Paraic Duffy to Stand Down

Started by AZOffaly, October 11, 2017, 01:51:42 PM

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sid waddell

Quote from: RadioGAAGAA on October 12, 2017, 12:28:49 PM
Quote from: sid waddell on October 12, 2017, 12:25:25 PM
There wasn't even an All-Ireland club championship until 1971 and the concept of the finals being played every year in Croke Park didn't begin until 1986.

So what? You completely and utterly miss the point.

How many clubs does this involve?

What about the thousands that are f**ked about week to week with fixtures postponed, re-arranged, re-arranged again, postponed, etc etc, all to suit the inter-county scene. Its not just the players, but all those involved with the clubs.
Or maybe it's to suit themselves?

I don't miss the point at all. I completely get the point.

Clubs themselves and county administrators are the main culprits in screwing over their own players in cancelling games at the drop of a hat.

Yet we're told that's it's apparently all the fault of Padraic Duffy and inter-county managers.

Cry me a river.






AZOffaly

Sid, by front and centre, I mean that they exist alongside our county games. We should not be squeezing the shite out of 95% of our players to allow the cash cow inter county game to have more slots.


I'm not a backwoodsman, or scream about elitism, but I am concerned about the direction we are going. The natural outcome of all of this, as far as I can see, is club and county essentially existing with no crossover between the teams.  Paraic Duffy and others have mentioned Champions league style formats as a possibility for example. the Super 8s is probably the first step along that road. They want more inter county games, more exposure of the IC game. This agenda is absolutely being led from the top table, and Duffy with his 10 year tenure has been instrumental in that shift.

But spare me the begrudgers comment sligoman2. I take offence at that. I begrudge nothing. I love the IC game, I love football, I love hurling and I love the club scene. Our clubs are struggling in my opinion, in terms of games and in terms of demands and availability of county players. In dual counties, the problem is magnified. I accept we need revenue generation to keep the club game alive too. So I'm not 'anti' IC. I am concerned that the drive to maximise the IC revenue streams is having an unintended knock on impact, and I'm concerned that the new changes will make that even more difficult for clubs , especially in dual counties.

I don't think my fears are unreasonable.

sligoman2

Quote from: AZOffaly on October 12, 2017, 12:54:51 PM
Sid, by front and centre, I mean that they exist alongside our county games. We should not be squeezing the shite out of 95% of our players to allow the cash cow inter county game to have more slots.


I'm not a backwoodsman, or scream about elitism, but I am concerned about the direction we are going. The natural outcome of all of this, as far as I can see, is club and county essentially existing with no crossover between the teams.  Paraic Duffy and others have mentioned Champions league style formats as a possibility for example. the Super 8s is probably the first step along that road. They want more inter county games, more exposure of the IC game. This agenda is absolutely being led from the top table, and Duffy with his 10 year tenure has been instrumental in that shift.

But spare me the begrudgers comment sligoman2. I take offence at that. I begrudge nothing. I love the IC game, I love football, I love hurling and I love the club scene. Our clubs are struggling in my opinion, in terms of games and in terms of demands and availability of county players. In dual counties, the problem is magnified. I accept we need revenue generation to keep the club game alive too. So I'm not 'anti' IC. I am concerned that the drive to maximise the IC revenue streams is having an unintended knock on impact, and I'm concerned that the new changes will make that even more difficult for clubs , especially in dual counties.

I don't think my fears are unreasonable.
Okay AZ, I will spare you this time but don't let it happen again... ;D
I used to be indecisive but now I'm not too sure.

Lone Shark

Before Sid Waddell came in with his comments regarding "elitism", it should be noted that the word had only been used once on this thread. That isn't the cry here. More than a few people had referred to the fact that in their view (and I'm in this group), Paraic Duffy's administration was notable for a huge drive towards the monetization of our big games, and a very commercial focus, as opposed to focussing on what's best for the development of our games overall.

Among the issues (and this is being specific, not throwing out general ideas) are these:

(1) The increasing power of the GPA, the lack of oversight in exchange for the huge level of funding they receive, and the fact that they appear to have a huge amount of control over what happens in our games. They make laughable claims about how the provincial championships could be played in April, like a standalone O'Byrne Cup style competition, but that the crowds will be same as they are now - and yet nobody calls them out on it. We have no idea what they pay their staff, no idea what they plan to use the media rights money for, and PD seems to think that's all okay. 

