LockerRoom: So what happens now? Nothing probably. Do the GAA place somebody beside a phone and wait for people to call about the For Rent ad in the Evening Herald?
Remember to tell them that there's an upstairs and a downstairs, all completely remodernised. Mention that there's hot and cold running water and a nice place to eat. If they ask about the neighbours, say they are very old and we'd have to insist on no parties and no animals - and if they sound like they're from Roscommon, no party animals.
We'll look back on the Rule 42 debate in years to come as one of the more bizarre interludes in Irish life. In the end, the GAA had no choice, so badgered and bullied were they by a coalition of the sanctimonious and the incompetent.
Opening the place up is the right thing to do if only for the sake of peace, but in hindsight we will wonder how we managed to let Rule 42 obscure the realities of Irish life. Namely, that in just about every county in Ireland the GAA have managed to put in place better facilities and more facilities than the FAI, rugby and the Government together have managed to do.
Croke Park is available for rent now. The last weapon which the GAA rule book offered for their critics to beat them with has been decommissioned. What will happen now? Will the perception of the GAA change so that we see that, clearly, it is worthwhile and necessary to pump public money into the heritage that is our national games?
We take it so entirely for granted that it is absurd. Are we moving into an era now wherein the GAA rule book has been straightened out and there are no more controversies to devour and we just ignore the most remarkable sporting organisation in the world, leaving it to fend for itself against the pervasive influence of huge professional sports?
A book popped out of an envelope on to the Sports Editor's desk last week. There is an old rule in newspaper offices concerning the reading of books. You may sit with your legs on the desk all day long reading newspapers, but be caught reading a few lines of a book and you are deemed to be taking the mickey. The Sports Editor panicked at the sight of the book.
He quickly put down his cheroot and said, "Here, take this", and urgently shoved the offending tome into the hands of your present correspondent who was at the time entreating the Sports Editor to sign for some expenses which would help pay for expensive cosmetic surgery because the movie star good looks on evidence at the top of this column are beginning to fade slightly.
The book is called Engineering Archie - Archibald Leitch, Football Ground Designer. It's written by Simon Inglis, who only produces books of great wonder anyway.
I'd only previously associated Leitch with the wonderful, elegant and angled stands at Highbury and Aston Villa, and had no idea his influence practically determined the character of English football. In fact, the list of his triumphs is almost endless: Ibrox, Goodison, Roker Park, St James' Park, Twickenham, Molineux, Old Trafford, Ewood Park and on and on and on.
The book is a treasure trove of detail and anecdote and leaves you with a residue of sadness. The coarsening of football and the eventual post-Heysel, post-Hillsborough need to replace the old stadiums has produced a landscape dotted with cookie cutter stadiums which while pleasant and comfortable lack the detail and love and character of Leitch's works.
The filigreed wrought-iron trim in Craven Cottage, the boardroom at Ewood Park, the latticed middle tier in Goodison, the marble halls of Highbury, the weird old north stand at Stamford Bridge. Every work by Leitch had its own character and sympathy with the area it was built in, and the aerial shots of the grounds show football clubs living cheek by jowl with the factories in which their fans worked and the houses in which they lived. Beyond the triteness of cliche and jaded sentiment, you can see just through geography and architecture how English soccer was once a people's game.
What is sad is that we move on so quickly. What is impressive is the series to which Inglis's book belongs is called Played in Britain and is published by English Heritage as an attempt to celebrate and commemorate the role of sport within English heritage and culture and "to ensure that rare and significant treasures are not lost or left unrecorded in the inevitable march of progress".
To that end, near the finish of the book we see a little housing estate in Middlesbrough which occupies where Ayresome Park once stood. There is a bronze football fixed into a grass verge where a penalty spot once was. Studmarks are set in concrete where the centre circle lay; the roads are named after terraces and stands. A scarf cast in bronze drapes over a wall and there is a bronze puddle at the very spot from which North Korea's Pak Do Ik scored the goal which knocked Italy out of the 1966 World Cup. Wonderful and imaginative.
In Ireland, the inevitable march of progress has brought big-time pro sports into the field built for and used by the amateurs of the GAA. The unique incompetence of certain governments and sporting bodies meant that in the end it was necessary for the GAA to make the big gesture, but it is incumbent upon all concerned to remember and respect the living culture that is the GAA.
It's no great triumph for anything that Keano and Drico may be playing in Croke Park before long. It's a failure, the mire of which we have been bailed out of by the GAA.
In the meantime, the living heritage of the games which the GAA nurtures and promotes needs some thought, lest we find ourselves at ceremonies to place bronze sliotars in the parts of housing estates where Ring would once have stood.
Rule 42 is gone and the air is a little clearer, and hopefully those outside the GAA can begin to see the games as the wonderful, living artefacts of our culture which they are. From Bord Fáilte (do we really need more golf tourists?) to the Department of Education to the Department of Health to the arts and culture bodies, we should be looking at ways to give special protection to native games which have survived despite the absence of Murdoch millions or the "international dimension" which we poor, cringing culturalists deem necessary to validate any activity we partake in.
The field which Frank Dineen bought for the GAA in a fit of optimism all those years ago and which Luke O'Toole chose to develop instead of spending money on a more formal monument to Archbishop Croke is open to all.
It's a big gesture without strings. Any big gestures of reciprocation out there?
