A great headline

 It was a great headline for a great story in the Irish Times.
“GAA and Rangers unite to promote Gaelic games.”
The piece was by John Fallon and Paul Cullen.
The piece was breathless in its enthusiasm.
An almost identical piece was in the Indo the same day by Brian MacDonald.
 “The GAA and Glasgow Rangers had joined forces to promote Gaelic games in the Rangers heartlands of the West of Scotland!”
It gushed about the Glasgow club’s army of community workers opening doors for Gaelic games in what had been, heretofore, hostile territory for the Gah.
It seemed a great story that probably the only major football club in Britain who has never fielded a Republic of Ireland international was working with Cumann Lúthchleas Gael.
Surely it would only be a matter of time before Glasgow Rangers were playing Crossmaglen Rangers in a friendly in South Armagh!
There was only one problem.
It wasn’t true.
This journalist spent an interesting day last month unpacking a story that had been run in both the Irish Times and Irish independent on Monday 2nd March 2009.
I called Rangers FC’s PR department and I spoke a very helpful and very young sounding press officer.
He told me that he had been fielding phone calls from “across the water” all morning.
I believed him. He sounded at the end of his tether.
“We don’t have any official link with the Gee Gee Ay!” he pleaded.
I believed him.
He told me the kids had been “treated” to a visit to Ibrox where they had witnessed the Light Blues trounce lowly Hamilton 7-1.
He then kindly sent me the following club statement.
“There is no official link up with the GAA as such but we were delighted to welcome pupils from Glaschu Gaels and Tír Conaill Harps to a recent anti-sectarianism workshop at our Study Support Centre which is based at Ibrox Stadium.
This involved a group of school children from Glasgow and Co. Meat, Eire – primary and secondary school age – coming together for the workshop followed by a tour of the stadium and tickets for the Rangers v Hamilton SPL game on October 25 last year.”
I hadn’t the heart to return the call and point out that Rangers had been away to Hamilton on October 25th.
At that match the racist abuse of young Irish player James McCarthy was so bad that it made it onto Sky news.
Rangers did host Hamilton on December 6th and duly won 7-1.
As I was checking this out Rangers supporters message boards were going into meltdown. This wasn’t a positive development for the Shankhill Loyal.
I called Croker and spoke to Alan Milton in the press office. I told him who I was and that I was calling about the rangers story.
“News to us.” He sniffed.
I told him that the story was in both the Irish Times and the Indo (hence must be true).
“Yeah, that’s where we heard about it.” Another sniff.
I called the GAA president in Britain Bernie Keane.
“I don’t know much about this!”  Bernie joshed.
“You’ll need to speak to John Gormley. He’s yer man!”
I duly called John Gormley-no-not light bulb banning John Gormley, but the ex-president John Gormley of the GAA in Britain.
If it is possible to sound ashen faced on the phone then that’s a fair reflection of John as he was heading from Luton to Glasgow for county board meeting. He had the Times ands the Indo on his lap.
Finally I caught up with John Fallon of the Irish times who was in Castlebar on the fateful night that the marriage of Glasgow Rangers and the GAA was announced.
A 25-year veteran of the quote unquote business Fallon confirmed the story. He had checked the quotes after the AGM with Gormley. The Irish Times man and me then quickly shared “source remorse” experiences.
I left this story with John Gormley getting back to me to confirm what he had been told by a GAA administrator in Scotland.
I’m still waiting.
It was a great headline though…………….