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Well come on lads, give the Dubs some bit of credit for their game against Clare and being in the U21 Leinster Final tomorrow.  Everyone seems to think they were the whipping boys against Kilkenny but apart from the goals I thought their skill levels were great and next time, even in three months time they would not be such a walkover against the Cats. Three games in Croke Park in the one years championship, along withn the fact that some of their lads are still involved in U21 Final sounds good to me for the future of Dublin hurling but they need more support than they are getting.

After being put out of the championship by Tipperary today I can't wait to see what Mick will have to say in this weeks Leinster Express!

http://www.leinsterexpress.ie/gaelic-football/MICK-LAWLOR-COLUMN--Laois.6374916.jp?articlepage=1

Anyone read the half page article in last weeks Herald about the thread "Jonno, for the love of God go NOW"   Great craic altogether with Dinny getting a mention along with the Down lad who stuck his oar into the Armagh thread to say "while he was delighted to see Armagh getting hammered he didn't think they should be that pessimistic !  It was written by Frank Roche who incidentally was one of the few to predict that Louth would beat Kildare - before the game.

Great article on our Laois Manager in todays Indo but for the love and honour of jaysus what is Eamon Sweeney on about on the back page???  I read the first paragraph and a half and that was it.  Couldn't be bothered with the rambling.

Old timer here never experienced the more modern team preperation methods and one thing that I would like to know is under what terms is a fitness test decided, or who decides.  To make the question clearer, just suppose that a player has a groin injury or ligament damage.  Who is qualified to say the player is fit to return without making the injury worse?  I ask this question on the same week as Collie Moran is in Mount Carmel getting a hip replacement ( as was reported in the herald) and as an aside to a suggestion for proper management training courses mentioned on another thread.

After 21 years Dickie Murphy has been ommited from the panel of ten referees for this years hurling championship.  Gerry Harrington is going balistic because no Dublin referee was selected on the either panel.

Right folks.  A new thread to deal specifically with the questions and answers for the GPA.  I received an email before Christmas from Mr Potts.  I have now replied to that email.  See below. As far as I am concerned now all the discussions are over, we have talked this thing to death over the last five or six years so this thread is not for another discussion as we can use the one below.  This thread is for to publish the replies we get from the GPA and to comment on those replies only.  I am proposing to provide one answer to one question at a time.  This board is , as far as I know,  the only one that has had decent discussion about the GPA and there are pro and anti members here and it is a credit to us that we can still discuss and put our viewpoints across without the adminstrator having to intervene. Now let us keep it that way and respect the answers we receive because up to now the GPA have respected us and whatever the final analyses we can't take that from them.

This is a copy of the reply I sent today.  Now we must wait.

Hi Sean,



Thank you for your mail before Christmas, now it is the New Year and time to get all them unfounded fears out of the way.



I have prepared the questions that are the most commonly asked ones, or from your side of the fence, the ones that are causing you the most problems.

To be honest I do not think there is a man among us that would not want to see all of us sitting around and eating from the one table, nor is there one among us who do not respect the individual achievements of your associations executive and bord of directors both on and off the field.



You may view the 10 questions I have asked at   .........

Please remember that your replies will be brought to the attention of thousands of members of the GAA Discussion Board and in this regard I will ensure that each answer is treated with respect.

I really really hope that at the end of the open forum that we have created that people like myself will be less begrudging of your association and that if the GPA is to co-exist with the GAA that it will do so in an all embracing way right down to junior club level instead of being perceived as an elite group of a minority trying to control the GAA from an outside independent company.



I await your reply with a great deal of excitement.



Tom Fennelly




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Press [mailto:press@gaelicplayers.com]
Sent: 17 December 2009 09:22
To: fennetec@eircom.net
Subject: Meeting in the GPA



Dear Tom



Your communication regarding a meeting with the GPA has been brought to my attention. I will contact you in early January to arrange a meeting and will give you due notice when you can forward any questions you wish to raise.

[€35M in compensation to Credit Unions.]

In yesterdays Irish Independent there was an article by a Finance Editor in which he quoted the outgoing Ombudsman as having concerns about large associations that have no experience in the financial industry being taken for a ride by investing in perpetual bonds that were near enough to worthless. Enfield Credit Union (yes, it would take the Royals to fight back) brought a case against Goodbody Stockbrokers based on the fact that they did not understand the intricacies of perpetual bonds - nor do I.  The bottom line was that Goodbody  Stockbrokers had to pay out €35M in compensation to Credit Unions.

