And So It Goes On …

There’s no doubt corporate Ireland became an increasingly bizarre place on foot of the depredations of the Tiger economy. But the saga of just how and why the GAA continues to deal in secret with what appears to be a private limited company called the Gaelic Players Management Company Ltd still takes some beating.

Try these on for size: 

• The GPA has long since been gifted a seat on Central Council, the most important decision-making part of the GAA after Congress
• The only legal manifestation we can find of this “GPA” is the Gaelic Players Management Company Ltd
• This is a private company whose shares are now owned by Brian Corcoran; DJ Carey; and Liam Hassett
• Over the last year it lost €143,843 and now has net assets of just €15,851
• Dessie Farrell is a director of this company
• As a director he is legally obliged to act only in the best interests of his shareholders. 

So, when Dessie Farrell sits at our Central Council, having the same status there as any GAA County in Ireland, just who and what is he representing? As a director of the company, it has to be his shareholders. Why do we continue to allow a privately-owned company to have access to and an influence on GAA business that ordinary GAA members don’t have? We all now know how corporate governance went up the left in Ireland over the past couple of years. But even in that chaotic context this arrangement takes the biscuit.

And that’s not all. Meanwhile: 

• The GPA has recently announced its membership of the EU Athletes Association … whose website describes itself as the European Elite Athletes Association, representing over 25,000 professional athletes (our emphases)
• Irish professional rugby players also belong to that same Association and its website is littered with examples of Collective Bargaining Agreements
• The GPA’s own website spells out 22 benefits of GAA recognition … 17 of which are a shameful litany to do with business; grants; careers; and so on … real core areas of GAA activity that really turn us volunteers on!

But, we’re told, it’s OK to discuss “GAA recognition” with an outfit of this ilk. Of course the people who tell us that are the same ones who argue that by taking/approving the taking of pay-for-play money they safeguard GAA amateurism! Is the next pig-in-a-poke they’re going to try to sell to GAA members got anything to do with bailing out unsustainable private companies? Or the need for the GAA to put in place Collective Bargaining Agreements with our elite players?

Finally, in case people are interested … the Minister of Sport when all this pathetic grants pay-for-play nonsense started … was … the one and only … John O’Donoghue. But, sure it was all done within the guidelines.

Back in July we put out the statement below after the GPA’s latest tiresome demand for even more r€sp€ct from the GAA. Three months on, we think it’s still as valid. Read it and judge for yourselves. 

“The Chickens Came Home to Roost”

“For the first time in several years we’ve had a statement from our GAA leadership which unashamedly and courageously spells out what the GAA is and why.”

That’s Of One Belief’s high-level response to the GAA’s 8 July published position on formal recognition of the GPA.

At last we have people stating the obvious, ie that:

“GAA players play our games as a recreation of choice”

And:

“The GAA belongs to the tens of thousands of Irish people who participate in GAA activities in their respective local communities, ranging from the selfless volunteers who seek to improve the quality of life, sense of unity and belonging in their communities to those who are spectators of our games. In essence, the GAA exists because of the voluntary efforts of its members.” 

It seems we now too have a President who both believes that and is prepared to act on it.

But reading Wednesday’s GAA statement still begs some fundamental questions. For example:

“How did we ever allow ourselves to get into the pay-for-play mess we’re now so clearly in? How have we allowed an elite group of the people who benefit most from what the GAA delivers threaten and bully their way to the heart of our decision-making? And why have we people taking us into areas which are anathema to the principles outline above, ie pay-for-play; pay-per-view TV; and the increasingly poisonous dalliance with the AFL?”

What’s most harmful of all is the GPA’s shameful demand to pocket 5% of the GAA’s gross revenues. That of course is the inevitable consequence of the disastrous GAA pay-for-play grants scheme. In the light of the GPA’s demand, some high-level GAA people really do need to consider what they’ve colluded in over the past couple of years and examine their consciences as to how they contributed to the unholy mess the GAA now finds itself in. As one journalist recently put it, it’s not a mess the GAA can wish away.

