Keith Duggan says it is hard to overstate the massive psychological jump that the GAA have made

There is no turning back now. Yesterday, the GAA pushed on towards the brave new world of soccer chants and rugby songs echoing through Croke Park.

The statement was brief and sugary but the facts alter the very tenets and ideals as drafted by the association's founding fathers. For better or for worse, 2007 will represent a radical year in the slow-burning history of the association.

Croke Park, the place of dreams for a century of Gaels, will open its gate to professional sports and so become a sports ground for hire.

The vision and principle of the current president, Seán Kelly, will be realised when the French rugby team add a dash of ooh-la-la to the famous stadium against Ireland on February 10th of next year. With that, over 90 years of exclusivity - or precious independence - will be washed away.

The white shirts of England will appear just a week after the first cockerel is released on the old stomping ground of Ring, of Purcell and all the late lamented greats. The flag of St George will fly under the spring skies of Dublin and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, the brooding hymn of Twickenham, London, will be transported to the Hogan Stand, to the Hill.

To some, that alone will represent an appalling vista, a betrayal of the very values and principles that have given the GAA its sense of self and separation for the past 100 years.

To many others, the sight of an English team playing sport in Croke Park will be a celebration, a confirmation of the new-found sense of confidence and strong business acumen that pulses through the GAA of the 21st century.

Soccer, once the beast with two heads as far as the GAA was concerned, will visit Croke Park later in the spring and again through the dark nights of autumn, when the native games go into hibernation. The honour of bringing the first Irish soccer team to Croke Park will fall to Steve Staunton and, curiously, that most English of gentlemen, Sir Bobby Robson.

Deals have been struck for 2007 only. But that hardly matters. When the year is over, the GAA will have banked some 10 million. They will, echoing the contemporary anthem for Irish rugby, have answered Ireland's call in making sure none of our national sporting teams were left without a home on these shores. They will be seen to have done the right thing: generous, financially prudent, sensible and, in the modern sense, patriotic.

And some day - God knows when - the loveable, cobwebbed mess of the old Lansdowne Road will reappear as something shiny and new and the big, bold sports of the outside world will take their leave of Croke Park. They will fold up the towels and turn off the immersion and say thanks very much. And then the old stadium will return to its original status: a place for the GAA's finest teams to play out their summer passions, a place where most GAA players will but dream of playing.

At least, that is the theory. This deal, this decision, was always meant to be temporary. But somehow, it does not feel that way. It feels as if something is being left behind, permanently. And so it is impossible to fully forget those echoing voices of dissent and proclamations of doom that filled the GAA debating halls over the past decade.

Many GAA people will take great pride and pleasure in seeing their wonderful stadium housing new sports and other nations. But even they are bound to find what will happen next year somewhat strange to behold. For all GAA folks, 2007 will be a version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Even those who dreamed of a new, egalitarian Croke Park will, in the days and hours when the old stage is draped in new colours stop and think: this is really happening.

It is hard to overstate the massive psychological jump the GAA have made. It is like the difference between those austere days when the clergy used to supervise the conduct at parish hall dances and the dreamy lights and French kisses of the modern discothèques: the place may be the same but the play unrecognisable.

The transition has hardly been smooth, with the mysterious £60 million Government grant on the eve of the 2001 Congress playing havoc with the original vote to open up Croke Park.

After that, however, the calls for change became more confident, the voices of protest more marginalised. Kelly gambled the reputation of his presidency on opening up Croke Park and performed impeccably in the long, emotional run-up to the decision day at Congress last April. He was driven by the pure belief he was acting in the best interests of the association. And if and when the Republic of Ireland and France, for instance, play out a noisy, thrilling cracker of a soccer match in Croke Park next autumn, his stewardship will be hailed as revolutionary.

All that colour and pageantry, the sight of new brilliance on the old field, the joyous mix of cultures through the sleepy redbrick arteries of Dorset Street and the cheerful tinkling of a thousand cash registers, the lit-up splendour of Croke Park on a freezing soccer night: who could deny the wonder of it?

Only the protesters, is the answer. The ex-presidents and traditionalists, labelled "backwoodsmen" in the end, who looked into their souls and could not see mere money as a good enough reason to open up Croke Park to outside games, to outside cultures. To them, the survival of the GAA in the modern world is a miracle. And inviting in the unknown represents a fatal mistake, as subtle and inevitable as the Native Americans shaking the hands of the white traders who merely wanted to barter. Just as much as the men and women who have shaped this GAA Renaissance, they believe their fears will be borne out. And will go to their graves believing so.

Time will tell. However, there is no turning back now. Croke Park, not so long ago a low-wattage and private kind of wonder, is set to become the Broadway for Irish sport.

We can but give it our regards.