Wily Cat proved an effective bridge-builder

SEAN MORANreviews the Kilkenny man's term as president and says he proved an effective, personable holder of the onerous office

BACK AT the inauguration of Paraic Duffy as the new GAA director general in November 2007, association president Nickey Brennan made some striking remarks in passing about his own future role within the organisation.

“I want to see the role of president pushed back and into the country,” he said. “I don’t intend to have as much of an executive role and I believe that future presidents will have less of an executive role.”

Cynics remarked that he had waited until well into the second half of his term of office before deciding to limit – for all of his successors – the influence of the office. That wisecrack would however have seriously underestimated the scale of the challenges that Brennan faced in the first half of his presidency.

The role of GAA president has never been precisely pinned down even if the official guide dutifully lists the functions of the office. Tension between the ambassadorial or ceremonial and executive functions has always existed.

It was the traditional answer of presidential candidates when asked did they think the office should be a salaried post to point out that this would cut across the responsibilities of the director general. Brennan however took up office at a time when the association decided that it had to cover the salary of its presidents in recognition that the position had indeed become a full-time one.

Although it is often stated that the presidency lacked a single, big defining event, such as the vote to open Croke Park to other sports, it hasn’t lacked critical issues to be addressed.

The past three years have seen a much-needed reshaping of the Croke Park secretariat with the creation of important new executive positions in the GAA’s headquarters.

A number of these had been foreseen by Brennan. In his accession speech he referred to the need to get to grips with the area of human resources management within the association and Fiona O’Rourke duly became the association’s first HR manager.

Although key personnel such as former director general Liam Mulvihill and PRO Danny Lynch were asked to stay on past their initially-intended retirement dates, the president also knew the major appointments of their successors would have to be made within his three years as president.

There has been a restructuring of the communications function with the appointment of an overall director, Lisa Clancy, and a specialist media liaison Alan Milton. Other initiatives include the introduction of a child protection officer, Gearóid Ó Maolmhicíl, and Feargal McGill’s taking up of the new post of operations director.

An IT professional with the agribusiness giant Glanbia before his election, the outgoing president has also dedicated considerable effort to overhauling the association’s antiquated communications technology and its resolutely unimpressive website, tenders for the improvement of which are currently being finalised. His hard work in this area is attested to by all involved.

Throw in the restructuring of the sponsorship model for the GAA’s championships and leading the association through the staging of the first rugby and soccer internationals to be staged in Croke Park and the sense of relief the president might have felt at the prospect of spending more time at clubhouse openings can be understood.

Whereas the expertise available to Croke Park in commercial matters has greatly improved over the years, it is still the president’s role to set the parameters for negotiations and business commitments, something Brennan himself referred to last year when pointing out that the GAA could make far greater revenue from its broadcasting rights were it not for the commitment to keep live championship action exclusively available on free-to-air channels.

If former president Seán Kelly had an external profile and approval rating nearly impossible for Brennan to emulate, it’s fair to say the Kilkenny man has done well in publicly representing the GAA without proving as divisive a figure within the association as his predecessor.

Whereas he took office vowing to be less available to the media – and even with an intended scheme of holding monthly press conferences rather than impromptu briefings at whatever launch or awards ceremony might be happening in a given week – Brennan was perfectly accessible during his term of office and related well to reporters, engaging forcibly in cases of disagreement but not holding grudges or taking prolonged umbrage.

The one exception was at the RTÉ launch of the Sunday Game season in 2007 when he used the platform to attack the quality of punditry on the programme, an intervention that caused considerable anger amongst the broadcasters.

He would also have been seen as a proponent of getting the state’s commercial terrestrial station TV3 involved in bidding for GAA rights, which they successfully acquired for the first time last year.

On accession, he took an abrasive line with the players’ body the GPA – accusing them of an ultimate “pay-for-play” agenda – but has conducted business efficiently and successfully with them, appointing now director general Duffy to the post of Player Welfare Manager within his first year in charge, a move which considerably improved relationships with the players.

He was also calm and measured in the face of fierce hostility from some quarters towards the Government grants scheme, a GPA initiative that Croke Park helped bring to fruition 12 months ago even if its future is shrouded in doubt given the crisis in the public finances.

In fact it is a matter of stated regret to Brennan that he hasn’t managed to sign off on the issue of GPA recognition, formal acceptance of the body as the official representatives of players within the association and it will be interesting to hear the president’s view of the hold-up in a process he announced was close to resolution two years ago when he makes his final address to congress this afternoon.

Reservations about the outgoing president prior to his election centred on a perception that years of politicking had blunted his capacity for decisiveness. It was generally accepted however that he was an extremely hard worker. In office he has proved – maybe released from the need to contest elections – well able to take tough positions and hold them.

The player grants issue was one such example; discipline has been another. The perennial flashpoint of the association, again in the spotlight today with the debate on the permanent adoption of the experimental rules, flared on a number of occasions. In June 2007 he convened a special meeting of Central Council to discuss indiscipline. The specific backdrop was the events before the Clare-Cork championship in Thurles the previous month, an episode that he recalled during this week as being one of the low points of his presidency.

Challenges to the resulting suspensions ran for a number of weeks before being confirmed. Although the Central Council meeting couldn’t make major rule changes it did have one significant outcome, directing the Central Competitions Control Committee to pursue incidents through the use of video evidence even if the referee has taken action.

At times he was frustrated by decisions taken by the GAA’s independent arbitration body, the Disputes Resolution Authority, over which he has no control. In the middle of the Thurles imbroglio for instance, the DRA dropped a controversial finding in relation to Derry’s Paddy Bradley that helped heighten apprehension over whether the indiscipline in Semple Stadium would ultimately ever be punished.

The one aspect of this problem for which he has to take blame is the unconvincing performance of the two committees he appointed in the area, the CCCC, which had to be told to exercise its full powers under rule, and the Central Appeals Committee, which delivered the extraordinary Anthony Lynch decision in 2006.

Brennan himself remained however forthright in his opposition to both indiscipline and the lengths to which units and individuals will go to evade the consequences of misbehaviour and his firm backing for what have been contentious disciplinary reforms extended into this, the last week of his term of office. Cork returned to haunt the presidency later in 2007 and a year later but although the president this week rightly drew attention to the sense of annoyance at headquarters at having to sort out the difficulties between the county board and its senior players, that process has been more driven by Duffy and this year the incoming president, himself from Cork, Christy Cooney.

Brennan also proved more supportive than expected of the International Rules series. Although his reactions to the violence of the second Test in 2006 were a bit scattered – ranging from assuring players of his support for the series in the aftermath to a well-judged media conference during which he maintained that no immediate decisions could be taken to within 24 hours announcing on RTÉ radio that the project had no future – the president engaged with the process of getting the series back on track and was rewarded with a well-behaved and exciting Ireland victory in last autumn’s resumed Tests.

Another arena in which Brennan performed well was in restoring harmony to Croke Park. Relations between his predecessor – and in fairness to Kelly, some of his predecessors – and the GAA hierarchy weren’t good.

The outgoing president maintained a discreet office on the ground floor of the Hogan Stand and is widely praised for his understanding of the demarcation lines between his role and that of the permanent administration.

Another fence that has been mended is that which existed between the GAA administration and the Croke Park stadium organisation under Peter McKenna. Although Páraic Duffy’s arrival as director general and a more collegiate style of governance has greatly facilitated the process, at a farewell function in his honour last week Brennan was explicitly acknowledged for his role in the greatly improved relations and sense of unity.

Overall the presidency has been effective, personable and perhaps a pleasant surprise to those who harboured doubts about its likely prospects four years ago.