Rugby's model does not fit GAA structures

GAELIC GAMES:The GAA championships are being shoe-horned into a structure that doesn't do them any favours, writes SEAN MORAN

THE GAA need great forbearance at this time of the year. With everyone keen to spot discouraging trends or give out about whatever new rules have been introduced – imagine if the games were like rugby and actually had to adapt to radical changes in rules and interpretation – the show has to go on.

Straddling the amateur-professional divide isn’t a comfortable place from which to administer sports with a wide recreational base and busy elite schedules. Were it possible to exist in a vacuum there would be no need to expend so much energy and investment in optimising the intercounty competitions in order to maintain revenue and exposure.

Conversely were it possible to go full tilt at the professional game, the shop-window competitions would be organised a lot more differently. Rugby is used as an example of how a game can be pushed through marketing and managing success on the field. But the game is the precise example of what Gaelic games cannot be.

In the past – and that’s only around 20 years ago – rugby was amateur and particularly so in Ireland. If you were any good there might be provincial recognition but until the provinces were turned into what are in effect super clubs there was little interest in the fortunes of Leinster, Munster et al.

There was also the international scene but until the first World Cup in 1987 that was spread around thinly enough and for most players that meant the provincial cup competitions were the only competitive outlet.

Amateur sports always prioritise knock-out competition but such an unpredictable schedule of fixtures could never be the economic model for professional outfits, which need regular income.

When rugby went professional 15 years ago it left the GAA on its own, competing for attention with the international razzamatazz of two professional sports but having to do so on its own terms. It wasn’t a problem in the immediate term.

Soccer had fallen away after the Jack Charlton years and rugby was finding the adaptation to professionalism difficult and unrewarding. The Fifa World Cup is nearly upon us and experience dictates it will have some impact on attendances at championship matches in June but it’s a quadrennial problem and not significant unless Ireland are involved.

Rugby is proving more of a competitor for hearts and minds with a currently successful national team and provincial sides that have been thriving at the top level of European and local competition. Leinster’s Celtic League final against Ospreys on Saturday won’t bring the nation to a halt but success would mean the Irish provinces have captured five of the six titles available to them in the past three seasons. Unlike soccer these are locally-based teams with high-profile players, who don’t suffer from the visibility restrictions of playing overseas week in and week out.

This isn’t an insuperable challenge. Unlike Munster and Leinster in Europe, the GAA will always have a happy and successful conclusion built into the season. They don’t depend on remaining successful in an international context.

The down-side is that Croke Park can’t run things as they might wish in an ideal world. The group or “champions league” structure, much coveted by many observers of the championships, is not an option for the GAA, who need the thinning impact of knockout competition to keep counties proceeding relatively normally during the summer.

Evidence also indicates the public is less than enthusiastic about group matches. Even in the majority of counties where this format or some variation is used for the local championship, it has been established that without something tangible at stake public interest is limited.

Another element of these formats in European competition that can be overlooked is that they are the result of a winnowing process. Thirty two counties may be easily divisible into groups of four and eight but are equally divisible into a lot of dead rubbers.

Yet without some sort of re-organisation the All-Ireland championship is inherently unfair, imposing wildly differing burdens on counties depending on what province they’re from. Addressing that imbalance would have implications for the provincial councils and the GAA points out they have to take into account the overall value of the provinces as administrative units rather than simply distortions of the intercounty championships.

But at the moment the GAA championships are being shoe-horned into a structure that doesn’t do them any favours.

The perceived need for provincial structures means the action gets off to a slow and interminable start – low-key matches and five whole weeks separating the start of the football championship and the entry of the last participating team.

Early-round matches in most knockout competitions are frequently forgettable but rarely are they publicised as the start of something big and given full televised coverage.

Many matches at this time of the year don’t look good on television, as they are played in venues that are far too big for the meagre crowds they attract. As they are also often predictable and or of mediocre quality they don’t exactly set the pulses racing.

The introduction of the qualifiers format doesn’t appear to have had a major detrimental impact on provincial championships with the finals holding up reasonably well in the 10 years to date.

But they have added to a sense of irrelevance in the early stages of competition because everyone knows the championship doesn’t really start until August and the serial successes of Kerry and Tyrone through the qualifier route have emphasised that.

Yesterday the GAA released details of the new, national advertising campaign, featuring Kieran Donaghy in football and Henry Shefflin in hurling.

It’s a clever representation of how the traditional strengths of the association feed into the modern dynamism of the championship.

There are no signs that the formula is in immediate trouble but you just wonder for how much longer the requirements of tradition and community can be balanced with the need to promote and market the games, which are the association’s biggest engine of revenue.