Expenses dispute exacting a cost on relations between GAA and players

The TG4 crew in Omagh had accepted the situation. They had been informed beforehand that neither players nor management would be making themselves available for interview. Even the Player of the Match award had to be handed to a Dublin official off-camera to pass on to David Byrne.

It was remarked that the restriction hadn’t overly inconvenienced the broadcaster as it had been communicated in advance, but that the losers were sponsors Allianz, whose branded backdrop would have been on television during the presentation to Byrne.

Expenses arrears are being processed and the main bone of contention is that mileage is being capped at four events a week, training or matches

It’s a low-key interference but the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) would have been aware that the withdrawal of media access would primarily affect sponsors, which would have been an unwelcome development for the GAA’s commercial department.

These sort of disputes become considerably more difficult once they go public, and GPA CEO Tom Parsons has been all over media presenting his case, whereas the GAA’s internal communications have been buzzing with communiques outlining the association’s position on the expenses dispute.

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Narrowed down, there’s not a lot between the parties. Expenses arrears are being processed and the main bone of contention is that mileage is being capped at four events a week, training or matches.

Anything further has to be negotiated and paid in full by the local county board – in other words without the Croke Park subvention of 18 cent, south of the Border, and less in the North (to correspond with tax efficiencies on the North’s civil service rate and compensated by a higher food allowance).

Adding to the difficulty is that both sides have a certain amount of justification. The GAA is keen to reduce the amount of training undertaken by county teams for reasons of finance – spending on intercounty teams hit a record level of €30 million pre-pandemic – and player welfare, on foot of the 2018 ESRI report that indicated demands on intercounty players had become unsustainable.

Mantra

They argue that raising the permitted number of sessions from three, as it was during the pandemic, to four covers as much activity as is desirable, and the mantra, echoed in director general Tom Ryan’s message to counties, has been “we cannot continue to fund bad practice”.

The burden of the GPA’s argument is that it’s not up to their members to enforce these restrictions and if they are summoned to training sessions or team meetings, they should be reimbursed.

The power of intercounty managers is often so absolute that panellists – a third of whom are students – are not inclined to refuse training sessions on the basis of player welfare.

Yet it was the GPA who co-commissioned the 2018 report with the GAA. Among its startling findings were that the average amount of time given to involvement with county teams by players was 31 hours, and 40 per cent of players said that they had no time off from Gaelic games.

Adopting a line that such impositions are fair enough once you pay expenses might be deemed unduly passive.

Could the GAA have done more to avoid discussions on a new players’ charter breaking down? There’s something fundamentally unsatisfactory about a players’ charter being unilaterally declared without the agreement of the players.

The GAA’s position is that they had to break the expenses logjam – players hadn’t been paid since the start of the season, before Christmas. Would it not have been possible to make an ex gratia payment in order to keep talks going?

The GPA are suspicious that the restrictions have more to do with cost-cutting than welfare whereas the GAA see the players’ position as being primarily concerned with reasserting central bargaining as the exclusive means of resolving disputes.

Back on track

The most important question is how players and administrators get back on track.

The GPA have been floating the idea of agreeing maximum “contact hours” for players’ involvement, proposing that a work group establish best practice in the area and that they would be happy to go along with that even if it was the current limit of four – but with proviso that it would have to be centrally enforced.

When the ESRI report was launched, the then president John Horan wondered about taking a leaf from rugby’s book.

“Is it time for us as an organisation to take on board a character similar to David Nucifora [IRFU high performance director] in rugby where we have an actual player welfare officer who ties in with our players and who dictates what is appropriate or not appropriate for our players to engage in?

“Or do we leave it to the multiple of managers to work on their own individual relationships, because if that’s happening then maybe the player isn’t central to it at all.”

I suppose the question is, who is taking control and potentially reining it in? Who is asking is this the direction we want the games to go in?

The then GPA chair Séamus Hickey enthusiastically endorsed the idea.

“A designated player relations officer or whatever is there in the IRFU – that’s a very intriguing prospect and again it might eliminate this see-saw motion of new managers, new regimes and different philosophies coming in and changing how things were done. I would encourage it, I would be for it, but again it is resource dependent.”

In the current circumstances, would it not be a good idea to see if these twin tracks can lead somewhere: engagement on an agreed number of training sessions or matches and a decision to progress how that would be monitored and enforced.

In an interview with the Irish Examiner just over two years ago Dr Elish Kelly, ESRI lead on the 2018 report, queried what measures were in train to address its concerns.

“I suppose the question is, who is taking control and potentially reining it in? Who is asking is this the direction we want the games to go in? If you continue on that upper trajectory, you are potentially going to see more players dropping out of the games.”

smoran@irishtimes.com