GAA Injury Fund (Not Insurance)

[illdecide]

I was told last night that Croke Park have imposed a new system on the clubs for their annual injury fund. Apparently there are 3 bands now based on your last years claims. (Hope i've got the following figures correct here but correct me if i'm wrong)

If you've no claims to the injury fund there will be a 10% increase on top of what you paid last year(Band 1)
If you've claimed up to £5000 (can someone confirm this figure) there will be a 50% increase on top of what you paid last year (Band 2)
If You've claimed more than the figure above your increase is 100%...WTF. Which will be most clubs in the Country.

I suppose anything over 2 operations and you're screwed...Croke Park haven't even brought this in gradually but with a bang surely this should have been imposed gradually or clubs told this will happen next year etc.
Many clubs are on their knees with County Board fee's and stupid tickets imposed by County Boards that the clubs must sell and now Croke Park are turning the screw...How some of the small Junior and Intermediate clubs survive i do not know.

[Ty4Sam]

There are 3 bands, see below, but no reference to what criteria there is for each band. I would suspect that Band 3 is aimed at clubs who are claiming a lot more than £5K but could be wrong. Its obviously a move to get players to take out personal insurance.

2017 Updates are as follows;

-          Team subscription rate for U21 teams will be reduced from €450 to €200 per team.
-          Injury Fund Reward rebate will be replaced with a claims discount for eligible units.

Eligible units will receive a discount of 10% off Total team Subscriptions due and this will be displayed on the invoice when registration is completed.   
A claims loading is also being introduced and there will be 3 claims loading bands
-          Units in Band 1 will have a 10% load applied to Total team Subscriptions due and this will be displayed on the invoice when registration is completed.   
-          Units in Band 2 will have a 50% load applied to Total team Subscriptions due and this will be displayed on the invoice when registration is completed.   
-          Units in Band 3 will have a 100% load applied to Total team Subscriptions due and this will be displayed on the invoice when registration is completed. 
-          Units that do not meet the criteria to qualify for the discount or who claims experience does not warrant the application of a claims loading will not see any change to subscription rates with the exception of the reduced U21 team rate if applicable

The discount / loading has been calculated based on a review of 3 years data across each unit of Team subscriptions paid into the fund against Claims payments drawn from the fund. 

[magpie seanie]

Is this for real? Fuckin scandalous. Another issue for the CPA....this is totally unfair.

[heffo]

Is this for real? Fuckin scandalous. Another issue for the CPA....this is totally unfair.

The issue is that some clubs were taking the absolute piss.

One club in the midlands/West nearly funded their development project on the back of members falling over in their club grounds (they were in the papers a couple of years ago about another matter)

It's an injury fund and you can only payout what you take in.

The rights and wrongs of that in the context of the GPA deal etc are another matter.

[screenexile]

Crazy crazy system. Why the GAA are not funding this more centrally is beyond me and for such an important issue as player welfare & health!

[magpie seanie]

Is this for real? Fuckin scandalous. Another issue for the CPA....this is totally unfair.

The issue is that some clubs were taking the absolute piss.

One club in the midlands/West nearly funded their development project on the back of members falling over in their club grounds (they were in the papers a couple of years ago about another matter)

It's an injury fund and you can only payout what you take in.

The rights and wrongs of that in the context of the GPA deal etc are another matter.

If some clubs are taking the p1ss then they should be dealt with and seriously. I understand how the scheme works and that it is topped up to the tune of approximately €1-2M by central funds. A lot of money but when you consider who and how many the scheme covers then it's not too bad given the amounts of money flowing through the GAA. Plus as you've mentioned the amount of money at the disposal of 0.1% of the membership.

There will be war in our club over this. On several occasions we've had stormy meetings over paying up front for ops for lads that got injured playing for the club. Totally legit, guaranteed to be refunded but a good rump of committee members would speak against it. If they hear our premium is leaping by a sizeable amount, based on previous claims there will be hell to pay. And people try to tell me there has been great advances in how players are looked after.....

Does anyone have a reliable steer on the figures for the bands? €5k is nothing. €4500 is the max claim and if there's an op involved you're in that region usually. Are they waiting to see how much anger there is before setting the bands? Unusual they weren't included with the original email.

[AZOffaly]

Do all clubs fall in one of the bands? Who are the clubs that do 'not warrant the application of a claims loading'?

If I'm reading it right, the more claims you make, the more you will be loaded. That's not necessarily unfair. It's the opposite of a no-claims bonus. However, if the criteria is putting load on clubs who are around normal operating instances per yer, then it's a disgrace.

Are there published criteria for the bands?

[Ty4Sam]

No criteria published yet as far as I am aware. I would guess that they are still working on it as the 'Player Injury Fund System' is down at the minute and they have indicated that further communication will issue when the system is available for registration. It'll all depend on their criteria for bands on whether this system is fair or not. I can see private Insurance companies having a field day here, the sceptic in me suggest that a certain GAA partner will benefit a lot from this.

[magpie seanie]

I suppose we can't fully comment until the bands are known but even at that the loading percentages seem severe. I can imagine some of the massive clubs in Dublin would easily have 20-30k+ worth of claims per annum on average, probably more.

What worries me here is that clubs will be worrying about what they claim in the future, which I don't think should be the case. If a case is genuine then it should be sorted without question.

[illdecide]

Our club had 3 cruciates in the one year and another injury...We had four major ops in one year. We have to make the short fall as the money allocated does not cover the operation fully so as a club we're out money straight away but now because of bad luck with operations we're gonna get hammered again on these silly bands they're going to put us in and double our fee's which we can't afford

[magpie seanie]

Our club had 3 cruciates in the one year and another injury...We had four major ops in one year. We have to make the short fall as the money allocated does not cover the operation fully so as a club we're out money straight away but now because of bad luck with operations we're gonna get hammered again on these silly bands they're going to put us in and double our fee's which we can't afford

That wouldn't be unusual for any club bar a very small one. If 50% of clubs are going to get their injury scheme contribution doubled it seems ridiculous and if 5k is the threshold you could easily have this.

My gut feeling though is that this will be used as a way to nail clubs they believe to be abusing the system and most will be unaffected either way. I'd hope anyway. There might be some funny figures produced as your average claim amount but not many will question it if it's lower that reality.

[laceer]

No surprise. All about the £$€ these days.

[Avondhu star]

I am surprised that any insurance company would even take this business on. There are so many scams going on with dodgy receipts, exagerated claims that it is bound to be a loser.
Of course people will want Croke Park to cover it but that will only happen at the cost of higher ticket prices, affilation fees etc

[manfromdelmonte]

one knee keyhole surgery costs about €3000 once you tot up the scans, surgeon visits and hospital bills.
some clubs cannot afford to pay up that money for a player in advance

I'd like clubs who are abusing the system (based on player numbers) to be penalised

[magpie seanie]

I am surprised that any insurance company would even take this business on. There are so many scams going on with dodgy receipts, exagerated claims that it is bound to be a loser.
Of course people will want Croke Park to cover it but that will only happen at the cost of higher ticket prices, affilation fees etc

Willis only administer the scheme for the GAA. The GAA top up the scheme to the tune of €1-2M per annum to cover the shortfall between premiums and payouts.

It's very annoying if dishonest clubs are ruining this for the majority.