The certainty this time is that something will be done. A profound change will be made. The crocked status quo won’t be waved through, on the nod. Some provision will be made to account for the day-to-day reality of the GAA’s relationship with so-called amateurism. It will involve sanctioned payments, and it will alter the landscape for good. Can you think of any other credible outcome?
In recent weeks, the GAA president Jarlath Burns and members of the latest Amateur Status Review committee have met county board officers in a series of gatherings around the country. The purpose of those meetings was not just to explain the committee’s thinking but to workshop their ideas. They were happy for the officers to drill holes in them.
And then what? Do nothing?
It has been clear from the beginning of his presidency that Burns wanted to make a meaningful difference. He wasn’t prepared just to be a ceremonial president on the chicken dinner circuit, pressing flesh and smiling for the cameras. The three principal items on his agenda were to reform Gaelic football, to reconfigure the GAA’s relationship with amateurism, and to break down some of hurling’s internal borders.
The success of the Football Review Committee (FRC) has been spectacular. The only way for football to heal was to break some bones and re-set them. In that process the FRC didn’t have all the answers at the start, but they had imaginative suggestions that were workshopped and critiqued and adjusted to fit. Their minds are still open.
For the GAA’s work with amateurism that is the procedural template now. Just like with the FRC, the general membership has been surveyed by the amateur status committee and there has been a roadshow, teasing out their proposals with the people who will have to enforce whatever is agreed.
At a special congress in October where football’s rules changes will be discussed proposals on amateurism will be on the agenda too. Not tweaks or fudges or cosmetic procedures: consequential proposals.
It is easy to argue that this will be more complicated than fixing Gaelic football. Too many people are in a settled relationship with the status quo. There are county boards and clubs all over the country who have worked out ways of paying whomever they need to pay, from whatever source, with assumed impunity.
Would new rules make any difference to people who had no qualms about breaking the old rules? Probably not.
The Amateur Status Review committee, though, cannot be discouraged by legacy rule breaking. There is an acceptance that being an intercounty manager is a burden far beyond the realms of a volunteer. The hours and the layers of engagement are simply too intrusive.
But how can compensation be made and to what degree? Three options were outlined at the four provincial meetings with county board officers in recent weeks: a contract along the lines of existing GAA employees; expenses set by Central Council on top of a stipend believed to be €20,000 or, thirdly, enhanced expenses paid by Central Council.
The stipend option would also require intercounty managers to take part in a development programme to formalise their qualifications for the role.
As things stand, the mileage rate for intercounty players is agreed between the GPA and Croke Park, which means that the official mileage rate for managers and members of the backroom team is smaller than it is for players.
But if special congress agrees that managers should be paid more than the basic mileage available to them now, where does that leave selectors and logistics people and other volunteers who are part of every support team? Physios and strength and conditioning coaches and sports psychologists are paid as service providers but not all video analysts, for example, would come under that umbrella.
None of this is straightforward. If the stipend option is adopted, there is suddenly a €20,000 difference between a manager and the selectors he has on board, none of whom are ever paid. They will remain volunteers in the eyes of the GAA while the manager will not. The GAA has never contemplated such a stark division of status before.
The day-in, day-out burden on managers is clearly far greater than on anybody around them, but selectors are just as absorbed in training sessions and meetings and matches and travelling and unscheduled phone calls, and all-hours WhatsApp messages, the stuff that devours time and invades your brain.
How do you square that? People will say that unpaid selectors already work with managers who are clearly being paid vast amounts under the table or from an outside benefactor. They know the score. But would those attitudes be corroded if the GAA was paying the manager?
A sidebar conversation that came up in the roadshows is whether outside coaches should be banned at intercounty level. This has been discussed and dismissed before. In terms of delivering All-Irelands, the record of outside coaches is remarkably poor: it hasn’t happened in football since John O’Mahony with Galway in 2001, and in hurling since Michael Bond with Offaly in 1998.
All the great breakthroughs in the last 30 years have been with local managers: Ger Loughnane, Liam Griffin, John Kiely, Micheál Donoghue, Mickey Harte, Joe Kernan, Jim McGuinness.
At provincial final level, though, it is a different picture. Davy Fitzgerald with Waterford and Wexford, Ger Brennan with Louth, Justin McCarthy with Waterford, John Allen with Limerick, Paídi Ó Sé with Westmeath, Mick O’Dwyer with Kildare and Laois, Brian Mullins and Rory Gallagher with Derry, Martin McHugh with Cavan, Tommy Lyons with Offaly have all won provincial titles as outside managers.
But counties who look outside for a shot of adrenalin are very often not All-Ireland contenders in the first place. They have other needs: promotion in the league, a run at a provincial title, the sense of progress or the hope of progress. There would be no stomach for closing borders and shutting off that energy stream.
In many counties, internal managers are paid now too. Typically, it would be multiples of the €20,000 stipend being touted. That clearly wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the managers who currently have no other visible means of income, or the journeymen who have commanded lavish remuneration wherever they have laid their hat.
But the GAA must make a leap now. They must acknowledge what the life of an intercounty manager has become. Piety about amateurism won’t cut it. Those days are gone forever.
