Squareball, gaa shop, gaa gear, gaa tshirts, clothing, merchandise.

Today was a big day for the GAA, itself Ireland’s leading sporting organisation, in case you forgot. Certainly it’s making plenty of dough these days when the rest of us are down to the last few choc ices. The new website www.gaa.ie went live and the lads also published the accounts for the year just ended.

The figures show an increase in revenue of €3.4 million, from €64.3 million in 2008 to €67.7 last year. An Uachtarán CLG, Christy Cooney and his sidekick and Director of Finance Tom Ryan both expressed themselves very happy with the way things are going, and well they might.

The GAA managed to fleece the golden goose as best they could without killing him. The golden goose was of course a cash cow in the form of Rugby and Soccer who both helped boost the GAA coffers. Having now decamped to the Aviva stadium the GAA has a hole to fill and to be fair they have realised that things might never get better.

Some of that cash is going back into developments in clubs and counties, with Seamus McCloy making sure Derry gets its fair share of things.

Gates receipts during the year showed a minor decrease from €26.3 million to €25.5 million, but the figure is skewed by postponement of the International Rules Series last October.

But like the Terminator, they’ll be back. Yes, next August the wallaby show hops back into town again, with the hint of latent violence from the players, along with their generally reprehensible behaviour whether it is players being boorish in Galway or the manager acting like a gobshite. That means they bring out the worst shade of Green in most supporters who normally save their hatred for the parish’s neighbours up the road. That inevitably boosts attendance for when the bloods up, the wits out and you know what that means. But for every passionate gael going to Croker of the Gaelic Grounds to hurl abuse at some Aussie hoor, there’ll be plenty of other flat earthers sittin’ on their hole at home in concerted opposition to the compromise game.

One of Talking Balls leading contributers reaffirmed his opposition to what he described as a “f****n abortion of a game. “I refuse to attend that shite and wouldn’t have it on the telly in case the grand childer saw it. Pure dung. I think it is a bastard version of both games, and it should have been strangled at birth.” Yes, and that’s the sort of measured, reasoned and calculating response we’ve missed since Ger Manas had his arse replacement surgery.

Back to the GAA and their financial backslappery today. Tom Ryan, head bean counter was keen to promote what he described as a value for money theme to attract people to games. Tom flagged up their special offer available for the All Ireland Senior Club Finals on St Paddy’s Day. That means that anyone saying ‘Alrite there Big Lad’ on their way into Croker, in a Gerry Kelly-esque Belfast Accent gets in free, irrespective of their age or their previous history.

The games themselves should be good craic with half of west Belfast attending in the hope of seeing McGourties and Co do it for Galls and Ulster. On the other, some of the GAA promotion smacks of miserliness with one media outlet reporting to us how they were offered two family tickets by Croker as a giveaway. For God’s sake like!

We won’t be there, we’re busy running a cultural maelstrom in our own club. There’s be craic, ceoil agus damhsa til’ the cows come.