GPA must keep fingers off Doomsday button

SIDELINE CUT:"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room." – President Merkin Muffley, Dr Strangelove, writes KEITH DUGGAN

Where would we be without the old GPA to keep things good and lively? In what has been a so-so summer of on-field games, the administrative-wing of player power has been as refreshing as a Cork dry and tonic. There are times, when the GPA delivers their latest statement of regret or their promises of future agitation that I think that this is what it must have been like to be alive in the defining days of the Suffragettes.

One half expects to turn up at Clones some afternoon and find the nippiest corner forwards in the business chained to the goalposts or to turn on the radio to learn that some famous midfielder has just hurled himself under the wheels of The Sunday Game mobile wardrobe.

From the various descriptions of players and mentors of the GPA, the atmosphere has become pretty grim. Administrators and members alike have reached the stage where they are fairly much ready to do anything: not sharing their thoughts and emotions (“4-18 won’t be good enough the next day, Marty”) with the cameras after Sunday’s big matches is just the beginning.

Presumably, the latest mood of unrest might well culminate in what was popularly termed “the nuclear option” a few years ago. It may not even have been the GPA who coined a phrase that seemed to have been plucked straight from Stanley Kubrick’s cold war classic. But it kind of suited the apocalyptic seriousness with which the GPA has gone about their business from the very beginning (Whatever happened to Donal O’Neill anyhow?).

If and when the definitive GPA warts and all pot-boiler is published, it will really have to be titled The Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter Of our Discontent. Like many people in Ireland, I am living for the day when I wake up to read the headline: GPA Chief Declares All Is Right With the World.

When it comes to the GPA, most of us are with the Joker: Why So Serious? For as PG Wodehouse said of Scotsmen, it is never difficult to distinguish between a GPA man with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.

All the strife, the strong words and the incessant press releases! Some times you hear the GPA talk and you have to do a double check. This is about Gaelic games, right? There ain’t no cat languishing in a British prison or on trial in Thailand for smuggling snuff through his sliothar, is there?

Sometimes, it is hard not to worry for the GPA. All that stress! All those denunciations falling on deaf ears! Lord knows, championing the GPA can be a tough old beat. They know that they are not universally loved among Gaels. And they are an easy old target: Joe Brolly must have had the listening nation in stitches a few weeks ago when he talked on the radio about the fun he had hauling his cousin over the coals about the GPA. The Derry man has pretty much worn his heart on his sleeve when it comes to his dislike of the GPA. Like many GAA people – and just Irish people in general – he is suspicious about the broader aims of the players’ body.

Many of us are still unsure as to what the GPA ultimately wants out of life. Player welfare is at the heart of it. Nothing wrong with that. Assurances have been given that player welfare is not about a move to semi-professionalism. It is not about money – although the argument during the week, when the GAA politely but firmly declined the GPA invitation to cough up five per cent of its annual dough for the GPA bank account did seem to be kind of about money.

However, as was pointed out during the week, it is not simply about giving players a meal after training either. Henry Hill himself could show up to cook the tomato base and it wouldn’t matter: for the GPA, it is not about the pasta any more. It is more than that – and we aren’t simply talking garlic bread. But how much more?

It is, unquestionably, a terrible pity that young men suddenly find themselves out of work and if they are hanging around their county purely to contribute to their team, then that is admirable. And because the country is banjaxed, as Uncle Gaybo used to put it, it is particularly unfortunate that the government grant has been slashed to a meagre million quid. It is a blow, particularly, as was pointed out during the week, for those players out of work. But Minister Cullen wasn’t lying when he said it: there simply is no money, boys. Not on this island.

Everyone wants the players to get what they want – if we could just be clear on what it is that they want. But blithely demanding a cut of the GAA funds is not the way to go about business.

The player has always been central to GAA lore, particularly the feted stars and that remains the case today. But it is to the notion of the county that the GAA crowds are wedded and ultimately loyal to. The modern Railway Cup is further proof of this. The best hurlers and footballers in Ireland, playing together: it should have intoxicating possibilities. “Marketed properly” it could be GAA equivalent of the NBA All-Star game. But that is hokum: nobody turns up to see the best players for those games because whatever significance the competition once had has been rendered obsolete. If the players really want to gauge their appeal beyond the traditions and framework of the championship, they just have to scan the stand next time they play Railway Cup. Ain’t nobody watching.

So is a strike the way we are headed? Will it be next year? If so, that is a mistake. The GAA is bigger than the current generation of players. It has 125 years behind it and a reputation for intransigence that, you can bet, they are secretly proud of. And they know this much: all players, even the very best, come and go. And their time in the bright lights is short.

As President Muffley said: “ . . . it’s not gonna help either one of us if a, if the, if the Doomsday Machine goes off, now is it?”

“So is a strike the way we are headed? If so, that is a mistake. The GAA is bigger than the current generation of players. It has a reputation for intransigence that, you can bet, they are secretly proud of.