• Skip to content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • News
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Archives
    • Volume 16: 2014/2015
    • Volume 15: 2013/2014
    • Volume 14: 2012/2013
    • Volume 13: 2011/2012

Student Independent News

NUI Galway Student Newspaper

  • Home
  • About
  • Get Involved
  • Contact Us
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy

Professionalism is nigh

February 11, 2015 By Sin Reporter Leave a Comment

download

It seems that GAA people talk about change every spring without fail. Player welfare, fixture congestion and the club vs county debate always seem to crop up. These issues are interconnected in different ways, but really these problems all come back to amateurism vs professionalism.

The GAA remains an amateur organisation in theory. The players don’t get paid, the clubs, which constitute a huge deal of the organisation, are run by volunteers and a large amount of the rules and administration of the organisation are also quite amateur.

However, in other ways the GAA is already a professional entity. The administrators of county and provincial boards get paid, as do coaching officers, not to mention the farce that is club managers getting “expenses”, that can go well into five figures. Also, inter-county players train as much as, if not more, than some of their professional counterparts in other sports. Not to mention that the GAA has a lucrative deal with SKY, a foreign TV company.

download (1)

This conflict at the heart of the GAA extends to a number of different areas, one being the fixture congestion that occurs every summer. The manager of the county team will invariably block the club championship fixtures to allow his players to prepare for the inter-county championships. This means that all the senior club players in a county are put on hold for the summer, if not longer, with some clubs going as many as four months between games. This giving the definite impression that the GAA is two different organisations, a professional one and an amateur one, at the same time.

The recent spate of inter county retirements has only has served to highlight the fact that a lot of older inter county players are falling out of love with the game. Players, such as Benny Coulter, Rory Kavanagh and Paddy Keenan, began playing football in a different era, where it was acceptable to go for a few drinks after a match, or where, in Rory Kavanagh’s case, a player would not be asked by his manager to eat eight meals a day.

They grew up with an amateur game, which was not obsessed with winning and which was played simply for the love of it. To these kind of players being a professional and getting paid to play would have been alien and against the ethos of the game they grew up with.

However, the game and the association has changed. Young players, who have been in through underage system and who are starting to play inter-county football, might look at the early morning and late night training sessions, the strict diet, the missed nights out and the stadiums full of supporters, and wonder what is in it for them, as everyone else involved is getting something.

The players do get the GPA grant, but put in context with the sacrifice demanded by the nature of inter-county football, it doesn’t seem like adequate compensation. Not if you are a player like Michael Meehan, amongst the best forwards of a generation, and you have an ankle injury, sustained from playing football, that affects your work and will most likely dog you for the rest of your life.

It is highly unlikely that the GAA teams will start to do less training, or teams will allow the standard of football to decrease now that the game has become more professional. Sports rarely move from being professional in nature to amateur, but certainly not when sports are as popular as in the GAA. The average attendance at inter-county championship matches in 2013 being 19,092, which is more than in professional sports leagues such as the NBA in the United States.

The slide towards professionalism seems inevitable, maybe it’s time the GAA actually started running two organisations; an amateur one for club players and a professional one for inter-county players. This would erase the issues of fixtures congestion, as player would either be amateur or professional and would allow club and inter-county competitions to run at the same time. Also, this would give inter-county players the financial stability and rest time they need, while freeing them up to play more games at that level over the course of the season, which would of course be needed to generate extra revenue.

Professionalism was once against the ethos of the GAA, but that organisation is long gone. It would need to be careful planning, but professionalism is engrained in the nature of the new GAA and it has gone past the point of no return. All we can do now is embrace it.

By Michael Farrell

Images via Google

Follow Us
Facebook Follow
Twitter Follow

Related

Filed Under: Local Sport, National Sport, Sports Tagged With: BENNY COULTER, GAA, GPA, NBA, PADDY KEENAN, RORY KAVANAGH, SKY SPORTS

Reader Interactions

Drop us a comment! Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Tweets by NuigSin

More News

‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ review [Spoilers]

‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ review [Spoilers]

By Ameya Godse ‘Can you ever forgive me?’ were the words used by Lee Israel, … [Read More...] about ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ review [Spoilers]

Final year diaries: results may include stress

Final year diaries: results may include stress

By Aileen O’Leary It happens every year: an email is circulated by either … [Read More...] about Final year diaries: results may include stress

Should Mick McCarthy utilise the granny rule or focus on home grown talents?

Should Mick McCarthy utilise the granny rule or focus on home grown talents?

Note: This article was originally published in SIN before Declan Rice announced … [Read More...] about Should Mick McCarthy utilise the granny rule or focus on home grown talents?

New running group offers sanctuary and solidarity for asylum seekers in Galway

New running group offers sanctuary and solidarity for asylum seekers in Galway

By Graham Gillespie The Sanctuary Runners, who are a running club that aim to … [Read More...] about New running group offers sanctuary and solidarity for asylum seekers in Galway

AE le Theresa May: “Dheamhan athrú atá tagtha ar an scéal”

AE le Theresa May: “Dheamhan athrú atá tagtha ar an scéal”

Le Quinton Beck Tar éis do Pharlaimint na Breataine vóta a thabhairt ar son … [Read More...] about AE le Theresa May: “Dheamhan athrú atá tagtha ar an scéal”

Footer

RSS Latest SU News

  • SU Weekly Email 21 – 14th February 2019 February 14, 2019
  • SU Weekly Email 20 – 7th February 2019 February 7, 2019
  • NUI Galway Students’ Union condemns unprecedented rent increases in Student Accommodation February 5, 2019
  • “Not Consent” Exhibition to open NUI Galway Students’ Union SHAG Week February 5, 2019
  • NUIG SHAG Week February 2019 February 1, 2019

Recent Posts

  • ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ review [Spoilers]
  • Final year diaries: results may include stress
  • Should Mick McCarthy utilise the granny rule or focus on home grown talents?
  • New running group offers sanctuary and solidarity for asylum seekers in Galway
  • AE le Theresa May: “Dheamhan athrú atá tagtha ar an scéal”

Recent Comments

  • Vegan Restaurants Galway – Hostel Dublin & Galway on The Temple Café: A Social Enterprise making a difference in Galway
  • Mom Jeans on the rise: What next, Grandma crop tops? – Fox in Thought on Mom jeans on the rise
  • “Young Sheldon” — Student Independent News (SIN) – The Bigger Picture on Young Sheldon promises to entertain and fill in The Big Bang Theory’s gaps

Copyright © 2019 SIN Student Newspaper. All rights reserved.