Bertie Ahern's interest in Gaelic Games was high-profile. He wasn't, however, as immersed in the GAA and its protocols as his successor, writes SEÁN MORAN.
JACK LYNCH, whose GAA connections helped get his political career off the ground, chose to mark the end of that career in the company of the GAA. The night of Charles Haughey's election as his successor saw Lynch in Jury's Hotel, Ballsbridge, as guest of honour at the 1979 All Stars presentation banquet.
The late Mick Dunne, whose idea the awards originally were, said years later that it was as if a weight had been lifted off the outgoing taoiseach (and six-time All-Ireland winner) that night, and that he was more relaxed than he had appeared for a long time - "amongst his own", as Dunne put it.
Similarly, when Lynch passed away just under 20 years later in October, 1999, his club-mate, an understandably upset Dave O'Brien from Glen Rovers, spoke to RTÉ's Breaking Ball: "Ring," he said of another legendary Glen hurler, "was a God, but Jack - Jack was one of our own."
Brian Cowen is the most dyed-in-the-wool GAA head of government for nearly 30 years, and in historical terms stands second only to Lynch, so it's unlikely there has been any fretting on Jones's Road about the new Taoiseach's elevation.
But it's timely to consider the association's interaction with the political world given that yesterday's chopping and trimming means that the new Government has been finalised.
It's certainly a watershed moment. Fianna Fáil taoisigh average nearly 10 years in office, so relations with Cowen are likely to be an important issue for Croke Park in the foreseeable future.
His predecessor, Bertie Ahern, will be a hard act to follow in the GAA's eyes. Leading a government through the boom, Ahern wasn't slow to share some of the proceeds with Croke Park and his interest in Gaelic games was high-profile.
He wasn't, however, as immersed in the GAA and its protocols as his successor. Last weekend, during a conversation with Offaly's All-Ireland-winning manager Eugene McGee, he conceded he had become a little weary telling and re-telling the story of how the new Taoiseach had nearly made that 1982 panel.
Apparently the young Cowen's legal studies made full engagement with the championship panel difficult and he didn't make the cut, but McGee also recalled what he reckoned was the only instance of Cowen's saying nothing for over an hour: a lift home from an under-21 championship match which Offaly had lost to Carlow.
Even his election to the Dáil after a Laois-Offaly by-election triggered by the sudden passing of his father, Ber, on whose coffin was placed the black-and-white jersey of Clara, was tangled up in the GAA.
Fine Gael ran Offaly's All-Ireland-winning captain Pádraig Horan. "Brian Cowan, who I'm friendly enough with, had a huge sympathy vote and a very good machine," according to Horan in an interview with this newspaper, "so I knew from the word go I was up against it. I actually did better in Laois than in Offaly, and there was great hurling rivalry between the counties back then. My hurling suffered from the whole campaign because I couldn't mix it with campaigning."
So it proved when Offaly reached the Centenary All-Ireland final against Cork and Horan suffered another first-count defeat. He didn't pursue a career in electoral politics, but reflected on how GAA celebrity wasn't a universal currency.
"Fine Gael wouldn't always show a huge interest in the GAA," he said. "I remember after winning the convention, the first day of canvassing in Stradbally. I was standing around talking to Garret Fitzgerald who was the taoiseach then. After a while he said: 'Where is the bloody candidate. You'd think he'd be here by now.' I said, 'I'm here. I'm the candidate.' So he said, 'Oh, are you?' And he'd been at the convention, only a week before."
Conversely, Fine Gael at present have two of the highest-profile TDs with GAA backgrounds, Kerry's multiple All-Ireland- winner Jimmy Deenihan and current Mayo football manager John O'Mahony. (On an historical note, Blueshirts founder Eoin O'Duffy had been a delegate to the Ulster Council - don't try that at home.)
The new Taoiseach has retained not just an interest in Gaelic games but a GAA sensibility.
Ten years ago, when the special congress to consider removing Rule 21 - the ban on members of the Northern security forces joining the GAA - was about to take place, Cowen spoke to RTÉ's Saturday View. The move, initiated by the association's president at the time, Joe McDonagh, was presented as a useful contribution to the new, post-Belfast Agreement world.
Although it's safe to assume that the then Minister for Health had a strong opinion on the subject, he was as implacable as any member of Central Council, insisting that the matter was entirely for the GAA to decide itself without any external promptings.
Commenting on the interaction between the GAA and national politics in Ireland 1912-1985, Politics and Society, Prof Joe Lee made the following observation: "The success of the GAA, based on the co-option of intense local loyalties into a wider sense of national identity, reflected a capacity for organisation and a sense of communal coherence . . . The GAA served not only as a recruiting ground for republican activists, but as an apprenticeship for national organisers. The prevailing culture proved able to relate local loyalties to national issues."
At his weekend homecoming in Offaly, Cowen's speech about the need to cherish community and "reduce the tendency to self-interest and individualism" sounded like a GAA club manifesto.
Judging by the uniquely Irish juxtaposition of a new Taoiseach's appointment and the wild scenes in Tullamore, Edenderry, Daingean and Clara over the weekend, and regardless of the Government's eventual outcome, the culture referred to by Lee is prevalent as ever.