Some very unpleasant chickens have now come home to roost around Jones Road. 

Whilst welcoming the clear statement of core principles, Of One Belief also retains a sense of unease about several aspects of Wednesday’s statement. As GAA volunteers we think a number of questions deserve open and honest answers:

• The “full support of GAA Central Council” is claimed for the GAA’s work to date on GPA recognition. But was that “full support” ever mandated at County and Club level? We all know the answer to that: it never was. The pay-for-play grants were voted through six working days after they were revealed to the GAA membership. In the same way a Tyrone Motion opposing GPA recognition, passed by a huge majority at the 2008 Tyrone County Convention, was prevented from even being discussed at the GAA’s 2009 Annual Congress. Does the GAA really belong to those tens of thousands of Irish people or to an elite, self-interested few?
•  Just who or what is this “GPA” that some people want recognised? In February 2007 the Tyrone County Committee wrote to the then President asking precisely that question. Twenty-eight months later a response is still awaited on the issues raised in that letter. But recent revelations about a private limited company called Gaelic Players Management Ltd beg absolutely fundamental questions about just who or what occupies that “GPA seat” on the GAA’s Central Council. There’s a serious piece of investigative journalism needed here. Maybe someone will take up the challenge! 
• If we’re serious about player involvement in the GAA (and some of us actually are) then let’s do something serious about it. Hold a place on every GAA committee, in every unit and at every level, for a player representative. Will there be a GPA rush to sit on Scór committees? To wrestle with fixtures schedules? To roll out child protection and health and safety? To fund-raise for others in the GAA? And do it all wholly at your own expense? We await the surge! Or is GPA involvement just about siphoning off GAA money into the pockets of an elite few? 
• The GAA is a choice-based membership organisation. You’re either a member or you’re not: and it’s yourself, and nobody else, who chooses whether you want to be a member. Any move to “recognise” and then give special privileges to any group within the membership runs contrary to the whole membership principle. Political parties forbid “parties-within-parties.” Credit Union shareholders are Credit Union shareholders. And we’ve seen in the Irish Catholic Church where “special status” and groups-within-groups inevitably brings you. The only reason for “recognition” is to give people special status. Why are we doing that within the GAA? And if we concede it to one self-defined internal interest group, how can we deny it to any other? This is just the first of many cans of worms which will be opened here. Above all, what does it say to those who don’t merit “recognition”? That they’re somehow lesser or inferior? It all comes back to whether we really believe that the GAA belongs to those tens-of-thousands of Irish people … or whether they’re just the foot-soldiers for an entirely more worthy elite. 
• In any case our GAA Rule Book is quite clear on this all. Rule 20 deals with Allegiance and states: “Clubs and Counties shall insist that the first allegiance of their members is to the Association and its games”. So what is it to be … allegiance to the GAA … or to the GPA … or to any other self-nominated group that comes along? If someone wants to change things, let them try to change the Rule. But that would mean initiating a GAA-wide debate … would mean ordinary GAA people voting on it … would mean going to Congress. And some of our top people patently don’t like those things!  
• What exactly does the Statement mean when it talks about “joint GAA/GPA sponsorships”? That sounds like the grants debacle writ large all over again. We either have GAA sponsorship or we don’t. It’s either controlled by the GAA or it’s not. Money earned on the back of all the members of the GAA either goes fully into the GAA kitty or it doesn’t. And it’s either fully controlled by the GAA or it isn’t. Joint involvement in financial affairs runs counter to any basic principles of corporate governance and is the road to disaster. The GAA can’t sign up for this. 
• The notion of the inter-County game as the GAA’s great profit-centre is one of life’s enduring myths. Few things on earth are as financially unsustainable as inter-County GAA activity. It’s far-and-away the most expensive part of our portfolio. It consumes up to 80% of a County’s income, most of which is put there by volunteers reaching deep into their pockets: were the voluntary input of those same people ever costed, then County teams would cost several times their County’s annual income. And that’s not even looking at the capital investment put into providing stadia for the County games. But in the GAA we value; sustain; cherish; and invest in inter-County games and teams because of what they deliver for our communities. And we want to continue to do that, not turn it into some grubby, sordid business making money for a self-selected, self-serving elite.  
