January's varied and intricate challenges

On Gaelic Games:This isn't just any old January. By the end of what is usually a cold and tumbleweed month the GAA will have reached a number of watershed moments. There will be a new administrative era in Croke Park with the departure after nearly 29 years' service of Liam Mulvihill from the director general's office and the accession of Páraic Duffy.

In a way, however, that's the least of it. Since the announcement of the change was made in November the cogs have been slowly engaging and moving steadily in the direction of a smooth handover of power. But, while the process of changing the guard continues, the GAA is also grappling with a number of particularly significant issues.

On Saturday week the first special congress to be held this early in the year will pass judgment on two critical matters for the association, burnout and its impact on young players as well as the re-balancing of the club and county schedules.

The club fixtures report is likely to be adopted, but already there is anxiety tending to fatalism about the fate of one of the burnout committee's key recommendations, the replacement of minor and under-21 inter-county championships with an under-19 grade for an experimental two years.

The problem with any gut rejection of the proposals is how then to address the problem of the insane intensity of training regimes for young players - because precedent has taught us all not to expect much in the way of constructive alternatives when carefully compiled reports are being shot down in tatters.

Then there is the conclusion of ground- breaking new sponsorship and broadcasting deals, due in the next few weeks.

These tend to be seen as simply enhanced opportunities to bank cash, but, as configured, with the GAA having to service more than one client in each field - more than one championship broadcaster and three sponsorship partners instead of exclusively one for both the hurling and football championships - they will also be formidable logistical, to say nothing of diplomatic, challenges.

Lurking restlessly in the shadows is the ongoing dispute within the Cork GAA, apparently immovable as an iceberg in the short term, the National Leagues start in less than three weeks.

The sight of the association's second most important inter-county competition going to the tape short the country's biggest and most successful county is unthinkable for many members and a hard one to explain to all those new business partners, who have been sold on a Gaelic games version of the Champions League with all its attendant slickness and high presentation values.

Frustratingly, Croke Park must look on with all the powers of intervention of the UN. If officially invited to journey down in an attempt to resolve the situation, the national organisation would be presumably willing to assist and, regardless of whether that's the way the story unfolds, there is likely to be some outside agency required to break the impasse.

Currently there is no breakthrough considered likely until Frank Murphy returns home from his incongruous South American holiday with the Cork footballers - surely the greatest display of insouciance since Drake insisted on finishing his bowls match as the Spanish Armada appeared on the horizon.

The intractability of the dispute is daunting. Both the county board and the players have doggedly left each other - and themselves - with zero room for manoeuvre. Realistically, someone has to hit reverse and dressing that up as a compromise will take ingenious negotiation.

Ultimately, the county board were within their rights to take the decision on the new football management.

Even if the matter has been less than fully discussed within the clubs there is little doubt in anyone's mind that the status quo represents the will of the clubs. But that's all you can say in favour of the decision.

Players are expected to give extraordinary levels of commitment to inter-county preparation and it's hard to blame them for wanting to walk away when a decision concerning the future of the senior footballers was taken in so cavalier a fashion.

All the rationales concerning frustrations with Billy Morgan's football management and the consequent desire to assert the board's influence more strongly on his successor are not an excuse for what happened at the end of last year.

The move was firstly contrary to best practice and secondly created a jagged controversy in light of which not all viable candidates for the position of football manager were willing to put themselves forward. Whatever Teddy Holland's credentials for the job, the critical question is whether he would have been selected in normal circumstances.

The appointment was also made in defiance of the players' request that no one accept the job until their grievances had been addressed. Everyone's welcome to their view, but Cork football deserved better than a decision taken primarily on the basis of showing the county footballers and hurlers who was boss.

In an amateur organisation, as has been pointed out quite frequently in recent times, no one's forcing anyone to play for their county. Cork players are acting on that understanding. Why should they take seriously what their county board clearly don't? There will, of course, be ripple effects.

The impact on the leagues would be hugely damaging and the GAA would be severely embarrassed. Down the line there is the prospect that should - as seems likely - the players' grants scheme be listed for discussion at congress, the context of a disrupted season could undermine the uneasy consensus that Croke Park believe exists in favour of the agreement.

In three months' time we'll know whether the varied and intricate challenges of January have melted into the annual rhythms of the GAA year mocking current concerns or instead, created mayhem.

Is it December 1999 or September 1929?