Media the battleground in money debate

On Gaelic Games: The media, as it is known, acts as medium to all sorts of things in terms of Gaelic games. On top of the traditional function, relaying of events and news, and the equally established role of scapegoat for unpalatable messages, there is the current situation in which media has become a proxy battleground for what might be termed the amateurism wars.

This loosely refers to the evolving conflict within the GAA concerning the extent to which commercialism has become an issue for both the association and its elite players. Whereas the wagons have been circled around a tight definition of professionalism as pay-for-play, many other facets of the concept enjoy free rein within the games at present.

Since the 1997 Amateur Status report, the latitude to make money out of high-profile playing careers has greatly increased. The GAA took comfort from the fact the report firmly ruled out pay-for-play, but the momentum toward financial reward has quickened rather than slowed over the past eight years.

Whether you consider this a positive or negative development depends on your point of view but it is fact.

There is ambiguity on both sides. For a start, what are the sides? The divide is effectively between the GAA at Croke Park level and the Gaelic Players Association. Yet the GPA has always denied any agenda, saying that its membership opposes pay-for-play. But there has been an obvious pushing at the frontiers of what Croke Park regards as its territory.

The demand for a chunk of the GAA's television rights has already flared within the past 12 months when Cork hurlers refused to co-operate with the making of a DVD on their All-Ireland success last year.

The current stand-off between players and RTÉ - which has led to the Cork hurlers refusing to co-operate with the broadcaster at their media night before the Munster final - is implicitly about the same issue.

RTÉ's unwillingness to allow product placement during interviews may be based on statute and EU directive but it is only relevant in the context of the broadcaster being unwilling to remunerate players for interviews.

It's easy to understand the Montrose perspective. The organisation has just agreed to pay millions for the latest rights agreement and believes it should be getting player co-operation for that price. Yet because the games are amateur there is no realistic way of compelling players to talk if they don't want to.

There have been exhortations from on high to co-operate with media but such an approach is purely aspirational.

Equally there is validity in what players, with the tacit support of the GPA, are trying to do. They have been encouraged by the GAA in both the Amateur Status report and that of the 2002 Strategic Review Committee to strike commercial deals for themselves - in short to make what money they can so long as it doesn't come out of Croke Park's coffers.

So having found an interested party, players have the offer of money in return for brandishing a branded drink on television.

It's not clear at the moment whether the GPA has been basing its current representations on the players' deserving RTÉ's co-operation with the product placement - even though it's prohibited by law - because it has happened in other sports or on the grounds that the relevant laws are being misinterpreted.

But one way or the other the players are reacting to a situation in which their activities are traded for substantial sums while, far from having a slice of the revenue, they are even forbidden a bit of on-the-side entrepreneurship.

In a way the GPA membership restricts its point of view itself by following the line on pay-for-play. A general acceptance that players should be allowed to earn what can be earned out of the game would be a more coherent position than the constant search for ways of making money for "amateur" players.

There are of course good reasons for avoiding the issue. It is not popular among GAA grassroots and even the current agitation stirs up hostility.

Professionalism or semi-professionalism is seen as a potential disaster that would both ruin the association financially and play havoc with its delicate eco-system of loyalties and local allegiance.

Into the broader debate comes an interesting item of post-graduate research by DCU student Niamh Hetherington whose timely thesis An Investigation into Attitudes towards Amateurism and Professionalism among Male Senior County Gaelic Football Players finds support for the ditching of the last amateur rubric.

The thesis that the surveyed players would welcome the onset of professionalism or semi-professionalism is not intended to be an opinion poll of what all players are thinking. Its sample size was intentionally small so that the 12 anonymous intercounty footballers could be questioned at length about their views.

Six are elite players (who have played football for province or country) and the other six are intercounty players. All of them support the idea of compensation for lost earnings and yet half of them believe that such a move would be the first step to the abolition of amateurism.

Should that happen none believed they would leave their current county but 75 per cent say that in general players' loyalty to their counties would be affected.

Determining opinions is very much a matter of how the questions are asked. Flashing pay-for-play in front of players frequently invites a negative response. Asking would they be interested in making a career in their sport invites a positive response.

Anecdotally I've met very few players who wouldn't like to try professionalism and put all their energies into excelling at what for many is their most significant talent.

That's in a perfect world. Within the GAA with its urgent needs for more development officers and enhanced facilities there must be concern about the issue no matter how emphatically any further dilution of amateurism is ruled out.

Hetherington makes a valid comparison between the GAA and immediately-pre-1995 rugby with its expanding competitions and intensified training and preparation methods.

"Eventually what materialised was a scenario not unlike that that exists in Gaelic games today. Rugby Union was professional in every sense except that players were not getting paid. That is, there was a professional organisation running an amateur game."

So the GAA are right to be concerned. Detailed consideration of financial implications has never been a major obstacle when other sports moved down the road that the GAA is currently travelling.