(2) The fact is that while it is correct to say that all changes have been voted through by county boards, and they in turn should vote on the basis of what their clubs want, that's not how it works in practice. In practice, the only motions that get through in the majority of cases are the ones proposed by Ard Comhairle, since what happens is that counties only oppose them if they have a strong vested interest in doing so, and there's never a huge number of counties that have that. Everybody wants to cosy up to the top table to have a chance of getting favours in future, so a county like Sligo, or Fermanagh, or Donegal, will vote through whatever Ard Comhairle wants when it comes to the Leinster and Munster hurling championship. And I don't think anyone on here is going to pretend that Tubbercurry, Termon or Teemore are going to sit down at a club meeting and discuss the Leinster SHC. They've enough to be doing making sure there are jerseys on the backs of the under-14s, and enough adults to coach them.

Homework exercise - try and find the last time a motion from a county regarding the structure of championships was passed. You'll have to dig. Successful motions in that area only come from Ard Comhairle.

(3) Back in the "golden era" that no-one wants to return to, despite what some people might claim, all county championships and most club championships were straight knockout. Consequently you could play club and county side by side, through the summer. Nobody wants that, but what has happened since is that both strands now have a full programme of games, and the extra space has been completely eaten by intercounty, instead of shared. County teams get the summer while the clubs get April, and Autumn (provided the county team gets knocked out). Even if a county team doesn't have a game for a fortnight, the manager often looks for the club players for a hastily organised challenge game, so there is no change of fitting club games in. Most would argue that a little bit of balance would be nice, but instead Paraic has been at the head of the charge for this notion that giving clubs the month of April is a big step in the right direction, even though I don't know a single club player who (a) believes that any county will actually be able to play club games on the weekend of April 28/29 in 2018, and (b) enjoys the "two season" aspect, and having to be championship ready at a time when there can still be a touch of frost on the ground when you get up in the morning. 

And yes, the new system means that most counties (at least 21/32, all bar 8 football and 3 hurling) will be done by mid-July. But what of the other 11?

(4) On top of all this, PD has overseen a dramatic growth in a new phenomenon, that of underage county development squads. Now we have the farcical situation where under-14 club teams can't get games played, because they can't get access to their players. We see county under-16 panels playing anything from six to ten "competitive" games in a summer, where managers demand access to the players and club fixtures can't be played. How is that not elitist? 

I like the U-20 development, it has always defied logic that players would play at that age (or U21) and senior as well. I'll give credit for that certainly.

(5) Another new evolution in GAA has been the amount of time involved in playing intercounty, which in turn means that whole swathes of people are ruled out, purely because their employers aren't able to be as flexible. And yes, that feeds into elitism, because it means that if you have a Tesco employee in Kinlough, playing for Melvin Gaels, and another five miles down the road in Bundoran, playing for Realt na Mara, and they are both potential county players - the county with the far greater level of funding (in this case Donegal) has a far better chance of getting their player a handy job that's compatible with playing county, while the guy in Leitrim has no option but to keep his job with all the weekend and evening hours that are incompatible with joining a county panel.

There will always be counties with wealthy backers, and the teacher will always have a massive advantage over the "9-5:30, 4 weeks annual leave" professional, but we've long passed the time for the top administrators in the GAA to shout stop - and they never have.



You say there are no details - there's just a handful of details, and in every instance PD has either stood back and done nothing, or overseen a continued decline, or in the case of the GPA, actively fed the parasite within. Again, I fully agree that he has only ever acted out of good will, but he has always been a man who has acted within the constraints of what he perceives to be the inevitable future of the GAA that no-one truly wants, but he feels powerless to stop. In comparison with the job done by Liam Mulvihill, I'm afraid he's in the ha'penny place.

AZOffaly

LS, I'll let Sid digest that and respond as many of the points I'd be in agreement with. However, just on the development squads, I'm not sure where you are getting that info?

I'm involved in Tipp, and Clubs are absolutely #1 when it comes to access to players. In fact I rang clubs on a Thursday to insist that lads on my squad played with their clubs on that Thursday night, despite our 'tournament' being on the Saturday. We organise training, and games around club availability, and in a county like Tipp with 4 divisions all operating off separate calendars, that is not easy.

We also only play that 1 tournament, so I'm not sure where the 6-10 competitive games comes from.

