GAELIC GAMES:WITH PROTEST marches and division in the clubs all part of the landscape in Cork, the good news story of the weekend was the historic first Sigerson Cup win for hosts Cork IT. Having recovered from an early blitz by Dublin IT, who blazed into a 1-3 to nil lead, CIT recovered to win by five points.

It was the culmination of nearly a decade’s work by the Cork college’s GAA development officer, Keith Ricken, who took up his role in 2000. CIT has an enrolment of around 5,500 and nearly 10 per cent of the students are members of the GAA club.

“We’ve been there or thereabouts,” said Ricken yesterday, “losing semi-finals to Sligo IT and Queen’s, who both went on to win it out. To win was great because it proved we could do it.”

Although controversy regularly flares up over eligibility for third-level competitions and the rules on what constitutes valid academic courses for the purposes of Comhairle Árd Oideachais are fairly impenetrable, CIT pride themselves on emphasising the role of full-time students.

“We don’t go recruiting,” says Ricken. “We see our role as providing Gaelic games for students, not providing students to play Gaelic games. We encourage the students to get involved in administration as well as coaching. If we have an outside coach, we have students working with him. The idea is that our graduates will go on and continue to be involved in the association when they leave.

“Billy O’Connor, for instance, was goalkeeper for Mary I in the Trench Cup final and he’s a former chairman of our club.”

There’s no suggestion the weekend was a flop across the finishing line for a weary team. With nearly the whole team eligible for next year’s defence of the Sigerson CIT will continue to be a force, and at the end of this week the hurlers will be in Dublin to contest the semi-finals of the Fitzgibbon Cup against the University of Limerick.

Meanwhile, the GAA has announced details of the association’s role in this year’s St Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin.

In recognition of the association’s 125th anniversary, the joint grand marshalls will be last autumn’s senior All-Ireland winning captains, Henry Shefflin (Kilkenny), Brian Dooher (Tyrone) and Cork pair Angela Walsh (football) and Cathriona Foley (camogie).

They will lead the parade from its start in Parnell Square along the route to St Patrick’s Cathedral.

Behind them will be the GAA floats, themed Monumental Moments, and the Artane Boys Band. Original plans to have the parade – or at least the GAA elements of it – conclude at Croke Park before the All-Ireland club finals had to be dropped because of the traffic implications.

“It wasn’t feasible to end the parade there,” according to Siobhán Brady of the GAA 125 committee. “Instead, the GAA floats will be loaded on to trucks and transported to Croke Park where they will parade before the club finals. That’s the reason the throw-in times for the finals are later than usual.”

Elsewhere, at last night’s Leinster convention in Mullingar outgoing provincial chair Liam O’Neill urged the GAA to push ahead in the face of the recession.

“We are a strong, vibrant organisation and I think we can give a lead to others by how we handle ourselves during these challenging times,” O’Neill said. “Rather than cut back in our activities, we should seek to use this time of recession to build for the future so that when the country gets back on its feet it will find us in prime position to lead the youth of our nation in sporting activity.

“A recession should mean that we can get work done cheaper than we could have done in the last few years. We should seek to engage with local authorities and Government agencies much more aggressively than we have to date, and we should be prepared to borrow for infrastructural projects on a large scale, bearing in mind our capacity to repay loans.

“Local authorities own land and we have the finance and resources to develop sporting facilities. It should be easy to do business with them with a bit of flexibility on both sides.

“Decision-making on these types of projects would need to be done centrally with a view to proceeding first with those projects which will yield the quickest returns, and in time we should be able to get around to all counties. Regional needs must supersede local or county needs.”

Finally, it was confirmed Tyrone’s appeal against the €2,000 fine imposed on the county and the eight-week suspension given to defender Ryan McMenamin are to be contested at the Central Appeals Committee, which meets this Thursday.

* Last weekend’s Ulster convention in Ballyshannon backed a Tyrone motion calling for the immediate ending of the international rules series, voting in support by 36-4.