Meeting of Grassroots to Discuss our Strategy re GPA

[quidnunc]

Irish Examiner  13 December 2007

GAA scores a disastrous own goal by signing up to pay-for-play deal

By Diarmaid Ferriter
I HAD a dream the other night that quickly turned into a nightmare. A prominent Dublin barrister, Michael McDowell, formerly Minister for Justice, had somehow been returned to the Dáil and was appointed Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism.


Alongside Ryanair's chief executive Michael O'Leary, McDowell was presiding over a presentation at Ryan Park, formerly known as Croke Park. The occasion marked the end of the GAA's inter-county hurling championship and McDowell, who had controversially asserted at the start of the summer that some measure of inequality was necessary in the GAA to keep it competitive and profitable, was there to present large cheques to members of the winning Cork team, to the tune of €100,000 each.




The players on the Limerick team who had provided the opposition were somewhat downcast that their quest for another all-Ireland medal had been dashed, but there was considerable consolation in that they were each receiving a runners-up cheque for €50,000 each.

Outside Ryan Stadium, which had been sold by the GAA the previous summer to Michael O'Leary and promptly named after the late Tony Ryan, the founder of Ryanair, disgruntled grassroots members of the GAA were protesting loudly and held aloft banners and placards that denounced the privatisation of the national sporting heritage. A few of them had earlier thrown eggs at the Mercedes of Dessie Farrell who, as chief executive of the Gaelic Player's Association (GPA), led the negotiations that led to pay-for-play in the GAA.

I woke up as the din got louder and cursed my choice of bedtime reading the previous night — the three-page text of the agreement reached between the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism and the Irish Sports Council, GAA and the GPA.

Apparently, it is an agreement to recognise "the contribution of senior inter- county players and additional costs associated with enhancing team performance". The opening sentence proclaims: "Our senior inter-county players provide the window through which our National Games are viewed nationally and internationally." It recognises that successful teams prepare and train to the highest international standards for team sports and that "the current scheme of tax relief for professional sports people cannot be applied to Gaelic players because of their amateur status".

As a result, the minister intends to "introduce schemes to recognise the outstanding contribution of Gaelic inter-county players to our indigenous sport, to meet additional costs associated with elite team performance and to encourage aspiring teams and players to reach the highest levels of sporting endeavour".

It's a document that is full of euhemisms to avoid the use of the word "payment" but instead refers to "schemes", and it is a blatant attempt to copperfasten a two-tiered GAA.

The level of award available to teams "will be calculated on a sliding scale increasing with continuing involvement in the championships", ensuring the elite teams will be singled out for special treatment. The amount to be provided in 2008 to fund these "schemes" is €3.5 million, which might not seem like much, but this worrying development is not about the sums of money involved, but the beginning of the abandonment by the GAA of its amateur status. No matter how it is dressed up by the GAA or the Government, what it amounts to is the inauguration of the pay-for-play era.

The language of the agreement is completely at odds with the ethos of an amateur organisation and contains phrases such as "performance-based criteria". The section on "Player Responsibilities" reads like a job specification. Players need to "attend at least 80% of all training sessions", keep updated training logs and diaries and "demonstrate improvement through regular fitness testing".

The notions of choice and voluntarism, on which the GAA was built, do not get a look in and the contention that "all parties recognise the amateur status of the GAA and nothing in this agreement will undermine that amateur status" is disingenuous.

The GPA has also been Jesuitical in its use of language by maintaining that the agreement will actually ensure the survival of the amateur ethos of the GAA, while Dessie Farrell dismissed opponents within the GAA as a "disaffected rump".

That was an extraordinarily arrogant assertion. In truth, neither the GPA nor the GAA leadership knows what the GAA grassroots think of this new deal because they have deliberately refused to consult the rank-and-file members, a situation in stark contrast to the debate about the deletion of the GAA's Rule 42 to allow Croke Park to be used for the playing of non-GAA sports. Prior to that development, ordinary club members were given the opportunity to have their say, and there was a feeling that the groundbreaking decision they made was a democratic one.

The GPA, to its credit, has done a lot of work to ensure that GAA players are better treated, particularly in highlighting a harshness that was often evident in the way injured players were treated, and because of its efforts it is fair to assert that inter-county players are now treated a lot better than they used to be. But the GPA now has also ensured that respect for players will be measured through the payment of money and it has achieved this by pointing a gun to the head of the GAA top brass with its threatened strike action.

THE GAA responded by caving in to that threat and is now complicit in undermining the very things that have made it so special and unique in the modern sporting world and the sense that the organisation is an entity which we feel we hold in common ownership.

There will be further preoccupation on the part of the GPA with broadcasting rights and image rights. In reality, it is not concerned with the wider welfare of the organisation, but with the elite inter-county players who represent less than 1% of the GAA's playing population.

The exceptional skill, commitment and passion of those elite players are not doubted. But the most important point is that what they do is voluntary and is a choice they make.

Last weekend, former players defended the new arrangement. Colm O'Rourke, for example, suggested that "if the amateur ethos of the GAA is dead, then it is not the players who did the damage — in fact, they are very late coming to the table", a reference to the widespread practice of payments to the managers of GAA teams.

In a similar vein, Colm Kearney, the former Down player, insisted that "the GAA could do well to acknowledge that the brown envelope syndrome already exists. It has been a feature of GAA life for decades in terms of payment, perhaps through intermediaries, of certain coaches and managers and other support staff".

