Amid all the fuss concerning the GAA's intentions concerning the potential use of Croke Park for rugby, one salient feature of the great debate has been forgotten. This is a matter no longer in the GAA's gift. Maybe five years ago when the first phase of the Croke Park redevelopment was completed, the offer could have been made and the notion of a national stadium forestalled but now the GAA's attitude to Rule 42 is fast becoming irrelevant.

Conservatism among those who make GAA policy (congress) means that innovation comes a bit too slowly to fully merit the name. This can be a strength in that no rash decisions are taken but it is a weakness when decisive action is needed.

At the weekend's National Coaching Forum, Liam Griffin made a comment about the GAA needing to be able "to turn like a minnow rather than like a whale".

The current situation is a vivid illustration of that need. With the commercial desirability of leasing Croke Park suddenly dawning on everyone, it has become equally apparent that there isn't enough time to make it happen.

There is an assumption that rugby internationals are just a matter of throwing open the gates down on Jones's Road. But at the moment the GAA doesn't have floodlights - which are, according to one elevated IRFU source, an absolute necessity for the playing of rugby internationals because television dictates so many starting times.

As late as yesterday, the GAA confirmed that there are currently no plans to install floodlights. "There's no planning permission for floodlights," said president Sean McCague. "At the moment it is not part of our agenda."

Assume that it does become part of the agenda and the installation will still take time because of intense, expected opposition from residents' groups who already succeeded in having Croke Park's planning permission restricted to the holding of only three non-GAA events a year.

Then there's the matter of persuading Congress. One GAA source put the case for retaining Rule 42: "It (deletion) may represent short-term financial gain but it would be very difficult to maintain a two-tier policy. Once we let out Croke Park, there'd be very little argument for prohibiting the same at local level.

"There are villages in the country where the facilities are the only advantage Gaelic games have. Soccer is wall-to-wall on the television but the GAA have the dressingrooms, the bar, the covered seating. Take those away and share them out to other sports and of course our games would suffer."

That may reflect an insecurity about the appeal of football and hurling which some might find surprising, but it's unlikely to be an isolated view at Congress despite all the financial blandishments.

Broad policy doesn't change easily in the GAA. It has been clear for two years that Rule 21 (the ban on the Northern security forces) isn't going to change until such circumstances exist to make abolition meaningless as a gesture. Similarly, Rule 42 may go, and even reasonably soon, but it will be too late for its deletion to make any difference.

The trenchant attitude of the IRFU in recent days is significant but not terribly surprising. Why would they want to pay the GAA a commercial rate for facilities which the Government is ready to build for them in return for a peppercorn rent? In other words this train has left the station.

More to the point, there is no sign whatsoever that the Government is rethinking its plans about the Stadium Ireland project. Notices of tender and public estimates allocations have been announced and preparations for the national stadium appear to be well advanced.

The merits of this need not detain us here. It's hard to argue that the city needs two 80,000-seater arenas but that debate was heard at length at the beginning of this year and hasn't deflected the Government from its course. At present the main prospect of Stadium Ireland being scrapped is the currently improbable scenario of Fianna Fail losing power at the next election.

Even then if sufficient work has been done in Abbotstown, how easy is it going to be to pull the plug?

The GAA is accordingly in a conundrum. Having woken up to the commercial world, it finds events outstripping it. There is also the irony of having to be supportive towards a pet project of a very sympathetic Government despite the implications for them of that project being completed.

It is valid to wonder what exactly Sean McCague had in mind when making such frank comments on the issue. It may be that he was simply speaking his mind, as his predecessor Paddy Buggy did by expressing a personal preference for the dropping of Rule 21 also on BBC radio during the Centenary Congress. It may be that he was trying to warm the more fundamentalist of his flock to the idea of other sports using Croke Park.

But he could have burst into a rendition of Rock Boys Are We and the facts of the current situation wouldn't have changed.