THE tail-end of a conversation overheard in the Croke Park Hotel on Friday evening turned out to be an early warning sign for supporters of Jarlath Burns.
“You have to keep the Nordies out...”
The man who said it and the men who heard it may not have been GAA delegates. Even if they were, they were hardly representative of the 278 men and women from around Ireland and around the world who cast votes to elect the next GAA President.
Did it betray a mindset in some quarters or was it just a joke? A joke with a jag.
That was an hour or two before voting began to elect the next Uachtaran Cumann Luthcleas Gael and although Armagh’s Burns was ahead with 80 first preference votes (Ulster counties have 50 votes) at the end of the first count, his Cork-born, New York-based opponent Larry McCarthy benefited from transfers from the other candidates Jerry O’Sullivan (Cork), Mick Rock (Roscommon) and Jim Bolger (Carlow) and finished 10 votes ahead of him after the fourth count.
That Burns lost out is a great pity but there is no doubt that McCarthy has excellent credentials. He has shown uncommon commitment to the GAA, travelling back and forth from the ‘Big Apple’ for several years to serve diligently and capably on Croke Park management committees. He intends to move home to serve his three years in office which begin when current president John Horan bows out next year.
After the second year of McCarthy’s term, there’ll be another vote to choose the next Uachtaran Tofa (President elect) and there was talk around Croke Park on Saturday that Silverbridge native Burns should bide his time and run again in 2023.
“At the moment we have a president and a president-elect so there isn’t room for anybody with those sort of aspirations,” said the former Armagh captain, when asked if he would run in the next election.
“I think it’s important that there is breathing-space given to the two men to do their job.”
In the history of the GAA there have been just five presidents out of 40 from the six counties: Padraig McNamee and Seamus McFerran from Antrim, Alf Murray (Armagh), Down’s Paddy McFlynn and, most recently, Fermanagh’s Peter Quinn (1991-94).
Experience has taught Burns that “it is difficult for somebody from the North to make a breakthrough” but he doesn’t believe there was an anti-‘nordie’ agenda at play last weekend.
“I’m not saying there’s any bias or anything like that,” he said.
“It’s hard to know why that is the case but we’ve never had a woman president either, this is the first time we’ve had an overseas president and Joe McDonagh (1997-2000) was the last Connacht president.
“The GAA is a 32-county organisation and a world organisation that doesn’t recognise any borders, any political borders so I don’t think that was a factor in any way.”
Silverbridge Harps clubman Burns said it was a positive step for the GAA to elect a man representing New York.
“Irish people have been going to America for many years and the first thing many of their parents would have hoped for is that somebody would look after them and the GAA in New York has always looked after our people,” he said.
“They would help get them a job, make them part of a community, give them a purpose… Maybe the GAA has decided to reward that and recognise it formally. We have taken a large step forward in acknowledging that we are an international organisation, a world organisation.
“Maybe this will be an opportunity for our members to recalibrate how we view our Association and that’s a good thing because we want to embrace diversity, we don’t want to be a single identity organisation in this modern world.
“I thought my leadership skills would have been good at this time but Congress disagreed with that and that’s fair enough. As long as we make the right decision for the Association, that’s the important thing.”
Burns had visited 29 counties to canvas support in the lead-up to the election and the delegates in the three counties he didn’t visit told him he didn’t need to bother because they’d be voting for him anyway. Many of those promises turned out to be empty on a night when the support of just one more county (a swing of six votes from McCarthy to him) would have tipped the balance his way.
“I’m possibly not cut out for that cut-and-thrust of politics and that’s why I never got involved in it,” said Burns.
“It’s a very strange process in that you’re going round looking for votes and people don’t want to let you down by saying: ‘No, I’m not going to vote for you at all’. There are a lot of reports going around about who did and who didn’t vote for me but that’s all irrelevant now.
“People decided who they were going to vote for and they voted for them and all I can do as a GAA person is wish Larry all the best. It (the presidential election) is not political parties running against each other, it’s about people who know others and get on well with others and there would also be a very strong provincial allegiance as well.”
Perhaps the biggest winners in all of this are the children of south Armagh. McCarthy’s victory on Friday night means that Burns won’t have to leave his job as principal of St Paul’s High School, Bessbrook. After working there for three decades he says the school is “etched in his DNA” and the Ulster Championship-winning captain has vowed to close the door on Friday night’s setback.
“I enjoyed going round the county and meeting county boards and I enjoyed seeing how the GAA works at county level,” he said.
“I’m not in any way bitter, I’m not even really disappointed to be honest.
“I move on very, very quickly when something like this happens to me and in the job I’m in, I face situations like that day-in, day-out and you just have to be able to section things off in your mind and move on.
“One of the things I probably hadn’t considered was that I was going to have to leave my school for three years. I’ve been at St Paul’s for 30 years, it’s etched into my DNA the same way my club is and it’s very much a part of what my mission in life is – to try and be a part of transformation education for young people, particularly young people who are disadvantaged.
“We have very high ambitions for our pupils. A week ago our choir sang at the Vatican and my philosophy on it is: ‘Why wouldn’t our school do that? We’re as good as any other school.’ That was the third time we’d been to Rome in 10 years.
“That’s the sort of high expectations we have for our pupils and I honestly would have missed that. I love being amongst those young people and being a part of their development.
“People had said to me: ‘If you get this job that (leaving St Paul’s) will be the most difficult part of it’ and I’m glad I don’t have that decision to make now.”
