SEÁN MORAN on Gaelic Games: Why are players different to every other type of individual that the GAA permits to be paid?
THE NOISE of metaphorical animals has been loudly heard within the GAA over the past week from the flapping wings of returning chickens as disciplinary issues came home to roost to the yelping of awoken dogs on the amateurism issue.
Annual congress failed to back the experimental proposals on discipline last month so the matter is parked but it was worth noting, as Croke Park’s director of games Pat Daly did yesterday, that the free count in the weekend’s championship matches was high.
In Enniskillen there was a rash of the sort of fouls, deliberate pulling down mostly but the odd high tackle and deliberate body collision, which had been punishable during the league by yellow-card dismissal. So a competitive match with a lively second half was marred by deliberate fouling for tactical advantage.
But congress considered all of this and took its decision and therefore those who remain concerned about cynical, foul play can wearily echo the rising Elvis Presley’s words to starlets newly enthused by his company: “You had your chance.”
Amateurism is a different matter. It’s not considered decent to discuss its intrinsic merits. Yes there was a big row last year over the Government grants to intercounty players but that was largely about whether they breached the rules on amateurism, not about whether Rule 11 had any purpose.
Association director general Páraic Duffy kicked the sleeping dog last week. He didn’t mean to but was delivering an extempore response to what was by all accounts a stimulating lecture, “The GAA at 125: The Challenges of Change”, from NUI Galway’s Prof Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh.
Some of what Duffy had to say was interesting in itself, such as his frank admission of “the huge challenge” posed by working-class Ireland: “I suspect that the GAA in Dublin has become a very middle-class sport. We have found it difficult to establish in working-class areas, where it is weak and there is a real threat from soccer.”
This particular issue is a major aspect of social disadvantage. Communities without material wealth or the committed volunteer base to plan and deliver infrastructure are simply at the mercy of what has been over the years poor public provision of sports facilities.
Consequently the growth spurts of Gaelic games in recent decades have been most obvious in affluent, middle-class neighbourhoods, particularly in the previously untilled soil of south Dublin.
Facing that implication of social exclusion is one of the biggest challenges facing the GAA.
But what grabbed the headlines was Duffy’s completely unexceptional contention, when responding to Ó Tuathaigh’s points about professionalism, that under-the-table payments to managers were the single most difficult issue to address.
There’s actually more to it than that. Some payments are completely above board, bringing in coaches or trainers with some specific expertise and remunerating them for providing it. In certain cases this works out to everyone’s satisfaction; in many others it simply revolves around greed, both on the part of the individual and also of the unit in question, determined to spare no expense in pursuit of success.
But Duffy was correct that the most egregious breaches of the rule originate in the desire of wealthy benefactors to bank-roll such pursuits.
Asked by Des Cahill on the weekend’s Sunday Game to elaborate on his comments, Duffy emphasised the context of Ó Tuathaigh’s address: “He specifically mentioned the issue of professionalism and pointed to the fact that he felt unregulated payments could erode the idealism of the association so while we’re all well aware of the work that managers, particularly at intercounty level, put in I do think that amateurism is very much a core value and we have to protect that because that’s what drives our volunteerism and is very much at the heart of the GAA so I have concerns about going down the road of saying managers are different and we’ll pay managers.”
As a rule of thumb, maybe going back 20 years to Pee Flynn’s famous elevation of Fianna Fáil’s non-participation in coalition government, I tend to the view that once something’s categorised as a “core value” it’s in trouble.
Contrary to the spoken consensus, there’s an argument to be made that managers are different. A good manager can energise a parish and county and make the best out of the players at his disposal, sometimes leading them to historic success, which in itself is a powerful promotional tool. That sort of expertise and ability benefits the GAA. It may be sorely vexatious for players to know that managers are being paid when even their own modest Government grants are begrudged to them but good managers win more silverware than good players. In some cases it all ends in tears but the efficacy of the people retained is not a matter of principled argument.
On the matter of payment to players the two big arguments against are, one, the volunteerist nature of the GAA and, two, the lack of adequate resources to fund the professional or semi-professional game.
Neither is wholly persuasive as a core value. The GAA is too big an organisation to be plausibly amateur. It needs full-time administrators and has had them throughout history, as most even voluntary bodies have but nowadays the number of full-time staff within the organisation is so vast that the GAA has its own HR director.
Whenever in history volunteers have dried up, professional replacements have been recruited. As soon as teachers stopped providing an enormous national network of voluntary coaches in the schools – and this doesn’t underestimate those who still provide such a service but it’s nowhere near the number that once did – the idea of development officers eventually emerged to tackle the problem. The same is true of administrators when the business of the GAA became too complex to be run in an hour or so here and there every week. Volunteerism has accordingly been a moveable feast.
In relation to the practicalities of payment that again isn’t exclusively a matter for the GAA. It’s one thing to maintain that all revenue after overheads must go into the association – and to be fair 80 per cent of all income does – but another to say that no one else can pay players for playing.
It’s true that the grass-roots membership is perceived as being very touchy on the subject but the question has to be asked: why are players different to every other type of individual that the GAA permits – explicitly or by turning a blind eye – to be paid?
smoran@irishtimes.com
