Gaelic players announce media ban

[Frank Casey]

Did Eamonn O'Hara (Sligo) commence his 'Strike' before or after yesterday's game in Tralee?

I'd say sometime after Dara O Se gave him a puck

[orangeman]

GOOD TO SEE COLM FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT !!!!!!!!   


How GAA ignored warnings of player unrest
In the first of our three-part series, Colm Keys analyses the birth of the GPA and the roots of an age-old conflict The background The conflict Milestones Search for recognition
By colm keys


Tuesday July 21 2009

The warning: Glenn Ryan gathered his kit bag and then turned, with the evidence clasped between his fingers now compounding his ire. Ryan's Kildare had just lost a second replay of their Leinster championship semi-final trilogy with Meath and the feeling was raw.

What had just been pressed into his hand however made it that bit worse.

The three games had drawn in excess of 130,000 to Croke Park over two weeks and now the tangible gratitude being shown to Ryan was a pair of vouchers for two pints in a bar somewhere above him in the labyrinth of the new Cusack Stand.

The Kildare captain unfurled the tickets from his palm like a detective unveiling evidence from a gruesome crime.

That was 1997, more than two years before the embryo of the Gaelic Players Association first surfaced in Belfast and perhaps a prime example of where the main players in the great drama that is Gaelic Games stood in the overall scheme of things.

Post-match entertainment hardly constitutes player welfare and Ryan's fury was clearly coloured by the hurt of defeat. But it was indicative of the time. Once the gladiators had performed, they were sent on their way with just enough vouchers to kill a thirst.

For sure, it was more than a player might have got in a match at some other provincial ground. And there were far greater shortcomings that players faced on other 'welfare' fronts.

But this was Croke Park, revamped to the highest specification on one side with plans to complete the process over the next five years. This was a football championship now sponsored by one of the country's leading banks and Ryan had just discarded a soaking jersey with the name of one of the bigger players in the burgeoning construction industry emblazoned across it.

And that is essentially the genesis of where we are today. In the 1990s, the GAA ditched its rules on sponsorship to court the corporate market, it expanded its main stadium and widened its programme of championship games, first in hurling (in 1997) and then in football (in 2001).

Few disagreed with any of these changes as they were being made. It was a natural progression.

It meant more games attracting bigger crowds and driving up revenues. It meant more money being ploughed back into the association for initiatives in infrastructure and games promotion too. But the players, who were ultimately the catalyst for this expansion, fell somewhere in between. It placed a greater commitment on them. And in the middle to the end of the 1990s, the GAA had absolutely no plan for that core part of its membership, no clear vision as to how the next decade might unfold.

An amateur status committee convened throughout 1997 had essentially concluded, with some housekeeping changes to the provision of training gear made and a proposed relaxation of the rules governing endorsement, that things should stay as they are.

Ironically, that committee did consider the payment of managers but never recommended it.

The background

The dynamic between player and administrator within the GAA has had a long history of fracture. In his autobiography, the former GAA president Sean Kelly observed there "has always been and probably always will be a certain amount of friction between players and officialdom".

Players don't enter contracts to play the games so their main obligation is to the time they invest.

"By and large for years and years, the players looked for little and got little," Kelly noted.

That history of friction can be charted back over 100 years and the publication in a letter to the editor of the 'Cork Sportsman' by the secretary of the Dungourney club in Cork outlining the reasons why four players had refused to travel to play Limerick in a game in Ennis.

James Kelleher's letter made clear that the principal objection was the distance they had to travel to Clare, incorporating a 23-hour day from 6.0am that Sunday morning. Then came his most stinging attack.

"Give me the name of the county board, Munster or general council man who will do it," he asked.

"I have seen, to my disgust, the players draw the crowds, make the money and lose their sweat at many a hard hour's game while those gentleman at the head of affairs take charge of the bag and jump in their cars again before the match is over -- off to their hotel to count the coin made by rank and file."

On the subject of insurance payments for injuries, Kelleher was equally scathing. "The men who risked life and limb are forgot," he boldly declared.

