Tumbleweed time. Apparently. Off to Waterford on Sunday to see Ballygunner win a 12th successive county title by the biggest winning margin they have enjoyed during the whole run, in a show of force and an apparently undiminished appetite for winning.
The same day, though, a statement following on from meetings of the GAA’s Management Committee and Central Council revealed far-from-routine business.
Saturday featured the report of a committee, empanelled to look at loosening the championship season a little. There was mention of a fortnight’s break between the All-Ireland hurling and football finals, as well as a slightly eased league schedule.
The committee, chaired by former GAA director general Páraic Duffy, reviewed how the split season had come about. With four years of operation to assess, he was unequivocal about the benefits of the new calendar.
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“This committee believes that the paramount duty of the GAA is to serve its players and clubs. Therefore, it strongly endorses the split-season model,” he said.
Player welfare was also a key consideration and the report found that “reduced national media coverage and sponsors’ exposure are overwhelmingly offset by the improved playing experience of both club and county players, and by the greater prominence now afforded to the club game.”
More pointedly, the proposal to extend the championship season and intercounty calendar by two weeks was very specifically made contingent on five measures to ensure that it does not end up being extended at both ends.
The most striking of these conditions was the removal of the preseason competitions, due to be reinstated next year, from 2027, when the report recommends its implementation.
There has been and continues to be strong opposition to this from some provincial councils, notably Ulster and Connacht, who are losing significant revenue over the loss of gate receipts.
In support of the case, the argument is made that these tournaments are little different from preseason challenges, but once you organise matches that are subject to the full rule book and charge people admission, those events become competitive matches.
Just as the GAA has had to bite the bullet on lucrative replays in order to expedite running the new condensed calendar to schedule, the association is asking the provinces to do the same in order to allow a six-week preseason. This was insisted on by the Gaelic Players Association on foot of the ESRI report detailing the demands on intercounty players.
An interesting reference in the report is to David Hassan’s Amateur Status committee, which is still assembling evidence.
“In recognition of the importance of protecting player welfare and safeguarding the principle of amateur status,” it reads, “it is anticipated that the Amateur Status Committee will, by 2027, introduce robust enforcement mechanisms to ensure the closed season is honoured in full by all counties, and this report is framed with that objective in mind.”
What was accepted on Saturday could well prove to be the moment the association put its foot down on player welfare. Among the wealth of data in the final report of the Football Review Committee (FRC) last week was evidence that the FRC may be losing its patience on the issue of handpassing.
Originally, the hope was that a game redesigned for a vertical rather than horizontal axis would take care of excessive handpassing. It was thought that the new rules would reward that orientation to the point that laboured, back-and-forth passages of keep-ball would become unprofitable.
Instead, the foot-pass to handpass ratio climbed a whole point this year – from 3.4:1 to 4.4:1. The finalised rules don’t make any recommendation to address the issue, but in the section on “Additional Recommendations, there is a significant proposal that at age grades below under-15, “consideration be given to introducing a rule whereby a player who receives a handpass must kick the ball on their next play.
“This initiative aims to promote greater use of kick passing, reduce over-reliance on hand passing and encourage more open and skill-based play at underage levels.”
The idea incorporates the reality that addressing this matter may well be best introduced from the bottom up, a bit like the introduction of protective headgear in hurling, which came through the age grades before being made compulsory for all.
The GAA established its Ethics and Integrity Committee earlier this year and at the weekend, the commercial partnership with German-based finance company Allianz was referred to it.
One of the longest surviving sponsorships in Irish sport – going back to 1993 and former subsidiary Church and General’s link with the national leagues – the Allianz link now includes both league and football championship.
This action followed widespread disquiet at the revelation in a UN report in July that a subsidiary of the company was complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, having invested large sums in shares and bonds linked to Israel’s occupation.
The report was published on the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the UN and alleged that Allianz helped “to sustain and pay for Israel’s actions in the Palestinian territories”.
A public protest by prominent GAA members, including Meath’s Colm O’Rourke and Dublin’s Dr David Hickey, in August called on the GAA to sever links with the sponsor.
It would be easy to despair at the powerlessness of the viewer, faced with the daily, televised horrors of this genocide, but discontinuing the sponsorship would be one way of distancing the membership from that particular complicity.
Allianz in Ireland are acknowledged as good sponsors and are on board until 2030, but as one leading official said, “it’s not a good look”.
And it doesn’t leave the Ethics and Integrity Committee much choice.
