GPA should have kept their powder dry

Only the GPA could manage the trick of applauding loudly at the news that professional sports are going to feature in Croke Park while simultaneously holding both hands out for some cut of the cash bonanza.

Gaelic games' answer to the Teamsters should learn that sometimes it is better to hold your thunder. Perhaps Dessie Farrell and the other executives of the players' body feel the only way to get their message across is to reiterate it at every opportunity.

But at this point it feels as if they are beating the public across the head with a cudgel. It is clear that the GPA fervently believes its members, the cream of GAA playing talent, are reaching breaking point because of the official indifference to their calls for some kind of material recognition of their dedication.

With every passing month, comments from senior GPA members are becoming more strident and aggressive and if players are becoming ever more alienated from the GAA, it suggests that a major and unprecedented rift between the association and its premier players is bound to happen sooner or later.

Since its inception, the GPA has undeniably proven itself an efficient and energetic association and seems to have acted as a balm for players who felt shabbily treated by the GAA, never the most sensitive or touchy-feely of beasts. Teenagers have benefited from its scholarship programmes, basic mileage rates have been pushed up and it has shown guile and imagination in showering useful gifts upon its members, the most extravagant being the reward of a shiny new vehicle for its best annual hurler and footballer. The recipient can, of course, either drive his shining ride to training or sell it on. Either way, it is a nice reward to what has probably been an All-Ireland-winning year. As Billy Ocean sang - although not necessarily with the GPA in mind, "Get out of my dreams/And into my car."

While the principle of amateurism remains enshrined in the GPA manifesto, in language and ambition, it portrays Gaelic Games as a professional entity. For instance, the claim that the GPA has pursued the issue of image rights to unprecedented levels in Ireland, working with Nic Couchman, who assisted David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, among others, instantly identifies the cream of the GAA crop with two of English soccer's most luminous stars. Except, the thing is, it will be a cold day in hell before any GAA star appears on the front of Hello magazine strolling along a beach with his girl or attending the Batman premiere in Leicester Square. It just will not happen. The only way the two worlds - that of high-performance Gaelic Games and professional soccer - can ever collide is through the opening up of Croke Park.

As the GPA stressed this week, its members will soon be sharing the same field as the finest rugby and soccer players in Europe, the young millionaires and Porsche drivers rewarded extravagantly for their skills. And, they conclude, nobody will be able to tell the difference (although let's be honest, there is a hell of a difference between Galway-Kilkenny in hurling and Ireland versus Lithuania in soccer).

It is perfectly true that GAA players fill Croke Park just like their soccer and rugby counterparts and provide entertainment that is frequently superior. But it is a troubling line of thought. Not all GAA counties get to play in Croke Park regularly and a considerable number do not get the chance to play there at all. Would those lesser lights receive the same benefits as the relatively select number of GAA stars whose summers are defined by epic games in Croke Park?

The GPA's reaction to this week's deal between the FAI, the IRFU and the GAA just deepens the fears and convictions of those who are convinced that the repeal of Rule 42 marked a black and foolhardy day for the GAA. In response to the GAA line that opening up Croke Park was the "neighbourly thing to do because if your neighbour's house burnt down you wouldn't leave him out in the cold, you would ask him in for a cup of tea", one of my friends asked, "Yeah, but would it be neighbourly to charge £1.25 million for the cup of tea?"

Another friend and colleague, who authors the Stubborn Nore column in the Kilkenny Voice, is convinced the end of Rule 42 was not properly thought through by its advocates. He believes it was just a reflex action caused by a duty to be seen as being modern and responsible, as if to do otherwise "would be like going out in public with dandruff on your shoulders".

Their fear is that by inviting professional games into Croke Park, and thus inviting comparisons with GAA games, the road to professionalism is already underway. By the GPA estimation, a lengthy intercounty career costs a player something between €100,000 and €150,000 in lost earnings and unclaimed expenses. If the implication is that those losses should be reimbursed it is hard to see how professionalism, of some shape or form, cannot be the ultimate answer. Maybe the GPA is being hard-line to illustrate purported aims for better conditions for players who do, undeniably, show tremendous commitment to their counties during the prime years of their athletic lives. But lost in the GPA stance is the joy and honour and the basic thrill that come with playing Gaelic games at the highest level. In Armagh, the midfielder John Toal, who suffered a horrific leg break, is putting himself through a monumental rehabilitation programme in the hope of kicking ball for his county again. In Kilkenny, the promising young hurler Conor Phelan has consulted cardiac surgeons across Europe to see if there is any hope that he may be able to play again despite the diagnosis of a serious heart condition.

Neither player is going to such efforts with any sort of financial gain in mind. Rather, it is the old stuff that spurs them on to such thankless heroism: the outdated and half-forgotten notion that playing ball for your county might well be the most exciting and noble thing you ever get to do with your life.

Nobody will begrudge the country's best players if their winter nights are rewarded through handsome mileage or a state-based grant payable to all intercounty players equally. But the GPA voice right now sounds rather elitist and bullying. Its stance shows no recognition of the time small town coaches and club secretaries and lotto sellers and the guy who turns off the lights in the dressing-room dedicate to the GAA.

It shows no respect or recognition of the fact the fans, the people who make up those 80,000 in Croke Park, shell out a lot of money to be there. It is a voice that makes those who warned against the opening of Rule 42 stand rooted still in fear of what lies ahead. And now, just days after the announcement that the GAA is ready to house the old garrison games in Croke Park, it is hard to deny that maybe they were right all along.