The Runaway GAA Train
Is the association going off the rails?
Jim Gavin sat down with Joe Molloy of the Irish Independent Sports Podcast last week to discuss the raft of changes to be implemented in Gaelic football for the upcoming season. Gavin has steered a committee containing some of the games brightest minds to create solutions to Gaelic football’s current state. The sport went through a transformation over ten years ago and has since consisted of mass defenses, lateral play and general sporting malaise. It needed change and Gavin was instructed by GAA president Jarlath Burns to deliver it. The conversation on the podcast was interesting. But Molloy’s final question, around the 50-minute mark, was of greater importance than anything that preceded it. It was a question in response to the issue of secret payments to GAA managers.
Molloy: “I said I was going to throw one curveball at you can and if you don't answer you don't answer. It's not a particularly controversial one. But you're a deep thinker about the game and the association and people respect your opinion enormously. It's just been bubbling away the last couple of weeks. Pat Gilroy resigned as a director of Croke Park ………Gilroy said as part of his resignation
‘The GAA is going down a path I don't think is compatible with what the organization should be. The things that are concerning me is this talk of paying managers, that concerns me because what's precious about the GAA is the amateur status. It is unique in the world and it's so democratically run. The idea of blanket payments to managers, the idea of a paid Dublin manager standing in front of players who aren't being paid, I can't get my head around it’
…... But where are you on that area?”
Gilroy: “That’s Pat’s particular opinion and you know he's obviously articulated that. From my perspective, I'd find it difficult to stand in front of any team and if they weren't getting paid how would the manager get paid? I'd find that difficult. But the association have been very clear in its ethos in terms of preserving that amateur status. I mean I've just articulated the vision that it’s the most exciting amateur game in the world. It's not pro, semi pro.”
Credit: Croke Park
That said a lot. The manager of the GAA’s greatest team was not paid. The players who played on that team were not paid.
One of the stalwarts of that team, the recently retired Brian Fenton, also had an interview during the week with Mike Foley of the Irish Times. Fenton described playing, not for himself or for the team, but simply to impress Jim.
‘I think I’m playing to impress Jim. He had that much of a hold on me. I am doing everything for you here. The edge for years was Jim. I need to just impress Jim. It’s like tell me you’re proud of me.’
Fenton craved approval from his unpaid manager. How would that have been different if Gavin was preoccupied picking up his brown envelope? How would the impact of his presence have been sullied by money?
But what do these payments of managers that have accelerated drastically in the last decade symbolise ? They symbolise an association that’s running away with itself and becoming infused with greed.
The laughable rule that inter-county team training cannot return until December 7th is broken by everyone bar the Kilkenny footballers. There is supposedly a ban on inter-county training between December 22nd to 27th, let us see which insecure county managers decide to break even this logical rule. Jim McGuinness, the Donegal saviour, has brought his players away to Abu Dhabi this month as part of a warm weather training camp in preparation for the 2024 season. It would certainly be interesting to count how many All-Ireland titles Brian Cody and his teams won on the training fields of Spain or Portugal or the Middle East.
We constantly hear that inter-county panels are filled by students and teachers. The demands of the game at that level filter out players who may hold a trade or work for themselves. How can teachers partake in county panels if it requires them to fly out to the Middle East in the middle of the school term? How can ambitious university students drop everything at a time of year that is often the height of exam/assignment season? Common sense would suggest they can’t.
A tale of caution regarding the loss of common sense has come from Parnells GAA in Dublin. Having sold land near the airport in 2008 for an estimated €22.5 million euro individuals in charge of the governance of the club lost all sight of what a GAA club should represent. Parnells sought to transform themselves into a GAA club with the best facilities in Ireland. In doing so they first paid €11 million for a leasehold on their grounds in Coolock to the religious order the Marist Fathers. €11 million paid not to own your ground is extraordinary. Parnells moved away from the core values of the association by trying to turn their club into a self-functioning business with a reception and a restaurant. They tried to buy a club All-Ireland by accumulating transfers at an ungodly rate. Following spiralling debts, accelerated by the Covid pandemic, Parnells GAA were forced into the ‘surrender and return of clubhouse premises and adjoining pitches to the Marist Order.’ This should be a case study sent out to the wider GAA community. Deviating from the GAA’s core principals is a slippery slope. Sure, you can build a restaurant for functions but what has that got to do with granting under 8’s and under 9’s an opportunity to play? Sure, you can ask your players to go on a team holiday in the middle of December and let their colleagues pick up the slack or you can ask your university players to fail their exams.
As revenue begins to tighten its grip on spending by county boards the gig economy for certain GAA managers might be soon up. Jarlath Burns may have gotten Jim Gavin to solve one crisis within the association, but he may have used him to solve the wrong one.