YOU get so used to DUP negativity that you almost expect their doom and gloom when good news visits us. Lord knows, good news has been thin on the ground over the last number of years.
The DUP, among many other things, are energy-sappers. Their spin doctors must sit up through the night and think of how they can turn the most magnificent positive into a negative.
Just when we can almost touch a new Casement Park after 10 insufferable years of knee-high weeds, decay and delays - and imagine Italy, Spain or Germany playing on the Andersonstown Road at Euro 2028 - we get another generous dose of mean-spiritedness about not handing a "blank cheque" to rebuild the famous stadium.
It's almost as if they don't want any investment west of the city. Would the DUP be saying the same thing if Windsor Park was in the frame to host Euro 2028 matches?
Earlier this year, we had the bizarre analysis from the Amalgamation of Official NI Supporters Club telling everyone that Casement Park was not suitable to host soccer matches and waffled on about "parity".
Just think of the potential psychological barriers that would be torn down should the Northern Ireland team get to host a game at Casement Park, if they qualify or are granted an automatic place at the Euro finals.
Maybe the Amalgamation of Official NI Supporters Club weren't aware that Windsor Park - and indeed Ulster rugby's home of Ravenhill - received significant face-lifts.
Maybe they thought there was a small chance that another tier could be built around the south Belfast venue and host the Euros.
Windsor Park is an impressive modern stadium, great views from every seat in the place, but it falls significantly short of the required capacity, which must reach 30,000, hence why Casement Park is the only show in town if we want Euro 2028 matches to be staged here.
When Turkey withdrew their candidacy to host Euro 2028 earlier this week, it left the UK and Ireland joint ticket in a blissful one-horse race.
It’s strange how things work out. Soccer - the old garrison game - has provided exactly the momentum the GAA needed to see the rebooting of the Casement Park project.
It’s not just the DUP that has turned ‘thinking small’ into an art form; there’s a GAA cohort that are just as mystifyingly small-minded who believe that the narrow capillaries – some call them roads – that lead to Clones are the future of Gaelic Games in Ulster.
It’s hard to know what the DUP is selling – apart from doom and gloom and division. It’s probably even more difficult to know what the Clones evangelicals are thinking of and how they skilfully romanticise sitting bumper to bumper for four or five hours with kids in the car to watch the Ulster final.
They’re all lost souls, of course, who will be washed away by progress when the first sod is turned at Casement.
It’s always been hard to understand the mean-spiritedness towards the rebuilding of Casement Park – as if it’ll be some kind of drain on the public purse forever and a day, even though the way that the business model is imagined the new stadium will pay for itself.
It has the very real potential to be a huge commercial hub and will act as a much-needed catalyst to regenerate one of the most socially and economically deprived areas in western Europe.
New businesses will emerge - restaurants, shops, cinema, entertainment – all of whom will contribute to the public purse.
The biggest problem here is a psychological one: not enough people ‘think big’ for their own city.
Of course, the fact that hopes have been raised and dashed over the rebuild a thousand times over has created a vacuum of cynicism.
But this week’s news looks and feels like a proper gear change. There has been enough rubber-necking and tut-tutting on social media over the last decade at the overgrown weeds, rust and crumbling edifice that is a terrible pockmark on west Belfast and the GAA itself.
During the last 10 years, there hasn’t been nearly enough energy and focus from GAA headquarters about the absolute necessity to do something meaningful with Ireland’s alleged ‘second city’.
A new Casement Park would connect Belfast to the rest of the island in sporting and cultural terms. The Dublin footballers wouldn’t think twice about playing in Limerick or Cork.
Why not Belfast? Why shouldn’t a new Casement Park host an All-Ireland football quarter-final or an All-Ireland hurling semi-final? An NFL or NHL final?
Treat it like Ireland’s second city rather than paying lip service to it and patronising Antrim Gaels.
Every time you drive down through Drumcondra and see the corner of the Hogan stand scorch the north Dublin sky, there is admiration and more than a little bit of envy at how the GAA thought ‘big’ for its capital city and rejected the flawed notion that Gaelic Games can’t do well in big urban centres.
No doubt, you need heroes to inspire the next generation and the ceaseless pursuit of excellence in every club – but you also need a place, a field of dreams where children can gaze up at and want to play there.
This is a golden opportunity – not just for the GAA, but for everybody who desires more for Belfast and beyond.
Read more: Casement Park - the story so far