But the question is, have any other associations, thinking they were doing the right thing, took a gamble and invested members or associations money thinking that here we go, we are in the big time, lets run with the advice of Davy or Goodbody.  Incentives to invest in shares are often pure hype and nothing more.  Robbie Kelleher, well know former Dublin senior footballer is often on RTE News/Morning Ireland as spokesman for Davy Stockbrokers.  I want to make it perfectly clear that I am making no disrespectful suggestions regarding Mr Kelleher whatsoever but I ask the question:

What if Central Council gave a million to a club to match fund new playing pitches and clubhouse that would take place over a two year period and thinking, like the credit unions did, that they could make a quick buck it was wrongly invested and lost, what would happen?  Have we a rule/contract that says  'this money is precisely for the development as follows'?

Say for example €1.6M is given to an association for the benefit of players and the executive happen to hear * Mr Kelleher on the wireless and based on what they are hearing they invest half the 1.6M and come up with the same results as the Credit Unions?  If Central Council have not got a prohibitive clause to prevent reinvestment of funds that are specified for a particular project or welfare program then does anyone think they need one.

Does anyone know any clubs or associations that have made such investments?  If you do they should be referred to the Enfield Credit Union outcome because if the settlement was 35 Million Euro it is the strongest example of Case Law I have ever seen or heard about in this country in my life and if any association, GAA or Non-Gaa were unfortunate enough to be taken in when times were good then they might, just might be able to recover some of their losses that may have put them close to being out of business.

* With reference to Robbie Kelleher, Robbie is well known for his achievements with Dublin footballers as are Keavney, Hanahoe, Paddy Cullen, Brian Mullins, Kevin Moran etc.   It is an unwritten rule in GAA circles that we support our own when possible and in turn we often seek support from each other.  We drink in the GAA pub in the village, we meet in the gaa pub when we go to matches so before anyone comes along questioning my reference to Mr. Kelleher the point I am making is that it would be easy for any GAA man or committee with control of the purse strings to think it a reasonable idea to make an approach to someone like Mr Kelleher in a similar investment company anywhere in the country and I simply make the reference because it is standard practice for any insurance company/investment company to use a high profile person for high profile sales.

Put more simply. If there is a rule that all GAA funds are lodged in deposit accounts, and that neither the clubs or the banks, or whoever the allocation is made to, have authority to invest those funds in similar bonds like what happened to the credit unions then there is nothing whatsoever to worry about and this post is totally irrelevant.

I have removed this original thread, as Muppet said, it was fastly reaching new lows. All I meant to say was that, from the scenes on TV, it was a sad situation for Gerald to be in and a time for all involved to reflect on their actions and ask was it worth it all in the end.

Duz anyone know where I could get three tickets for any of the Ireland home rugby games for 2010.  When I was in hospital for a while I was well looked after by three people who are mad into rugby and I wanted to give them a present.  I have seen some sites but they are worse than touts.  Anyone any idea?



Oooops, just found prices on the IRFU site !!!

Except when I clicked to buy they were frigging sold out.

Duz the GAA publish a quality Year Book & Diary similar to the Adminstration one, ie, a quality Diary with information on how to apply for grants from the Sports Council, Lotto, Central Council, dates of Congress, County Board Officials for each county. The admin one below costs around 70 euro so why don't the GAA publish a simialr quality yoke.

Watching the Portlaoise boys receive the Leinster Football Club trophy last Sunday, despite their elation, I was proud of the boys whose first thoughts were for their clubs finances when interviewed.  The club player, the one who does it all at club level, real heart beat of the GAA stating that "this will do a lt for our clubs financial problems after what we have gone through in thelast years" making it evident that these lads were more interested in Club Welfare than Player Welfare.  Fourteen miles down the road from O'Moore Park the Ballinakil club have been moving around like Nomads for the last year without a pitch to play on.

How are the finances in your county.  By this I mean I do not expect every club to put up their private business but to get a general consensus of how many counties need a cash injection I am asking how things are in your county.  If Portlaoise are in dire straights then smaller clubs must be worse off.

No need to explain the difficulties people are in. some awful scenes on TV.
Should the GAA not do something, take the lead, hold a benefit game in Croke Park.
Before anyone says, it's too much to ask the players after the years commitments, if I was still playing I would gladly do it, day or night and I would say almost every player to a man would want to do the same.
So even pay the players for their nights work, have the GPA All Stars play the GAA All -Stars with those who were nominated making up the teams where there is a joint award decided.
Fill Croke Park some night, people who would not normally go to games would go, everyone put their shoulder to the wheel and as someone suggested one time, get an ould car as sponsorship and have a raffle for it on the admission tickets and get anyone except Jedward to sing a few songs between games.  We have done it before for other countries but now, when it is our own some of these unfortunate people are being put through Means Tests !  Yep, the HSE and Social Welfare never cease to amaze me.  That's my house there floating down the river, where would you like me to sit while I do your means test? 

