GAA Clubs need a Voice

Some think that Of One Belief lost at Congress, others believe the GAA did. No matter.

No, wait! Before you depart, I'm not going to get into grants, or expenses, or whatever we should call it.

Of One Belief may be no more, but their brief existence taught us an important lesson. Although vilified and pillorised by some, with Martin Breheny leading the lynch mob, Mark Conway and Of One Belief were a critical counterbalance to the money-driven and elitist GPA in the "grants" "debate".

Without Of One Belief there was no other point of view than the GPA's. Croke Park and the GAA hierarchy were easily cowed by the GPA threats and did their utmost to whisper through an agreement with them. Nicky and the suits certainly made no effort to inform the GAA members of the details of the agreement and what the potential consequences were. wasn't until Of One Belief was formed that some semblance of a debate began and the pro's and con's of the agreement were properly aired. 

Now that the GPA have got what they wanted they have firmly established themselves as an important and acknowledged constituency within the GAA, the next step will be to recognise them as the inter-county (always important to make that distinction) players official union. Talks to do so are already under way. Not before its time, some would say, and that's a fair point. 

Official recognition will give the GPA a place at the top table and an even greater influence on the future direction of the GAA. Ordinary GAA members, in contrast, who make up the vast majority of the GAA's numbers, are increasingly disenfranchised from GAA decision-making. The GAA prides itself on being a democratic organisation, but the clubs are too far removed from decision-making at Congress and Central Council to have any real say. With the exception of the "important questions" like the Ban, Rule 42 etc., the clubs are not consulted on the running of the GAA and have little, if no, impact. The Club Forum is a good start, but it's not enough.

With the GPA's emergence as a force in GAA decision-making we can expect that the frequency of occasions when what's good for the GPA is not necessarily good for the rest of the association to increase. The problem is that there will be no voice for the majority of the GAA's members to put their point of view across. If the media wants a quote it needs someone to go to. Without a spokesperson or focal point for the majority of the GAA's members the GPA will once again have free reign in the national media for their bullyboy tactics.

But, the clubs don't have direct representation, despite desperately needing it. There's a whole range of problems, from fixtures (some go weeks and even months without matches during the summer freeze) to volunteering, which are neglected because Croke Park and the County Boards' give more weighting to the inter-county scene. 

The weight of representation is against the clubs. With so many diverse interests in the game the GAA cannot continue to speak for them all. That needs to change.

DRA endorses Of One Belief Action

Although the final decision of the DRA went against Of One Belief, they can take some consolation that their role in playing the devil's advocate met with the approval of the DRA Tribunal.

The real GAA men making up the DRA's Tribunal that heard the case-- Chairman, Michael O'Connell, son of the legendary Mick O'Connell, Mick Loftus, former GAA President, and Damian Maguire--all but praised "the bona fide attempts [by Of One Belief] to ensure that no inroads have been made on the amateur ethos."Can the same be said of Born Again Amateur Dessie Farrell? Is he being honest and sincere when he says that he now subscribes to the amateur ethos of the GAA? How long will his renewed commitment to these values and beliefs last?

The DRA Tribunal didn't feel that Mark Conway and Of One Belief were talking nonsense or that this debate was unnecessary. Quite the contrary, they consider that Of One Belief's actions have assisted in "the multilateral effort that produced" the final scheme--"the finely crafted document." The Stalinist attitude shown by some, like Martin Breheny, in describing Of One Belief as anti-player, is pathetic. Is everyone who campaigns against the Lisbon Treaty in the upcoming referendum in Ireland being anti-European? I think not. Try telling that to Martin et al though.

GAA & Grants: Who Was Right and Who Was Wrong?

The latest update from Of One Belief rightly draws attention to the utter incompetence Croke Park has demonstrated throughout this sorry affair. [My emphasis in bold].

"Now everybody knows why those promoting player grants/awards/whatever ran scared of the DRA - they knew that what they had attempted to foist on the GAA back on 8 December hadn’t a legal, let alone an ethical leg to stand on. The panicky mantra this time around about compliance with EU law shows just how close to disaster the GAA had been brought last November/December. Serious questions have to be asked about the levels of competence shown right the way through here. And those questions remain about the latest offering to an increasingly sceptical GAA membership.

If there was any doubt that "Of One Belief" and those of like mind got it exactly right late last year and Central Council got it frighteningly wrong, then the frankly embarrassing expenses denouement of 17/18 March spells it out loud and clear. Last December we were told we were scare-mongering, that we were dinosaurs/backwoodsmen/The Taliban, that all the bases had been covered, that the amateur status was "copper-fastened" by the deal. Now the "copper-fastening" scheme is in the bin (a bin we’re confident is firmly copper-fastened!) and we’re presented with a whole new scheme and a whole new language. The last batch of very nervous assurances turned out to be as worthless as the grants they applied to.

In one of Irish sport’s great ongoing turnarounds, the cash-for-elite-GAA-players terminology has been changed yet again. We’ve so far waded our way from "grants" through "awards" to "eligible expenses" (can the term "dig-out" now be all that far away?) But the outcome remains tellingly the same: inter-County GAA players will be given sizeable amounts of cash simply because they’re inter-County GAA players. That’s the one sad, unchanging fact in all of this mess.

As the morass deepens we’ve been told by our President ("Off The Ball", Newstalk, 18 March) that inter-County players, having had their GAA mileage rates already paid by their County Boards (at 50 cents a mile), can apply to have their rates topped up to Civil Service levels (at ?1.27 a mile). It’s simply unbelievable.

In one of the GAA’s most ironic twists ever, we now have the GPA -which originally rightly railed at the fact that some elite GAA officials got better mileage rates than elite GAA players - endorsing exactly the same sort of grubby discrimination they said they came forward to oppose. Principle . where are you! But then maybe part of the GPA’s well-versed "plight-of-the-inter-County-player" is being cursed with cars that are, just as a fact of life, much more expensive to run than those driven by anybody else involved in the GAA. Maybe, to steal a phrase from another person; another time; and another place, the rest of us want to try it sometime!