WHEN The Loup wanted to put a new pitch in a few years ago to replace Derry football’s answer to the Ali Sami Yen, they did what most GAA clubs do and brought out a £20 ticket.

They had a three-for-two deal and their sellers got carte blanche. Be generous.

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A child in the house? If the parents are buying, throw the child a free ticket.

It took off like a forest fire.

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Their pitch would cost just over £1m.

Of that, they raised £432,000 from their £20 tickets.

It was sheer, bloody hard work – exhaustive evenings and weekends traipsing the whole of Ulster, groups of them.

“We were just counting it up, we think we knocked over 100,000 doors, from the Malone Road to the lakes of Fermanagh. It was absolutely fantastic,” said then club chairman Sean Corey in 2016.

A hundred thousand doors.

Loup have just over 200 adult members. There are roughly 40 families that live there.

See, here’s the thing. The idea that the GAA are standing at the doors of Westminster like Oliver Twist with his bowl has grown like a weed through the never-ending debate over Casement Park and to what level it should be funded by public money.

That has been fairly hard to take.

Casement Park will now cost over £200m, almost three times its original estimate of £77.5m.

When the Maze stadium was on the table, it was the DUP that........

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