Both Kearney and O'Rourke are, of course, correct in their assertions. But wouldn't it be better to launch a campaign against those practices rather than formalising an elite payment system in an organisation that supposedly cherishes the notion that everybody in it is equal?

[full back]

O'Neill, you are an unappreciated genius

[DUBSFORSAM1]

Line 50....

Well hardly surprised I get taken out illegaly...

[his holiness nb]

Line 50....

Well hardly surprised I get taken out illegaly...

And it was a Tyrone man too Dubsforsam, you must have started it 

[rrhf]

Ill be ringing Feargal Logan the night

[Paymaster]

 Payment and Rule 11 :   perusing a case study of a small rural club in Fermangh and the effects the demand for money  has had on the local Belleek GAA club will surely demonstrate that money is the root of all evil in the GAA. apparently this small rural club has been decimated since a few members  of the club held the executive  to ransom by demanding  to be paid to manage the Belleek senior  football team.  

[DUBSFORSAM1]

Line 50....

Well hardly surprised I get taken out illegaly...

And it was a Tyrone man too Dubsforsam, you must have started it 

Well you know what happened.......He slipped trying to dive and thats why his feet caught me.....

[Seany]

The best moment of my life.  Getting mentioned in a poem by the great O'Neill.  I'm all a glow. I think I'll print it in colour, wrap it up and give it to the woman as her Christmas box, with my line underlined in a sort of santa claus red.  Bet she'd love that.  And a bit of tinsel round it.

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

Joe Brolly mentioned an "imminent legal case" in respect of the grants and the GAA's 'amateur' code in his column in yesterday's Gaelic Life, though didn't elaborate on whether he himself was behind any impending litigation.

There may be trouble ahead...

[Seany]

I notice Jarleth taking a step back and appealing for unity in his article.  Sensible.

[Bogball XV]

By John O'Brien
Sunday December 16 2007

Hopes that the thorny issue of player grants had been settled after last week's hastily agreed compromise by Central Council have receded, with the news that the decision to approve the payments in principle is to be challenged at the GAA's Disputes Resolution Authority.


The case is being taken by a group of grassroots' dissidents, including Tyrone man Mark Conway, Longford businessman Joe O'Brien and Donal McAnallen, brother of late Tyrone captain, Cormac.

According to the group, the payments are in contravention of the GAA's Rule 11 which governs the Association's amateur status. Nor, they contend, did Central Council have the authority to make a decision which they claim impacts on the GAA's official guide.

"The only body that can make an alteration to Rule 11 or any rule is Congress," Conway said yesterday.

For the GAA, and president Nickey Brennan in particular, it is a worrying development. Although details on how the funds would be disbursed were sketchy following last week's meeting, it was agreed that county boards would not be part of the process and it was this concession that shepherded the controversial scheme through a stormy session and averted the threat of a players' strike.

The GAA has claimed all along that as the money is not coming from them it doesn't impinge on Rule 11, and at the end of last week's meeting it was proposed that an amendment be added to the agreement saying that all parties involved "state their absolute commitment to the maintenance of the amateur status".

For their opponents, however, such words ring hollow. In their submission to the DRA, which they filed through Omagh solicitor Paddy Fahy on Thursday, the group cited Mark Vaughan's appeal against suspension by the Leinster Council in 2005. In its decision in Vaughan's favour the DRA stated: "The tribunal is bound to interpret the rules as they are, not as it might wish them to be, and to do otherwise would be an abdication of our obligation as an arbitral tribunal of law."

The group believes that just because the various parties reaffirmed their commitment to the amateur status that does not bind it in fact.

"As far as we're concerned it's a spurious comment," said Conway. "It's like Albert Pierrepoint putting a noose around someone's neck and saying: 'By hanging this person I am reaffirming my belief in the sanctity of life.' We might say it, we might put it on paper -- but people don't believe it. It doesn't stack up."

At the very least the case reflects the robustness of the opposition that exists towards the principle of GAA players receiving grants in any shape or form. Two weeks ago a crowd of 400 voiced their opposition at a meeting in Toome, Co Antrim, and a second meeting will take place at the Cavan Crystal Hotel on Wednesday evening. Though opposition remains centred in the north, a website established as a rallying point for dissenters has attracted 550 emails.

Last week, Conway resigned his positions with Club Tyrone and the GAA's National Audit Committee in protest at the grants and he was subsequently joined by McAnallen, who quit as secretary of the Higher Education Council, citing his disillusionment at the direction the Association was taking.

The case will be a landmark one. The DRA was established in 2005 largely to curb the growing trend of players seeking redress against suspension in the High Court -- and for a body of the Association, Central Council, to be taken to task on an issue relating to one of its own rules is an unprecedented development. Whether the DRA even has the jurisdiction to hear the case may be the first question to be decided on.

The group are hopeful the case will proceed and a decision will be made within seven days.

Concerns have been raised at several county conventions and they expect at least one motion to be brought to Congress in Sligo next April. "We'll take this as far as we can take it," said Conway. "This isn't going to go away."

- John O'Brien

http://www.independent.ie/sport/other-sports/grant-rebels-take-on-gaa-1248638.html

[DMarsden]

Nice to see mark getting a few more column inches. i was beginning to wory for him after the drama of his initial "resignation" had died down.

[pintsofguinness]

It's sad you feel the need to continuously attack someone who's done so much for the GAA.

[DMarsden]

Yes, everyone is equal but some are more equal than others

[pintsofguinness]

Yes, everyone is equal but some are more equal than others

You're talking nonsense again, could you put that in English.