It's a small wonder then that it took another 92 years for a players' representative body to come together and take root properly.

In the early 1980s, a group initiated by the Clare hurler Johnny Callanan did get up and running, but its lifespan was short.

The Gaelic Players' Association (GPA) was treated with even greater suspicion by authority than Callanan's group when it evolved from a meeting in the Wellington Park Hotel in September 1999 under Donal O'Neill's guidance.

O'Neill is a member of the famous Down football dynasty but it was his background that sent alarm bells ringing through Croke Park and beyond and laid the basis for a dysfunctional relationship at the outset.

He was a former employee of Mark McCormack's International Management Group who had been based in Asia. Now he was back in Ireland, mobilising Gaelic footballers and hurlers to make more of themselves off the field.

That first gathering in Belfast brought together players chiefly from Ulster; Armagh's Kieran McGeeney, Benny Tierney and Paul McGrane, Tyrone's Peter Canavan, Derry's Anthony Tohill, Fergal McCusker and even Joe Brolly, now one of the GPA's most ardent critics. Dessie Farrell was one of only two players from south of the border.
The GAA's suspicion focused chiefly on O'Neill's background. They feared it would be a sports agency rather than a meaningful player welfare group. They looked at him more than the players gathering behind him or the genuine concerns that they had and immediately put up roadblocks.

The conflict

The composition of that first gathering in Belfast, or a later one for southern players in Dublin, sat perfectly with the GAA's initial assertion that the association would only benefit elite players. And they weren't too far wrong in drawing the conclusion that although 'pay for play' may not have been on the table at the time, it was certainly in the drawer waiting to be produced.

Had they embraced the concept of an independent players' body there and then, then the GPA could easily have been absorbed into the organisation and nurtured in that way.

Instead, they were left in isolation and a cold war ensued. It was quickly portrayed as a struggle between players and officials and that suited the GPA, helping to fuel a recruitment drive.

The GAA turned to its in-house players advisory group, chaired by former Galway hurler Noel Lane, who had been working away quietly on certain aspects of the 1997 report.

Before the end of Joe McDonagh's presidency in April 2000, a raft of measures that relaxed the rules governing endorsements were announced. Individual players, however, would have to sign off 50pc of their earnings from such endorsements to a central team fund. The GPA saw the move as a success for them, even if the endorsement issued was being thrashed around by McDonagh's committee for three years.

But that was the point -- there was no urgency, everything to do with players became a reaction, not an action.

The GPA faced many challenges in those formative years, questions about the depth of their membership and their accounts being central to general suspicion.

Their drive to address and recruit county panels was met with opposition from officials throughout the country. O'Neill, now no longer employed by the GPA, became a figure to fear and loathe for GAA officials.

McDonagh's successor, Sean McCague, then pulled something of a masterstroke when he announced that Jarlath Burns would take over as chairman of the players' committee.

Burns had been captain of Armagh's Ulster title-winning side the previous year (1999) and had subsequently retired from playing. He provided an articulate voice for the GAA's argument that any player representative body should work within the parameters of the association and according to the rules set out.

Burns became a point of contact within Croke Park for grievances players and squads had over facilities, expenses and the provision of what official guidelines stipulated players should have.

While he challenged the GPA, its ideals and its sense of elitism, he also offered an olive branch and it was under his watch that the first meetings with Croke Park took place.

Those meetings, however, amounted to nothing and the GPA quickly realised that. Under Sean McCague, the GPA were never going to cut too much ice.

By 2002, the GPA had overcome most of its early teething problems and was now tapping into lower level hurling and football counties to expand its membership. In time, a majority of players would feel some form of allegiance to a group that was lobbying on their behalf now as much as it was making commercial deals for some of its better-known members.

Milestones

Two of the more significant milestones happened in 2002 and helped the GPA take deeper root. Farrell became full-time chief executive on the same day that Roy Keane erupted in Saipan and, later in November, the Cork hurlers served strike notice in their battle for improved conditions with the most powerful county board in the land.

