Former All-Ireland winners Pádraic Maher and Graham Geraghty believe any potential protest around the Allianz sponsorship of the National Leagues won’t be a distraction for the players involved.
Speaking at Thursday’s virtual launch to mark the 34th successive year of the Allianz sponsorship, Tipperary’s three-time All-Ireland hurling winner Maher said he was unaware of any planned protest involving his former team.
“Nothing that I’m aware of,” Maher said. “I know they’re training away hard at the moment, and if there is something [planned] I haven’t heard about it.
“I’d imagine the players are just concentrating of getting ready for Saturday night, trying to get a good league campaign under their belt.”
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Geraghty expressed similar sentiments, the two-time All-Ireland football winner with Meath, like Maher, a partner for the new Allianz campaign Keep Playing to Life, which is aimed at supporting long-term participation and inclusion in Irish sport.
“I’m not aware of anything being planned or discussed among the Meath players,” Geraghty said, “and would fully expect the players to be entirely focused on the opening games anyway.”
It emerged earlier this week that a potential boycott of Allianz signage during player interviews was discussed by Dublin County Board and the senior management teams, although no player opinions were sought.
Instead, it was decided all players could take their own decision on the matter.
This followed a series of motions passed at club and county conventions in recent months calling on the GAA to drop Allianz after a United Nations report on the conflict in Gaza listed Allianz’s German parent company, through its subsidiary Pimco, among those holding Israeli government bonds.
Maher said: “I personally don’t think it will be a distraction for the players, no. I think they’ll leave the GAA and whatever else to sort out their own thing, they [the players] have enough to be worrying about, getting themselves right.
“They’re under enough pressure at the moment to make an intercounty panel or team or getting fit. So I don’t think anything like that is going to be a distraction for players.”
Meath open their Division Two football campaign against Derry in Croke Park on Saturday (3pm, live on the TG4 player), before Tipperary host Galway in the hurling (7pm, live on RTÉ 2).
A motion presented at the Kilmacud Crokes agm on Wednesday night, calling on the Dublin County Board in turn to call on the GAA to drop Allianz as sponsor of the National Leagues, was defeated.