I'm not sure what counties you are referring to, so maybe it's different in other counties, but there are guidelines laid down about Development Squad sessions, and the pre-eminence of club activities, so that may be a county or counties actually breaching guidelines set down by the GAA.


sid waddell

Quote from: AZOffaly on October 12, 2017, 12:54:51 PM
Sid, by front and centre, I mean that they exist alongside our county games. We should not be squeezing the shite out of 95% of our players to allow the cash cow inter county game to have more slots.


I'm not a backwoodsman, or scream about elitism, but I am concerned about the direction we are going. The natural outcome of all of this, as far as I can see, is club and county essentially existing with no crossover between the teams.  Paraic Duffy and others have mentioned Champions league style formats as a possibility for example. the Super 8s is probably the first step along that road. They want more inter county games, more exposure of the IC game. This agenda is absolutely being led from the top table, and Duffy with his 10 year tenure has been instrumental in that shift.

But spare me the begrudgers comment sligoman2. I take offence at that. I begrudge nothing. I love the IC game, I love football, I love hurling and I love the club scene. Our clubs are struggling in my opinion, in terms of games and in terms of demands and availability of county players. In dual counties, the problem is magnified. I accept we need revenue generation to keep the club game alive too. So I'm not 'anti' IC. I am concerned that the drive to maximise the IC revenue streams is having an unintended knock on impact, and I'm concerned that the new changes will make that even more difficult for clubs , especially in dual counties.

I don't think my fears are unreasonable.
Why wouldn't the GAA and the people involved in it at every level want more exposure for the inter-county game. That's the GAA's primary selling point.

A round robin format, as we will have in hurling next year, allows for greater certainty in terms of fixtures.

More revenue from the inter-county game means greater revenue to be distributed to clubs.

The inter-county game will not have "more slots" next year. The inter-county season will in fact be shortened, with more games fitted into the "slots" allocated to it.

More not less time is being set aside for club championships.

Why are clubs struggling in many areas?

Well, look at what's happening in wider society for the answer to that.

Why are most rural areas in the country struggling?

Because society is changing, jobs are hard to find, and young people tend to move away from rural areas, either to cities or out of the country altogether.


AZOffaly

You think everything is hunky dory in terms of Club fixtures and scheduling Sid? And that they will be even better after the new formats?

If so fair enough, but I disagree fundamentally, and I think our fixtures are an embarrassment when set beside soccer or rugby.

Zulu

Quote from: Owenmoresider on October 12, 2017, 10:51:46 AM
Quote from: Rossfan on October 12, 2017, 10:46:05 AM
When is this "Professional era" coming in?
Will all 32 Counties have fully professional hurling and football teams of 30 players each plus 20 managenent/back up/administration?
€50K ×50 = €2.5m x 64 = €160m.
Minimum for wages only.
Who's going to pay for all this?

I thought paranoia had vanished from GAABOARD but it's back in full flow as the "enemies/nemesis" of the GAA are getting it with both barrels from the usual crew.
Your usual kind of carry on with anyone who dares question the motives of the GPA, Croke Park etc., predictable as it is tiresome.

Anyway if the Association slides further towards professionalism there won't be 32 teams for sure, it'll simply not be sustainable, you can look forward to the bigger guns staying pretty intact and the rest disappearing or having to merge to become in any way viable, us ye and Leitrim might become the North Connacht Rangers or some such franchise name.

And repeatedly scaremongering about a looming professionalism without any real detail on how it could happen is equally tiresome. Duffy did a brilliant job and directed the GAA very capably. Players and teams are becoming better prepared which involves more time and finance but nobody has ever proposed a realistic professional model and until there is one then the prophets of doom are as misguided as the nut jobs on street corners claiming the end of the world is nigh.

Syferus

Quote from: Zulu on October 12, 2017, 02:15:39 PM
Quote from: Owenmoresider on October 12, 2017, 10:51:46 AM
Quote from: Rossfan on October 12, 2017, 10:46:05 AM
When is this "Professional era" coming in?
Will all 32 Counties have fully professional hurling and football teams of 30 players each plus 20 managenent/back up/administration?
€50K ×50 = €2.5m x 64 = €160m.
Minimum for wages only.
Who's going to pay for all this?

I thought paranoia had vanished from GAABOARD but it's back in full flow as the "enemies/nemesis" of the GAA are getting it with both barrels from the usual crew.
Your usual kind of carry on with anyone who dares question the motives of the GPA, Croke Park etc., predictable as it is tiresome.

Anyway if the Association slides further towards professionalism there won't be 32 teams for sure, it'll simply not be sustainable, you can look forward to the bigger guns staying pretty intact and the rest disappearing or having to merge to become in any way viable, us ye and Leitrim might become the North Connacht Rangers or some such franchise name.

