Ciarán Murphy: Where’s the transparency about county managers’ expenses?

For all the words currently being expended on the current GAA/GPA row, it's the figures that have really caught my eye.

A simple Google search will bring you to the GAA/GPA Players Charter from 2019. “65 cent a mile.”

“Subventions of 18 cent – less in the North to correspond with tax efficiencies on the North’s civil service rate, to be compensated by a higher nutritional allowance.”

“For cars with engine sizes below 1200cc, mileage is payable at 63c per mile.”

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"Appendix re sponsored cars – where full motor costs are borne by car provider, no GAA mileage is payable. Where fuel costs only are borne by the player, mileage is payable at 10c per mile. Where fuel and maintenance costs are borne by the player, mileage is payable at 20c per mile."

It's not the value of all these figures, but their very existence that's giving me pause. In an organisation which seems to go as weak at the knees as an Edith Wharton grand-aunt at the merest suggestion of financial accountability and transparency, the sheer fact that such agreements are in place and available to read by the public is the truly astonishing part.

There are surely a few inter-county managers shifting uncomfortably in their seats at all these figures of seemingly trivial changes in mileage rates and expenses being generally available to anyone with a functioning internet connection.

What is the centrally agreed mileage rate for inter-county managers, and is that being adhered to? While we’ve got the magnifying glass out, could we possibly see a spread-sheet of all 64 inter-county managers and what they’ve claimed for?

I’m not against managers, coaches and back-room staff getting paid mileage, but the systematic way in which the players’ expenses are processed and agreed upon must seem rather quaint to some inter-county managers out there.

I’m also not saying that managers aren’t currently putting in enough hours to merit greater financial remuneration than even the players are currently getting. But can we at least have the conversation? Because the hypocrisy must be beginning to grate with players.

We’re sitting here arguing with our county board over 18 cent subventions, when you could go through the financial statements at the end of any given year and have no clue whatsoever what the backroom staff members attending the same training sessions we are, are being paid?

The GPA feel they have a better chance of securing a fair deal on expenses with Croke Park than they do with individual county boards. They also know that it's easier for them to negotiate with Croke Park on agreed 'contact hours' per week between players and management than it is to negotiate man-to-man, or even squad-to-man, with inter-county managers.

Power dynamic

The power dynamic between a squad of young men and their manager is still woefully skewed. Then again, their playing future is in the hands of their manager, so that may be unfair but that is also the reality.

But the power dynamic between county boards and the men they hire to manage their county teams is also skewed. County boards appear toothless in the face of a county manager demanding the world, regardless of cost, and they have not shown any real desire to grasp this nettle.

So pundits can talk – as Colm O’Rourke did at the outset of this row – about the GPA simultaneously releasing studies revealing an unsustainable average of 31 hours’ commitment to being an inter-county player per week, while also campaigning for unlimited numbers of training sessions for them to be reimbursed for, as if that’s some sort of grand contradiction.

But the urgent sometimes has to overtake the important. The GPA could wait for the GAA, and by extension county boards, to stand up and rigidly enforce a cap on training sessions allowed per week, or “contact hours” per week, per player.

What that means, in actuality, is facing down the power of the inter-county manager. But given the lack of urgency given this topic over the last 30 years, does that seem like the most productive use of their time?

The GPA want the expenses arrears cleared, they want players to receive the money that they believe is rightfully theirs, and then they can talk about reducing the number of hours their members find themselves beholden to an inter-county players’ schedule.

I disagree entirely with the methods the GPA have used to bring this matter to a head. A refusal to do pre- and post-match interviews damages, in descending order, the media, the sponsors, the players, and then the GAA.

Simple testimonials of the sort of financial annoyance the withholding of expenses imposes on a Leitrim footballer studying in UCD (for instance) would articulate the problem, rather than just mildly annoying people.

But players would be well within their rights if they felt like the people they share a dressing room with three or four times a week, the backroom staff and county board officials, are living by rather different rules to the ones the players are currently trying to codify.