Amid all this talk of naming rights, revised costings and executive committees there are times when you genuinely fear for the GAA's soul. Of course this new world of fantastic modern arenas and rude financial health has its obvious advantages. But as the plush seats become ever more comfortable and the credit ratings continue to soar, the faint nagging voice which is just about discernible in the distance doesn't go away. And it is saying that for all we are gaining, we might just be losing something much more valuable as well.
Up until these salad days, the games had always been the thing for the GAA. Clubs were run on impossibly tight margins, surviving only thanks to the selfless goodwill of the men and women who ran them. The provincial championships survived and sometimes even prospered. But media interest in all things GAA was at best sporadic and not always sympathetic. The games survived though. For as long as the GAA continued to function there would be enthusiastic but shapeless under-12 football and hurling matches on Saturday mornings.
None of that will disappear in the near future but the GAA into which these young boys and girls are enrolling may be dramatically different to the association of just a generation ago. External forces and pressures might see to that. In Belfast last Saturday night the Belfast Giants ice hockey team played their first home game in a gaudy showpiece.
Ice hockey the world over is not famed for its subtlety or delicate nuances. The most interesting thing was the universally fawning response of the press and television here. The local media bought into the entire package with such gusto - the expensive family ticket, the merchandising, the stage-managed fights - that we can reasonably expect ice hockey to have become the national game by the end of next January at the very latest.
This can be attributed at least in part to the sporting starvation this place has been subjected to for 30 years and more. After the emptiness of what has gone before, the powers-that-be could have dressed up international tiddlywinks in some fancy new clothes, franchised their own team, provided a merchandising stall in the foyer and sat back to watch the punters and the pounds rolling in.
The challenge staring the GAA in the face is just how far it is prepared to go down the commercial road. Bit by bit, it seems, we are being prepared for a situation where the games might not always be the thing at all.
That makes the victory achieved last week by Bridgeen O'Hare, Nicole McGrath and seven other girls from County Down all the more remarkable and important. Like many young girls of their age they had experienced the benefits of the recent explosion in women's football and camogie. They had taken their places in mixed football and hurling teams right up to under-12 level and had revelled in the opportunity.
But two years ago they were told by the county board in Down that the door that had been opened to them was now being closed in their faces. The official policy within Down was that mixed gender teams were only acceptable up to under-12 level and that after that girls who wanted to continue playing football and hurling would have to look elsewhere.
The girls and their parents, with the assistance of the Equality Commission here, took a test case that was about to come before the court in Newry last week. But just before it was heard the county board relented and changed the rules so that the girls and many others like them could continue to play in mixed teams up to the age of 14. The caveat was that their parents would have to give written consent after reading a medical report outlining the potential risks but this particular battle had been won.
In the great scheme of things, all of this may not mean very much. The corporate boxes will continue to be sold and the lobbying for extra funding will go on. But the determination and the resolve with which the girls and the parents pursued their claim reveals a lot about the new GAA that is developing in tandem with its larger, cash-rich big brother.
This was not a legal battle for planning permission or a carefully planned public relations onslaught to secure a few extra million in government funding. It was, instead, a long and involved struggle for the rights of members of the GAA to play its games on an equal footing with everyone else around them. The whys and the wherefores of whether girls should in fact be playing with boys at this level are to a certain extent irrelevant. The most significant thing is the innate desire of the girls involved to play a fully-functioning, totally involved role within the GAA. Nobody was about to put a price on that.
The publicity given to this one particular court case should not give the impression that this is some nine-day wonder or passing GAA phenomenon. Women at all levels have been claiming part of the association for themselves for a long time now and what happened in Newry last week is a further indication of the way in which that has now trickled down to the lowest age groups and the most modest levels.
The effect on the GAA at club level has been refreshing and revitalising. The constituency has been widened significantly and for perhaps the first time women can legitimately feel that they have an unchallenged place within the GAA structures. That in turn entitles them to a voice.
Almost unwittingly the GAA has become a significantly more democratic and inclusive organisation with a wider support base than ever before. The importance of this will become increasingly apparent over the coming years. As events on the ice in Belfast last Saturday showed, the battle for hearts and minds is now beginning in earnest.
