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Around the Country, GAA-folk will be gathering together these wet weekends to take part in that yearly GAA ritual – the Club Annual General Meeting. The one time of the year when gnarled oul fellas that you haven’t seen in a long twelvemonth appear out of the woodwork to point out some obscure administrative ruling. This in effect means they can filibuster the entire meeting for an hour or so, thus depriving the rest of you valuable drinking time, away from the wife or girlfriend under the pretence of transacting invaluable club business.

Recent administrative professionalism filtering down from the Powers That Be in the bureaucracy means that the AGM isn’t what it used to be. Nowadays motions have to be submitted in writing in advance thereby eliminating the possibility of a prolix, verbose and often drink-induced motion being raised from the floor on the day of the AGM. If folks haven’t got their act together they cannot shanghai the club’s business the way they used to. Take a moment reader, to reminisce about the now-rarely-heard motion from the floor, and give praise.

Back in the good old days when nobody really gave a feck, or fewer did than do now, every January lads gathered round a Calor Heater in a ball-freezing parish hall to discuss the pressing matters of the day that would dictate that year’s business. Whether the club should provide socks to all senior players; whether the lotto should have four numbers or three (cue a treatise on the probability of winning from an over-mathematicised former ship’s radio engineer who really needed a better sex life) to a heated argument on the costs of paying some oul bollix to cut the grass on the pitch rather than do it theirselves.

The Election of Officers was another piece of theatre. The Club secretary – wizened, eyes scrunched up in paranoia, a fixture for seventeen years, yet worried that rumblings of a stalking horse candidate or indeed a new ruling from Croke Park could render him powerless. The Chairman, an oracle of tales of yore but feckless at chairing meetings. The Treasurer, still in possession of his parents’ first communion cash. Last year he introduced a motion, and was successful, that gave him sole rights on the distribution of sliotars for training and matches. Any new sliotars requested had to be sought in writing in triplicate, along with an account of the circumstances leading to the loss of any sliotars heretofore supplied. Thus the camogie freetaker was instructed not to strike her frees so hard at one rival club’s ground as their ballstop was not of the required gauge to halt a sliotar, the club being a football only club. Likewise, the Treasurer had a word with a Seamus Carey’s dog Tickles, after the audacious hound made off with an average of a sliotar a session over a period of pre-season training.

When these learned gentlemen came for re-election – woe betide the fella that dared suggest they had served their time, that it was time for new blood. To do this was the GAA Club Equivalent of treason. One year the over-seasoned office holders resigned en masse over some slight uttered by a woman at the AGM. “You oul fellas should catch yerselves on sittin there in tracksuits…” was the gist of what she said. Taking umbrage the entire executive walked out and had to be cajoled back in again by a triumvirate of the Parish priest, the County Chairman and for some obscure reason the Local Bank Manager. Reassurances given that there would be no more ‘unwelcome’ comments from ‘women’, the Officers duly returned to their seats. The more visionary members saw this as an opportunity lost but dared say nothing for fear of being ostracized and suffering reprisals e.g. being denied access to Championship tickets.

At his stump speech the secretary put his head down and burst into a remarkable thirty minute monologue, the exorbitant length due to the fact that (a) he repeated every point three times, albeit in different words and (b) head down, eyes focused on the table in front, he failed to notice that a goodly number of his clubmates had dozed off in the manner of middle aged men after a feed of Sunday dinner.

The AGM is also distinguished of course by the absence of the vast majority of players whose arses are too precious to be bored off them by talk of motions, elections and the like, and by the presence of at least one new member – spaniel-like full of enthusiasm and bright ideas. Typically they never return for a second year due to a fatal dose of disillusionment adminsistered at the AGM in the fashion of a slow but lethal silent killer, leaving the same folks to attend year on year on year and year on year on year.

Anyone propose that motion…? Do we have a seconder…?