Praise the Lord for new Ministers trying valiantly to make an impression. The weeks around Christmas are usually illuminated by only three things. One is the unique combination of soap opera and Shakespeare that is that most noble of GAA inventions, the Annual County Convention. The second is the sanctuary from family and stuffing better known as the King George VI Chase on St Stephen's Day. And the third has always been the increasingly illusory dream of a thumping Celtic win in the New Year Old Firm game, something which has become a comfort blanket to cling to from one winter to the next.
But this Yuletide, raise your glasses and join in a toast to the venerable Michael McGimpsey, for it is he who, as the new Northern Ireland Minister for Sport, has given us the will to go on and face whatever the next few years will bring. He has provided a reason for being and real hope for the future. We all owe him a tremendous debt.
How has he managed this terrific achievement? It is all very simple. Given his silence on all matters sporting since his elevation to high office we rudely and erroneously assumed that they were not particularly near the top of Michael McGimpsey's ministerial agenda and had merely been tagged on to his portfolio as an administrative afterthought. How wrong we were and how Minister McGimpsey has proved all the sceptics wrong.
The new Minister chose last week to make his sporting debut with the bold assertion that Belfast should stage a game or games (he was a little sketchy on the detail) of the 2006 World Cup Finals. This bizarre announcement made the expected splash as the lead item on a number of the local sports bulletins and no doubt the Minister and his advisers were more than pleased with their little promotional coup.
But it is when you start looking at this nonsensical idea in anything approaching objective detail that it starts to crumble in your hands. In terms of the new consensus, gesture politics the mentioning of the Holy Grail of the World Cup and Northern Ireland in the same cluster of sentences fits in perfectly. Scratch the surface, though, the absurdities are obvious.
First of all, and most obviously, this fanciful plan is envisaged as part of an English bid to host the Finals in six years time that already looks doomed to fail. South Africa and probably Germany are ahead of them in the pecking order and there is the small matter of the chaos and general confusion surrounding the building of new stadium to replace Wembley which would be capable of hosting a major international competition. The issue of Northern Ireland hosting one of the group games would, it appears, be laughably far down the list of priorities.
Look a little closer to home and this proposal's feet of clay becomes even more apparent. The Minister and his officials will presumably be aware of the existence of a body called FIFA and its old-fashioned insistence that every ground which hosts a World Cup Finals game must meet minimum standards which guarantee both spectator safety and comfort. The last three host countries - France, the United States and Italy - have all provided stadia of the highest quality ranging from the old-style splendour of Rome's Olympic Stadium to the post-modern magnificence of the Stade de France.
You can just imagine the scenario when the FIFA boys come to call, as they are obliged to do in assessing any bid by potential hosts. No doubt they will be wined and dined because Belfast has no shortage of brash new places to impress the great and the good. This, of course, bodes well as we attempt to smooth our way towards an inevitable, hopeless Olympic bid.
Suitably sated by the fine foods and wines, they will retire to bed to rest in advance of the ground inspection the next day.
The following morning the cavalcade of hire cars will snake through the narrow terraced east Belfast streets, lined with commuters' cars, a mile or so from the city centre. A look of puzzlement and genuine bemusement will roll across their faces as they are told there isn't far to go now. Where is the green field site? Where is all the car parking? Where is the infrastructure and the state of the art transport links? Who, they wonder nervously to themselves, would choose to build a World Cup venue in a place like this?
They don't have to wait long to find out as the chaps from the Irish Football Association beckon them out of their warm cars. By this time everyone is standing in front of what is rather grandly called the Main Stand but what is in effect a large shed-like structure in the style of English First Division grounds 20 years. "Welcome to Windsor Park," one of the IFA top dogs says, puffing out his chest. "This is where we would host our World Cup game. Inside we can seat up to 15,000 people." The confident tone in his voice then tails off a little. "Although we've never had it what you would exactly call full in the last few years." Cue mass exodus of world football officials with only their lavish expense claims to remember this little place by.
Michael McGimpsey's head-in-the-clouds scheme would be laughable were it not so depressing. Half a century of benign neglect has left Belfast bereft of a stadium fit for small time league football, never mind one capable of playing a part in the biggest sporting event in the world.
It was only when Lawrie McMenemy was freeing himself of the shackles of the contract that bound him to the international team that he was able to say what he really thought and declare that he felt embarrassed bringing international teams to Windsor Park. That is why the IFA have made it clear that they will pick their new manager from within by opting for the much-vaunted "local man". The clear logic is that he would not have the temerity or the requisite distance to say what McMenemy did.
The sad thing is that Michael McGimpsey is now playing the same self-deluding game by dangling this World Cup carrot in front of a sports-starved Northern public. Rather than providing the leadership that is so clearly required, he is instead pandering to the school of quick fixes and lowest common denominators. It all has uncanny echoes of the antics of the Dublin International Sports Committee a few years ago and its strategy of grandiose gestures and schemes which trumpeted their charms loudly but in reality did not amount to a hill of beans. Michael McGimpsey's first foray into the world of sports policy-making has been equally inauspicious and does not bode well for the future.
Who knows what he has in his bag of tricks for next year? Will he seize on the proposed changes in the GAA playing calendar and use them as an opportunity to nominate Casement Park as the venue for the inaugural, government sponsored Combined Services Gaelic Football tournament between representatives of the RUC, British Army and Royal Irish Regiment? Or will he centre a bold and audacious Northern Ireland bid for the next Winter Olympics around the opulence and grandeur of the dry-ski slope and golf course on the outskirts of Lurgan? Watch this space, because just about anything seems possible.