I think this would be a chance for the GAA to make a name for itself, it would certainly distance it from the tag of being a Grab All Assoc. 

Get every club in the country involved. Get each club to get reports from their area about hardship cases or simply give the money to the Red Cross, Vincent DePaul or Welfare Officers in each area.  If the Credit Unions can donate 120K we should be able to donate 1.2M. 

See on the main evening news yesterday warnings that yer man Coleman from Ballyfermot is predicting another apparition at Knock on Saturday and people have been warned about staring at the sun.  Seems they are seeing the sun dance in the sky and all kinds of apparitions. 

Am I on my own in thinking that it is about time the  GAA copied the way soccer stadiums sell their tickets in relation to the layout of the grounds.  Instead of paying Ticketmaster sell them from Croke Park like Man Utd etc.

Wherever they sell them from, or whoever sells them they need to cop on as to what they are selling and stop taking the easy option. As an example if you go on the IRFU site to book tickets you can book a ticket for the Cusack  Stand for 80 euro.  But where in the Cusack Stand? Are you going to be in the front row middle lower or up with the pigeons in the top left corner of the uper tier? There are a number of reasons why they should get off their arses and sort this out and stop taking us all for granted.

1.  Myself for example finds it difficult to follow the ball in hurling because the old eyesight is not great so I could  not watch a game from the upper tier.   I remember one time giving a Mayo man tickets for an AIF and he worked for a certain city council. He had to be facilitated with a downstairs ofice in his work because he suffered fro vertigo and he could not use the seats.  That is one or two reasons why people may not want to use the Upper Tiers.

2.  This year will be a hard sell to get people into Croke Park other than when Dublin Hurlers are playing. Price and cost of attending matches at 75euro a head have a lot to do with this so if for example there was a football game on and a few lads were betwixed and between whether they would go or not they might say, ah sure we will go into town and have a few pints and go to the cheap seats and watch the game.  That is a reason why more people would go to games.

3.  There is a layout of Croke Park on a number of websites which is useless because all tickets are priced the same.  The areas should be colour coded into Left Lower, Centre Lower, Right Lower etc.  Other Stadiums use incentives like a "Quid's In" to allow a child under 7 into the cheap blocks for a pound with an adult at some of the less attractive games.

My reasoning has nothing whatsoever to do with snobery or moaning for the sake of it but say if six guys decide to pay the guts of 500 euro to go to Croke Park for the first time and they end up stuck in bad seats they will not go back. Please don't tell me there is such a thing as a bad seat in Croke Park because my second last experience there is the reason I post this.  If everyone knew what area they were buying tickets for then the GAA would sell more of them and if Man Utd can sell their tickets from their stadium I am at a loss to know why there is not a box office at our HQ.  If the GAA continue to think that every ordinary everyday supporter has a Credit Card then Croke Park will continue to be half empty for Leinster Finals.

Can anyone help me with the following little problem.

If I launch Google Earth and I hover my mouse say over a pub down the road it will give me the Lat & Long. co-ordinates down on the bottom.

Now, if I copy these and insert them here :  http://www.followmegps.com/ I end up in Ethiopia or in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean so what am I getting wrong, is it the two different GPS formats or what.  Someone is after taking the ould Massey Ferguson 20 on me and if I can't get a trace on her before the battery goes flat I'll never see her again.

Just reading Martin Breheny in todays Indo and begob Martin hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that during the rugby match there was a big Guinness sign painted onto the pitch.  He said that if this was during a GAA match the lines to Joe Duffy would be hopping.

So I was just thinking that once we had The Guinnes All Ireland Championship, The Bank of Ireland Championship and the Allianz Leagues etc but everytime the GAA try to do soemthing we seem to get it in the neck just like Martin B has suggested.  The GPA are as responsible as the P.C. Brigade because they have caused conflict of interest between the reliable sponsors the GAA had.  It is unlikely that the Bank of Ireland (recession or no recession) would be chomping at the bit to sponsor a championship that will have another group sponsoring the players in the championship with Halifax Bank or that Allianz will be encouraged with a similar situation in terms of the GPA's Insure.ie deals being offered to all and sundry while Allianz would be expected to sponsor the league?  Lucozade Sport/ Energiser etc, etc, etc.  Conflicts of interest on a large scale and one of the reasons why the GPA should pack it in, not that any of the hacks in the Indo would agree with that since they even print the GPA magazine and are up to their necks in supporting them.

So, what would happen if the GAA had a commercial arm  to provide Home and Car Insurance with four regional offices in each province. Ould Joe Moore did it when he gathered up a few "Members" and formed the PMPA. Semi State companies have their own insurance and Quinn started off with a few hundred members.  I have just received house and car insurance renewals and leaving aside the car market my  house renewal ialone is 560 euro but let us call that 500. There are 3000 houses in the area, Firhouse, where I live and unless 60% of them went up in flames they can't loose much out of one and a half million a year that they are getting for the last thirty years or more.

