Quinn's conversion on road to reform

GAA: With the passage of time former GAA president Peter Quinn has more and more the appearance of a man who has stepped through the looking-glass and is shocked by the new perspective and its relative powerlessness.

This theory was reinforced by TG4's profile Mo Chuntas Féin - Scéal Peter Quinn, shown over the weekend (bizarrely, on first screening, in opposition to The Sunday Game).

His less than flattering views on the calibre of the GAA's power structures were made clear at last year's special congress on the doomed proposals of his Strategic Review Committee.

For such a strong personality, who tends to polarise opinion, Quinn is subject to one wide-ranging consensus: that he would be a better president now than when he actually held office between 1991-94. Not surprisingly that was not one of the themes of the programme but even Quinn himself commented on the matter in an interview in Breaking Ball magazine.

Asked did he agree with the consensus he replied: "If I wasn't (a better president now) I shouldn't have spent the last 10 years living. It would mean that I'd learned nothing from 10 years." That concept of learning from experience is a key consideration when assessing Quinn but more importantly than that it's the one issue on which the GAA can learn most from its former president.

His talents ensured he hasn't had a peaceful retirement from the office he left nine years ago. He has chaired two seminal strategic committees - Amateur Status and Strategic Review - and remains involved with the Croke Park Redevelopment Committee, the project with which he tends to be most closely associated. That's a phenomenal workload for someone who also runs his own business. As Quinn's sister Bernadette Maguire put it: "He always seemed to get into things that involved a lot of work but not a lot of thanks."

Anyone who saw him on the floor of last October's special congress arguing, with the fuse on his legendary temper burning down alarmingly, for the reforms of his Strategic Review Committee would concur with the above assessment. Assailed by all the usual congress reactions to far-reaching change, ranging from the reasonable to the more familiar assaults on common sense, Quinn had to be wondering why he bothered. As was pointed out at the time, it was a long way from 11 years previously when he had been the identifiable bulwark of the GAA's conservatism in the notorious RDS affair.

This was simply a promotional idea from Dublin club Clan na Gael-Fontenoy to stage a challenge between Dublin and Down (1991 league and All-Ireland holders respectively) on a double bill with the Shamrock Rovers-Bohemians League of Ireland soccer match. The tortuous ins and outs of the matter needn't detain us but the plug was pulled on the idea and although Quinn maintains to this day the decision wasn't his - and supports his case by pointing out that he was out of the country at the time - he was excoriated in the aftermath.

Mo Chuntas Fein largely ignored the controversy, maybe not surprisingly in a programme running at less than half an hour and featuring Ulster voices almost exclusively. Donegal manager and county chairman Brian McEniff was, however, incisive and got to two important bases.

One, he pointed out he had spoken on the national radio news about the matter, a fair reflection on how the matter convulsed the airwaves in December 1991 and how it would mark the presidency. McEniff recalled how he had criticised the decision, saying the "the GAA was living in the past" and secondly how this impacted on his relationship with Quinn. "Peter would have taken umbrage and we had a cool relationship for a number of years afterwards."

Quinn may now be embarrassed by the whole fiasco even if he is at pains to distance himself from it but it was the starting point of an interesting personal journey from a point where he took issue-based arguments so personally.

Dr Roy Magee met Quinn when they were both acting as facilitators in tentative negotiations over the Drumcree Orange parade. This was three years after his presidential term had ended. During the programme Magee said of Quinn: "He was a man willing to make space for other people."

Although Quinn tends to see his evolving views on issues as logical responses to changing circumstances, few would have seen his presidency as marked by a desire to create intellectual space for others. As McEniff described the Quinn presidency: "In the GAA structures you have to be saying what people would like you to say and Peter wasn't built that way."

Cynics argued that Quinn's change of mind on Rule 42 - used to prohibit the playing of rugby and soccer at Croke Park - was the inevitable outcome to the struggle between the financier and the cultural conservative, in other words a victory for Mammon. But that's to misunderstand the deeper significance of his business background. It's not simply a question of money but more how problems are identified and dealt with, as he pointed out when looking back at the bruising experience of the SRC debates.

"The big change that has occurred is that for a century the GAA could and did function as an administrative organisation rather than as a management - in the classic sense of 1960s and '70s theorists. I believe that it can no longer operate as an administrative body and must change to a pro-active, management style. We're not there yet because when the pace of change is slow the longer it takes and the bigger the danger to its position in Irish life.

"That approach creates its own problems. It may be a simpler environment in which to operate but the administrative model is no longer of value. I believe there's a need to focus on change but that's not everyone's view nor probably do a majority accept that change is needed.

"There is a view that everything's worked well for 115 years. This year's championship was tremendously successful and both championships have been in recent years. So why change it when it aint broken?

"When I come across that attitude I go back to the combination of practical and academic - I worked in both areas - in my business background. That taught me that most organisational problems occur when an organisation appears to be doing well."

The irony is that after he had emerged from and left behind the traditional GAA mindset, it became the biggest obstacle to the battery of reforms, which he believes necessary for the association.