GAA What the real story should be

Frank Roche in de Herald recounts a history of the recent violence in the International Rules series. The appropriately titled "The Beast is Coming Back" is describes some of the outrageous Aussie carry-on, while also fairly exposing some of the hypocrisy of the GAA taking the high moral ground on violence in sport. We've seen it all before though and there's been at least two articles every day for the past two weeks speculating if the games will degenerate into something more appropriate for an American extreme fighting cage.

The real story is elsewhere, however, but receives little attention. According to Frank, himself, on another page -- ignore the piece about those Cork langours -- Wicklow SHC champions Glenealy are threatening not to contest this year's final against Carnew after the game was fixed for this Sunday, despite the presence of Leighton Glynn, Glenealy's star, in Australia with the International Rules squad. Glenealy have threatened not to appear on Sunday. Rightly so.

That's the real story. That's what the media should be writing about. An important final for serious GAA players, two clubs and thousands of real GAA supporters is being disrupted. And for what?  

But, that's only half the story. Why hasn't a county which got knocked out of the All-Ireland championship in early summer not yet played its county final? What the hell have they been doing all summer!? Why can't the GAA not put in place a proper scheduled season? When are they going to start paying more respect to the majority of its members? That's the real disgrace, not some bastardised nonsense thousands of miles away.