Liam Hayes article - Sunday Tribune

[turk]

 GAA 


Time to face up to the (inconvenient) truth that the GAA is in meltdown 




JUST a couple of weeks ago, the smartest and most influential GAA official of the last 100 years gave a spell-bindingly honest interview to the most articulate and influential GAA writer of this generation but, unfortunately, it appears their chin-wag failed to challenge the doziness of the vast multitude of Gaelic football and hurling people. Pity.

Because former president Peter Quinn told Martin Breheny of the Irish Independent that our great old association is being mismanaged and misdirected and, all told, is on the road to ruin if we're all not very careful.

Peter might as well have been standing in the shoes of former US presidential candidate Al Gore, who also had An Inconvenient Truth or two to disclose to the world in the last 12 months.

Hands on hearts, how many of us have bothered to watch that documentary which explains, I am expertly advised, how our planet is sweating and boiling to death?

Me? I didn't go to the cinema to catch it and, shamefully, any evening I have come across it amongst the list of possible purchases on my Sky Movies package I think, 'Naw, not tonight. . . next week. . .

maybe'. And I trot along to watch Gordon Ramsey's lovely wife Tana on Market Kitchen instead, to check her out and, also, to check out what fantastic food my planet is still able to grow for me.

The GAA is in meltdown too, and the last remaining item of any worth the association will have left on its books will probably be Croke Park, the world's largest open-air swimming pool.

Don't know whether it is true or not but I was told years and years ago, when Quinn was on active duty as GAA president, that he would walk to his car outside Croke Park at the end of a working day, with tears of frustration welling in his eyes. At that time he was the man with the vision for the magnificent HQ we have today but even back then, 15 years ago, he didn't like very much else he was viewing around him. Yeah, at that time Quinn was GAA president, and Liam Mulvihill was GAA Director General.

Liam is still there, and Peter is long gone out of office. Again, a pity.

If it had been the other way around, the GAA would not have a director general scared silly of people knowing exactly how much he is earning at the top of the world's greatest amateur organisation, and we would not have a championship season (in Gaelic football and hurling) stretched out in front of us which appears as hopelessly wide-eyed and legless as any year chosen from the 1940s and 50s.

I'll leave the hurling analysis on these pages to Liam Griffin, God help him.

Liam's a fantastically successful hotelier and businessman and, lucky for him, as a hurling philosopher he's got the imagination and fortitude of a Hollywood mogul.

Hurling, at county level in this country, is all but dead and buried. There are less than a handful of teams still alive and healthy and only another two or three, like Limerick, Galway and Wexford, who can work up to a pulse on a very good day.

But this is not my problem, is it? I've got a 2007 All Ireland football championship, also reeking of decay, to talk to you about this morning and God help us too.

When Nicky Brennan started bragging this week about how high and low the GAA might go looking for a new TV partner when their contract with RTE expires in the very near future it was clear that there were no Vincent Brownes at his latest press conference. 'Nicky. . .

Wakey, wakey man!'

Nicky Brennan is no Peter Quinn.

Nicky would have been an excellent GAA president . . . if he had been elected to office in the 1940s or 50s.

To have him suggest, in all seriousness, that 'his' games might give rise to an untidy queue of companies, of the quality of Setanta and Sky for instance, standing on the toes of RTE is the stuff of dreams.

Oh, he might get lucky, and some eejit in Setanta or Sky might pay twice as much for the GAA championships for the next three or five years. But in the process they will be purchasing the weakest product line the GAA has had to offer over the last 30 years. Gaelic football has more life left in it than hurling. However, its commercial appeal looks like taking a bumpy ride in the summer ahead.

I'm expecting lower attendances at games, smaller TV audiences, and less money at the end of the year for Nicky Brennan to shovel into the long string of 20,000-capacity grounds being rebuilt all over the country, but which never even fill up on one Sunday in the whole year.

In Gaelic football the problem is this, and it's quite simple really . . . Nicky Brennan and his buddies think they have a game which they can sell to TV companies for billions and gazillions of euro but, at the same time, they are investing just four or five million each year (in travelling and training expenses) in the 'stars' of the games.

The managers and the players are basically left to get on with things themselves. They're ignored for large chunks of the year, they're belittled, and they are expected to prepare and behave like professionals when they are being treated like the cheapest of hired help.

