It's out of their own mouths that they're condemned.

Here's what Seán Kelly, the then president, had to say after the vote providing for the opening of Croke Park was passed at Congress in 2005: "If planning permission for Lansdowne Road is not granted, then all bets are off." Here's what Nickey Brennan, the new president-elect, had to say the same evening:

"There will be an agreed date when Croke Park will be made available, based on a commitment to start building at Lansdowne Road, and there will be a known end date when that is going to be done. It will be during that period of time, and that period of time only, that Croke Park will be made available."

Pretty clear, right? But that's not the reality now.

Planning permission for Lansdowne Road, which is the precise issue the motion was contingent upon, has still not been granted. There was actually a game played there very recently. Yet people are making excuses about health and safety issues, pleading that that's why major matches can't be held there. Sorry, but this is neither the fault nor the concern of the GAA.

The motion that Congress passed is being flagrantly and blatantly disregarded.

Needless to say, many of the carrots that were held out by supporters of the motion have turned out to be miles wide of the mark. The notion of somehow ring-fencing the income generated by rugby and soccer at Croke Park for the exclusive use of grassroots GAA clubs, for example: What nonsense!

The goodwill that the GAA demonstrated has also been thrown back in our faces.

There's been no reciprocity, despite promises to the contrary. Hurling and football won't be played at Lansdowne Road. Hurling and football won't be played at the stadium in Tallaght unless the Thomas Davis club succeed with their court action.

Hurling and football still aren't being played in rugby schools, although you don't hear anyone accusing rugby schools of operating their own form of the Ban.

Also, when it appeared as though Munster might end up with a home quarter-final in the Heineken Cup, suddenly there was a manufactured campaign pressurising the GAA to open Fitzgerald Stadium. Once again we were painted as the bad guys. But it's not the GAA's fault that there isn't a rugby ground in Munster with sufficient capacity to host big games.

As many of us predicted at the time, the decision to open Croke Park has become the thin end of the wedge.

What makes matters worse is the marketing opportunity that was missed this weekend. I'm talking about Dublin and Tyrone.

Floodlights at Croke Park, a crowd of 80,000, a match that was talked about non-stop for the past three weeks - yet it wasn't on terrestrial TV.

The GAA could even have paid RTE to cover the match live. It would have been money well spent. What resulted instead was a PR disaster. The message that's gone out is: "If you want to see great floodlit sporting action from Croke Park live on TV, watch rugby and soccer.

Coming soon!"

I'm unashamed to say that I'll be a sad man next Sunday.

That's not because I have anything against rugby, it's because the moment that Ireland's game kicks off in Croke Park is the moment that the GAA will have lost its moral, strategic and ideological case for refusing to pay its players.

And who will have destroyed the amateur ethos? None other than the Association itself. There's irony for you.

In case you want to know what I'll be doing when the rugby is on, I have three cows due to calve that weekend.

I'll be doing my own pushing and pulling and dragging.

John Arnold is a member of the Bride Rovers GAA club in Cork. He was speaking here in a personal capacity