With that flair for the hapless which at times distinguishes the association, the GAA drum-rolled and trumpeted their hurling team of the millennium within hours of Sunday's farcical events which left the hurling community seething with rage. This resulted in an abashed statement apologising for the state of the pitch, its dimensions and the effective absence of a scoreboard for the denouement of the first quarter-final. So the carefully orchestrated promotion for the celebration of 1000 years of hurling had to scrap it out for coverage with an admission that Croke Park had failed to showcase the game properly on the first All-Ireland afternoon of the season.
Inevitably, the team of the millennium caused as much truculent reaction as celebration, but presumably that's part of the idea. The whole concept of these cross-generation pecking orders is fairly daft, but honouring great hurlers of the past as part of the GAA's Hall of Fame is a worthwhile enterprise.
An Post's commemorative stamps, the companion issue to last year's football cover, will accord the awards a broader acknowledgment which in some ways out-strips the football equivalent. Hurling has always been regarded as the real national sport, despite its more restricted operation and the nationwide popularity of football.
The reasons are easy to understand. Hurling is less reducible in terms of bat and ball games than football is in its global context. Mythological references to fabled heroes and the earlier occurrence in history books of what can be regarded as definitive hurling matches give the sport a cultural edge in relation to football, which emerged in distinctive form little over 100 years ago.
Even in the modern age, hurling has come to be regarded as culturally and sportingly superior to its big-ball sibling. Attitudes have modified recently in the light of controversies on the hurling field, but in general the game is accepted as being something more distinctive and a greater source of pride than football.
Accordingly, the events of the weekend were all the more embarrassing and they provided some scope for Croke Park bashing - criticism of the venue rather than the GAA in general. Much of this relates to the superiority of Semple Stadium in Thurles as a hurling venue.
Now I have no intention of trying to argue against this point. The surface in Semple Stadium has long been a marvel, keeping its billiard table properties intact in the depths of winter. Its size has made it the most popular ground in the country for hurling, as it allows players the space to express themselves. If the quality of the field was the sole criterion, All-Ireland hurling matches would be played in Thurles all the time.
Yet, that is not the sole criterion. Unlike many sports around the world, both hurling and football have a very definite epicentre. Thurles is the birthplace of the GAA, but Croke Park is its headquarters, both in a sporting and administrative context. It is where the biggest events of the year are staged and it is where followers of football and hurling gather in largest numbers.
As a result there would have to be very compelling reasons to move big matches out of Croke Park. Centenary year in 1984 was one such occasion, an acknowledgment of the association's origins and a popular idea. Replays are another example, with Thurles providing relief from congestion at headquarters as with the Clare-Offaly replay two years ago.
Do the events of last Sunday warrant the transfer of next month's hurling semi-finals? If they were to be repeated, the answer would be: probably. But the indications from Croke Park are that the electronic scoreboard will be back in action (and in fairness I can't remember it going kaput in a big match before) and that the length of the pitch will be extended by 10 metres.
In addition, the manual scoreboard operator will presumably be sedated and further reassured by not having to carry the whole gig himself - albeit with the puckish assistance of the public address announcer.
In relation to accommodating the crowds, the projected capacity looks sufficient. Offaly and Cork are unlikely to attract a greater attendance than last year and whereas the Kilkenny-Clare semi-final 12 months ago broke the current capacity by 8,000, Galway haven't in recent times been pulling the same crowds as Clare.
After the Cusack Stand had been demolished, the 1994 championship suffered similar problems, with the east side of the ground exposed for the season. The world survived.
The composition of the millennium team sparked some of the controversy which attended its football equivalent, but there was an even more half-hearted feel to the fuss. A year ago Jack O'Shea was omitted from the football line-up in order to accommodate Tommy Murphy of Laois. Never having seen the Boy Wonder play, I can't offer a personal opinion on this decision, but the reasons advanced certainly made no sense.
It was argued that Murphy was a purer footballer, but that Jacko was more likely to win you a match, and his career achievements certainly backed that up.
As for the hurling team, having similarly never seen Nicky Rackard play, I can't comment on how he compares with Ray Cummins. Whatever about being the full forward of the millennium (Rackard was by most accounts a wonderful centrefielder in his prime and only switched to full forward as his powers receded late in his career, at a time which coincided with Wexford's rise), he misses out on the inaugural induction into the Hall of Fame.
This shows the weakness of the millennium team gimmick. Nicky Rackard may or may not have been the best full forward in history, but he would surely have qualified as a top-15 pick for any hurling Hall of Fame.
An even cursory perusal of the game's history would suggest that his personality, charisma, scoring feats and central role in one of hurling's most popular teams deserved as much. It is to be hoped that the regular induction process begins as quickly as planned in order to rectify the omission.