Admittedly, all of the greatest Gaelic footballers in the country might be getting half of an additional 4- 5m which Minister for Sport John O'Donoghue is now talking about with the GPA. That's better than a slap in the face with a wet fish . . . just about.

But the best Gaelic football managers . . . who have to build the teams which will attract the TV audiences which will be asked to pay the billions and gazillions of euro . . . just get told to shut up and shuffle along with whatever mileage allowance or whatever brown envelopes they can find under the table.

And some of these men, in complete truth, don't get any brown envelopes.

Four of them who do not (and you can make up your own mind about the rest) are Mickey Harte, Joe Kernan, Pat O'Shea and John Caffrey. Let's stick with this quartet for a minute or two.

What's going on around these four men should be very worrying for us all.

For starters, Tyrone and Armagh, who together have formed an enthralling and at times quite mesmerising double act over the last four or five years, look like they might be about to disappear altogether. Or, at best, disappear back into the chorus line. Dublin have won nothing outside of Leinster in the last 10 years and, as the GAA's greatest illusion, the boys have disappeared in a puff of blue smoke once too often for their own good and for the good of the game.

Without Kerry, and the genius of the people and raw power of the place, Gaelic football fans would have an even more miserable look on their faces. Though it's not good that Kerry football teams only have to hit the mediocre-to-good bracket in order to win a couple of All Ireland titles every decade.

A few years ago, Peter Quinn and a group of men around him came up with the suggestion that Dublin should be divided into two football teams and, sure, that had the shock value and the smell of a Plan X about it, but at least someone was saying out loud 'Heuston, we have a problem'.

Gaelic football in Dublin has been experiencing problems for far too long and it's evident in the quality of senior club football (which is a deathly pale colour, and far less exciting than what most counties in Ireland offer up to locals) not to mention the inability of anybody in the county to group together six forwards who would have the ability to walk onto any other county team in the country.

With too few good club teams, and very few good forwards in any club, it should be no surprise to anybody that Paul Caffrey might end his three-year reign, a few months from now, with nothing more to show for his efforts than predecessor Tommy Lyons.

Dublin needs more than one good man to turn things around. However, given the fact that Kerry look like they are a little bit at sixes and sevens under their 'new man' and that Tyrone and Armagh might be saying adios to us all for a few years, the 2007 All-Ireland football championship is a wide open field. So the Dubs have the same chance as 10 other teams in the scramble to claim Sam.

A Dublin victory would be great for them and great for the game. But, if it happens, don't for one moment think that the game of Gaelic football is suddenly on an upward graph. Too few managers have achieved too little in the first four months of this year.

John Maughan did what we expected him to do but, after him, there was only Brian McIvor to thank for saving the National league from becoming a complete non-event.

McIvor had built a strong, thundering, inventive and disciplined football team in Donegal and, with two years of such good work behind him, there is a chance that the wheels will not fall off the wagon in the rocky Sundays ahead. Donegal have to beat Armagh and Tyrone to win their place in the Ulster final, which will be a tough feat but a smaller ask than it would have been in any of the last four or five years.

Armagh's great defence of old is over and done with (McGeeney should probably have retired last year, and Bellew might now be retired after suffering a devastating ligament injury), and Tyrone's scintillating forward line has O'Neill and McGuigan with serious question marks beside their names due to injuries.

Joe Kernan and Mickey Harte have run out of time, and good luck. The two most controversial and thrilling teams of this new millennium are in big trouble. Kernan and Harte might not be able to save them on their own, and looking at the make-up and attitude of their two county boards it's no sure thing that a cavalry is about to come over the hill to aid these two great men.

And, for one minute, do you think the GAA at large cares? Do you imagine, for one second, that one or two of the lads in Croke Park on the big bucks have sat down and considered the implications of 'losing' Tyrone and Armagh?

It has not happened, believe me, and as two of the GAA's greatest and most profitable of teams are about to disappear off the product line we're left hoping, fingers crossed, that John Maughan or Peter Ford or Billy Morgan or Liam Kearns, or someone of that quality or blood line, can work a little miracle or two in the months ahead.

On your knees, folks . . . looks like we'll all have to pray a little harder all through the summer of 2007.

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I think it's a load of scutter myself lads, I think he is mixing up Maughan with John O'Mahony myself, or he is expecting big things from Roscommon, I'm not sure. I've aired my views on hayes before so i'll stop here now

[Romeo]

He sounds like a lot of lads on here, that Gaelic football didn't exist before the current Armagh and Tyrone teams 

[5 Sams]

Mickey Harte, Joe Kernan, Pat O'Shea and John Caffrey

Who's John Caffrey?

