Same Old Story for the Brave New World?

It could just be that your Spailpín Fánach is a miserable, bitter and suspicious little man, but has anybody else noticed the underwhelming response that the GAA's ditching of Rule 42 has got from those two sporting bodies who are the decision's only beneficiaries, viz, the Football Association of Ireland and the Irish Rugby Football Union?

Is it just my imagination, or have the boys already decided to go to Cardiff anyway, irrespective of the Brave New World that Liam Griffin, George Hook and Eamon Dunphy were eulogising on The Sunday Show on Radio One this morning? The FAI says that it was paying a quarter of a million Euro per game to the IRFU for Lansdowne Road and it considered that daylight robbery - as such, anybody in that organisation would have reacted badly to the GAA's Peter Quinn saying on Network News on RTE2 (it is hard to keep up with branding, yes) on Thursday last that if the GAA were renting Croker, it'd go for one million squids a pop, and probably two. Something's got to give.

An Spailpín does have one hope though. An Spailpín hopes that all those people that were saying what bigots and traitors the GAA would be if they forced the FAI and IRFU national teams to play home games on foreign fields will be suitably contrite in their apology to the GAA if the IRFU and FAI do just that anyway, and do it for the most base reason all - money. An Spailpín will not hold his breath, however. The GAA may be constituted of idealists to over 66% of the delegates at Congress but Spailpíní plough a more realistically rocky furrow I'm afraid.