Prime Time - 9th Februrary 2012

Katie Hannon blogs ahead of her report tonight on the GAA:

The GAA has become the focus of intense scrutiny. As some of its most high-profile players decide to withdraw or step back from the inter-county game, the GAA is wrestling with two long-standing issues - the all too public violence on the pitch to the secret payment off managers off it. Does it have the means to weather this storm?
Cumann Lúthchleas Gael is enjoying a remarkable surge in popularity. The numbers attending its games at every level have never been higher. It boasts the biggest and perhaps the best stadium in the country. Viewership figures for the All Ireland finals beat every other sporting event hands down.
Yet all the while the Association is grappling with some potentially catastrophic challenges. There are the ugly melees that appear to dog its games at all levels. There is the scourge of emigration that is robbing both club and county of their most promising talent. But undoubtedly, most challenging of all, there is the issue that GAA President Christy Cooney has described as a cancer running though the organisation – that is the continuing practice by many clubs and county boards making ‘illegal’ payments to managers. The payments are described as ‘illegal’ because the GAA rulebook bans any payments to managers over and above modest vouched expenses for travel and meals. However it’s an open secret that many clubs and county boards have been paying managers many multiples of that entitlement, often in a bid to coax them over county or club boundaries to manage their teams.
Paraic Duffy, the Director General of the GAA, has circulated a discussion paper on ‘GAA Amateur Status and Payments to Team Managers’. The paper sets out three possible courses of action for the GAA. The first is to do nothing. The second is implement fully the GAA’s policy on its amateur status. The third and most contentious is the proposal to introduce a system of regulated payments to senior inter-county managers. It’s worth quoting the conclusion of the report at length: “The choice facing the Association is a very simple one; either we do nothing about a practice we dislike so much and continue to wring our hands and piously mutter our disapproval…..or we decide that it would be defeatist and hypocritical not to confront directly a practice that those who care about the GAA know to be a blemish on the Association”. All county boards have been requested to submit a written response by February 24th.
While there are many conflicting views on this issue within the GAA, most agree that how the Association confronts it will be the making or breaking of it. As the Irish Independent’s Martin Breheny put it: “You have this small indigenous sporting organisation on the western edge of Europe grappling and fighting against professionalism. It’s a major challenge and nobody knows how to handle it and that’s the difficulty. If you don’t know how to handle it, it could blow up in your face”.
Louth senior football manager Peter Fitzpatrick says he gets 50 cent a mile travelling expenses which works out at about €10 a session and he is very happy with that. “Everybody knows at the moment there’s managers out there getting illegal payments and that has to stop because at the end of the day it will destroy the GAA”. However, recently retired inter-county referee Pat McEneaney believes managers deserve to be paid. “We need to get our head out of the sand here, come up with a proposal and sort the issue out”.
However, it’s at club level that this issue is probably causing the most difficulties. We found a small hurling club in the midlands which was asked for up to €150 a session by prospective managers. With up to three training sessions a week plus a match at the weekend, this would be a considerable drain on any club’s resources at a time when fund raising and sponsorship is a struggle.
The decision by a number of high profile players to withdraw or step back from the inter-county game has highlighted the extreme commitment the modern game demands from players. And the great fear of course is if managers’ commitment is recognised and rewarded financially, demands to pay players will be difficult to resist. While the Gaelic Players Association has said it would not pursue payments for players in such circumstances, many suspect that this line will not be easily held. And what then of the GAA’s cherished amateur ethos?
Katie Hannon
Prime Time, 21:35, RTÉ 1