It’s that sense of difference, which sometimes reads as superiority, which jars with the ongoing controversy over the Liam Miller charity match.

Tickets for that game went on sale this morning and were expected to sell out fast, with a capacity crowd in Turner’s Cross.

As you’re aware, however, the organising committee originally sought to have the game held in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. As the Irish Examiner reported earlier this week, Michael O’Flynn of the committee said: “Cork County Board were receptive, but Croke Park and the GAA can’t do anything about this while that rule is there.”

The GAA’s rule is straightforward: back in 2010, it was accepted that Croke Park could be used for other sports, but not other grounds around the country. For ‘other sports’ to be played in those grounds, permission has to be granted by the GAA’s annual Congress.

Straightforward. But nonsense.

An organisation cannot on the one hand position itself as embedded in its communities like no other body, with a national reach like no other, and a sense of social responsibility like no other — and then use the fig leaf of a technicality to abdicate its responsibilities to those communities.

Much is being made of some issues that are slightly tangential to this controversy. For instance, the fact that Liam Miller played GAA with his local club, Éire Óg, before enjoying a spectacular professional soccer career, or the public funding that was invested in Páirc Uí Chaoimh during its redevelopment.

There’s quite a lot of talk about PR disasters and outmoded schools of thought also, not to mention the only-to-be-expected faux outrage on social media.

None of these sideshows take precedence over the fact that someone who brought fame to his home place all over the world is being denied his due. That’s the bottom line in this case, not hand-wringing over bureaucracy and permissions.

(With tongue in cheek, in fact, it’s odd that no-one thought to bill the game as a charity Gaelic football game between the participants, with the proceedings turning to ‘ground football’ as soon as the game kicked off — er, threw in. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened on that patch of grass).

To be parochial about the matter, it’s particularly disappointing that the Cork County Board isn’t more proactive on this.

While Michael O’Flynn stressed that the board was receptive to the idea of using the stadium for the game, and has offered its premium facilities free of charge to the organisers, it would be interesting to see the reaction if the Cork County Board decided unilaterally to allow the game to take place in the stadium, and to do the right thing by its own people rather than the rulebook.

It’s not too late for the GAA to act. Whatever Jesuitical retrofitting of approval or permission needs to be done can be done.

Print another 36,000 tickets and it becomes the occasion it should be.

If not, well, there was a time when Cork was known for knowing its own mind, for doing what it felt was right and for taking the consequences for what it felt was right.

The weekend after next there’ll be thousands of Corkonians in Croke Park chanting about how it feels to be a rebel.

How about some rebelliousness for one of your own ahead of that?