And they want us to rubber-stamp a split in the GAA, where 0.5% of members free-wheel within one system whilst the other 99.5% toil within another.

Those are our reactions to Saturday’s amazing announcement by GAA President Christy Cooney and Director General Paraic Duffy that they intend to commit €1.60m of GAA money to the GPA and simultaneously create, for the first time in the GAA’s 125 year history, two official classes of GAA membership. Saturday was a long, long way from the brave words of July past.

Like many other GAA people Of One Belief stands bemused and disillusioned by this whole sad and sordid mess. Let’s begin with a few observations: 

• A couple of weeks ago GAA Director of Finance Tom Ryan quite rightly told us that “central” GAA wasn’t there to bail out GAA units that had got their finances wrong; that the GAA worked to fixed, set budgets; and that financially things were currently very tight and would be so for some time. Put plainly: “Get those GAA belts tightened.” That’s exactly what we’d want a GAA Director of Finance to tell us in these times. Then lo-and-behold, €1.60m suddenly becomes available for something that’s not even a GAA unit to start with. It’s an insane move that flies in the face of all basic corporate governance principles. 
• The GAA’s National Infrastructure Committee (NISC) has recently made it very clear to GAA County Boards how the GAA’s national funding regime is going to work. It’s a brilliant model, teeming with best corporate governance practice. Counties will apply for money for projects which meet certain criteria. They will all be equally scored against those criteria. They won’t get money for work that’s already been completed without NISC approval. They’ll have to show how they themselves will come up with the majority of the project funding beyond the NISC grant. And they’ll all work within and be governed by the same funding parameters. Yet on Saturday highly-paid GAA officials drove a horse-and-cart through that model by gifting a non-GAA body a special status within the GAA and earmarking huge sums of GAA money for it in a totally different; arbitrary; and discriminatory way. The message seems loud and clear: if you’re a County Board wanting to invest in proper GAA work, you take your place in the queue. But if you’re the GPA, then: “Suits you, sir!” 
• Most GAA County Boards don’t even come close to having an annual budget of their own of €1.60m … yet now our top highly-paid officials deem it right and proper that this amount of GAA money should be handed over to a group that isn’t even part of the GAA. And in return that group says the new dispensation won’t “gag or muffle” it in any way. And uses phrases like “our own industry”. Once you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane! This is just the first of many, increasingly large pay-offs. 
• It’s long past time the GPA and Croke Park paid staff-propagated myth of, in their joint words, “inter county players as core contributors to the commercial success of the Association in the modern era” is shown up for the absolute fallacy it is. Firstly, the only reason we have a modern era is because those who went before us gifted us the infrastructure and GAA legacies we currently enjoy. And they gifted us it for free, with no strings attached other than the reasonable expectation that we might hand it on in no worse shape to those who came after us. Inter-County players and the highly-paid people at Croke Park are amongst the few GAA people who are insulated from the reality that far from being “core commercial contributors,” County teams are by far the biggest financial drain on the real GAA. Ireland’s 32 Counties currently spend on average €0.75m pa each on their County teams and invest at least the same amount again in terms of volunteers’ (remember them, anybody round Jones Road?) time. That’s an investment of at least €48m per year. Boys (and the odd girl), you need us much, much more than we need you! But through Saturday’s actions you simply started turning off the tap to yourselves. Back in July you told us the GAA “exists because of the voluntary efforts of its members:” what’s happened to your thinking in the subsequent three-and-a-half months? Even more worryingly, what’s going to happen to it in future? 
• The GAA has a full-time paid President and a full-time paid Director General. Why then was the role of “facilitating” this secret process handed over to an outside barrister? We had the same disastrous abdication of leadership responsibilities in the first Cork coup d’etat (that coup of course has since been followed by six more in the following 18 months). Is this now the accepted way of doing business at the highest levels of the GAA? And if it is, just what is it that we pay our leaders to do? It seems leadership is the last thing we can expect. 
• The GPA has won its war hands-down. And it’s won it without conceding anything. After a year when it sustained heavy losses and in the worst economic climate for decades, it now says it won’t go looking for its own sponsorship. That’s big of it! Anyway, why bother when the volunteer GAA is now being rail-roaded into picking up the tab! That’s a volunteer GAA that’s losing its own sponsors and sources of income by the day. Further, the GPA positively flaunts the fact of there being “no question of us being gagged or anything like that”. What has the GAA got out of this appeasement? Not even the promise of “peace in our time”. 
• The GPA victory does nothing for GAA players. It actually leaves them in a worse position by siphoning off scarce resources that could have been used to great effect in increasing and improving real GAA facilities. The €1.60m earmarked for the “welfare” (sic) of an elite 0.5% of players could have provided six sand-carpet pitches. In one year. And another six the year after. And so on. For the ordinary GAA player, the real hero at the end of the day, this deal just means they’ll have to dig ever deeper into their pockets to subsidise their so-called betters. 
• Starter for ten to the GAA’s top table: just what will you not concede to the GPA? Where actually would you hold the line? What actually is left to hold? So far you’ve given in to a strike threat; conceded on pay-for-play grants; created a special status for a non-GAA group (and parallel lesser status for the rest of us); introduced outside arbiters to do jobs we reasonably believe you’re paid to do; and don’t seem too worried about who actually decides whether a County GAA panel is legitimate or not. Increasingly we have people in GAA office. But they’re not in power. In Ireland we handed power over to tiny, self-regulated elites. Look where it got us. Sadly the GAA now seems hell-bent on following suit. 
• Finally, and this is strictly business, not personal. It really is time the GAA went back to having volunteer Presidents. We badly need volunteer leadership again. And we need to start publishing openly the salaries we pay our top people. Because the growing suspicion on the ground is that we’re not getting value for them. Any chance of a voluntary pay cut on Croke Park’s sixth floor? After all, there’s €1.60m to be found from somewhere. 

