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I've been following the GPA debate on both this site and AFR with interest. My own position is that the GAA in it's present form cannot support professionalism so i'm against pay for play. I feel like a hypocrite, though as i've stood by and watched my own club pay people to manage our senior football team. I've felt for a long time that the principle of professionalism had been conceded with payments to managers (from the top to the bottom of the association) and the genie could not now be put back in the bottle.

Having read Bud's contribution about managers however I see a possible way for the GAA to stop the rot.

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You can't turn a blind eye to managers getting paid thousands of euros when holding up up the amateur status placard to the players. In my view the GAA needs to take the lead role in this.

The first move that should be made by the GAA is that managers should not be selected to manage a team from outside their own county and the mobile Messiahs of Paudi O'Shea, O'Dwyer, Mullins, O'Mahoney  and and others like them should be either managing their own county or none.  Even if they were never getting paid, and that is one whopper of an if, they give the impression that they are so important to the counties they arrive in that they are getting paid.  You can be absolutely certain that there are players on this board who resented at some time the call for an extra lap in training because they thought yer man shouting the order was on about a hundred grande. The gaa should put an end to this forthwith and introduce a proper management (Badge Course) to nominated members from every county who have an interest in management to be provided with a proper traing course.  That way, because the knowledge will be filtered back to local clubs weaker counties, especially in hurling would have some chance of improving instead of just the elite ones. Instead we have weaker counties who do not even have a manager of badge calibre.

I'd go further though, and add the rule that the manager of a club should be subject to the same rules of eligibilty as the players he's in charge of.

If the GAA is really serious about retaining it's amateur ethos it should do this, if not why not go the whole hog and pay the players?

How many of the fundamentalists on here who'd have Dessie's guts for garters are turning a blind eye to what's happening in their own clubs?

Read this interesting article this am. Anyone know anything about this lot?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/27/technology/27pogue.php

STATE OF THE ART

A SMALL IRISH FIRM TACKLES THE TYRANNY OF GLOBAL ROAMING

A cellphone without borders
By David Pogue
Published: September 27, 2007

It's amazing the way the Internet keeps toppling traditional businesses. Telegrams have gone away. Music CD sales are tanking. Newspapers are hurting.

One especially lucrative business, however, has somehow escaped the Internet's notice so far: international cellphone calls.

That's about to change. Early next month, a small company called Cubic Telecom will release what it's calling the first global mobile phone.

But first, some background. Cellphones from T-Mobile and AT&T rely on the same type of network (called GSM) that most of the rest of the world uses. In theory, then, you can take these phones to other countries and make calls as usual. (Most Verizon and Sprint phones work only in the United States.)

Unfortunately, international roaming runs from $1 to $5 a minute. A 20-minute call home from the Bahamas on a T-Mobile phone will set you back $60. The same call home from Russia on an AT&T cellphone will cost a cool $100.

Sure, you could always rent a phone or use a phone card when you travel — but then nobody knows how to reach you.

It costs a lot to dial overseas from here, too. Verizon charges $1.50 a minute for calls to most countries. AT&T's rates can be truly Dr. Seussian — like $2.52 to Greece, $2.80 to Iraq and $3.65 to Australia. That's per minute. Make one 20-minute call to New Zealand, and you owe $75 to AT&T.

Now, most carriers offer special international plans: you pay more a month, you get slightly lower roaming rates. But even they can't touch the appeal of Cubic's cellphone. It makes calls to or from any of 214 countries — for 50 to 90 percent off what the big carriers would charge.

On this phone, a 20-minute call from the Bahamas costs $5.80 (that's 90 percent off T-Mobile's rate). The Cubic price from Russia is 49 cents a minute (90 percent lower than AT&T).

And there's no monthly fee and no commitment for any of this. It works like a prepaid phone, where you put some money in your account and use it up as you talk.

At this point, the appropriate world traveler's response ought to be involuntary drooling, but there's more to the story. Most of it is more good news, but also more complexity.

For example, consider this: at the MaxRoam.com site from Cubic, you can request local phone numbers in up to 50 cities at no charge. Now you can have a Paris number, a London number and a Mexico City number that your friends overseas can use to call your cellphone.

No longer must you hand out a series of international phone numbers for each trip you make, or expect your colleagues in the United States to pay $50 a pop to reach you.

Cubic points out that this feature alone is a life-changer for people who have moved, for example, to the United States from overseas. Their family back home can keep in touch for the price of a local call.

I signed up for numbers in Paris, London and Barcelona, and then asked friends in those cities to call me. They dialed local numbers, and my phone rang in New York — very slick. Voice quality was typical of Internet calls: perfectly understandable, but slightly muffled, with a quarter-second to one-second voice delay.

Even that's not the end of this phone's possibilities. For a flat $42 a month, you can turn on its unlimited Wi-Fi calling option. It lets you receive unlimited unmetered calls to any numbers in the world from Internet hot spots, or make them for a penny a minute. Either way, you have little fear of racking up your bill.

This works on hot spots that require a password, but not ones that require a Web-page login. And in contrast to the new HotSpot@Home phones from T-Mobile, which seamlessly hand off calls between Wi-Fi and the cellular network as you move, the Cubic phone drops the call when you leave the hot spot.

Still, if you make a lot of international calls, this option could save even more money. The voice quality is excellent, although these Wi-Fi calls are sometimes marred by random beeps, clicks or dropped connections.

In some ways, the Cubic phone isn't just different; it's actually eccentric. As a phone without a country, it requires a country code and area code for every call, even next door.

well?

If ye're gonna ban Cavlan from playing gaelic Games for option 1 what about the rest? At least in option 1 the animal has an even chance.

Working from home today and Ali Frazier 1971 is on ESPN in the 'background'. Jazus that was some fight, both fighters hospitalized afterwards. Couldn't believe their weights just over 15st for Ali under 15st for Frazier.

Carpenter commentating, what a useless p***k he was, keeps calling Ali, Clay. Reminds me of the story of lads listening to one of his radio commentaries,  english fighter v Johnnie foreigner. 14 rounds of 'get in there frank' type commentary then the englishman gets KO'd. Oul fella in the pub pipes up 'Jazus he musta hit himself'.

The GPA lads and JOM standing for election follows a long tradition (in the free state anyway) of lads parlaying their sporting prowess into political positions. I was wondering if we could get a team each of Hurlers and footballers (county standard and td,mp or mla).

I'll give you Jack Lynch (Cork, FF) as captain of the hurlers and Seamus Mallon (Armagh SDLP) for the footballers as your starters.Selection on the basis of political 'achievement'.

Edit
Just to help Bud negotiate his way around the board i've added a 'Free State Friendly' sticker to my original post. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/newsline/newsline1830.ram

26.25 minutes in.

Nice one Noel, it's the only way to get the BBC to cover any GAA. As at matter of interest what was the combined attendance at the Irish league matches on saturday?