Profile - Dessie Farrell:He has stood up for players'rights in the face of GAA opposition, but will his strike threat lead to professionalism down the line, asks Keith Duggan
The high-noon announcement of the sensational vote to strike by the elite players in Gaelic games is bound to confirm Dessie Farrell's reputation as the chief thorn in the side of the GAA. Whether the GAA grassroots will ever actually witness the unholy Sunday of silent turnstiles and a disconsolate Marty Morrissey with not a sinner to interview does not really matter. The sanctioning of this mood for revolution will be interpreted by those who regard the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) as a dark and threatening manifestation as the beginning of the end of the GAA. Such doomsday predictions may be exaggerated. But the pledge to strike unquestionably marks a new departure.
It is not as if the proletariat acted out of the blue. In his resilient and implacable style, Farrell had regularly forewarned that what was extravagantly termed as "the nuclear option" of a general intercounty players' strike would, sooner or later, be activated by popular vote. Tortuously slow progress over the distribution of a €5 million grant for intercounty players, approved during former Minister for Sport John O'Donoghue's administration, has frustrated GPA members into returning ballot papers for strike action.
The timing of this vote, with the GAA season now slumbering towards its Christmas recess, means that the interested parties have sufficient time to thrash out a means for distributing the cash. But the stark threat of a strike will allow the GPA to at last make the claim that this show of player power prompted those around the high table in Croke Park to move smartly.
The prospect of a national player's strike will inevitably raise the spectre of professionalism infiltrating the GAA. The GPA has frequently been accused of subtly agitating for the advent of "pay for play", a suggestion that Farrell has always stoutly denied. He was scathing about it in his most recent address, castigating "the petty begrudgers bleating on about pay for play and scaremongering about the destruction of the GAA. It would be pathetic if it wasn't so malignly dismissive," he told guests at the annual GPA black-tie-and-baubles dinner. And it ought to be acknowledged that Farrell and the GPA deserve the respect of being taken at face value on professionalism, the next - and last - great choice that awaits the GAA membership.
It has been a fascinating if improbable journey for Farrell, from his days as a spike-headed, pale streak of creativity in the Dublin forward line to the stewardship of the GPA. As chief executive of the GPA, Farrell has adroitly steered the association from its original beginning as a renegade body genuinely reviled by some GAA traditionalists to the point where the mother association had an official representative - player welfare officer Páraic Duffy - at the GPA annual awards dinner last week.
WHEN HE JOINED the GPA during its founding year of 1999, Farrell must have known that stepping forward as a spokesman would win him no popularity contests. Farrell experienced the Dublin football rites-of-passage adolescence. He shone as a teenager at St Vincent's CBS, making the Dublin minor team at 15. Also an exceptional hockey player, he pursued both sports at an elite level for a number of years before committing fully to Gaelic games. He was a strong and distinctive attacking player on Dublin teams reared on the relatively impoverished fare of the 1990s.
In 1992, he was a quiet and self-possessed kid on a strong and confident Dublin team that were stunned in the September final by Donegal, a county where Farrell had spent many summers. Curiously, he was marked that afternoon by Noel Hegarty of Glen, a player whom Farrell had knocked around with during his summers in the northwest. Remembering that gloomy city Sunday in this newspaper almost 10 years later, Farrell noted how insignificant he felt in the overall set-up. "I was lucky to get my boots and a bit of training gear that week. I never knew what was going on," he said.
Under Pat O'Neill, Farrell's instinctive cleverness and sharp score-taking bloomed. He was a key member of the Metropolitan's last All-Ireland title victory in 1995, a season which he finished with an All-Star. Three years later, he was appointed Dublin captain by his former team-mate Tom Carr. Although his tenure was not particularly lucky - Dublin had three narrow Leinster championship defeats before pushing Kerry to a replay in the 2001 All-Ireland qualifying series - it was clear that Farrell had the stuff of leadership. Although reasonably affable and a good communicator, Farrell was not one for fire-and-brimstone speeches simply to appreciate the sound of his own voice. Leading was a skill he developed.
"I suppose that side of me, that being a pain in the ass in the dressing room, the mouthing-off, began the next year," he recalled in this newspaper. "Since then I've tried to fine-tune it to constructive criticism."