And repeatedly scaremongering about a looming professionalism without any real detail on how it could happen is equally tiresome. Duffy did a brilliant job and directed the GAA very capably. Players and teams are becoming better prepared which involves more time and finance but nobody has ever proposed a realistic professional model and until there is one then the prophets of doom are as misguided as the nut jobs on street corners claiming the end of the world is nigh.

You just want to keep us at just the one professional side, I guess.

Zulu

Quote from: AZOffaly on October 12, 2017, 02:04:32 PM
You think everything is hunky dory in terms of Club fixtures and scheduling Sid? And that they will be even better after the new formats?

If so fair enough, but I disagree fundamentally, and I think our fixtures are an embarrassment when set beside soccer or rugby.

AZ, I agree with you on the club situation but I think you are mistaken on the motivations for more IC games. It isn't primarily monetary but simply about giving IC players a much better ratio of games to training. Of course, the best teams will get more games and this will generate more money but I don't believe the GAA sat down and said screw everything else, how can we make more money.

One thing that is repeatedly ignored by those bashing Duffy is the fact his super 8 proposal was on the back of extensive engagement with all clubs and counties and the restrictions they imposed, like keeping the provincials, limited what he could propose.

Clubs certainly need to be given more time for games but I know that underage has improved massively from my day when even with two codes you wouldn't get a huge amount of games unless you got to the county final and played at more than one age grade.

Zulu

Quote from: Syferus on October 12, 2017, 02:25:15 PM
Quote from: Zulu on October 12, 2017, 02:15:39 PM
Quote from: Owenmoresider on October 12, 2017, 10:51:46 AM
Quote from: Rossfan on October 12, 2017, 10:46:05 AM
When is this "Professional era" coming in?
Will all 32 Counties have fully professional hurling and football teams of 30 players each plus 20 managenent/back up/administration?
€50K ×50 = €2.5m x 64 = €160m.
Minimum for wages only.
Who's going to pay for all this?

I thought paranoia had vanished from GAABOARD but it's back in full flow as the "enemies/nemesis" of the GAA are getting it with both barrels from the usual crew.
Your usual kind of carry on with anyone who dares question the motives of the GPA, Croke Park etc., predictable as it is tiresome.

Anyway if the Association slides further towards professionalism there won't be 32 teams for sure, it'll simply not be sustainable, you can look forward to the bigger guns staying pretty intact and the rest disappearing or having to merge to become in any way viable, us ye and Leitrim might become the North Connacht Rangers or some such franchise name.

And repeatedly scaremongering about a looming professionalism without any real detail on how it could happen is equally tiresome. Duffy did a brilliant job and directed the GAA very capably. Players and teams are becoming better prepared which involves more time and finance but nobody has ever proposed a realistic professional model and until there is one then the prophets of doom are as misguided as the nut jobs on street corners claiming the end of the world is nigh.

You just want to keep us at just the one professional side, I guess.

Be patient child, I'm sure your mother will put your pacifier back in your cot soon and you go back to sleep. Us adults promise not to talk too loud.

sid waddell

Quote from: Lone Shark on October 12, 2017, 01:28:38 PM
Before Sid Waddell came in with his comments regarding "elitism", it should be noted that the word had only been used once on this thread. That isn't the cry here. More than a few people had referred to the fact that in their view (and I'm in this group), Paraic Duffy's administration was notable for a huge drive towards the monetization of our big games, and a very commercial focus, as opposed to focussing on what's best for the development of our games overall.

Among the issues (and this is being specific, not throwing out general ideas) are these:

(1) The increasing power of the GPA, the lack of oversight in exchange for the huge level of funding they receive, and the fact that they appear to have a huge amount of control over what happens in our games. They make laughable claims about how the provincial championships could be played in April, like a standalone O'Byrne Cup style competition, but that the crowds will be same as they are now - and yet nobody calls them out on it. We have no idea what they pay their staff, no idea what they plan to use the media rights money for, and PD seems to think that's all okay. 

