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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Choosing red option at Congress will give better balance to inter-county season

We are back on the merry-go-round as we try to square the circle that is the All-Ireland football championship, or to at least find a format which makes some sense of the manure heap which it is at present.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion If January is a wicked month, it can often show what a player is made of, building character for days that matter

If the GAA was having a nine-month season and people were asked what three months should be off, most would probably nominate December, January and early February as the months to go into hibernation.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion If the GAA's full-time executive aren’t making and implementing the big decisions, why are they there at all?

The business of making a wishlist for the future is something I don’t find particularly rewarding as I have seen too many well-crafted GAA reports buried, ignored or just destroyed by sheer indifference. On that basis, I have always been amused by John Maynard Keynes, one of the great economists of his time, who famously said that “in the long run we are all dead”. No point in much long-term planning there.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Reality is that one size does not fit all - the rich need to support the poor in GAA’s vision of future

There was a television series in the 1970s about two brothers who took different paths in life. It was called Rich Man, Poor Man. Life did not work out well for one of the brothers.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion The GAA are finding Newton’s Law very difficult to resolve

Recently, Joe Brolly wrote in this paper about how the change in age for minor football from 18 to 17 was causing a fall-off at adult level and various luminaries (isn’t that a great word) of the game had made contact with him to endorse his views. This, though, is a very good example of something which seems simple but is, in fact, quite complicated.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Club finals, sadly, low on quality but high on caution proving conservatism is never the correct approach

One of the treasures from last year was the amount of good quality club matches on TV during the lockdown. Last weekend, I watched three games, the Kerry semi-final between St Brendan’s Board and Austin Stacks, the Mayo final between Belmullet and Knockmore and later on Sunday, the Dublin final as Kilmacud and St Jude’s went at it. Each of these was disappointing, low on quality and the only saving grace in Kerry and Dublin was a bit of drama at the end.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Department is failing the test of our education system on so many levels

Last week the chickens came home to roost in education. They had been circling for years, but the Covid crisis has revealed a truly sorry mess in many schools.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Covid lessons have been quickly forgotten with the GAA tail still wagging the dog

The GAA are giving a passing imitation of a dog chasing parked cars with the decision yesterday to allow pre-season competitions.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Merging boards can strengthen both men's and women’s games

Perhaps we caught a glimpse of the future last Sunday in Navan when the ladies senior club football championship final between Dunboyne and Seneschalstown was played before the men’s equivalent, which also involved Dunboyne, against Wolfe Tones. There was no double for Dunboyne on the day as the ladies won but the men lost.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Tailteann Cup is worthy of a noble future

Along with the decision to continue next year with the All-Ireland in its present format, albeit with the back door and quarter-finals, there is also the advent of the Tailteann Cup for teams in the third and fourth divisions of the league.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Selfishness ruined a real chance for change

The fall-out from last week’s verdict at Special Congress continues, with the quest now to have a new proposal ready for a vote by February. It will mean squaring a lot of circles to get that done. Many might say it is impossible, but in the GAA, impossible sometimes gives way to reality very quickly.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Congress battle was lost but the war is only just beginning

So the ship sails on. When is a majority for change not a majority? When it is the GAA. The motion to change the football championship was carried but not by a sufficient margin.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Idea that our leaders in the GAA should be silent on big decisions is nonsense

I got to thinking in the past week about how leadership works in the GAA. It is a peculiar, inverted process.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Counties must be brave and support the plan which gets their self-respect back

The music may have stopped on the inter-county playing front but the wheels of club activity grind on with plenty of big games in the coming weeks. Those are the matches that make or break hearts to a greater extent than what happens in Croke Park.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Jack O’Connor knows exactly where the blame will be placed if Kerry fall short next year

Jack O’Connor hopes that third time is just as lucky as the other two as he takes charge in Kerry again. He won’t be playing golf in any invitational tournaments in Kildare for a while after departing with indecent haste, having agreed to stay another year in the midlands. The road to hell is paved with good intentions but could anyone blame him for wanting back to his own? Jack, like Oscar Wilde, could resist anything but temptation and the Kerry job is the best or worst gig in town.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Bad smell has given way to a blend of style and substance