In 13 seasons of wearing the sky-blue shirt of Dublin, Farrell scored 3-58 and won six Leinster championship medals. His credentials as a footballer who kept showing up because of the venerated traditions of local pride and commitment are unimpeachable. He was the model amateur.
Although he was feted as a hero by the masses on Hill 16, his long career left him with a keen appreciation that the perceived glamour of big-time football was illusory. Farrell played through the last days of avant-garde amateurism, where the treatment of players varied wildly from county to county. Often, players fought against bureaucracy and a wall of indifference for the meagre allowances to which they were entitled. "When I was injured a few times I realised I was just a number," he said in the twilight of his playing career. "If I couldn't play after being injured, well, it was tough. I can remember scrimping and scrounging for my few bob to come in from the club."
Perhaps it was that latent sense of injustice that caused Farrell to immerse himself in the advancement of the GPA. When the association first met in September of 1999 in Belfast, the attendance was almost exclusively Ulster-based. About 130 players showed up at the Wellington Park. A journalist in attendance conducted an experiment out of curiosity, roaming the room and asking players if they would be in favour of getting paid to play their sport. The vast majority agreed that they would. And from the beginning the presumption has been that this motivation was at the heart of what the GPA represents. When Farrell was elected as chief executive officer in May of 2002, he was praised by founder member Donal O'Neill as being "head and shoulders" above the other candidates in "his stature and appreciation of what the GPA means".
HIS STARTING POINT was not the most promising, with the GAA blankly refusing to meet the players' group in the beginning and maintaining an openly hostile position through the early years. Farrell retired from Dublin in 2004 and published a popular and in places harrowingly personal biography that autumn. All the time, he steered the GPA towards stability. Astute sponsorship deals enabled the GPA to survive and slowly prosper under Farrell's able and dogged pursuit of those rights which members felt most pressing. In the spring of 2005 came the breakthrough official meeting with the GAA president of the day, Seán Kelly. That pow-wow was a radical improvement from the warring early days and a de facto recognition by the GAA that the players' movement was not simply going to fade away. This week, Donal O'Neill ended his involvement with the association, emphasising that he was leaving it in rude health, with a turnover of more than €1 million a year and a financially stable structure.
There have been times when the GPA message has been communicated in a rather heavy-handed manner. All possible arenas have been used to exercise the independent rights of players, most colourfully when players began downing sponsors' drinks like men rescued from the desert during post-match television interviews. When it emerged that they were being paid to promote the energy drinks and the strategy was duly outlawed by RTÉ, Farrell voiced the general grievance, noting that it was "the only way for players to get some sort of recompense compared to their professional comparison".
It is this associative union of thought between the sporting lives of GPA members and professional sportspeople that has probably hardened the suspicion that pay for play will be the ultimate conclusion to the brokering between the GPA and the GAA. The greatest fear of many GAA people is that the advent of professionalism would kill the volunteer spirit that has been the backbone of the association and ultimately lead to privately backed super-counties drawing the cream of elite players and destroying the fundamental concept of "playing for the jersey".
At present, professionalism in the GAA seems like a far-off world. But as the GAA, for a century the most intractable of organisations, this week signed the contract on a new electronic games version of their sports, it is clear that they have begun to see the prestige All-Ireland championship in terms of being a product. Slowly but surely, the GAA and the GPA are falling into step.
The mere thought of a strike will send a cold shiver through traditionalists and enrage many more. But as Judge Danforth warns in The Crucible, "This is a sharp time, now, a precise time." Certainly, further tensions between the players and the GAA seem certain in the years ahead. It remains to be seen how quickly the GPA will opt to activate "the nuclear option" when they next reach an impasse with the GAA. Then, the old GAA talent for mute intransigence may re-appear. But as Dessie Farrell has shown, he is not one for blinking quickly either.
TheFarrellFile
Why is he in the news?
He is chief executive of the Gaelic Players Association (GPA), which yesterday voted by a landslide 95.3 per cent to approve a general strike action.
Most appealing characteristic
His bravery and honesty for standing up for the GPA cause. Also, his ability to kick points for fun.
Least appealing characteristic
A tendency to communicate the impression that the world somehow owes elite Gaelic games players a favour.
Most likely to say
"Nothing has been ruled in or out at this stage"
Least likely to say
"Give me a jersey, an auld pair of boots and a ham sandwich afterwards and I'll die a happy man. The GAA is the greatest organisation in the world"