The rules of hurling used to decree the permissible length of a hurling field to be 140 yards minimum to 160 maximum, and the width to be 84 yards minimum to 96 maximum. Then, in the chariot tracks of Charlemagne, Lynch the Invincible drove the frontier of our Empire to the Elbe, and it became expedient to metricate our dimensions. Thus, today we have length 130 metres to 145 metres, and width 80 metres to 90 metres. (See Official Guide, Part 2, (Playing Rules) Croke Park, 1995. They've never gone and changed things, by Order of Quango, since then? Have they?)

It is worth noting that, in this metric conversion, the maximum permissible length lost some 1.7 yards, while the maximum width gained some 2.4 yards. ``Sloppy'' I hear you say yet a mere mote by comparison with the bungling at Corporate Park, at the dawn of the spang new millennium.

The accompanying, and highlighting, chorus of twaddle and piffle from sciolists and official spokesmen (those species being, in the main, indistinguishable or interchangeable throughout) was, of course, most fitting and delightful and predictable.

Around the time when the first moves in the handover of the GAA to the Tribunal class were being made, a promise a sop was extended to the lower orders, supporters and players and suchlike: the playing area of Corporate Park would be increased to the maximum when the handover was consummated. In recent days, Danny Lynch, the perennial Boy on the Burning Deck, announced that the width (currently 82 metres) will be 84 metres when building is completed. That is six metres narrow of the maximum and of the promise.

DANNY LYNCH also announced that the current length is 138.5 metres. Upon which, no doubt proceeding on the principle that a little complication might liven things up, Liam Mulvihill and Seán McCague chimed in speaking in yards. Seán thinks the pitch is ``at the present time nine yards shorter than usual.'' Now 1 metre = 1.0936 yards. And 138.5 metres + nine yards = 159.97 yards. So, if Seán speaks true, the pitch was, up to the present time, 159.97 yards long, i.e. maximum length, as long as, say, Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Sadly, but most manifestly, Croke Park never in its history was that length.

Corporate man Mulvihill, in the throes of expansionist passion, envisions the pitch being ``15 yards longer than ever before''. If realised, his vision would take the place away over the maximum permissible length. Even the increase proposed for the upcoming hurling semi-finals, 10 metres, will make the pitch 148.5 metres long: 3.5 metres over the permissible maximum and, consequently, illegal.

Liam Mulvihill further announced that the pitch is currently 10 metres wider than it was last year. Therefore, the pitch was 72 metres wide last year, i.e. well under the permissible maximum; thereby, very arguably, rendering all the results achieved thereon null and void and open to objection by whomsoever cares to object.

Responsibility for causing, or permitting, very many matches to be played on a pitch of illegal dimensions rests with the GAA's chief executive, Liam Mulvihill.

The rules decree that the halfway line be a minimum of ten metres long: last Sunday, it was not one half of that. And the grass was cut on Friday morning. At those stadia, where farmer's boys, who remember that grass grows quickly in high Summer, remain unbanished by the Tribunal class, the grass is cut late on Saturday. And what's wrong with Sunday morning?

THE sight and sound of Croke Park's great nabobs expatiating on pitch dimensions, a topic obviously remote indeed from their competence, revives once more the ancient proverb: ``The further up the tree the monkey goes, the more you see of his arse.''

On even so vile and regressive a project as Corporate Park, a few ordinary decent carpenters must be working. Give one of them the tape, tell him and his mate to lay out a rectangle 145 metres x 90 metres, or 160 yards by 96 yards and keep all nabobs well out of the road.

Yours etc,

Kevin Cashman