The Cork hurlers ultimately scored a resounding victory as the board caved in on every basic demand and from there, players across the country had a template if they required one.
In most cases it wasn't required. Better conditions for players in counties which desired success were being delivered anyway and, at national level, a committee chaired by president elect Kelly in 2002 saw further advancements in what an inter-county player was entitled to leading to an eventual increase in the mileage rate to 50 cent.

Ironically the latest stand-off comes after a six-year period, crossing two presidencies, when relations have continued to improve.

Kelly's term saw more harmony created between 2003 and 2006. He had attended the GPA's gala night in 2002 and followed up by declining to elect a players' committee during his term. Instead, the players were given representation on Central Council and Farrell was duly voted in.

Stand-offs continued, most notably over the production of a Sony Playstation game when many players exercised their property rights over their names and refused to co-operate unless a fee was paid. Sony and the GAA went ahead but without the familiarity of names it wasn't the success it might have been.

Search for recognition

At Congress in 2004, Kelly touched on the subject of formal recognition in an official capacity for the first time.

"The GPA have come but not gone as many predicted and probably hoped. Is it the monster that we feared? Is the gap between the GPA and the GAA narrower or wider that it was four years ago? As realism sets in, I feel the gap narrows," he said in his address.

On Nickey Brennan's watch, the torch of recognition was carried on and the appointment of Paraic Duffy as the first player welfare officer was a significant development, welcomed by all sides, given his abilities as an administrator.

Withdrawal of services remains the players' most potent weapon, as the last two winters in Cork will testify, but how often can strike papers be waved in the air? Public opinion can wear from repeated threats.

A one-match strike was averted in early April 2006 over the lack of progress on the grants issue which had evolved from the idea of a €127 per week grant directly from the GAA and tax breaks from the Government.

By November 2007, withdrawal of services was back on the agenda and a ballot to strike among GPA members was carried emphatically. That too was averted once agreement over grants was reached, with Duffy, on his appointment as director general, declaring that it was time to move beyond the age of conflict.

Some 20 months on from that declaration, official recognition, once dismissed as irrelevant by Farrell, is on the agenda at a price.

The GAA has come a long way in how it treats and deals with its players, as spending €20m-plus on preparing inter-county teams suggests.

That said, it came off a very low starting base and has been prompted along the way by reactive instincts to the now 10-year-old players' association.

The latest document offers players a huge amount but stops well short of a 5pc demand of all player-related revenues which association membership is unlikely to tolerate signing off.

Had the GAA been more receptive 10 years ago, the landscape may have been a lot different; a healthy integrated players' body may have flourished.

But, in truth, the fracture sustained as far back as the beginning of the last century has never truly healed.

- colm keys

[INDIANA]

Good article- at least some journalists are providing a bit of balance.

[pintsofguinness]

Good article- at least some journalists are providing a bit of balance.

I thought it was a load of shite

[JMohan]

What's Tohill's stance on it now?

[paddypastit]

Implausible as it may seem, I remain generally nuetral on the GPA in that I find myself agreeing with it on some issues and considering them off the wall on others but if I were trying to push change in / on the GAA and leaving aside completely for the purpose of making this point the specifics of what that change might be, the last place in the world that I'd try to start is within some committee type construction of the organisation.

You know how people say that the Eskimos have some 30 different names for "snow"?, well GAA committeemen have at least 30 ways to say "no".  I've seen it first hand and change in our little GAA world is always though 'special' initiatives - not regular process.

[cornafean]

Good article- at least some journalists are providing a bit of balance.

I thought it was a load of shite

Typical silly season filler, probably written 3 months ago. Its a lot cheaper in this recessionary times for the Indo to get Colm Keys to sit at his desk all day writing stuff like this instead of travelling the highways and byways interviewing players, coaches etc ahead of this weekend's games.

[laoisgaa]

STATEMENT FROM GAA

The GAA and the GPA have engaged in informal discussions over recent days. A formal process of dialogue has been agreed for the weeks ahead with the aim of addressing the differences in their respective positions.

