Elite GAA players giving everything for nothing

TIPPING POINT:How long can the GAA expect intercounty players to train and prepare like full-time athletes for no financial reward whatsoever?

JIMMY BARRY Murphy has revealed he never darkened the door of a gym until after he’d stopped playing. There’s plenty to take out of that, even for those of us who exhibit all the signs of having never been in a gym and suspect it to be the natural habitat of shallow narcissists not able to get enough of looking at themselves in the mirror. But there’s a lot more in JBM’s statement when you take it in the context of the recent spate of retirements.

There’s been a lot of comment in recent weeks about under-the-counter payments to GAA managers and much of it has harped on about how permitting that will ultimately result in payment for players. That’s enough for most Gaels to reach for their skirts and hoick them up in indignant shock at even the idea of the glory-of-the-parish not being enough of a reason to play. And for most club players, that’s fine. But it’s a very different ball-game for intercounty players.

It is now generally accepted that playing intercounty football or hurling is a full-time job in all but name. Even when not partaking in three or four training sessions a week, there are tales of Herculean efforts in the gym with weights, private workouts, lengthy journeys, a Calvinist dedication to diet, not even a sniff of a social life, and that’s not even taking into account actually playing matches.

It all sounds desperately monastic, even slightly masochistic, to those not possessed of the same dedication or devotion to the games. Yes, there can be a camaraderie to it and yes the satisfaction that comes from winning after such intense self-sacrifice must be immense. But by definition there can only be one winner a year, which leaves the vast majority staring down the barrel of another long year ahead flogging their guts out again for not much more than the very personal challenge of trying to get better.

And here’s the thing: how long can that sustain a player? More importantly, how is that supposed to encourage a young player into devoting the best years of his life to something he may very well love but whose demands are all-consuming? Because in the real world there’s a word for someone who works like a dog for nothing, and that word is gobshite.

That will get more than a few true Gaels steaming, dismissing such a statement as evidence of a non-comprehension of the unique appeal of Gaelic games. Maybe so, but that smugness also fails to comprehend the impact and the result of the current fitness demands on top players.

The nature of the games is changing in front of our eyes, some of it good, but some undoubtedly negative.

Gaelic football is increasingly turning into an examination of players’ running power rather than actual skill. There are top players whose qualification for such status rests almost entirely on their strength and stamina and willingness to work. Some would be hard-pressed to hit a barn door with a banjo their shooting radar is so off-kilter.

It has always been so, you might argue. Every team has needed its workers, which is true, but not to this extent.

Hurling has fundamentally altered too. When was the last time you saw any emphasis on moving the ball on the ground? Instead one of the greatest teams in the history of the game, Kilkenny, have focused on allying their sublime skills to strength, breaking the tackle, overwhelming the opposition with power. It’s enthralling to watch but the work required to reach that level is colossal. And it places incredible demands on players.

No one twists anyone’s arm into playing but there’s something rather fundamentally wrong when Kilkenny’s Cha Fitzpatrick retires at just 26. Tipperary’s star Lar Corbett at 30 should be at his peak, but for whatever reason he has decided to chuck it in this season.

Everyone seems to doubt the reason Lar has given – work demands – but it’s hardly ridiculous to want to make a living for your family instead of flogging your guts out around a field in Thurles for nothing.

In most sporting arenas, longevity is the new black. In GAA, it’s the exact opposite. Whatever shelf-life a top player has is getting shorter and shorter. And what’s this saying to the next generation of players, the elite young minors with all the sporting talent in the world who, given a choice between pursuing GAA and say rugby or soccer, or even Aussie Rules, might come to the eminently sensible conclusion that being a gobshite is an expensive past-time.

Darren Sweetnam is from Dunmanway and earlier this month he was handed a first start by the Cork senior hurlers. He also plays under-19 rugby for Munster. This is obviously a talented kid. And he could end up faced with a choice, a choice more and more highly-skilled teenagers are likely to face.

Because behind all the towel-whipping, old school-tie jibes, rugby is becoming a serious rival to the GAA, both in terms of audience, but especially in terms of what it can offer talented youngsters. Sure, there’s gym work and some desperate physical punishment. But here’s the thing – you’re paid. Really make it and it really pays, set-up-for-life stuff. And there are other benefits.

Popular repute has it that if more than three high-profile Leinster players go into a Donnybrook boozer on a Friday evening – just for a water of course – it can quickly start resembling backstage on the Stones tour of ’72, as our heroes have their pick of as much south Dublin totty as their sybaritic tongues can cope with.

Most of all, though, there is the benefit that matters most – getting paid to be a full-time athlete. Seán Óg Ó hAilpín has spoken of looking enviously at his brother Setanta playing Aussie Rules and wondering what it might have been like for him if he’d been snapped up when young enough to go Down Under.

Sure, he loves hurling, but can you image how good an openside flanker Seán Óg would have been? He wouldn’t be human not to think of the what-might-have-beens.

Tomás O’Leary doesn’t have to wonder. Neither does Tommy Bowe, or Rob Kearney. There are plenty of others whose first love might have been GAA but who did a quick tot when presented with another opportunity and found the answer a no-brainer.

Behind all the aspirational cant, this is an issue the GAA is increasingly going to have to face up to. Obviously there is no comparison to the financial set-ups with professional sports. But presuming on the old devotions is becoming more delusional by the week.

If there’s going to be a payments debate, then surely it is time to open it up. And though it might run contrary to many GAA instincts, it surely is in everyone’s long-term interests to make that debate a realistic one.