• We need to tell the truth, not peddle the myths about the finances of the inter-County game. Last weekend a former inter-County player instanced the need for players to get “their share” of the “Croke Park soccer-and-rugby-money”. What are the realities here? They’re quite simple – and brutal. Every GAA County got a one-off payment of €0.25m as a result of Croke Park being opened up. That was/is it. And that would just about cover the cost of the now-expected annual holiday for Senior inter-County teams. What “more share” do people feel they need? We’re long past some realism here.  
• Another reality is that, based on figures it released to the Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Sport and Tourism, the GPA’s own annual commercial income of €0.90m is greater than that of most GAA County Boards. Yet it wants a percentage of all GAA income plus a fixed €0.05m per month from the GAA. And some of us thought that financial fairy-tales died with Anglo-Irish! 
• Just what is this “player welfare” that now seems to be the bounden duty of every non-playing GAA member to deliver? The original gripe peddled was to get away from just “the-Rich-Tea-biscuits-and-milk” after training (though most GAA volunteers haven’t even got the length of that luxury yet) … but now it seems we’re required to provide employment services; health services; and education for our elite players. What’s next on the shopping list: help with their housing; pension; marriage/partner; child-rearing; clothing; holiday and car (the ones we don’t already meet); and PR costs? The really dangerous thing is that those options aren’t really a joke any more. 
• Why as GAA volunteers have we been kept in the dark about so much of this? The openness of the 8 July Statement is refreshing and welcome. It’s nice to be treated as adults, to be given access to issues that are of fundamental concern to us. But why were we not given sight of the 27 February 2009 paper which evidently outlined “our” (sic) position on recognition to the GPA? Why was this done in secret? Why do paid people have a bigger role in all of this than the volunteers? Unfortunately it dove-tailed with an appalling level of behind-closed-doors all the way through this rancid business. After all, in terms of the player pay-for-play grants, Central Council; the DRA; and Congress all managed to approve an “expenses scheme” (sic) the detail of which they were never shown! 
• After the atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan, the Emperor Hirohito broadcast to the Japanese people and told them: “The war has not necessarily gone in our favour.” The GAA’s 8 July Statement’s claim that the government grants are an example of GAA/GPA collaborative success surely sits up there with the Emperor’s use of language! If the grants debacle represented “success” we’d dread to think what failure might look like.

Christy Cooney has started well. He’s shown courage and loyalty to who and what we are. But we still have work to do to get rid of the malignancy that’s been allowed to creep into the GAA.

Those of us who opposed the grants are grateful for and proud of our involvement with the GAA. It may sound arrogant, but we’ve been there when others weren’t. We’re still there after others left. We did and still do the work that others won’t. And we fund and provide for our players when others merely pontificate from the ditch. But we won’t concede the GAA without a fight. And the fight’s far from over.

Back in the real GAA world there are teams to coach; gear to buy and wash; dressing rooms to sweep out; tickets to sell and buy; lottos to run; young people to help develop; pitches to build and maintain; major GAA-related bank loans to personally guarantee; County teams to fund and to follow; and communities to sustain. It’s a GAA that exists regardless of what happens at the All-Ireland Quarter-Final stage and beyond. More crucially, it’s a GAA that will exist very happily without any All-Ireland Quarter-Finals at all. But it’s a GAA that many who should know better try to ignore or pretend doesn’t exist.

It’s long past time we all got back to real GAA business. The GAA’s 8 July Statement marks a possible start on the journey back. Did someone say: “A lot done … more to do”? Let’s make sure we make a better fist of it than that other lot did.