On Gaelic Games/Seán Moran:At the farewell media lunch for Liam Mulvihill a couple of weeks ago it was joked that his sense of timing was impeccable.

As the non-appearance of Cork in the National Leagues began to come into focus it was suggested that this was a good time to be taking your leave of national GAA administration.

The outgoing director general was amused at the thought and probably more so than he even let on at the time. It's an assumption that over the nearly 30 years of Mulvihill's tenure the organisation he has guided has become so big and modern that it's an awful lot harder to administer in a world that can be portrayed as full of menacing challenges.

That assumption has some validity, but just because we can all see how far the GAA has successfully travelled since a 33-year-old Mulvihill walked into to the unrecognisable austerity of the GAA's old offices in June, 1979 doesn't mean the world was simple and uncomplicated and set on an unfussy, inevitable course for the future.

Croke Park's structural splendour has been a popular choice as the most fitting monument to Mulvihill's years at the helm and it remains the most visible legacy of the last 20 years. Its importance - both as a venue constructed ambitiously and in the nick of time financially and also as a revenue engine - cannot be overstated, but Mulvihill's reflections on his years in charge don't dwell too much on the redevelopment.

It's noticeable that when he is asked

about his years in Croke Park, the darkest memories always come back to the conflict in Northern Ireland. As those bleak decades recede into history it's easy to forget the enormous pressures the Troubles exerted on the GAA.

So there was Mulvihill in his early 30s faced with the day-to-day responsibilities of the association - "My first priority is administration," he told his first press conference on June 6th, 1979, "giving proper service to Central Council and the management of the association".

In his final media conference last week he remembered the stress of building Áras Daimhin, the headquarters of the GAA between 1984 and 1999, because the cost of over £1 million was triggering fears that it might bankrupt the organisation.

At the same time in Ulster, members were being targeted and murdered. Again last week he spoke about the impact of these events.

"When you visited a small community that had lost its club chairman or club secretary or a great activist or former player the thought struck you that that deed had hit not just at that family but had hit at the whole association in that area.

"That's why the Troubles were so horrific and why those deeds were done because people on both sides of the political divide realised that they were going to cause unbelievable anguish to a community."

There were further implications of the conflict. Just months before Mulvihill took office, the GAA's annual congress adopted an extraordinarily loaded bunch of motions.

For a start, the provision stipulating that the association be non-political was changed to read 'non-party political' - an amendment that still survives - thus clearing the way for various exercises in extreme nationalist rhetoric.

For instance, that 1979 congress passed the following. "That CLG as a national organisation, which has as its basic aim the strengthening of the national identity in a 32-county Ireland (this actually leaves out the significant qualifying clause, 'through the preservation and promotion of Gaelic games and pastimes'), supports the

struggle for national liberation and the

right to self-determination of the Irish people in the 32 counties without interference from foreign powers."

Not surprisingly, this gave considerable latitude to those who wanted to depict the GAA as the recreational wing of provisional republicanism.

With tensions exacerbated by situations such as the occupation of Crossmaglen Rangers' ground and developing concern amongst members south of the Border at the sulphurous waft of the association's public positions the situation was extremely volatile.

Rule 21, the ban on Northern security forces joining the association, was still in force and would be for another 22 years.

Asked about the rule in an interview in this newspaper on August 11th, 1979, the new director general gave what would become a familiar response.

"My attitude all along is that we should be guided by our members in the Six Counties. When the day comes and they can accept the people concerned, when there would be a police force which could be stated to represent all of the population and be one with the population then we would have nothing to fear and would have no reason to have a ban."

That encapsulated the dilemma for the GAA - attitudes struck in relation to Northern Ireland were invariably driven by the Ulster membership, whose views were naturally more strident than those of the population and membership at large.

Significantly, the ban fell only after then president Seán McCague took the responsibility in 2001 of persuading the Ulster counties not to stand in the way of its removal and by extension representative recruitment into the fledgling PSNI.

But those 1979 attitudes were going to be divisive in the South. Just days after that August interview, an incident with echoes of more recent times occurred when a Provo rally took place in Casement Park.

The difficulty of trying to hold everything together was demonstrated when the following year unrest erupted within the Garda Síochána. Nineteen-eighty saw the murders of two gardaí, John Morley and Séamus Quaid, who had been prominent inter-county players.

Public criticism of the GAA as being ambivalent on republican violence was levelled by gardaí. The situation became sufficiently acute in November of that

year for Jack Marrinan of the Garda Representative Body to bring a delegation to Croke Park to meet then GAA president Paddy MacFlynn and Mulvihill.

It was necessary to issue a joint communiqué in which the GAA had to spell out that the association "condemns violence, including that perpetrated by subversive organisations no matter who they are".

That night in Long Kesh a hunger strike was into its second week. Although it ended without fatality before Christmas, it was a prelude to a second such protest that would not end so well.

That hunger strike would convulse the GAA and is referred to by Mulvihill as the unhappiest period of his term of office, but like another GAA icon, Jack Lynch, he can say that he held the line during times of trial and unimaginable turmoil.

So when he sits back in this, the first week of his well-earned retirement from Croke Park, Liam Mulvihill can look at events in Cork and crack a smile at the notion he's getting out just when the going gets tough.

... smoran@irish-times.ie