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The 3 remaining sides in this years All Ireland football championship are 3 highly funded, professionally prepared teams. All 3 have spent huge sums on getting to this stage of the competition. Their resources come from many different sources. Most will know of the high profile sponsorship deals and fundraising expeditions and of one of the counties getting 1.5 million euro yearly off regular GAA folk like you and me to fund the development of their underage players.

The source of their resources needs to be looked at but in this thread I'm focusing on the results of the high level funding and the impact it's having on the game. It is my opinion that if it is let continue it will finish the game of Gaelic football as we know it. The money available to these teams is not just giving them a hugely unfair advantage but it's making teams question the point of competing with them. The only conclusion to this madness will be either the cash rich teams splitting away from the rest to form their own competition or the rest splitting away from them.

Let's have a look at the impact the money is having on teams and competitions already. In Munster Kerry are dominant, nothing new here you say. The difference between now and before is that teams like Tipperary and Clare are putting in huge efforts to improve their standards. Their growth is being stunted at senior level because of whippings they get from Kerry. Let's not forget where Kerry were. No All Ireland since 2009, very little talent coming through, people were even predicting that it would be a long time before Kerry were at the top again. What changed? They got a shed load of money and trained their team to a professional level.

The Connacht championship is being dominated by one side, Mayo are likely to set a record for the number of Connacht titles they win in a row. They've handed out numerous beatings to all teams including a big county in Galway. Similar to Kerry, they are also halting the growth of teams like Roscommon who're putting in huge underage work and beating teams by 20+ points wont be helping them improve. GAA men and women in Leitrim are begging to be put into another competition even, they see no point in entering the Connacht championship and why should they? There's no way they can compete with the money Mayo have available to them.

The Leinster championship is dead. Dublin have won all but 1 of the last 10 Leinster championships. Teams now are beaten before they even get on the pitch. They hand out regular beatings to everyone. No one has got within 7 points of them since 2013. Again here teams are trying to get out of the Leinster championship, there's no point in competing in it. Dublin just use it as a warm up exercise, try out a few players and build up fitness for the later stages. This is a result of years of millions being given to fund the growth of their players and millions being pumped into their senior teams preparation.

Many counties around the country don't have their best players playing for them because the interest is not there. Why train all year to get destroyed in your provincial championship? As I've pointed out, some counties want to be put into a separate competition while the money rich counties are sick of wasting their time beating the poor counties so talk of throwing them into a losers competition is growing. Do we want an elite league where you need money to enter their competition? Is this what the GAA is meant to be about? Also as we seen last Sunday, these teams have no respect for the game. They're all about win at all costs like all professional teams.

Let's call a spade a spade here. This is financial doping, the teams remaining are buying their way to the top. I've already pointed out some of the results that has and will happen because of this but the ultimate conclusion is the game will go professional in these counties. We already see it with players barely ever working, their whole diet/lifestyle/daily routine being looked after by highly paid professionals. This has to be stopped.

The question of how we stop it can be answered later, first we have to let it be known that we want it stopped. There's too much silence on this issue. It barely ever gets mentioned in the national media. Whenever it does it's always shouted down by the money rich counties. Dublin GAA went mad when it was suggested that their yearly 1.5 million budget they get from the GAA should be looked at. We can't let this go on. It will destroy the inter county game, within a decade it will be finished. They'll be an elite league of about 8 playing professionally. We can't let this happen. Let's stop it now!

I've taken this from the Laois forum, posted by the boy Don Draper. This is what Cheddar Plunkett had to say post the Dublin match:

"This is nothing to do with me," Plunkett says, killing the obvious line of questioning stone dead. "Anything we do has to be about Laois hurling and only about that . . . It's not about people, it's about systems and structures and about the quality of work that people put in.
Cheddar is surrounded by recording devices as dozens of kids happily puck about despite the ancient tannoy voice demanding they remove themselves and their odd-looking sticks.
"I can't say this more clearly to people who have influence here," Plunkett continued, reiterating his everlasting lament. "There is an opportunity in Laois at the moment to do something absolutely brilliant. There are a lot of businesses out there trying to flog products and they don't have the natural customers that you see in this field at the minute."
Sliotars whizz over and under head. Most are killed stone dead by decent first touches. It's only 30 kilometres to the Kilkenny border.
"I've presented it to enough people at GAA headquarters but for some reason they just close their eyes to this and that is just incredibly disappointing.
"I'm not just saying that after this defeat, I've been saying it for three years. It's time for somebody here to wake up and decide how this thing is going to be done better. Because certainly what is being done in the last 30 years is not working.


