The future

[irunthev]

Article from last week's Irish World newspaper (London newspaper). The Spectator is a weekly column.

The Spectator

I genuinely don't like this time of the year; Ba Humbug and all that I know, but I really don't care.
Christmas decorations, Christmas shopping, Christmas cards, Christmas parties, mixing with people I genuinely don't like and pretending that I think they are great, it really isn't me at all.
The whole thing makes me feel very uncomfortable and I am mighty glad when everything can return to relative normality.
On top of all the festivities that surround the Christmas period, I also hate all the looking back on the year that has just passed and reminiscing.
Most it is rubbish and in protest to that practice, this week I intend to buck the trend and look forward instead.
While half the country will spend the next few weeks being force-fed nostalgia by irritating B-list wanna-be TV personalities, painfully recalling the supposed highs and lows of 2007, and handing out awards for what people have achieved (or in the case of so many British sportsmen and women, nearly achieved), my plan is to use this column to look ahead to things that I think will happen over the course of the next ten years or so within the Gaelic Athletic Association.

•   The All Ireland SFC will be revamped in a similar way to that which the hurling Championship has been restructured. The only differences being that there will only be two tiers in the football championship and that the provincial championships will still be played in the traditional manner for historical reasons. However, winning the provincial will have no bearing on whether a county plays in the premier competition (the Sam Maguire) or the secondary one, probably  known as the Tommy Murphy Cup.
•   The pay-for-play issue will have been taken to a new level, with players playing in the top-tier competitions in the SFC and SHC being paid an increasingly large fee in order to represent their counties, with many of the bigger name players now either not working or only working part-time in order to facilitate the demands on their time created by travel and training. Players in the lower tier will no longer be paid.
•   The Gaelic Players Association will have ceased to exists, with the less militant key figures in the GPA being brought on board by Croke Park to work full-time in the player's welfare department, while the more ambitious members of the GPA will have set up an agency to represent players in negotiating their individual contracts with their counties, as well as dealing with the brand and image rights and marketing of many of these players. At least one key former GAA administrator will also be involved in this practice.
•   The top flight hurlers and footballers will no longer be allowed to play league games for their clubs or for the colleges due to insurance reasons. The only time a player listed on the county panel will be allowed to represent his club will be in a Championship match. Likewise players will not be permitted to train with their clubs aside from in the week before a key Championship game.
•   A relatively obscure player, playing for a minor county, will be head-hunted by a larger county and while his original request to transfer will be turned down, an agent will encourage him to take the GAA to court, a case he will win. His landmark judgement will signal the beginning of a legitimate transfer and draft system within the GAA, the "bastard child" of the decision to pay players to play the game, meaning that the GAA does not have the right to restrict the movement of labour between the various counties..
•   Attendances at GAA fixtures will fall dramatically, prompting a review of the way the game is marketed. In an attempt to drag more money into the Association, a pay-to-view television station will gain exclusive rights to all Championship games.
•   All players will be given a squad number at the start of each season and jerseys will have the name of the player and his squad number on the back. Each player will be entitled to a percentage of the income from the sale of jerseys with his name on it.
•   London's hurlers and footballers will both be excluded from their respective National Leagues due to a lack of commercial interest in their participation and poor gate numbers, resulting in them failing to meet the new "revenue generation targets"  (RGTs) introduced in 2012 by an increasingly corporately structured Croke Park
•   Many of the third tier inter-county hurling teams will have ceased to play hurling competitively due to the increasing costs of running the teams and a general lack of interest from the public. These teams will still compete annually in their respective Championships, but the lowest division of the NHL will be scrapped, also victims of the RGT policy.
•   The lack of appropriate facilities at Ruislip will mean that all of London's Championship matches will have to be played in Ireland in order to comply with Europe-wide health and safety regulations.
•   The virtually non-existent Irish population in New York under the age of 30, together with the restructuring of the SFC, will mean that New York's participation in the Championship will also be terminated.


That's my look ahead over the next ten years, and while many of you may feel that there is a great deal of fantasy involved in what I have predicted, if you just take yourself back to 1997, would you ever have imagined that the England rugby team would be playing in front of 82,000 people in Croke Park or that inter-county players would be threatening to strike in order to get paid for the honour of trying to win an All Ireland or provincial championship?
Ten years later and just look where we are?

[Gnevin]

Bullshit
stop reading after the first paragraph

[Pangurban]

Think you were having a nightmare, at least i hope so, the scenario you outline is too awful to contemplate

[tayto]

Load of nonsense.

[Zulu]

Childish, more of this boogeyman stuff that is so common amongst anti-grant posters. If we face and prepare for the future we have no need to fear it.

[passedit]

The funny thing is that all these things have already been set in motion with barely a whimper from the rump of malcontents. The grants are the whistle of the train as it pulls out of the station.

BTW good to see ya back johnboy.

[ONeill]

I was hoping he'd go a wee bit further and write of floating stadiums and superhuman players with spare legs for free-kicks etc. I wonder is there anything in the rulebook to stop you, as a manager, playing a monkey or orangutan in goals. Or putting springs around your studs for extra leverage.

[orangeman]

That didn't take a lot of imagination now did it ? 

[Carmen Stateside]

I was hoping he'd go a wee bit further and write of floating stadiums and superhuman players with spare legs for free-kicks etc. I wonder is there anything in the rulebook to stop you, as a manager, playing a monkey or orangutan in goals. Or putting springs around your studs for extra leverage.

Armaghs been at it for years!