There is something about Tyrone, something which stirs emotions among many neutrals. In the last decade, it could hardly be classified as fawning admiration as they made themselves hard to like, even in the noughties with a team possessing a number of brilliant players. They just got grudging respect.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Wrong plan for the wrong team kills Mayo hope

The fallout from last Saturday, inside and outside Mayo, has been harsher than for most of the lost finals of the last decade. When great expectations are smashed, a wide range of human emotions surface.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Tyrone's class forwards the reason Sam Maguire is not heading west

Tyrone were not bothered about sentiment in Croke Park on Saturday evening. They acted with the calm efficiency of a German car as they throttled Mayo in much the same way as they had filleted Kerry in the semi-final. In doing so they completed the most remarkable year for any team in the history of this great game.

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Colm O’Rourke Opinion Inflated grades an incalculable mess waiting to happen

Last February, I wrote an article for the Sunday Independent in which I pointed out that the accredited grades system was a mess waiting to happen. It has turned out much worse than that.

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Colm O'Rourke's All-Ireland final preview: Intriguing battle of wills may go to Tyrone

Tyrone invited the media into their lair in Garvaghey last week, but Feargal Logan made it clear they would not answer any questions relating to Covid. I think he was right to do so.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Old-style spirit does the trick for Tyrone

If Covid dominated the build-up to yesterday’s All-Ireland semi-final, there was no sign of it in the Tyrone performance as they did the usual by hounding Kerry at every turn. If Kerry did not have David Clifford this game would never have gone to extra time as, despite being marked closely by Ronan McNamee, he was still able to create havoc.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Mayo’s big task now is to cool fans’ giddiness

The best thing that has happened to Mayo has been the postponement of the second All-Ireland football semi-final between Tyrone and Kerry.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Fearless warriors seize the day to end an empire

Mayo ripped down the walls of an empire in Croke Park last night. They did so with bravery as much as class but long before this was over the were the complete masters.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Tyrone must be given time to recover and play semi-final

The doubts which hung over Saturday’s All-Ireland semi-final between Tyrone and Kerry have been dispelled. Tyrone yesterday withdrew their team on medical advice. The doomsday scenario has materialised.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Dreams and reality collide for Mayo, but I will believe it when I see the scoreboard at the end showing Dublin behind

Dublin and Mayo clash again on Saturday and at this stage we should be getting a contest as distinct from a match. Don’t bet on it. Mayo have been here too many times before. All heart, effort and plenty of skill. Close, but no cigar. Yet they keep on returning with renewed hope.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Dublin doubters jumping the gun

So Dublin are no longer favourites for the All-Ireland. That’s not something that will keep them awake at night. It is the kind of background noise they are excellent at shutting out.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Mayo will be too hot for Galway to handle

It is good to see the Connacht final in the big field by the canal today. After all, it belongs to everyone and Mayo supporters have paid for a lot of it, apart from the Dubs. Yet even Dublin supporters did not bother with last Sunday and the crowd did not come near the 18,000 permitted.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion The Dubs will get their house in order and Meath could be on the receiving end

The conventional wisdom is that Dublin have become vulnerable. Sated by achievement, they have become like Viking lords where wine, women and song are the order of the day. If only that were true.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion Cluxton’s road less travelled: Like Jim Gavin, he did his job but did not think it made him different

Now we have the Cluxton affair. It’s not in the same league as some of the scandals of the past but it is one that continues to garner column inches. When does taking time out amount to retirement? At 39 years-of-age there is not much time for a holiday and then a triumphant return.

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Colm O'Rourke Opinion The road to the inevitable continues but there are good matches to be found below tiny top tier

The process of sorting the chaff from the wheat continues today — independence day for some, execution for others. It is a very cold, even brutal, sort of thing with very little consideration of the emotion involved.