"We need somebody to look at this differently and take advantage of the opportunities that are arising. And I'd be saying exactly the same thing about Westmeath and Carlow and other counties. They are giving everything they can to improve themselves. And that's not easy. We're a small county. We just don't have the revenues generating that other counties have.
"Will people continue to sit on their hands while all these people do all this work and an opportunity is here? I can't keep asking that question often enough.
"It's about a complete vision for hurling. How we're going to promote the game. What is the objective here? Is the objective for the next 40 years to have an All-Ireland championship where only three counties can win it? Because we've had that for the last 40 years.
"If that's what they want, let them stand up and be honest and say it.
"And we'll all go away and do something else. But if the vision is to support people like us in what we're doing, let them stand back and say what has worked before isn't working and let's do something different."


Then this is what Croke Park said in response:


The GAA has rejected comments by Laois hurling manager Séamus Plunkett that were critical of efforts to develop hurling. Plunkett was speaking at the weekend after the defeat of his team by Dublin in the All-Ireland qualifiers.

"Work has gone into this on a number of different frontiers," said GAA director of games Pat Daly. "Laois are one of the designated five counties for instance (a scheme that targets improvement at senior level for Laois, Offaly, Carlow, Antrim and Westmeath), and with the help of that and thanks to the work done by Cheddar Plunkett there has been an improvement."

Plunkett had said the difficulties facing the game were more than about resources "It's more that that," he said. "Daly denied that the GAA was content to allow a limited number of counties compete.

"Of course we don't want a scenario where only three teams can win the All-Ireland, but competitive levels oscillate through the years and there are more contenders some years than others. At the start of this season it was seen as quite an open championship and we'll see how it unfolds.

"What we are trying to do is to build sustainable systems providing games opportunities for as many as possible and up to as high a standard as possible . . . We're happy that we're making good progress but we know that it's not perfect and that not everyone is happy with the rate of that progress but we're also constantly reviewing what we do.

"We'll be sitting down with Laois and discussing the best way forward."


The GAA gave the 5 weaker counties mentioned above about a million euro to divide between them. Here, there's a few quid for ya and now will you leave us alone? The GAA is filled with business men at the top, it's all about the revenue they can generate. Teams trying to improve their standards is just an annoyance to them, they don't see a financial return in it so they ignore it.
Counties like Carlow, Westmeath, Offaly, Antrim, Laois and others not even in that list like Kerry, Derry, Down etc are trying their best but they're getting no support. There's great people in all those counties (except Offaly ) that are trying to keep hurling alive but they need help. As Cheddar has said, it's not just finance, they need people of expertise to form development plans and give advice on what can be improved.
The business men and women in HQ are important, let's not deny that but developing our games and keeping hurling alive is far more important.

The level of sponsorship and fundraising is growing hugely in the GAA. Counties are getting big sums of money from multinational corporations, big business and backers in England and America. These counties are able to pump huge resources into funding their Gaelic football teams. They have top level coaches, nutritionists, physiologists, lifestyle coaches, basketball coaches, 5 day training camps, all they could ever ask for when preparing their teams basically.

I believe this is causing a major gap to develop between the counties that have funds v the counties that haven't. The counties receiving the highest sums are Kerry, Donegal and Dublin. Who's won the All Ireland in the past few years? Kerry, Donegal and Dublin. Mayo also have big money being invested in their team, we see them competing in the latter stages of the All Ireland every year. What this means for other counties is that they may line up against Kerry, Donegal, Dublin and Mayo with 15 v 15 but it's 15 well prepared players v 15 professionally prepared players.

This is an unfair advantage. It's causing some big beatings to occur. For example, Dublin have won games in Leinster by 27 points and 19 points this year, by 11, 16 and 16 last year and by 16, 16 and 7 the year before. No one's getting close to them and a lot of counties are beginning to think what's the point of competing in Leinster. It's killing the game in that province. In Munster, Tipperary have been making great efforts to improve their standards but they'll be halted in their progress because they have a highly financed Kerry in their way. Donegal have dominated Ulster and Mayo have dominated Connacht.

Where are their high level of resources coming from? Kerry got 4 million from fundraising overseas, we can't be sure of the exact amount Donegal are getting but they have a very wealthy backer in England who played an instrumental part in beating Dublin last year by financing a 5 day training camp leading up to the match while Dublin have AIG, sponsors of the All Blacks supplying them with a multi-million euro deal. They also have a lengthy list of other sponsors. Them being; O'Neills, Bavaria, The Gibson Hotel, Toyota, Aer Lingus, Ros Nutrition, Ballygowan, Linwoods, Energise sport and Skins.

Something has to be done about this or the gap between the rich and the poor will grow and grow. Is this the game we want? A game where only those who can attract sponsorship or investment can compete? That's where we're going if this is let continue. There'll be an elite group of teams who'll push away from the rest. We're already hearing suggestions of throwing the weak teams into a B championship. The big teams have had enough of wasting their time battering the minnows, while the weak teams are sick of the beatings. This will destroy the game, it'll be like hurling where only a few counties can aim to win the big prizes while the rest struggle away.

Let's do something about this now before it's too late.