Letters to the Editor: GAA has lost the hearts and minds of the country

Irish Examiner

a day ago

For two years now I have been saying the GAA's 'split season' is an absolute disaster and to tell the truth, I've often felt like I was wasting my time and energy, so I'm glad that at least one former Inter County manager has come around to my way of thinking.
Let me repeat again, the split season has been an unmitigated disaster for the GAA.
But let's examine the reasons why the split season was introduced in the first place.
Undoubtedly, ordinary GAA Club players weren't getting fair play under the old system, where the Inter County Championships ran from May until September. A club championship game was fixed, then the County team were involved on a draw and replay, and the Club game went off.
This happened repeatedly — first rounds of Club championships were often played in May and it could be September before the next game.
Certainly there was no certainty for the Club players who make up around 92% of all hurlers and footballers — they couldn't plan holidays, weddings, honeymoons or other social occasions.
There was a major problem and as a Club Officer for decades, I am well aware of what pertained. The so-called solution — the Utopia, the panacea — the much-lauded split season has solved one problem but caused many others far more serious than the old postponement of fixtures.
Has the GAA ever commissioned a cost-benefit analysis of the split season? Maybe secretly, but I never heard of it anyway. I don't simply mean cost-benefit in terms of finance, but in terms of developing our games and promotion.
Our promotion in the GAA is woeful. Take the Munster Final next week. After great games in the early round, we now play our top game at 6 o'clock of a Saturday evening — have we a curtain raiser? Have we a band? Have we a price hike for tickets?
The club championships in every county are the 'bread and butter', the lifeblood of the GAA in every parish. Our Inter County games then should be our shop window, our Champions League, our premiership, something to attract youngsters to Gaelic Games and foster a love of our native pastimes.
Here we are at the end of May and over 60% of all our Inter County Hurling teams are 'wrapped up' for 2025. Promotion — how are ya!
Fair play to one of the Munster rugby bosses who lately commented on the 'promotional value' to rugby of big games in Croke Park and Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
Fair play to the GAA, we truly are sportingly ecumenical, but it isn't it time we saw after our own?
Losing the absolute grasp we had on the minds and hearts of the country every September has been an unmitigated disaster.
Is the GAA too proud to admit 'We made a mistake' and admit the same in regards the decoupling of minor and senior inter-county games.
Ad nauseam I have proposed a dual 'side-by-side' Club and Inter County games programme running from April until September — like the song says 'When will they ever learn?'
John Arnold, Bartlemy, Co Cork
Time to honour our Defence Forces heroes
Commandant (retired) Ray Cawley once again draws attention (Letters, Irish Examiner) to continuing 'failure' of various Irish governments to ensure the heroic actions of the members of the Irish Defence Forces and the brilliant leadership displayed in the defence of Jadotville are properly acknowledged.
Cmdt Cawley, in my opinion, correctly criticises our Government, senior civil servants, and military hierarchy for their continuing failure in this regard.
I can confirm that during my time with the United Nations peacekeeping operations, I met several civilian and military personnel who were in the Congo at the time of the siege of Jadotville. All spoke in glowing terms of the performance of Irish military personnel.
Several military officers from various nations confirmed to me that the defence of Jadotville is used in their training academies as an example of outstanding defensive actions.
Yet successive Irish governments in the past 60 years have failed to properly recognise the actions of those brave men.
Shame on them all, government ministers and ministers for defence — beginning with Micheál Martin, former minister for defence, and Simon Harris, current minister for defence.
Recently, Fergus Finlay wrote: 'Our leaders are running a 'do-nothing' parliament and it's offensive.' Any wonder that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael between them could not form a government after the last general election?
The people of Ireland deserve better. Over to you, Micheál and Simon.
Michael Moriarty, Rochestown, Cork
Trump deserves praise for keeping cool head
The editorial on May 27 adopted a rather belligerent attitude towards US president Donald Trump for, apparently, not plunging Europe, including Ireland, into a devastating world war since his return to the presidential office in the US.
Looked at a little more objectively, it would appear that Mr Trump is behaving in a somewhat restrained manner for the sake of the American people, and for all our sakes, by not allowing himself to be dragged or pushed by belligerent people into a world war scenario.
The Irish Examiner's editorial attack on Mr Trump is quite personal.
