Chronic indiscipline and the toleration thereof endures as the biggest stain on the organisation's escutcheon. As for having to listen to some of the contributions at Congress every year, so evocative of Breandán O hEithir's line comparing Dáil proceedings to "a long slow trawl through sewage" - well, let's not even go there. (Literally. Please, Mr Sports Editor. ) Tortoise-paced? Reactionary? In thrall to its own version of history? The GAA can be all of those things, sometimes to infuriating extremes. But when it wants to be, it can be - and has been - the polar opposite. Imaginative, enterprising, eminently capable of casting aside the chains of yesteryear and striking out into virgin territory.

If it weren't, Ireland and France wouldn't be playing rugby on Dublin's northside in a fortnight's time.

If it weren't, 82,000 spectators wouldn't be flocking to watch a National Football League match under floodlights at Croke Park next Saturday - only Twickenham will attract as large a crowd in these islands over the same weekend - in a stadium whose redevelopment was initiated before the Celtic Tiger roared and without the necessity of a financial comfort blanket from the government.

Troglodytes do not build cathedrals.

If it weren't, one aspect of the GAA's legacy wouldn't echo Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph. Si monumentum requiris, look around you. Playing pitches and club rooms - monuments of their own kind - in every parish in every county in Ireland.

In the light of forthcoming events in Dublin 3, the Tribune hereby presents the five most progressive moves by the GAA in modern times. Just to keep them on their toes, we'll also give you five moments they'd prefer you forgot about.

THE ENDING OF THE BAN Simultaneously a small step and a giant leap that brought the association into the 20th century, albeit seven decades late. Yet if it can fairly be said that a law preventing members playing "foreign games" was one that had no place in a modern organisation, it's equally fair to point out that the Ban hadn't been instituted, then maintained, on a whim. Far from being regarded as a purely negative rule, as Marcus de Búrca points out in The GAA: A History, the Ban "was to its early advocates and supporters a positive expression of loyalty to one form of Irish culture", requiring GAA members to indicate publicly their support of Irish games in addition to withholding their support of English games.

After attempts to scrap the rule failed at Congress five years in succession between 1922 and 1926, an episode that de Búrca attributes to a backlash against a now-forgotten sugar rush of anglophilia that surfaced in society here in the years immediately following the Treaty, momentum grew during the 1960s to such an extent that, by early 1971, 30 counties were in favour of the deletion of Rule 27.

Thanks to the then GAA president Pat Fanning's masterly handling of a situation fraught with difficulty, the Ban was scrapped without debate - and, more importantly, without acrimony - at Congress in Queen's University a few months later. The GAA no longer defined itself as much by what it wasn't as by what it was.

Fanning, who'd made no secret of his pro-Ban sympathies, has frequently admitted to one regret in the intervening years: the failure of Irish rugby-playing schools to embrace Gaelic football and hurling, contrary to assurances that they would do so in the event of the Ban being dropped. This continuing hostility of rugby schools to Gaelic games remains the most obvious - and, of course, unacknowledged - case of bigotry in Irish sport.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ALL IRELAND CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS Received the green light at Congress in 1970 following motions from Galway and Wexford and despite the opposition of - you'll never have guessed it - Cork. A wonderful competition that's given us the Connollys of Castlegar, the Fennellys of Ballyhale, an Antrim team winning an All Ireland hurling title, a Wicklow team winning an All Ireland football title and Tony Doran winning an All Ireland with his club 21 years after he won one with his county. For the credit of the little village indeed.

SPONSORSHIP Another prime example of a scenario where, despite the direct prognostications, the sky didn't fall in after all. At this remove it's difficult to believe that the notion of having county jerseys emblazoned with a sponsor's logo attracted such opposition prior to 1991, the first year of the concept. The logos soon got bigger, as did the deals behind them. For a company backing the likes of Cork or Dublin, the sponsorship is not merely a local one but a national one.

Although Croke Park don't possess figures as to the total value of intercounty sponsorships due to the determination of county boards to keep the details under wraps, indications are that there are very few current intercounty deals not of the six-figure variety. And once the Rubicon was crossed 16 years ago, it was only a baby step to the Guinness and Bank of Ireland championships.

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE BACK DOOR Writing in the 1994 Clare GAA Yearbook, the late Brendan Vaughan asserted that, "attractive as it may be to run knockout championships, they must be seen as a dangerous and unacceptable indulgence where Gaelic games are concerned".

Vaughan's was no voice in the wilderness; within three years, the back door had been installed in hurling, thereafter to be widened and introduced to football. Simultaneously logical and bold, the move has given intercounty players more return on their investment of sweat and toil, yielded more high-profile fixtures and birthed All Ireland quarter-finals in both codes.

On the negative side, the club scene has been badly squeezed in many counties, although county boards who lack the gumption to adhere to a strict fixtures' schedule must take much of the rap. Also, give the hurlers of Cork or the footballers of Kerry a second chance and they're likelier than most to take it. The less successful counties can't have it both ways.

TELEVISION COVERAGE If you show it, they won't come. Thus, for years, ran the mantra articulating the GAA's opposition to live TV coverage of fixtures. A nadir of sorts was plumbed on the Sunday of the World Cup quarterfinals at USA '94, when RTE showed six and a half hours of soccer to one hour of Gaelic games (and this on the day of the Munster hurling final). Eventually the penny dropped that if it ain't on TV, it ain't on. Live double-headers are now a staple of summer Sunday afternoons on RTE, while TG4 showed approximately 75 games live last year.

The recent decision to approve floodlighting for additional grounds in each province means that National League matches on Saturday nights are a thing of the present. How long till we'll be watching championship matches on TG4 or Setanta on Wednesday evenings in June and July? Not very.

More new ground to be broken.

AND FIVE MOMENTS TO FORGET

THE 1994 RDS/CLANNA GAEL-FONTENOY AFFAIR The local Clanna Gael-Fontenoy club announced their intention of staging a Dublin v Down/Shamrock Rovers v Bohemians double-header at the RDS in December 1994 by way of marking their centenary celebrations. Citing objections to how the afternoon's proceeds were to be divided, the GAA withdrew their permission for the game but denied this was an anti-soccer move. Few believed them. Cue a thoroughly predictable PR disaster.

THE 1996 ALL IRELAND FOOTBALL FINAL REPLAY ?Or any of the numerous other great all-in mills of our time, basically.

THE 2006 INTERNATIONAL RULES SECOND TEST Not the first unsavoury encounter against the Aussies and not even the dirtiest, but never was there one where the violence had been so comprehensively flagged in advance.

Also takes the palm for the additional frisson of hypocrisy that emanated from the Irish side afterwards. Those dirty Australians, eh?

SPECIAL CONGRESS 1998 AND THE RULE 21 DEBATE In the wake of the Good Friday Agreement, Joe McDonagh, the incumbent president, reckoned that the time had come to rescind Rule 21, which prevented members of the British army and RUC joining the GAA.

He soon discovered it hadn't. Following an in camera debate, Rule 21 stayed, though the GAA pledged their intent, pending a review of the future of the RUC, to remove it at a later date. And, during Sean McCague's presidency, did.

CONGRESS 2001 AND THE CROKE PARK DEBATE Was all set to give the go-ahead for the opening of Croke Park to other games until the government dangled a £60m carrot in front of the GAA on the Friday night. The voting process next day was only slightly more fragrant than the election in which, standing in a rotten borough boasting precisely one voter, Blackadder polled 16,472 votes.

Shambolic.