An outspoken opponent of Donegal's highly-publicised motion to limit the number of games a county can play in Croke Park during the GAA congress over the weekend, former GAA President Sean Kelly explained his decision in greater detail on Monday's OTB AM.
Faced with the accusation from Donegal's county chairman Mick McGrath on Monday's OTB AM that his comments regarding the Donegal's "negativity" was inaccurate, McGrath asked Kelly to withdraw the notion that the motion was inherently negative.
However, a few days removed from the incident, Kelly had no such intention of backing down from this assessment.
"No, I'm not," Kelly stated, "I just commented practically on the wording of the motion."
"It was written in a negative sense because it said no county could nominate Croke Park as their home venue.
"That is a negative, that's what I was talking about.
"I think if it was approached in a different light, it might have got a different result, but it was beaten two to one."
"If [the Donegal motion] had said that Dublin could play their home game in Croke Park but the final game would be played in a neutral venue then that would change the situation completely, or as I said, maybe we should look at playing one game at home, one game away and toss for the final one.
"Regarding negativity, the response from John Costello showed the depth of feeling there was in Dublin about the way the motion was worded.
"No disrespect to Donegal, but I think a different approach would have got a different result.
Quizzed over a reliance on semantics rather than the necessary flaw by which Dublin - although unnamed in Donegal's motion - would play two of their Super 8 games at their home venue of Croke Park, Kelly highlighted the importance of terminology.
"The wording does matter," Kelly insisted, "because you're passing a motion on the wording."
"You can't say the wording doesn't count, the wording is everything in a motion down to the finest detail."
Looking ahead to the possible reemergence of this motion in another form, Sean Kelly suggested he'd be "very surprised if there isn't a motion similar to what I'm suggesting now" forthcoming from some "unit of the association next year."
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