Last week, somewhere between the beating of Cyprus and the dispatching of Andorra, it struck me that there was the possibility of all the planets coming into freakish alignment.

"You know," I said to some soccer people, "we could end up playing Portugal and Holland in Croke Park."

And in one form or another the soccer people said: "You really think those bastards would allow that?"

So I said it to a few GAA people, ordinary folks in the know, and they said: "Aaah. Uuuhm. Yeah, it would be great, but the motion is going to have trouble."

So it appears. There is a worry that some of the big "one step forward, three step backward" counties will follow Cork, the market leaders in regression, and swing against the opening of Croke Park next Saturday when the discussion starts at Congress. Better to see your neighbour's horse die than to have two horses yourself.

I have always held that it is wrong and bad-mannered to bully the GAA, a small, amateur organisation, into sharing its major asset with the greatest professional sport in the world. A lot of what is said about the GAA and Croke Park spins out of an anti-GAA bigotry which finds its mirror opposite within the association itself. It's bad and counterproductive. Now is the time to get past all that.

It starts with some realism. I don't doubt either that, while there are pluralists in the IRFU, it is commerce which dictates the deals they make with the FAI. No harm. Nobody expects the IRFU to say, listen, we're not using the place next Wednesday, it's yours, turn the lights out when you're leaving and put the key under the mat.

Instead they take about 15 per cent of everything, from gate to perimeter advertising. (Which leads us to a digression. Given that particular loss of income for the IRFU, how much is Bertie going to have to give them to go to the Bertie-Bowl, the centrepiece of the ever more ludicrous Abbotstown project, a colossal, state-born expense which not only creates no new business but pays pro sports for bringing their existing business somewhere less convenient. Excuse me, I need to go lie down in a darkened room for a while.) The rugby people take the soccer rent and use it to promote their own games. Those crazy pluralist bastards!

There are people in the GAA with a pluralist instinct and there are people in the GAA with a sound commercial instinct. If you trawled the association as a whole, those two groups between them would make a sound majority. GAA Congress no more represents them, however, than it speaks for the Communist Youth Leagues of Havana. Next Saturday's debate will amount to a search for an enlightened two-thirds majority. The nearer it gets the more worried you become.

Next Saturday there exists a chance for the GAA not only to make an expression of its confidence within itself, but to make a gesture which reeks both of generosity and selfinterest. When it is finished, Croke Park will have cost some £40 million more than the initial projections suggested, and annual maintenance, not surprisingly, is going to be about £2 million a year. So?

There are two stark decisions which can be made in the light of those figures. The GAA can continue cutting off its nose to spite its face, can continue keeping the doors of Croke Park shut; or it can do itself a favour, score a massive public relations coup plus a financial windfall by opening up its doors to other sports. Those sports should no more be required to have a 32-county context than Neil Diamond or the Pittsburgh Steelers were.

It's not too late. The GAA can actually do itself and the nation a favour. We need no more than one 80,000-seater stadium in this city. The GAA have it nearly built. If Bertie is going to build a Bertie-Bowl, let it be about the intended size of Eircom Park, let it be downtown or in the docklands near an indoor arena, and let the remainder of the Sports Campus Ireland project be built elsewhere. Despite the pie-in-the-sky figures being bandied about, most Irish soccer and rugby fixtures would live happily in a modern, accessible arena with a capacity of 45,000. That's also the size of venue the GAA could sensibly throw a few matches into each year.

CROKE Park won't be overrun. Look at the calendar. In a two-year soccer period, only the home games against Holland and Portugal in this current World Cup group would require Croke Park. In rugby, the spring visits from the home nations teams might need the bigger stadium if Ireland were contending strongly. I accept that the pitch in Croke Park probably needs too much work to be available for soccer on June 2nd (although it will be available for football the next day), but imagine the atmosphere there might be on September 1st in Croke Park as Ireland chased a World Cup place against Holland. I don't believe that any GAA person other than the most brass-necked bigot would get anything other than a kick out of showcasing the wonderful stadium on an afternoon like that.

Motions laid down for next Saturday from Kilmore in Roscommon and Shanahoe in Laois propose that "Central Council shall have the power to authorise the use of Croke Park in certain circumstances for field games other than those controlled by the association." These are debates at which the whole country will be looking, they are debates which for many people will define the image of the GAA for the next half decade or so. Surely it's time for Congress to show the sporting world that we aren't dragging our knuckles along the floor anymore.

Once, just once, couldn't the organisation stand up straight, do itself a favour, and make a grand gesture? Please.