CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS Mayo GAA Hurling Chairman John Hopkins and Mayo GAA Board Patron Paddy Muldoon read through the financial report at last Sunday’s County Convention in Claremorris. Pic: Michael McLaughlin
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Daniel Carey
MY first Mayo GAA Convention was also my most exciting.
It was December 1, 2008, and Noelle Horan launched a blistering attack on the County Board Executive, before confirming that she would not be seeking a nomination for the post of Public Relations Officer, a position she had filled for the previous three years.
The Mayo News deadline was pretty elastic in those days, and we knew that we’d be able to carry news of an eventful Monday night Convention in the following day’s paper. When the smoke had cleared, I went to the front desk at the McWilliam Park Hotel, booked a room for the night, and hunkered down for a long evening in front of the laptop.
It was close to 1am when I submitted my final piece of copy.
Fast forward to 2012, and if events on the Convention floor weren’t quite in the same explosive league as four years previously, I still had reason to remember my second Claremorris Convention. Struggling to find a Wifi signal and up against a deadline, I bolted out of the hotel. Racing up the Kilcolman Road, my phone rang. It would probably have been a good idea at that point to a) stop running or b) put down the laptop I was carrying. In the end, I did neither, and the laptop tumbled onto the pavement.
That evening, material was sent to The Irish Examiner the old-fashioned way: by telephone.
Journalists who have never had the privilege of spelling out the word ‘Garrymore’ four times to a sub-editor are really missing out in life. It was the most expensive €30 I’ve ever made.
So, I suppose, by the law of averages, I was due a quiet McWilliam Convention, and boy, did I get one.
There was, if you’ll pardon the pun, an element of ‘going through the motions’ when it came to discussing possible rule changes, and the fact that much of the material in committee reports had been circulated on Friday or earlier meant there were few surprises.
One visiting journalist got briefly excited when he noticed that Mike Connelly had apologised to his brother Noel and Pat Holmes for the way in which they were treated at the end of their terms as joint Mayo managers ... until I pointed out that he was reading last year’s minutes.
With Central Council delegate Seán Mac Éil keeping an unusually low profile, it was left to treasurer Kevin O’Toole to produce the two best one-liners of the day.
The first came in response to a delegate who wanted to know why club fines were listed in the accounts as totalling €100, when his own club had, he said, ‘paid well in excess of that’ during the year. O’Toole’s question – “Ye were fined, but did ye pay it yet?” – prompted laughter.
The response which followed seemed to leave little doubt: “We paid a figure of €2,662, and we had to pay it before we got our second allocation for the replay.”
But the Tourmakeady clubman wasn’t bested yet. “I think if you check back, that was part of your affiliation fees, your insurance; it wasn’t a fine,” he said. “It’s a liability ... but it’s not a fine.”
O’Toole played a blinder, addressing delegates for 16 minutes, and then took questions for a further 18. He was in the process of issuing a cri de coeur when he was overtaken by a coughing fit. “The clubs are just as big a part of Mayo GAA,” he had told delegates, as the County Board, Mayo senior football team or its management. “One of the themes for this year,” he added, struggling to get the words out amid the coughs, but determined to fight on, “is that we’re all in this together”. And having managed to conclude on an upbeat note, he said: “And I think it’s time I shut up now!”
All quiet at Mayo GAA Convention
