The GPA

[armaghniac]

All the more reason to stop wasting time and money promoting trips to the States.

[Eamonnca1]

Is it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rHvr5GM9I8

[Bingo]

I'd worry about many things but professionalism is way down the list.

The notion of some pro league in the US or some rich bloke setting up a pro league is quite funny actually. Is the US summer scene not pro as it is?

[Eamonnca1]

Is the US summer scene not pro as it is?

Allegedly it was. But they reckon there's not as much money being thrown at it now, more of the growth is at entry-level grades because of more Americans taking up the game.

[Croí na hÉireann]

Brian Farrell is at it as well. You couldn't imagine Mick Lyons or Martin O'Connell whinging on the internet about a couple of bob. No wonder Eastmeath are gone soft.

[Hardy]

I have to agree.

[sheamy]

Totally and absolutely pathetic. They're all at it. Threatening what will happen if their grants are cut. The mask slips when the Danegeld is running out.

'I don't think the Government fully understand the potential player power Gaa players could muster if grants are cut AGAIN' Craig Rogers

[Stevie g 8]

The GPA sold their sole joining up with the main body.dessie took the money and ran.he,s on a massive salary and in my opinion it was always an elitist organisation doing damn all for the players

[Hardy]

Ah well, they haddock cut at it anyway.

[AQMP]

It's all feckin' codology

[Sportacus]

The top players are well enough looked after, sure the All Stars are having a whale of a time in NYC.

[Zulu]

Ah good to see the very mention of the GPA still hasn't lost its effect here, turning normal, reasoned posters into paranoid worst case scenario prophets of doom. I'm sure one of you will be on the Discovery channels 'Doomsday preppers' soon, ominously loading your shotgun as you look into the camera telling us that it isn't terrorism, global warming or the Chinese that we should fear but the GPA!!

I'd love to hear how professionalism can be forced upon us Hardy. What you seem to ignore is that outside of the GAA there is a view that the top players should get paid and there is an international dimension to all these sports so there is the potential to do so. This doesn't exist in the GAA but if it did I'd have no problem considering professionalism.

I see nothing wrong in the top players moving on from their clubs and getting paid for playing IC while the rest of us watch them strut their stuff. But this can only happen if there is a genuine international dimension.

The GPA are doing tremendous work by all accounts and have said they hope to eventually represent all players and that professionalism isn't a goal.

[Hardy]

Zulu, I've dealt with all the questions you raise dozens of times. No need to re-hash it all again and I'm not interested in a long drawn out debate. We won't enlighten each other and we have fundamentally differing positions on the benefits or depredations of professionalism, as evidenced in your second-last paragraph.

I do, though, object to your gratuitous portrayal of me as some kind of extremist prophet of doom. This comes, of course with the implied suggestion that you are the epitome of reason by comparison. It's especially irritating because I have taken the trouble to support my argument with references, examples and an attempt at reasoned deduction, while you offer only unsupported statements of what can and cannot be. But we'll let that slide.

So just four quick answers:

1. How can professionalism be forced on us:
- How was it forced on tennis and rugby?

2. How can there be professionalism without an international dimension?
- There is a professional Danish women's handball league, as I stated. Not international handball. The women playing in the domestic league get paid to play in that league. I could give you another dozen examples in Europe alone in sports that don’t have an 82,000-capacity stadium, a club in every village and a TV audience of 20% of the entire population for big games. But you can use Google as well as I can.

3. The GPA "hope to eventually represent all players".
- That's a strange thing to say, since they're officially supposed to be representing them already, as they have been set up by us, the GAA membership, as the representative organisation for all players. I know it's hard to do that while specifically banning them from membership of the organisation that "represents" them, so I see their difficulty. I presume, then that what they're expressing is the "hope" that they will actually represent them some day rather than banning them. Yeah, right. What's stopping them? Of course I know. And you know. And I'm surprised you'd swallow horseshit like that.

4. The GPA have said that professionalism is not a goal.
- They have also stated the direct opposite. And their leader has stated that their strategy is to conceal their goal of achieving professionalism until they achieve some lesser goals. "Small steps" I seem to remember he called the strategy. So which statement should I believe?

[Zulu]

Lighten up Hardy, the doomsday stuff was meant as a lighthearted ribbing though it has an element of truth.

Your assertion that the GPA still has professionalism as it's goal is not supported by any evidence or logic. The GPA have stated professionalism isn't sustainable yet you still accuse them of having it as a goal without a shred of evidence yo support that.

We don't differ much on professionalism insofar as neither of us wants it we only differ in the event of it becoming a reality. You see that as being a disaster whereas I don't necessarily, though it may well be.


Now, to your 4 points;

1. Was professionalism forced on the sports you mention? It may have been against the wishes of the IRFU but forced on the rugby world, I don't think it was. All sports evolve and the sports that can afford professionalism have done so. There is no big Market to fuel a pro GAA so it differs from the sports mentioned.

2. I'm sure you're correct but it's the international dimension that creates the need for a pro Danish league. Ireland couldn't have gone pro in rugby if we were the only nation playing but once the bigger countries went pro we had to or be left behind. The decision to go pro has been a huge success with more kids playing the game now than ever before.

3. You clearly don't know what's stopping them but funding and man power is one. If you want the GPA to represent all players I'm sure you'll happily support the GAA employing enough people to listen to the moaning of a junior C footballer in Sligo.

4. The most recent one. But that's neither here nor there as the vast majority of the GAA are happy to remain amateur and without 'Market forces' dictating otherwise there is no possibility we can go pro.

[Bud Wiser]

Well I met their "leader" there recently on two occasions and he seemed to be pretty down to earth about what he was about. There are three main reasons why I changed my mind and I suppose in a nutshell if we want to keep going to Croke Park and see players perform at the levels of fitness that we expect as a result of the hours they put in on both the training pitch and the gym then I am thinking somewhere between the doomsday scenario or running around a field of muck with not an arse in the trousers you are going to change back into when you are finished.

For example, at one stage Renault, Ulster Bank and Vodafone were all under the collar of the GAA and sponsored the All-Ireland Football series.  Then Bill Cullen copped onto himself or, the people he was fooling copped onto him and his intention to fly into space using their money to propel him. The Ulster Bank were caught feeding at the same trough as all the other Bankers and could not afford to continue sponsorship of the GAA and pay themselves €350,000 a year pensions.

Vodafone saw that there was as much money value in sponsoring Dublin instead of the GAA. So they gave Dublin a sponsorship of €6M  (SIX FRIGGING MILLION) and therein lies my first gripe.  If one county in Leinster can get €6M to throw at their teams efforts to win an All-Ireland and other counties like Laois or Carlow are feeding off scraps then the GPA for all their faults are trying to see that equal player benefits are shared equally.

I said this before on the old thread I think but Allianze sponsored the league for 20 years. In the last ten of those years neither the GAA or the sponsor made any attempt to stifle the wails of the media about the GAA being decimated because of emmigration. The GAA were glad to soak up sponsorship on the back of young lads 17yrs to 25yrs who could not get a job in the sales and service industry because they were being crucified with quotes in excess of €2000 each for car insurance from the same company.  Something like what Chartis do for GUI in golf was never even attempted and they didn't need an out of this world database to know that a young lad who was devoted to playing hurling for his club or county was a safer bet than someone driving around withn a sawn off shotgun.

There has to be balance between the facilities players have in all counties and that is what we should be talking about. Whether that is achieved by trying to put a cap on the prep funds for county teams or how it is done is what my point is. I remember one year there when JP MC M threw 5 Million at theLimerick county board and told them to go out and win an All-Ireland - had they done so I would have eaten my 1986 National Football League program.