"HURLING'S an expensive game to promote, and right now it's easier to find a syringe on a playing pitch in Dublin than a sliotar.
Dublin county secretary John Costello's dark humour graphically reflects the problems facing the GAA in an urban environment where social deprivation meets scarce resources.
In his report for this afternoon's Dublin convention at Parnell Park, Costello makes a strong case for the urgency of the problems facing the GAA in the capital. The detail of his presentation has already been circulated, and the problems outlined are serious.
Like most problems, they can be addressed financially, but Dublin's needs are ill served by the conventional funding mechanisms of the GAA.
In general, small support for local clubs leads to poor revenue from club championships, whereas the high level of support for the county team generates decent income only when Dublin progresses in the League, as the Leinster and All Ireland revenue goes to the provincial council and Croke Park.
Among the measures that Costello has proposed in the past is the allocation to Dublin of a permanent seat on the Management Committee, but that proposal wasn't accepted by Congress. In any event, of what direct benefit would such a concession be?
"We are looking for recognition of the problem," he says. "Ireland is becoming an urban society, and not just in Dublin, but in areas like Bray, Dunboyne, Ashbourne and Maynooth in other counties. It's not just a sporting issue but a social one."
The social problems of Dublin raise mostly political issues, but deprivation includes being deprived of sporting facilities and, like other sports bodies, the GAA struggles to take up the slack.
"One of our coaches," says Costello, "working in Dolphin's Barn was attacked by someone with a syringe trying to rob balls and equipment. Many of our clubs are in areas of high unemployment and with large numbers of one parent families.
"We have a network of clubhouses and facilities throughout the county and the first item on many of their agendas is security. All have problems with it.
"Someone made the point to me recently that the new clubs making an impact on the senior championship are from better off, middle class areas where there's more resources and no problem with parents coming on stream to coach juveniles.
"That's not the case where there's a high incidence of one parent families. In addition, there are huge transport costs because kids from less well off backgrounds don't have access to cars and clubs have to hire buses.
The cost of land and building in Dublin also creates difficulties. A Leinster Council audit in 1995 showed that we organise nearly as many games as the rest of Leinster combined. In population terms, we re as big as the rest of the province, as big as Munster, bigger than Connacht or Ulster - at least the part of it that's a target area for the GAA."
The presence of Croke Park in the city and the campaign to sell corporate facilities in the new development have also affected Dublin's efforts to raise funds.
"After winning the All Ireland there was a slight increase in playing numbers, but a lot of sponsors are already committed to Croke Park. I can go to a potential sponsor with a proposal to provide a coach for a particular area and they'll tell me, `We already have a box in Croke Park'. I can't argue that that's a different area of the GAA to developing the games.
"The whole soccer thing is also a problem. There's wall to wall coverage of the English leagues. Yesterday (Thursday) on the front pages of all the papers was Kevin Keegan. Cardinal Basil Hume was even asked about it and quoted in the Irish papers. I'm not turning this into an anti soccer thing, because our problems are deeper than that, but it's a factor.
"We get good co operation from Croke Park and the Leinster Council, but we need to focus more attention on the problem. For instance, the Leinster Council has just set up an urban development subcommittee without appointing anyone from Dublin to it."