Neither the GAA nor the GPA will be making any further comment.

[JPF]

The GAA and the GPA have engaged in informal discussions over recent days. A formal process of dialogue has been agreed for the weeks ahead with the aim of addressing the differences in their respective positions.
Is this about getting the terminology of the deal right?

[orangeman]

All post match interviews with players should be banned. Cringeworthy.

[Bud Wiser]

The GAA and the GPA have engaged in informal discussions over recent days. A formal process of dialogue has been agreed

Why wasn't I told about this, I heard nothing about this and I'm a member.  I didn't agree to anything.  This is a disgrace and an undermining of my position as a member.  Have I no say at alll at all?  I'll see about this I tell ye and after I get a bit of bluestone sprayed on the spuds Dessies next meeting will be with me.

[orangeman]

The GAA and the GPA have engaged in informal discussions over recent days. A formal process of dialogue has been agreed

Why wasn't I told about this, I heard nothing about this and I'm a member.  I didn't agree to anything.  This is a disgrace and an undermining of my position as a member.  Have I no say at alll at all?  I'll see about this I tell ye and after I get a bit of bluestone sprayed on the spuds Dessies next meeting will be with me.

[/b]

He's insured against bluestone. 

[Bud Wiser]

Nobody talks to me on the board anymore now orangeman since I joined up. Even when I walk down to the pub for a pint Im afraid this 'grassroots' element will jump out and drag me into a field.

[orangeman]

Nobody talks to me on the board anymore now orangeman since I joined up. Even when I walk down to the pub for a pint Im afraid this 'grassroots' element will jump out and drag me into a field.

Ahhh poor Bud !    Malcontents.

[Bud Wiser]

Well yesterday evening after I made that last post above I took the bull by the horns and rang Dessies about my membership.  "Come out to DCU and meet me sez he, I am meeting Conor there to give him his wages early this week and shur you can join us for a few minutes."  Well for balls alone for suggesting that I sit down beside a Mayo man after them landing poor little Donie Brennan on his arse and turning him upside down in the square the very first minute he ran on as a sub in Croke Park in that quarter final.  In fairness I went out with fire in my belly about some issues I had and by the time I left I wondered why in the name of Jaysus anyone would travel from Sligo or Donegal to Rathkeale to pray at a stump of a tree when you could drop at this mans feet any day of the week.

Not allowed to say what was discussed but as I left he came all the way out to the car park, said good luck now, thanks for the spuds and put this note in my hand:

This 125yr celebrations,
it's over, we have all had enough,
It's time to move on and give us recognition,
or else we'll just have to get tough.
They spend more time up there in Headquarters,
discussing old times going back to 'our roots'
And useless debate about things that don't matter,
like who would or would not lace Christy Rings boots.
All the smart talk about Club Energiser,
we just drink before each game to quench thirst,
Ye'd think we were back in the thirties,
when a man cut hay and milked twenty cows first.

All we want is better injured players welfare,
We're not talking scenes like Omaha Beach,
Now that Francie's not about, there are less players laid out,
and Nine Hundred Grand is well in our reach.
Lads like Conor are playing a blinder,
But at the Connaught Final my heart really sank,
When he pulled up his jersey to reveal Michael Jackson,
Instead of the Halifax Bank.
If Mayo get to the All-Ireland,
he may have to take down his pants,
because what I'm hearing, every day on the wireless,
I think we are fooked with the grants.

Thats why we can't delay, there are pensions to pay,
and cars to be kept on the road,
while GAA Discussion boarders and bar stool supporters,
continue to laugh and to goad.
We have two million now in the kitty,
thats our executives pay sorted out,
So I can't understand for a minute,
what all of the bitching's about.
We have now almost 2000 members,
Where they are from, well who really cares,
but sometimes I laugh when I realize,
there are only about forty of them players.
Thanks for your time and your money,
And for coming to see me today,
And tell all your friends on your discussion board,
That the GPA won't go away !