FOR THE public at large the crackling undercurrents of conflict and division emanating from the Cork GAA in recent months have been generally attributed to the county’s apparently endless capacity for sporting squabbles. There has, however, been a wider relevance to the dispute, which arose when senior hurling manager Gerald McCarthy was last October reappointed to the position despite the opposition of the players who would have been expected to play for him. McCarthy’s resignation this week may have signalled the beginning of the end of the whole sorry business.
It is safe to say that no other county executive, let alone a top-level one such as Cork, would so recklessly antagonise its senior players in a futile attempt to impose its idea of authority on players with whom it has had an enduringly fractious relationship.
Gaelic games are a unique model in world sport, combining mass-spectator events and a thriving commercial operation with an elite playing corps that remains amateur in the strict sense of not being paid to play. Some of the shrapnel flying throughout this dispute has tried to parlay it into some sort of final conflict between the forces of professionalism or semi-professionalism and the traditional values of the association.
There is little evidence to support this representation, which according to McCarthy underpinned his determination to cling on to his position despite the unavailability of the majority of the county’s top 100 hurlers but that’s not to say that the issue of amateurism is irrelevant. Given the demands on intercounty players and the commitment necessary to compete at the elite level, it is inevitable that they will place a price on that involvement – not commercially but in terms of the conditions on which they will engage. That may be termed “player power” but it is no more than the best practice as observed in other counties where officials still manage to maintain the usual hierarchies of authority necessary to the organisation of any top-level team sport.
The departure of McCarthy, in a sad postscript to a lifetime’s contribution to both hurling and Cork, does not however address all of the issues that have arisen in this dispute. Of widespread relevance is the matter of responsible exercise of power by authorities within counties. Eventually the clubs in Cork confronted the fact that an unacceptable situation had developed. The lesson for all clubs is that the effective running of any county is as much their responsibility as that of the executive and that there is a price to be paid for any loss of vigilance.