FOR several months last year there was a running joke between Frank Fitzsimons and myself.
When he became Antrim senior football manager, he was faced with the onerous task of trying to get many of the county's top players back on board. Frank insisted his door was always open. For a while, every interview I did with Frank had virtually the same headline: 'The door's always open'.
"What about Mick McCann, Frank?," I'd ask.
"Yes, Mick's a smashing footballer. The door's always open," came Frank's reply.
"What about Kevin Niblock, Frank?"
"Yes, Kevin's a great player. The door's always open," replied Frank.
"Seán Kelly?"
"A fantastic footballer," said Frank. "The door's always open."
"Brian 'Bam' Neeson?"
"We'd love to have 'Bam' back," and guess what? The door's always open. I suggested to Frank on numerous occasions that he was born in a field because he never, ever shut the door.
Frank’s strengths as a manager are his likeability and his pragmatism. He knew it wasn’t straightforward to expect the best players to automatically declare for the county team. Many of them had been infected by the apathy that has plagued Antrim GAA for generations.
Antrim were stuck in Division Four and going nowhere fast. So you could understand why some players decided to step away from the set-up to play other sports.
In many ways, Frank’s 'open-door' policy was the only approach available to him. He had to play the role of gentle persuader. He wasn't in a strong enough position to be slamming doors behind him.
Even when Antrim caused one of the biggest upsets of last year’s All-Ireland series by clawing back a nine-point deficit to defeat Division Two side Laois in O’Moore Park, three players left the panel to play football in America.
This is Antrim. This is what happens in a county with collective low self-esteem. So what does Central Council do? It proposes to banish them to the outskirts of the association.
It proposes to cut them adrift by creating some meaningless competition that nobody actually wants. It proposes to start the process of deinvestment in the smaller counties because that's exactly what will happen if Central Council's proposed B championship gets passed at next month's congress in Carlow.
Just prior to Christmas, Antrim GAA experienced a major takeover. 'Saffron Vision' virtually swept the boards by winning six out of eight positions on the county executive. The people involved in the new county board come with weighty GAA and professional CVs and are already making some headway.
In a couple of weeks’ time, the new board plans to completely restructure its fundraising practices and has already established key links with the corporate world. Creagh Concrete, one of the county's loyal sponsors, is back on board for another stint.
Should congress pass this controversial motion, imagine just how more difficult it will be for Antrim GAA to convince would-be sponsors and other financial backers to come in and support the senior team in a B championship.
Such giddy ideas would only prompt brain drains. More players would inevitably drift away from the GAA. The best coaches around wouldn't want to be associated with a lower-tiered tournament when they could apply their skills elsewhere. County teams would be run down. They might train once a week for a B championship. Or they mightn’t train at all.
And yet, county teams, we're often told, have always been the GAA's shop window. Now, Central Council wants to give the Division Four counties a makeover they don't want by attaching dowdy net curtains to their shop fronts, particularly at a time when the GAA is already fighting a battle with other sporting codes for hearts and minds.
If the GAA hasn’t realised already, the debate is all wrong. The GAA’s top brass continually fawns over the club and how it will always be at the heart of the association. The GAA’s top brass lauds the association’s volunteerism and the richness of its grass-roots.
The GAA is supposed to be a bottom-up association. It is intrinsically altruistic. That’s why the GAA is admired and the envy of other sporting organisations around the world. And it's exactly why this B championship motion doesn’t make sense.
It’s a safe bet that Antrim, Carlow, Waterford or Wexford won't win the All-Ireland title in the foreseeable future. Likewise, Cameroon, Mexico, Costa Rica or Chile won't win the World Cup in the foreseeable future.
So what's stopping Fifa creating a B World Cup for the smaller teams and putting a glass ceiling in place to allow Brazil, Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Argentina to play among themselves to see who wins the trophy?
Uefa have expanded Euro 2016 to 24 teams in France this summer. Iceland, Hungary, Albania, Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are participating but won’t win the big prize. But they might cause an upset. If there was an A and B Euro 2016 finals running side-by-side, there wouldn’t be the same numbers flocking to France this summer.
It's important to remember tournaments are not just about the winners. That’s only one chapter. Tournaments have always been about the narrative, its layers and the memorable stories that emerge and nurture us as sports fans.
The GAA is supposed to be different, unique - better, even - in its outlook. Talk of an All-Ireland B championship is crassly Darwinian and serves no-one well, particularly those who tabled it in the first place.
