advocated a decade earlier and he would purse with the kind of vigour reminiscent of Elliot Ness in the years ahead.
And it does make you wonder what his presidency and profile would be like had Rule 42 been removed that day.
In modern times, the two most contentious GAA rules were 21 and 42. Surely Rule 21 – which prevented members of the Northern Ireland security forces becoming members of the GAA – was the more important. Joe McDonagh was the architect of its deletion, calling for a special congress on the matter in April of 1998, when tensions in Northern Ireland were still high. The delegates baulked then but McDonagh’s courage in tackling and persevering with the issue ensured and hastened its removal some three years later, under the presidency of Seán McCague after the Monaghan man canvassed extensively for support in Ulster.
But neither ex-president is associated with the abolition of Rule 21 in the same way that Seán Kelly was and remains associated with the end of Rule 42.
The drama and swell of congratulations which surrounded the end of Rule 42 formed the centrepiece of his presidency. He showed considerable resolve and stubbornness in the face of mounting criticism and resentment from within the GAA for his very public championing of Rule 42. It is easy to forget how very heated that debate was. It was crudely distilled as a debate between the GAA modernists – as led by Seán Kelly – and the “backwoodsmen” who wanted to persevere with it.
Of course, those who wanted to keep it closed believed passionately in their rationale; that the old place was sacred, that it belonged to the GAA and the GAA alone and that inviting “foreign” sports in could only weaken the GAA. Proponents were more vague and watery in their reasoning, talking about generosity and extending the hand of friendship – the kind of tokenistic language, in fact, that heads of state are often forced to trot out. Ultimately, Rule 42 was about expediency and it was about money.
Those who were against might have been fearful and conservative in their view but they stood for something crystal clear. The opening of Croke Park revolved around the symbolism of the Ireland v England rugby match in 2007, which was a contrived and mixed-up occasion of misplaced patriotism, a so-called “wonderful and unforgettable day” that has already been forgotten.
The benefits of its deletion for the GAA can be debated all day long – true, they made some nice cash out of the arrangement but some of its members may feel a bit “used” now the rugby and soccer crowd have fled Croke Park, never to return. Nowadays, Rule 42 seems like much ado about nothing; restoring it to the GAA rule book would make no great difference.
And listening to Seán Kelly on the radio as the football fans from Down and Cork made their way to Croke Park last Sunday, it seemed clear the end of Rule 42 had been of benefit to no one as much as its architect-in-chief. Whether there is a price to be paid for that will only become clear if and when Kelly hits the canvas for the Áras and meets with old faces from his GAA days.
In the prologue to Rule 42 And All That, Kelly recalls his emotions that day in Congress when the motion was passed.
“My time with the GAA was on the wane,” he writes.
“But I was quite sure now that it would never be forgotten.”
