DAY IN A LIFE SERIES: PÁRAIC DUFFY, DIRECTOR GENERAL OF THE GAA:"I'd be an awful man for a list," says Páraic Duffy as he gets up to grab a sheet of paper off his desk. We're in his office on the sixth floor of Croke Park. If you've seen a game from a corporate box or been in the stadium for a conference, you've almost certainly walked past the GAA director general's office and you haven't had a clue.
It’s an unmarked door on a public corridor that to the untrained eye may as well be where they keep the mops and buckets.
“Look,” he says, “here’s today’s list. You’re not even on it – I was saying to my assistant there that when I’m finished with you, we’ll tackle this list and we’ll get through it. I’d draw one up each morning and really try to concentrate on getting it finished by the end of the day.
“That’s just the way I would operate. I just want to get things done and be efficient. You never get to the end of it, though.”
The main reason he doesn’t get through it is this isn’t his list of official appointments for the day he’s talking about, just a list of the things he’d like to get done over and above those. It’s a few minutes past noon and he’s already motored through five meetings since 8am.
There was a review of the Strategic Vision and Action Plan first up and then a meeting with GAA president Christy Cooney. Next was marketing manager Dermot Power and then a meeting to discuss some pilot projects on urbanisation.
And finally, to his slight amusement, Duffy went to a meeting of the board of the Artane Band.
“Would you believe, I found out after a little while in the job that I’m a trustee of the Artane Band? Or rather, that the director general is a trustee. So that was the last one of the morning. Five before midday would be a particularly busy morning, but you’ll have that this time of the year. It’s always busiest in the months before Congress.”
No kidding.
The upcoming weekend in Mullingar is the culmination of months of work for Duffy and his staff. Starting in December, he spent a couple of hours in front of the computer every morning, writing up his annual report.
Once Congress has passed and the championship begins, he can melt into the background again and get on with the day-to-day stuff. “Once the summer starts, nobody’s bothered with Croke Park. People are interested in the games, that’s how it should be.”
Some people will be bothered. Some people are always bothered. He gets regular letters and emails from people all across the country, giving out about this or that. If players aren’t standing still for the anthem, or wearing their socks down during a parade on a big summer Sunday, he’ll see it in his inbox come Monday morning.
If a Sunday Gamepanellist goes in elbow-up on one county or other, he'll hear about that too. He replies to anything that comes with a name attached; anonymous letters go in the bin unread.
If one complaint screams out louder than the rest, it’s the cobwebbed nightmare that constitutes the club fixture list in each county. A couple of weeks back, he got an email from a player who had recently retired from the intercounty scene and who wanted to play out the last few years with his club in peace.
“Dear Páraic, I know this will probably never reach your desk . . .” it began. Duffy hates this notion that Croke Park is a huge, unapproachable monolith so he organised to meet the player for lunch.
The player doesn't want his name in the paper, but doesn't mind The Irish Timessitting in. He's in his early 30s, articulate and bright, working as an accountant and trying to plan his summer. Except, he can't because his county board are either unfit or unwilling to put together a coherent calendar for when the county championship will be run off. He can't book a holiday, he can't book anything. Worst of all, he can't get anyone to listen to him.
Duffy listens and the pair tease the thing out. The problem is local and national at the same time and while Duffy reckons the local entanglement can be solved reasonably easily, the national one will take time, imagination and willpower. He is keen, though, the player doesn’t go away feeling he has been handled.
“You need to do something for me,” he says. “Sit down with a blank sheet of paper and draw me what you think the calendar should look like. Send it to me and we’ll meet again on it.”
It's an issue that comes up time and again. Throughout the winter, he and Cooney went around the country to meet clubs personally. They called them Ag Éisteachtevenings. He sits in front of 20 or so club members and tells them to fire away, whatever's on their minds.
Sometimes, the going gets heavy – he was at one in Louth a couple of weeks back and couldn’t get past last year’s Leinster final no matter what he said – but in general he enjoys them. The fixture list is never far from the agenda.
“I was at one in Donegal the other night and I was asked by one of the guys there: ‘Why can’t Croke Park just dictate to each county how to run their club fixtures?’ And the answer is you can’t.
“The GAA is a national organisation in lots and lots of ways, but in some very important respects, it is not. And this is one of them. You’re working with 32 autonomous units and when it comes to something fundamental like club fixtures you have to accept that you have limited control. It is a frustration, definitely.
“You’re dependent on enlightened, strong leadership within each county and we all know that, in some counties, that’s just not there.”
No two days are the same in Duffy’s job. The weekend after we meet the player for lunch, it’s confirmed Queen Elizabeth will make a visit to Croke Park next month. A few days later, there’s talk of Obama too. That same weekend, PSNI officer Ronan Kerr is murdered in Omagh and his coffin is carried by Mickey Harte and Brian Dooher.
There must be something surreal in having to pivot from a panini in a shopping centre to dealing with dignitaries to tiptoeing along a massive historical and political faultline all in the space of 72 hours.
“That’s the nature of the job. You just take whatever comes to you and you’ve got to be able to deal with all of them. When I wasn’t in this job, I used to read the big controversies in the paper and think they were a huge thing.
“But one thing I’ve learned is that when you’re in the middle of them, they’re actually pretty straightforward. You just get on with fixing whatever problem is in front of you.”
What’s in front of him this evening after we finish up is an all-out effort to get to the end of his list for the day and then a drive up the road to Monaghan. He lives in Dublin for the job, but tries to make it home one evening a week for his tea.
He finds time most days to read up on how the Boston teams are doing across the sports. He fears the Celtics are getting too old and will miss Kendrick Perkins now he’s gone to Oklahoma. Tomorrow morning, he’ll head back to Dublin around 6am to beat the traffic.
“I don’t get stressed about the job. The only thing that would annoy me is if I made a mistake. If I got something wrong, that would pick away at me. But I wouldn’t lose sleep at night over any of the big issues facing the association.
“They’re there and we’ll work towards sorting them, that would be more my attitude.”
One list at a time.
Páraic Duffy's Day:
8am –Strategic Plan Review meeting. The Strategic Plan is basically the association's manifesto and the current one is almost halfway through its seven-year cycle. Duffy meets regularly with his staff to find how progress is coming on specific targets and initiatives.
9.30am –Christy Cooney meeting. Duffy and Cooney make sure to sit down together for a general meeting in the morning on days when they are both in the stadium. Whereas the president would be on the road at least two or three days in a week, Duffy is in the building most days.
10am –Meeting with marketing manager Dermot Power.
11am –Meeting with staff to discuss pilot projects the GAA are trying to get up and running to promote their games in urban areas.
Noon –Meeting of the board of the Artane Band. The director general of the GAA is automatically a trustee.
1pm –Meeting with a player in a south Dublin shopping centre on foot of an email the player sent with regard to club fixture chaos.
2.30pm –Back at Croke Park, preparing for meetings to take place the following day.
3.30pm –Leave Dublin, head for family home in Monaghan.
7pm –Attend under-21 football match in Armagh.