Looks like Hayes is subscribing to the "fact" that football began in 1999 and now that he thinks Armagh and Tyrone are on the wane....that its gonna end again....

[mylestheslasher]

Sensationalist shite. I am not sure that Peter Quinn would like the way Hayes is slyly trying to say that his opinion is the mirror of Quinns. I am not so sure they are even close.

[Billys Boots]

Dribbling idiot, but I wouldn't have expected any different.  A few slaps on the arse in his youth were sadly lacking. 

[lynchbhoy]

I'd say this is a bit of a freudian slip.

John Caffrey is the older brother and the actual brains behind the resurgence of the Na Fianna football team in the late 90's in Dublin.
His kid brother Paul (Pillar) was part of the management set up, but John, a teacher and football coach/manager and ex Dublin player from the 80's was the guy who pulled it all together and made Na Fianna the powerhoue in dublin so dominant for best part of a decade.
If he had gotten the Dublin job, there would be a lot of sick culchies out there now,as I believe he would have landed at least one all Ireland for the metropolitans.
(yes I know he couldnt 'buy' players but he is a creative kind of guy !


Hayes is possibly a bit bitter that his own attempt at mgt ended up in the toilet !

[An Laoch]

yeah, I'd agree it's a load of manure. I know I'm certainly looking forward to the 2 championships, can't wait to settle down and watch the double header this Sunday, and I'm sure there's plenty like me.

[Hardy]

Fair play to you lads for figuring out what it's about. I haven't a clue what he's talking about. Does he mean that the GAA is in deep trouble if Tyrone, Armagh or Dublin don't win the All-Ireland? Or if Kerry do? Or that the players and the managers should be paid? Or that if they were paid then we'd get big money from TV, but not otherwise? What sort of nonsense is that?

As a writer, he's a good footballer. 

Or, in other words, I agree with Turk's assessment - a load of scutter.

[magpie seanie]

Quinn's article a few weeks ago was spot on. Hayes above is a load of scutter and the attempt to use Quinn's article to somehow strenghthen his point looks needy.

[Hardy]

BTW, this made me laugh out loud:

...  the most articulate and influential GAA writer of this generation ... Martin Breheny

[deiseach]

In Gaelic football the problem is this, and it's quite simple really . . . Nicky Brennan and his buddies think they have a game which they can sell to TV companies for billions and gazillions of euro but, at the same time, they are investing just four or five million each year (in travelling and training expenses) in the 'stars' of the games.

He might have a point if the GAA were trying to extract billions from TV companies, let alone gazillions. But, of course, the true figure is counted in millions, €20 million according to this article in the Sindo. So if the current deal is worth €10 million then fully half the amount the GAA receives from the TV deal goes on the 'stars', which would (relatively speaking) be largesse of Ridsdale proportions.

[INDIANA]

he really talks some shite- obviosuly hasn't seen much club football- aorundthe country - i have and  ai tell you dublin ain't that badly off- seems bitter that he didn't cut it at inter county level managment- what a gobshite.

[armaghniac]

This is mostly bollox, football teams come and go, perhaps Hayes will remember a team from the area just North of Dublin that had high standards and large crowds for many years? Armagh and Tyrone created a new scene, things now will only be a problem if they disappear (and many of us here hope they won't) and they are not replaced by other teams.

He may have a point in two issues, firstly the GAA hasn't fully faced up to the situation in Dublin which will have a large part of the population of the country. Secondly hurling really does have a problem, while we are all gald to see Waterford looking good, Wexford are now 100/1 for the AI in a competition where there isn't the same turnover as in football.

[Mike Sheehy]

Not only has he got it wrong but he has it completely backwards. If someone other that Tyrone, Armagh or Kerry win the AI then surely that would increase the wider appeal of football.

[Tyrone Dreamer]

Would it be to much to ask that every now and again that these guys who make money by writing GAA articles had something positive to say? Look at Spillane he never has anything positive to say but makes good money out the game. It seems that most big name gaa writers try to out do each other week in week out by saying as much bad stuff about the games as possible. Its not good for the organisation and doesnt happen any were near as much in other sports. Ill not be taking anything Liam Hayes says to seriously anyway, sure wasnt it him who said Carlow were going to win the Leinster title!