Any of the "Insurance Companies" are only glorified Brokers.  So why not have our own 'members' insurance with the GAA acting as broker between the member and the main underwriter, Lloyds?  If you had to be a member to get the reduction every club in the country would have all their memberships paid up and on top of that employment would be created for members in each province.  We could sponsor ourselves then out of at least 50 million a year on house insurance alone!

Now, aint that a pure mad idea?

See on TG4 that King Henry's sister had to collect his award as Mrs Shefflin had just given birth to a baby son and Henry was playing in the All-Ireland Club Championship.  Congratulations Henry, may you create a minor team all of your own.

I was saying there do'ther day that a parcel arrived for me and when I went to the Post Delivery to collect,  it was a spanking new GPA Polo Shirt.  Since the GPA are now almost gone I think maybe I will auction this on the board as a collectors item.

The Gaelic Players Management company have now lodged their accounts for the last year, 2008 and for the year they lhad losses of 143,843 euro - 3,000 a week give or take a few pints.  There are now three directors including DJ Carey and Brian Corcoran both of whom made a huge contribution to hurling, the best game of all. I am confused as to why these men at this stage in their lives would become directors of a company that is clocking up losses of three grand a week and which by now, based on last years losses could be heading for the quarter of a million figure. 

Brian 'Every Single Ball" Corcoran will be remembered for his book and for of course deciding not to wear a helmet in the 2006 All-Ireland Final, before then going on to endorse his own brand of helmets for the Lidl or Aldi group which were instructed to be removed from the shelves and all ended up in a Greenstar skip because they did not meet safety standards. (At the time I thought there was a bit of political pull involved and I think BC got a raw deal on that one) So unless Brian has another interest in terms of launching other approved GAA gear I am at a loss why he would get involved to the stage of becoming a director.

Then you have DJ, one of the greatest players of all time and I am totally confused as to why as a business man he would sign up to this.  His wife/partner is the lady on Dragons Den who, more than any of the other mentors uses the phrase "I'm Out" after advising some poor fooker that his auto cow milking maching with built in seperator is doomed to failure.  I hope poor ould DJ doesn't get told "Your Out".  This is a huge commitment for DJ to make, and, for to protect the interests of current players, after he has retired?  The only thing I would say in regard to DJ is that if he had profiled the GPA in terms of P.R. from the start they might not be down 148,000 now, or twice that.  Apart from the Right Honourable Desmond nobody knew the names of who was involved and when the names did become available we still didn't know who they were so maybe once again DJ will come to the rescue but I for one doubt it.

So, does anyone think my polo shirt will be a collectors item?

Almost nine weeks now since I joined the GPA and still no membership card or an invite to an ould meeting. Must check now to see that I am actually insured since getting insured free along with GPA membership, or getting GPA membership free along with getting insured was the deal I got that day in the middle of a potato field.

Now I sees that Desmond has gone all European according to this report:

Yesterday, the GPA announced that have been admitted to the 'EU Athletes' Association -- a federation of independent athlete and player associations from all over Europe. "While our sports are unique and amateur, a lot of the issues affecting individual players, athletes and their representative bodies appear to be replicated across Europe," said players chief Dessie Farrell. "Particularly, in areas such as antidoping, image rights, welfare services, funding, corruption in sport, and so on."

Now, how in the name of jaysus did Dessie and the boys do this without consulting me.  I would have said a firm NO to the EU on this, next we will have minimum wages down to 3.80 euro an hour which won't suit the man himself or anyone else in a suit either.  Micko and Geezer wil be hopping mad.  Will the GAA be the minority in this Association, will the French, the Germans, the Belgiums and countries with women with balls outvote the GPA when they try to raise concerns about anti-doping and corruption in sport for example.   Anyone else able to elaborate on this?  Should I call up with a bag of spuds to Dessie in a softly softly approach and see can I find out what is going on or should I go up with the spade and draw off him with it and tell him I want my money back?

 

News reached us yesterday evening of the sudden passing of John Doyle who is well know in local gaa circles throughut Dublin as lead singer with ballad group 'Mulligan'.  John was on a short trip to Austria where he died suddenly.  He was a very devoted GAA supporter and there are countless secretary's reports from Ballyboden St. Endas where John is thanked for providing the music and craic, and most notably for his contribution towards making the Senior Citizens party possible every year.I am posting this here because of the sudden passing of a truly nice gentleman as I am sure there are many who may not know.  To his family and friends, sincere sympathy.  R.I.P. John.