(2) The fact is that while it is correct to say that all changes have been voted through by county boards, and they in turn should vote on the basis of what their clubs want, that's not how it works in practice. In practice, the only motions that get through in the majority of cases are the ones proposed by Ard Comhairle, since what happens is that counties only oppose them if they have a strong vested interest in doing so, and there's never a huge number of counties that have that. Everybody wants to cosy up to the top table to have a chance of getting favours in future, so a county like Sligo, or Fermanagh, or Donegal, will vote through whatever Ard Comhairle wants when it comes to the Leinster and Munster hurling championship. And I don't think anyone on here is going to pretend that Tubbercurry, Termon or Teemore are going to sit down at a club meeting and discuss the Leinster SHC. They've enough to be doing making sure there are jerseys on the backs of the under-14s, and enough adults to coach them.

Homework exercise - try and find the last time a motion from a county regarding the structure of championships was passed. You'll have to dig. Successful motions in that area only come from Ard Comhairle.

(3) Back in the "golden era" that no-one wants to return to, despite what some people might claim, all county championships and most club championships were straight knockout. Consequently you could play club and county side by side, through the summer. Nobody wants that, but what has happened since is that both strands now have a full programme of games, and the extra space has been completely eaten by intercounty, instead of shared. County teams get the summer while the clubs get April, and Autumn (provided the county team gets knocked out). Even if a county team doesn't have a game for a fortnight, the manager often looks for the club players for a hastily organised challenge game, so there is no change of fitting club games in. Most would argue that a little bit of balance would be nice, but instead Paraic has been at the head of the charge for this notion that giving clubs the month of April is a big step in the right direction, even though I don't know a single club player who (a) believes that any county will actually be able to play club games on the weekend of April 28/29 in 2018, and (b) enjoys the "two season" aspect, and having to be championship ready at a time when there can still be a touch of frost on the ground when you get up in the morning. 

And yes, the new system means that most counties (at least 21/32, all bar 8 football and 3 hurling) will be done by mid-July. But what of the other 11?

(4) On top of all this, PD has overseen a dramatic growth in a new phenomenon, that of underage county development squads. Now we have the farcical situation where under-14 club teams can't get games played, because they can't get access to their players. We see county under-16 panels playing anything from six to ten "competitive" games in a summer, where managers demand access to the players and club fixtures can't be played. How is that not elitist? 

I like the U-20 development, it has always defied logic that players would play at that age (or U21) and senior as well. I'll give credit for that certainly.

(5) Another new evolution in GAA has been the amount of time involved in playing intercounty, which in turn means that whole swathes of people are ruled out, purely because their employers aren't able to be as flexible. And yes, that feeds into elitism, because it means that if you have a Tesco employee in Kinlough, playing for Melvin Gaels, and another five miles down the road in Bundoran, playing for Realt na Mara, and they are both potential county players - the county with the far greater level of funding (in this case Donegal) has a far better chance of getting their player a handy job that's compatible with playing county, while the guy in Leitrim has no option but to keep his job with all the weekend and evening hours that are incompatible with joining a county panel.

There will always be counties with wealthy backers, and the teacher will always have a massive advantage over the "9-5:30, 4 weeks annual leave" professional, but we've long passed the time for the top administrators in the GAA to shout stop - and they never have.



You say there are no details - there's just a handful of details, and in every instance PD has either stood back and done nothing, or overseen a continued decline, or in the case of the GPA, actively fed the parasite within. Again, I fully agree that he has only ever acted out of good will, but he has always been a man who has acted within the constraints of what he perceives to be the inevitable future of the GAA that no-one truly wants, but he feels powerless to stop. In comparison with the job done by Liam Mulvihill, I'm afraid he's in the ha'penny place.
But there is absolutely a need for an organisation like the GPA. And it has to be administered by professional staff.

Different people have different ideas about championship formats. Lots of people who claim to have the best interests of the GAA at heart (hello Joe Brolly) want a two tier or a three tier championship format. That to me sounds like a great way to kill off many county teams. That's actual elitism, from the very people who claim to be against it.

In administrative terms, you describe a problem which lies at club and county level and a problem of the calibre of person involved, not a problem at the national administrative level.

Is round robin or back door at club championship level not "elitist" too? Why is having more games "elitist" at county level but not at club level?

You say "nobody wants to go back to straight knock-out", either at club or county level, but yet they want those games to cut across each other's seasons.

"Fitting games in" (at club level) is the operative phrase here, and that's a fool's game. The answer is to completely separate county and club championship seasons.

Moving the All-Ireland finals forward helps in this regard, but you could easily argue they should be moved forward further, to the end of July or the start of August, if this problem is to be fully addressed.

The amount of time involved in playing inter-county has always been "on the increase". It was on the increase in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and the 00s. That isn't driven by "the top table". It's driven by ever-increasing standards which are driven by the players themselves. The increase in standards and in the amount of time needed is driven by the human capacity and the natural human drive for self-improvement.

