LOCKERROOM: What a great service Jack Boothman did for the GAA last week. By articulating, with an odd, de Valeran sensibility, his fears for the future of the GAA were a soccer player ever to set stud on the sacred sward, Jack opened up the debate in a frank and honest way. There is now no excuse for a nod and wink conspiracy to preserve Rule 42 next week; let's hold our prejudices and fears up to the light.

Jack Boothman has described the appalling vista which plays on the minds of the conservative rump which attends Congress and controls the GAA in a way which causes discomfort among the vast majority of members. So let's have it out.

Imagine, said Jack, the children being bused out of the villages towards Croke Park, therein to attend a Roy Keane testimonial. Well sure, let's imagine. The children aren't going to be rounded up and forced onto buses at gunpoint, are they? They'll go because they want to go, because Roy Keane is a genuine hero, because the average kid in Ireland sees far, far more soccer and far more Roy on TV then he or she sees of GAA. They'll go because soccer is the dominant world sport and the GAA hasn't marketed or merchandised itself imaginatively. And if they go to a stadium in Abbotstown to watch Roy and the boys, they'll still be enthralled. Good luck to them.

Imagine, though, if they did go to Croke Park. Imagine if under their seats they each found a little gift pack from the GAA. Welcome to Croke Park, Home of the World's Greatest Games. Perhaps a ticket to the GAA museum and a championship match, to encourage them to come back. Imagine the clamour to be brought again. Imagine if they went home and fell under the influence in school or club of one of the many badly-needed coaches which Croke Park rental money could buy.

Imagine if they looked around the village from which they had been abducted by the evil soccer barons and noticed that, whatever the world as seen through Sky sports is doing, the GAA club right here in town is the best-organised, most culturally meaningful, the most confident and vibrant of all the sporting organisations. It has the best games and its activities mean the most, and when the organisation is spoken about it is not in terms of "bloody backwoodsmen" and "craven bigots". Imagine that.

Imagine, says Jack, that "every gombeen politician feels free to shower us with advice on how we should plan for the future". Why shouldn't they? Last spring, the gombeens of the GAA let it be known that they were gombeens with whom other gombeens could do business. Let us Imagineers rewind the tape 12 months to that moment on the eve of Congress when word went out that the Government had let it be known that a large wad of cash would be lying around if the vote on Rule 42 could, erm, facilitate Abbotstown. What followed in the voting hall was the greatest triumph of gombeenism in modern times. Lots of closed mouths, including those of several ex- presidents, Jack, lots of absentees and a motion failing to get the two-thirds majority by a single vote. A red letter day for gombeens everywhere.

Imagine this. Imagine an association like the GAA which thrives on the goodwill of the communities it operates in, imagine that association voting next week to, in effect, waste a billion euros of public money on the rank and smelly Abbotstown project. This after the GAA has (rightly and deservedly in my view) accepted a sizeable amount of public money towards its own stadium project. Guess who will carry the can? Guess which sporting organisation will cause another generation's-worth of people to either love or loathe it?

Imagine this. The GAA opens up shop. The Government gives a sizeable portion of the money saved on the Abbotstown debacle to the IRFU to redevelop Lansdowne Road fully, and gives another tranche of money to the GAA to finish Croke Park. This allows the GAA to get on with developing its games, especially in the cities where it is losing out big style. The association suddenly has the chance to use Croke Park as a promotional vehicle and a revenue generator.

DON'T even begin to imagine GAA grounds in every village and town being opened up to other sports. That is a scare tactic, nothing more. We are talking here about national facilities, about how the GAA might maximise its competitive advantage in a Sky Sport-saturated world. The true strength of the GAA is in the uniqueness of its culture and its extraordinary determination to plant itself and its sports at the centre of the consciousness of so many communities.

It isn't an attack on soccer to say that soccer clubs emphasise primarily the playing of games. They have fixture lists so full and so well run that they are the envy of GAA clubs. They have a culture of playing week in, week out, and at pretty low levels of the food chain they have a culture of paying for play. The energy and money of soccer people is channelled largely into the actual playing of the game.

The GAA has survived by taking a different route. Vast amounts of energy are consumed at grassroots level by constantly adding infrastructure. Clubhouses, community halls. New pitches. Dressing-rooms. These things are the flesh and bones of the GAA, the engine that makes the association distinctive and culturally unique. Without these things and a few other trimmings which we don't care nearly enough about, we would be a bland and homogenised people.

So don't imagine, as the Progressive Democrats sometimes seem to, that the GAA will be giving away those things lightly or at all. Those pitches, those dressing-rooms, those halls, they were built on the sweat of the people who use them and need them. Those people will decide how their clubs are used.

So it is a matter of trust that when we speak of opening up Croke Park we speak of Croke Park only. We speak of Croke Park and put aside all the old fears and consider the best way forward for an association that has the self-confidence befitting the proprietors of such a majestic facility.

No more silence. Let us now hear from people with passion and vision. And no more spooking the folks with bad dreams, Jack; its time to join hands for the great leap forward.