The extract reads 'Trump's narcissistic streak' and 'Trump needs to up his game'.
Instead of such negative personalised comments, the Irish Examiner should be thanking Mr Trump, profusely, for keeping a cool head — and avoiding, so far, a major world war — unlike certain other European leaders.
In the Financial Times, in an editorial under the heading 'Europe needs smart rearmament', on May 15, Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, is quoted as follows: 'If Europe wants to avoid war, Europe must get ready for war.'
I think this is ill-conceived advice from the European Commission president — it is myopic; it ignores the underlying causes of the two horrific wars in Europe in the last century, namely the First World War and Second World War.
Is this lady readying the scene for another world war? For instance, regarding the Second World War, the construction by France in the 1930s of the heavily fortified and armed Maginot Line along its border with Germany didn't avoid that war.
It would appear that Ms Von der Leyen, along with others in Europe and elsewhere, are unaware of the dire recent warnings by an eminent US organisation, the Science and Security Board, of the imminent nuclear threat facing the people of Europe, including Ireland.
For instance, since the beginning of the year, the Doomsday Clock (Albert Einstein et al) has moved closer than it has ever been to predicting a major global disaster — the clock now stands at 89 seconds to midnight.
The Doomsday Clock's Science and Security Board Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warned on January 28, 2025, with regard, for example, to the increasing possibility of nuclear war, that: 'The war in Ukraine, now in its third year, looms over the world; the conflict could become nuclear at any moment because of a rash decision or through accident or miscalculation.'
Micheál O'Cathail, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin
We must stand up for victims of Gaza now
In the years to come, a global generation of young people will confront their parents with simple questions: What did you do to oppose the catastrophic genocide of innocent civilians in Gaza? What did you do to resist the deliberately induced Israeli famine in Gaza?
If that question is met with a variation of, 'What could we do? We were only observers/bystanders with no direct ability to challenge the slaughter,' it will be treated with the same contemptuous response that consumed the first generation of post-Second World War German children in the 1960s, when they demanded of their parents, 'What did you know or not do about the persecution of Jews that culminated in the Holocaust?
The overwhelming response to that question was a variation of personal innocence, ignorance, and/or helplessness. This led to the scathing term 'mitläufer', a label depicting an individual, who through a lack of courage, didn't confront the obvious evilness of the evolving Holocaust.
What's your view on this issue?
You can tell us here
We witness in real time on a daily basis the mass starvation and daily bombardment of 2m defenceless Palestinians. Will our children and grandchildren in the years to come not also challenge us with a simple question: What did you demand of your government?
The very least we should be able to answer is that we demanded of our TDs an immediate implementation of the occupied territories bill — a piece of legislation which is a totally inadequate resort to the incremental displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Yet consecutive Irish governments have found multiple excuses to not apply even this deficient response.
If we do not mobilise as a national collective to demand/force our representatives to act on Israeli genocide, we too will have to bare the guilt of the morally outraged yet, at the same time, otherwise engaged citizen.
Kevin McCarthy, Clonfadda, Killaloe, Clare
Cruel impact of Catholic Church's negative labels
The Irish Catholic Catechism of 2014 states homosexual acts are 'intrinsically disordered' and 'contrary to the natural law'.
Sadly, this teaching can unfairly put gay people off having any gay friendships, and it can also prevent normal friendships forming between gay people and straight people.
In turn, Catholic straight people also get to hear false biology teaching from their own Church — a false type of lesson that is easily apt to mischievously get under their skin and make Catholic straight people feel uncomfortable to be in social settings with gay people.
This can cruelly be the case, I feel, no matter how talented and nice gay people may strive to appear to be.
The Catholic Church often says gay people should be loved by everyone else in society.
But this will, I fear, never fully make up for the harm such an offensive and divisive term as 'unnatural' can cause this significant minority.
Many acts committed against the law of our land are not considered unnatural and so may soon enough be forgiven and forgotten.
But, I believe, unfortunately, when some people are labelled as being unnatural, then this negative label may unhappily never leave them at all.
Seán O'Brien, Carnanes South, Kilrush, Co Clare
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