The GAA spends a lot of time looking in the mirror, like a spotty teenager, squeezing the pus from pimples. It likes its reflection; it doesn’t like its reflection. Every feeling is under review. No feeling is final.
The self-scrutiny continues, on an endless loop. The GAA president Jarlath Burns has just announced a committee to look at the championship’s structures and scheduling. An altered structure for the football championship was only adopted in February. A new system will be in place next season. The system it is replacing had only been in operation for three years.
Rubber-stamping the status quo will not be this committee’s brief, though. Hurling must be on their minds. More changes will be proposed. One or two populist outcries will be entertained.
At the beginning of the month, in another exercise in self-reflection, the GAA launched a major survey on amateurism among its members. Once upon a time this was an issue of conscience and self-image; now it is a matter of rampant, unsustainable outlay. Amateurism used to be a monolith at the base of the GAA’s existence; now it is a lump of Play-Doh, that can be scrunched up and made into new shapes.
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The fourth question in the survey poses a question that nobody would have thought to ask 20 years ago. “Do you think the GAA’s membership is broadly familiar with the GAA’s amateur status rule? (Official Guide, Part 1, Rule 1.8)”
Does it matter if the answer is yes or no? Everybody knows, for example, that “dodgy boxes” amount to piracy. They also know that the providers of “dodgy boxes” are facing jail terms. But according to reports last week, there are anything up to 400,000 “dodgy boxes” in use around the country.
Normalised breaches of their amateurism rules is the GAA’s “dodgy box” challenge. Eliminating the offence is not practical, and, according to the everyday actions of the GAA’s rank and file, it is no longer even desirable. Nobody has ever been sanctioned for a breach.
The Revenue Commissioners seem, at last, to be taking an interest in the matter, but until they take some action nobody will be afraid. And even then, nobody will think they’re going to get caught. Finding some kind of regulatory fig leaf for the GAA’s modesty on this issue might be the only viable exit strategy.
In the middle of the survey there is a question that captures perfectly how the landscape has changed, and how it cannot be changed back.
“Regarding backroom personnel,” it says in question 28, “some counties have stated that there is a lack of clarity concerning which roles they can engage on a professional basis (ie payment for professional services) and which should be dealt with through the payment of standard expense rates?”
The list of roles runs to 15: doctor, physio, selector, coach, masseur, video analyst, GPS data/stats analyst, strength and conditioning coach, nutritionist, goalkeeping coach, psychologist, liaison officer, logistics person, kitman.
The question refers specifically to intercounty teams, but any club team with aspirations to win a championship at senior, or even intermediate, level would feel that at least a dozen of those roles were absolutely necessary now. Many senior club teams would have somebody in all 15 of those roles.
The survey openly addresses the possibility of managers being paid either as a “stipend” on top of their expenses or, as question 11 proposes, “in a manner consistent with an employee of the Association”.
In his 2010 discussion document – Amateur Status and Payment to Team Managers – Padraic Duffy raised the option of legitimate payments, but it was ultimately rejected. The rank-and-file preference was for subterfuge and chicanery.
This is an anonymous survey, and it is open for another month. Maybe enough honest feedback will be harvested for this to be some kind of tipping point, but there is no precedent for that. On this issue GAA people have consistently looked in the mirror and tolerated the pimples on their face.
There is an abundance of precedent, however, for meddling with championship structures and the fixtures calendar. The committee that Burns promised to set up at a Central Council meeting nine days ago will presumably explore the possibility of All-Ireland finals being played in August.
Burns has raised this issue on a number of occasions. The first time he flew the kite it was shot down internally, but he has returned to the matter again recently. It cannot happen next year because of concerts already scheduled for Croke Park in August, but Burns seems determined to leave this behind as a parting gift when his presidency ends at Congress in 2027.
This new committee will more than likely address the issue of replays in provincial finals and revisit the preliminary quarter finals in hurling. When they were marched to the gallows at Special Congress in September 2023 they somehow slipped the noose and 52 per cent of delegates voted in favour of retention. Two years later, there is surely no stomach to defend their existence in their current format.
It has been suggested, however, that the preliminary quarter finals could be re-engineered to accommodate the fourth-placed teams in Munster and Leinster. That piece of populism would be a grave mistake.
Allowing fourth-placed teams to progress would fatally undermine the competitive tension in both provinces. Since the round-robin system was introduced in hurling in 2018, this is the first season when it didn’t really fire. But creating an extra game for Waterford or Wexford, for example, in years when they fall off the pace isn’t going to improve their fortunes.
Wexford have contested just three Leinster minor hurling finals in the last 10 years, and, staggeringly, have only one Leinster minor title to their name in the last 40 years. Offering them a preliminary quarter-final as a midseason sop isn’t going to solve anything. Their weakness is their responsibility.
On this matter, the mirror is a blunt instrument.
