Financial realities gnaw at amateurism's frail shell

Gaelic Games/Comment: Seán Moran looks at the implications for Gaelic games of the Government's proposal for tax refunds for elite athletes

Danny Lynch, the GAA's PRO, was put in mind of the butterfly that flaps its wings in the Canaries and causes an earthquake in South America. This reference to Chaos Theory was brought about by the Government's proposed tax rebates for sportsmen contained in the Finance Bill and the inquiries to Croke Park which it triggered.

Danny's been in the game too long to think that the biggest amateur sports organisation in the country would somehow be precluded from questions about the earnings of its participants.

In other words, a butterfly flapping its wings anywhere is sooner or later going to end up as an earthquake on Jones's Road.

It hasn't just been the Finance Bill that has stirred the pot on amateurism. The recent statements of the Gaelic Players' Association on the cost to members of their involvement in intercounty activity have refocused the pay-to-play debate.

One of the most pointed contributions to this was the GAA's Strategic Review Committee (SRC) report, which strongly reiterated the argument for amateur status, stating that the "amateur status of players" was one of "the two principal cornerstones of the GAA of the future". Yet the SRC report also recognised that the system of obliging players to split any revenue from commercial endorsement with their team- mates and the association had, in the words of committee chairman Peter Quinn, "proved unworkable".

This was significant, as Quinn had also chaired the Amateur Status Committee - the body that devised the regulations on endorsements little over four years previously.

There isn't a sport in the world that hasn't found "unworkable" every attempt to curb the spread of money. Like water, money will find a way into any sport with mass appeal. The pattern is always the same: a governing body tries to regulate a slight relaxation of the rules on amateurism; it is forced to relax them further and abandon each retrenchment until professionalism or semi-professionalism is permitted.

The only obstacle to this scenario in Gaelic games is the fear that the revenues involved would not be adequate to meet the demands of paying players.

But ultimately the market will regulate what's paid. It's not possible to disburse more than you take in - as rugby clubs painfully discovered.

Indeed, the SRC report seems to adopt the attitude that players should be paid by anyone - advertisers, media - as long as it's not the GAA.

There is also an element of fairness. There are players who do nothing as well as they hurl or kick ball. It's their principal talent. When their careers finish, they've peaked in terms of the esteem and popularity they can inspire.

Allowing them to benefit to some extent during their playing days is not a bad thing. The logic of the Amateur Status report (1997) accepts this in its green-lighting of endorsements.

The practical downside may come in the sundering of the links between community and team. Professionalism or semi-professionalism will break that connection and allow players from weaker counties to gravitate towards the stronger.

Ironically, this is already allowed. Get someone a job and shift their residence and they're qualified. The experience of Shea Fahy and Larry Tompkins in Cork and Karl O'Dwyer and others in Kildare is that a county's supporters prefer success to strictly enforced rules on amateurism.

Will this shut out smaller counties without wealthy benefactors? Maybe - but hardly to any greater extent than a system which pitches Leitrim into the same championship as a county, Galway, more than five times as populous. If the GAA is to maximise its exposure from games, greater demands will be placed on players. A championship based on a league format may benefit the association, but it will ask more of the elite players.

Has any sport suffered in the long term by going professional or dispensing with rigorously policed amateurism?

Theoretically, it shouldn't be a big deal. The Victorian concept of amateurism was socially elitist and objectionable. Nineteenth century British attitudes to sport were part of Cusack's motivation in founding the GAA.

The professionalism Cusack denounced was not what we would associate with mainstream modern professional sport. It was a world of athletes paid under the table, fixed competitions and widespread corruption. In many ways the organisation he established was a response to the elitism of the amateur establishment.

Above all there is a need to recognise that a line has to be drawn between county players and ordinary players. Every sport depends on a voluntary sector to nurture talent and administer clubs. It may be a declining sector, but its participants operate on a recreational basis - as do the overwhelming majority of GAA members.

But at intercounty level the demands on players stretch far beyond the recreational and undoubtedly affect their career prospects. Sooner or later that is going to have to be addressed.