I'm not really sure where you're going with the Donegal/Leitrim comparison. Donegal isn't exactly an economic powerhouse. There are few counties which are. You argument appears to have either a problem with economics and the jobs market, or is one where you advocate the actual standards of the games should drop across the board. That isn't going to happen because players won't let it happen.

There is no system and no format under which the likes of Leitrim will thrive at inter-county level. Economics and population will always see to that. That's the fact of the county system on which the whole of the GAA is based.

Lone Shark

Quote from: AZOffaly on October 12, 2017, 01:41:38 PM
LS, I'll let Sid digest that and respond as many of the points I'd be in agreement with. However, just on the development squads, I'm not sure where you are getting that info?

I'm involved in Tipp, and Clubs are absolutely #1 when it comes to access to players. In fact I rang clubs on a Thursday to insist that lads on my squad played with their clubs on that Thursday night, despite our 'tournament' being on the Saturday. We organise training, and games around club availability, and in a county like Tipp with 4 divisions all operating off separate calendars, that is not easy.

We also only play that 1 tournament, so I'm not sure where the 6-10 competitive games comes from.

I'm not sure what counties you are referring to, so maybe it's different in other counties, but there are guidelines laid down about Development Squad sessions, and the pre-eminence of club activities, so that may be a county or counties actually breaching guidelines set down by the GAA.

I'm conscious of the fact that other counties may do things differently, and I'm certainly going to defer to your firsthand experience. Tipp seem to treat development squads like, well, development squads, as opposed to championship panels - sadly that's not always the case.

I will say that at under-16 level (for example) a Connacht team might enter the Ted Webb Cup, and the Fr. Manning Cup, and have prep matches for both. If a county side went well in both of those, they could easily play four games in each. You will have the odd player involved in both hurling and football as well.

And what happens in a lot of counties (here in Roscommon included) is that there will be a week where there might be no U16 or minor fixtures, to allow these county games.

And you can end up with a situation like my (adopted) club had this summer, when we had a club championship U16 game scheduled for a Friday evening, but half a dozen lads were selected to go to Donegal for a hurling blitz with the county on the Saturday. Our opponents aren't a dual club, so wouldn't have had any hurlers. We were given two choices (1) play on the Friday evening, without the county players , or (2) play it on the Sunday morning, after your six guys have had a 300-mile round trip the previous day, and played 2/3 competitive hurling matches into the bargain. Of course there was always option three, concede a walkover.

Offaly aren't as bad as Roscommon, but not as good as you describe in Tipp either. And this from Joe Brolly (leaving out the hyperbole, just focusing on the facts) would suggest that other counties are not following guidelines either.

http://www.independent.ie/sport/columnists/joe-brolly/joe-brolly-dysfunction-and-humiliation-summed-up-in-one-hypocritical-letter-36184759.html 

This is the key bit from the above piece:

QuoteTo ensure that the clubs remain the priority, the letter continues: "The county minor squad will only have pitch sessions on Mondays and Thursdays with a gym session on Saturday morning, and to minimise disruption, the under 17 squad will mirror this schedule."
This doesn't take into account matches and challenge games, which means effectively a four-day-a-week county commitment for 15, 16, 17 and 18-year-olds, starting in January.

sid waddell

Quote from: Lone Shark on October 12, 2017, 01:28:38 PM
Before Sid Waddell came in with his comments regarding "elitism", it should be noted that the word had only been used once on this thread. That isn't the cry here. More than a few people had referred to the fact that in their view (and I'm in this group), Paraic Duffy's administration was notable for a huge drive towards the monetization of our big games, and a very commercial focus, as opposed to focussing on what's best for the development of our games overall.
Also, the GAA has a duty to monetise the games as much as possible.

This is not a new thing.

This is exactly what the Croke Park redevelopment, with its corporate boxes and conference facilities, was designed to do. That was 1992.

That's what sponsorship was designed to do. Sponsorship is not a new thing. The All-Stars were sponsored when they began in 1971, by a tobacco firm, no less. Shirt sponsors have been around since 1991 and the All-Ireland championships themselves have been sponsored since 1994. Club championships are sponsored.

Concerts at GAA venues have been happening for decades.

Croke Park was opened up to other sports.

Should the GAA not try to get a fair price for TV rights?

Where does the money for the grass roots come from?

What's "acceptable monetisation", and what's not?