Tom Humphries LockerRoomPerhaps it would all be for the best if the Republic of Ireland played their World Cup qualifying games in Celtic Park, Glasgow. Then we'd have to explain ourselves to a third party, The Outside World.

We'd have to explain to The Outside World that the land of Giles, Brady, Keane and, um, The Celtic Tiger, has no soccer stadium. We'd have to explain about this amateur, community-oriented sports organisation called the GAA, about how they somehow built a world-class stadium and used it for, well, themselves. We'd have to point the finger and say it's all their fault, those bloody amateurs.

It might do us good to see ourselves as others see us. It might be sobering to hear the cackles of laughter. It might make us grow up a little to experience the full embarrassing force of being paraded naked without the fig leaf of our native guff.

As things stand the GAA Congress of 2004 will choose not to open Croke Park to other sports. There are several reasons.

First. The GAA, quite rightly, sees itself in competition with other sports. Some elements of GAA see the withholding of Croke Park as a competitive strategy. Others see its rental as more useful. There's an argument either way.

Second. There is the realisation that the income from opening up Croker would be useful but not life changing. A little tinkering with their own competition structures to create a few more big days and the smooth resale of the executive boxes (in a market where the GAA has an ongoing monopoly) would close the differential further.

(It's interesting to note that last year, with a break for Special Olympics and no International Rules series to host, Croke Park was used for 19 major occasions. How many home games in a Premier League season? 19.)

Third. Festering resentment towards the Government. The GAA took the big PR hit in 2001. The Government reneged on half the deal. Now the Government lecture the GAA about patriotic gestures. Silly buggers.

And last. Attitudes have hardened. It's hard to remember a time when there has been so little respect for the "soccer crowd" among GAA people. It's not soccer that's the trouble. It's the people that run it. Post-Saipan, post-Genesis, their stock is low.

You have to be of a certain age to fully appreciate the change there. When I was a kid, carrying a hurl or an O'Neill's bag meant hearing comments like "gahman", "redneck" and "mulchie". You put up with it. Soccer was more glamorous pre-Heffo's Dubs.

Nowadays, along my neck of the woods, you look out on a rainy morning and the kids wearing stripy, woolly hats with St Vincent's logos and blue St Vincent's raincheaters far outnumber those wearing Premiership regalia. Nobody hollers after them either.

Things are different in GAA clubs now. Big screens show soccer virtually every weekend. In my club we've had Brian Kerr and Jason Sherlock in presenting camogie medals in recent months. Gerry Smith, who coaches the under-15 football team in the club and had a succesful stint managing the Irish under-20s at the World Cup last month, had at least one daughter get a medal on each occasion. Nobody grumbled.

On the ground soccer people and GAA people mingle quite happily. I remember in November 1993 on the night Ireland qualifed for USA 94 hearing a group of FAI blazers chorusing that "You Could Stick Your GAA Up Your Arse" and wondering if indeed another World Cup mightn't finish off Gaelic games. Ten years later the GAA is stronger than ever and we all know there will be no winners in this competition.

GAA people don't worry about soccer anymore. The vast majority have moved on and feel confident and secure about what they are at. They see themselves as part of a vital and important cultural organisation. They'd like a little respect.

Yet deep down in the heart of the GAA there is minority resistance, still. You have to scratch hard to find it but current circumstances are bringing it forth.

Having Irish people at the helm of the national soccer team has changed the mood in an odd way. It's an Irish reflex to guess the political persuasion of any person from the north whose name we encounter in the news. We guess from the person's name.

GAA people have a reflex curiousity about the attitude of prominent soccer people towards the GAA. Noel O' Reilly is the nicest man you could meet in a long walk but his interview in the Sunday Times last month stoking up the old soccer animosities to the GAA came at just the wrong time.

All over the country GAA people have complaints about the behaviour of soccer clubs which pretty much mirror Noel's complaints about GAA people. In many places there is quiet co-operation. In many others, rivalry. Mostly people just get on with it. Noel, inadvertently I would imagine, popped a blister in some part of GAA hide though. You can hear it in GAA bars and read it on GAA websites now. If That's The Way They Feel About Us, Let's See Where They'll Go To Play Their World Cup Games.

That's the difference between now and 2001. Tone. The hardliners are more stroppy. Small things have fed them.

The stage is set for an unedifying bloodbath at Congress. Reasoned argument will get drowned beneath speeches about Michael Hogan. Nobody will make the point that what the GAA has become and the stadium it has built is the best and most confident answer Michael Hogan's tribe could ever have given to Bloody Sunday.

In 2001 the hardliners found it easy to apply the whip to their delegates. It was the defecting ditherers who made the difference in the end. The vote was lost by a whisker.

Minds haven't been changed. The voices are more shrill. The same counties have been lining up on either side but the critical differences are around the fringes. A liberalising motion was hammered in Galway. Last time out in a free vote at Congress, Galway had six delegates supporting liberalisation and four against. Last time Antrim voted in favour. This year's Antrim convention said no.

There's a realisation too that the public-relations storm which will break over Croke Park will continue for a week until the last of the following Sunday's newspapers are sold. And then the Government and the FAI will be left to each other's company.

In the real world, blaming the GAA for looking after its own interests in its own slightly wounded way just won't wash. It's been five years and the Government and the FAI have built nothing but a hole. They have a few weeks to get themselves out of it or we'll all be off to Glasgow in our green shirts and our big red faces.

Remember us? We were going to host Euro 2008 with you? Yeah, that's right. Well there's this crowd called the GAA . . .