GAA CONGRESS/Countdown: Seán Moran talks to Connacht Council secretary John Prenty about the likely fate of the SRC report

As the Rule 42 debate heads inexorably for the rocks and the presidential election reaches endgame, the other most important item of business at this weekend's GAA Congress looks like being deferred.

Motion 22, from Mayo, proposes that a special congress on the report of the Strategic Review Committee (SRC) be held and no later than within two months.

Already the GAA's Central Council has bounced that proposal out and demanded an autumn date against the wishes of president Seán McCague and director general Liam Mulvihill. The Mayo motion, if passed, would take precedence, but it is by no means certain that Congress will accept the more immediate timing.

The GAA hierarchy's desire to hold a special congress quickly was based on a fear that the SRC proposals would atrophy if left on the shelf for another six months. Significantly, the line now emerging is that a deferred date might not, after all, be a disaster.

John Prenty, the secretary of the Connacht Council, was a member of the SRC and he concedes that the Mayo motion may be in trouble. "I'd be afraid so. I think the main reason the Central Council made the decision was that it was in their interest to put it off. They discussed it and decided to put it off until the autumn."

Central Council was always going to be a hard market for the report, as its proposals include a couple guaranteed to go down badly at that forum: that the composition of the council be changed from specific county delegates to county chairmen and that an age limit on officials be imposed.

So putting the report before Central Council was a very precise example of the hoary old image of asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. Opposition was couched in terms of counties needing more time to deliberate, an argument Prenty dismisses.

"This has been in the public domain since January 20th. By the time a special congress would be held that would be nearly six months. Extending that deliberation period to the autumn is false anyway because I don't think it'll get a lot of consideration over the summer.

"It wouldn't be a huge blow but I think we should do things faster. Six months isn't exactly breaking the speed limit and there'll be less impetus in the autumn."

There would appear to be a danger of the report not attracting enough attention at this stage - but for the heated exchanges on the issue of Dublin's county structures being split in two. Prenty accepts this but feels that there has been a quiet absorption of the report throughout the country.

"There are 300 recommendations," says Prenty, "and 299 haven't been thrashed out at all. They are mostly sensible, housekeeping proposals and if we don't accept them I'm afraid we'll be on the back foot as an organisation.

"Of course a number of things affect individuals directly, like the proposals on Central Council and Dublin, and people will take personal positions on these. I think what most counties have done is quietly look at it and take out the things that are good for them and they are waiting to try and put those through."

A further problem with an autumn date, Prenty feels, is that the whole report may have to be explained a second time. "If there is additional time to consider it the committee may have to sell it again," he says. "Ninety per cent of these recommendations are simple, sensible proposals but there's a lot of detail. A good bit of work has been done at provincial level but it might be no harm to make separate presentations maybe in each of the 32 counties."

In the meantime Prenty hasn't entirely given up hope of motion 22 being accepted at the weekend although - maybe even because - the chances of the last item on the clár getting the undivided attention of delegates at an election congress would appear slim.

"This isn't an earth-shattering proposal, just an attempt to get the report considered sooner rather than later. You never know. Last motions at congress have a good record of getting through."

The Waterford debate on Clare's Rule 42 motion (to refer the use of Croke Park by other sports to Central Council) ended in an overwhelming no vote. There was a margin of nearly three to one (36-13) to reject the proposal.