GAA annual congress: Seán Moran assesses Sean Kelly's presidency. For all the positives, there will be frustration he didn't engage more fully with a wider range of issues

Let's start with the consensus. Seán Kelly's presidency, which ends this weekend in Killarney, will be indelibly associated with the vote to allow other sports be played at Croke Park.

To some of those who supported this departure he is one of the great presidents; to its most implacable opponents his term of office was a triumph of style over substance, a constant, self-seeking pursuit of soft publicity at the expense of administrative application.

The verdict on Kelly has to fall between those extremes and in the interests of accuracy closer to the positive but there will be a sense of frustration among those favourably disposed that he didn't use his considerable talents to engage more fully with a wider range of issues.

It wasn't completely his fault the Rule 42 debate dominated so much of his presidency. His open support for change enraged some, albeit that such objections ignored modern practice.

Kelly's two predecessors, Joe McDonagh and Seán McCague, each took public decisions to urge the abolition of Rule 21, the prohibition on members of the British security forces joining the GAA, and the controversial measure duly went after an intensive canvassing operation by McCague in Ulster.

Whereas the relaxation of Rule 42 has become the leitmotiv of the presidency - and it's worth remembering the decision of last year's congress was only a temporary measure that is almost certainly going to require a further decision of congress - it would be more accurate to take the broader concept of "opening Croke Park" as Kelly's enduring legacy.

Even the vote to change the rule represented the liberation of ordinary members' views and was partly brought about by clubs making their views known in counties where officials had traditionally opposed change.

And it wasn't just international soccer and rugby teams that have reason to respect that contribution.

Kelly's determined championing of less successful counties led to the restructured championship finals, which allowed Westmeath and London hurlers win the Ring and Rackard Cups respectively on big days in Croke Park, as well as the at times maligned Tommy Murphy Cup, which was raised by Tipperary's Declan Browne - one of the country's most admired footballers.

Kelly's openness wasn't universally welcomed. Those who opposed his stance on the use of Croke Park ensured the presidency was - and frequently, scandalously so - the most abused from within possibly in the association's history.

But he was more than capable of both taking it and giving it in return, as his congress speech two years ago proved. And there is no way anyone with a lack of intellectual staying power or determination could have seen through the Rule 42 amendment.

In 2004 the Motions Committee, largely composed of former presidents, sullenly blocked motions on the use of Croke Park in defiance of Kelly's expressed wish that the matter be debated - and not for any compelling reasons.

DUSTING HIMSELF DOWN, the president used a special congress later that year to organise a fundamental reappraisal of how motions were vetted and ensured arcane objections could no longer be a credible barrier to having issues of concern to the membership discussed at annual congress.

On a less visceral level, for those charged with the daily grind of running the GAA, there was a sense that sometimes the presidency could blur the lines between the Socratic gadfly that stings authority into more rigorous contemplation and the plain old gadfly that flits from one topic to another with irritatingly little attention paid to any of them.

To some, especially media, his inexhaustible accessibility constituted a refreshing willingness to engage with the world; to officials it meant too much policy-making on the hoof.

What has become a long-running tension over the responsibilities of the president in the context of the Croke Park secretariat was especially visible in recent times. Kelly often visited Dublin without going near headquarters, emphasising the distance between the full-time staff and a self-described maverick president.

At a recent dinner to mark the end of Kelly's tenure and attended by An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, only one male member of the GAA's full-time staff attended. There were plausible excuses but the president himself dryly noted the turnout.

There were areas of disappointment, notably the issue of discipline and most memorably the raft of experimental rules introduced at the beginning of 2005.

However worthy the trial, they were hurried in conception and, more disastrously, faint-hearted in application. At the first dissonant note from intercounty managers the GAA turned tail and fled, in the widely derided circumstances of an All Stars trip to Hong Kong.

Despite an awful lot of energy expended in attempts to reform and bullet-proof the disciplinary and administrative framework in the face of increasingly litigious attitudes and a growing refusal to accept reasonable punishment within the spirit of the rules, the situation governing these issues is more ambiguous than it was three years ago.

Then again the old structures had no future and needed to be overhauled. Kelly undertook at the start of his term to split the old Games Administration Committee into the two remits of fixtures and discipline and this he accomplished although his exasperated distancing of himself from error-prone disciplinary decisions of his GAC caused upset within the committee.

Maybe the new provisions tabled for discussion at this weekend's congress will mark a turning point but the evidence of the Disputes Resolution Authority (DRA), introduced last year, is new structures need time to settle and sometimes take off in different directions than intended.

One of Kelly's strengths was the ability to drive business when chairing meetings, his good humour and acuity keeping even the most demanding congress ticking over.

There could be a lack of sensitivity, which on one occasion led to an official, a member of a diligently ambitious sub-committee, walking out of congress in frustration at a flippant put-down of his body's hard work.

Another undertaking on accession to office concerned the slashing back of bureaucracy in Croke Park: "There are too many committees, with too many on them, often for too long, that met too often, achieved too little and cost too much," he told congress in his first presidential address back in 2003. Yet three years ago there were 38 committees, sub-committees, work groups and task forces. Today there are 53.

Nonetheless it would be unfair to explain away all these difficulties by reference to the presidency's big-picture ambitions because it would do an injustice to the small-picture successes.

FOR INSTANCE, Kelly took office with one substantial problem on his plate: how to deal with Dublin in the wake of the SRC report recommending the splitting of the county into north and south. Having taken personal charge of the problem, he defused it.

Early in his presidency the GAA came under pressure over the Guinness sponsorship of the senior hurling championships. Kelly managed to control the issue without overly whingeing about other sports' alcohol sponsorships, accepting the GAA because of its massive social reach was a special case.

His establishment of a task force to consider the problem of alcohol in contemporary society and how the GAA might contribute to tackling it went a long way to ensuring the controversy passed, as well as providing a thoughtful blueprint for confronting a major social issue.

In relation to the Gaelic Players Association the success was more personal in that the core issues have yet to be addressed by the GAA although in a highly unusual course of action, Central Council effectively chose to take Kelly off the case nearly two months before his term of office concluded.

Having tried initially to outmanoeuvre the GPA by appointing a Players' Committee of his own - despite clearly flagged opposition - the president eventually came to a clear understanding of the players' case and did his best to bridge the gap between the GAA and the players.

For much of the three years this helped keep the agitation below the surface but as has been apparent in recent weeks more fundamental rapprochement is required and Kelly was unable to persuade the GAA of that necessity.

Yet all of the above concerns the impact of the presidency on the GAA, which perhaps disregards the wider public. Kelly was a brilliant front man for the association. I remember watching after a student debate in UCD, at which he had acquitted himself with great aplomb, plunging into a thicket of students when the meeting had adjourned to the Montrose Hotel and genuinely conversing with them.

A senior news broadcaster in RTÉ once made the point in conversation that it was "very good for the GAA to have a president like that, someone who reassures people".

That outside view was vindicated to an extent by the award to Kelly of a People of the Year citation late in 2005.

Such external recognition can't be the ultimate arbiter of a presidency's success but neither can it be ignored.

Few presidencies escape the epitaph that they could have done better and while accepting that in this case, Seán Kelly brought a pleasant and courteous style to the office and achieved enough of substance to deserve the GAA's gratitude.