It is the language of the play-ground, but two years on from the fateful events of late 2007 when pay-for-play was introduced to the GAA, well, we told you so! The malcontents got the scenarios right. Saturday’s capitulation marked another inevitable step to a new model GAA. It’s one that’s a poor shadow of the one we were gifted. Sic transit gloria … !

www.ofonebelief.org

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.

“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.

By the way, if you see anybody wearing the badge below, that’s the eqivalent of meeting a 1916 GPO veteran. Away back in late 2007 Dessie Farrell described us as “a small rump of malcontents”. Well, “Míshásach” is “malcontent” in the first language and we do wear it as a badge of honour. Can official GAA recognition be far behind???

The GAA was always different. It was better; special; above and beyond things like greed and selfishness. It was us and we were it. For 123 years it stood up to whatever the fates threw at it – the “Parnell Split”; the Civil War; the northern state; poor times. But the eventual virus some members couldn’t resist was the Celtic Tiger’s disastrous ethos of “it’s-all-about-me-and-sod-the-rest-of-you.”

 As Irish banks collapse around us, we’re given a stark “insight-with-hindsight” explanation: “They ignored the fundamentals”. Our GAA leadership also ignored GAA fundamentals when it capitulated on the poison of pay-for-play. The plain people of Ireland now pay for the financial recklessness of Ireland’s elite: they’ll also pay for the pay-for-play recklessness of the GAA’s elite.

 Unbelievably, our leadership and the GPA intone the delusion: “By taking this money we preserve our amateur status.” What’s next in double-speak? Teetotallers saying that by taking alcohol they copper-fasten their abstinence?

 There are loads of better uses for this money. But let’s sideline the 100 teenage Irish girls who will die of cervical cancer because a government which assigned €10.5m to the grants “can’t afford” their €10m vaccination programme. Ignore the ravages of alcohol and drugs. Be blind to the €6m cut in the GAA’s 2009 budget. And forget those  bulwarks of Irish society, our 2,750+ GAA Clubs which struggle heroically and willingly to fund and deliver gaelic games for all of our players; of all abilities; and at all levels.

 The real disaster here isn’t these opportunity costs. It’s that our leadership and the GPA fractured the core GAA dynamic that energised and sustained us over 123 years. Brilliantly simple, brilliantly powerful, it said: “Here’s what those who went before you left for you. It’s uniquely Irish; it’s the best about; it’s given and taken for free. No one else on earth will make you this offer. If it adds to your quality of life, develops you as a person, then come with us. If not, walk away and leave it, no worse than you found it, for others.” That dynamic prospered. Until December 2007.

 The grants then officially threw money into our playing equation, to inevitably overrun the GAA drivers of place; community; choice; volunteerism; unity; equality; and local pride. Every sport that’s chosen this poisonous road proves it doesn’t work. Club rugby and professional soccer in Ireland teeter on the brink. Sadly, not even their own people care any more.

 Is that the GAA we want? “You-owe-me” as a core value? Fundamentals which sustained us for 123 years cast aside in the face of bullying (a threatened strike, by people who chose to be involved in the first place; benefited greatly from it; and were free to walk away at any time)? If only we’d had an Obama-like President to insist that abandoning ideals for expedience isn’t acceptable.

 Ireland’s economic collapse makes us look at ourselves. What we see isn’t attractive. Greed corrupted entire organisations … and entered the GAA. Our leadership needs to reinstate GAA fundamentals (including addressing the parallel poison of paid managers). The GAA and Ireland will be better as a result. We can’t afford to mimic the financial crisis and realise only when we look at the wreckage, what’s been lost; how; why; and because of who.

 Let’s get rid of pay-for-play before it gets rid of the GAA we’ve been bequeathed and only hold in trust. To coin a phrase: Yes We Must.

• We lost but don’t know by how much. One paper said we had about three dozen supporters … another said maybe 40% of the vote went for us. On Friday night we had asked for the vote to be counted and were told it would be. On Saturday that agreement was reneged on. That’s sad. But who knows, it could work out like the GPO in 1916 … as the years go on and the consequences become apparent, more-and-more people will say: “I was there and I did my bit”!!!

• For the record the Counties that stood against the grants/expenses/whatever were: Antrim; Armagh; Derry; Donegal; Down; Fermanagh; Limerick; Longford; Louth; and Tyrone.

• If we had one vote for every person who met us over the two days and said “I have grave reservations about this, but …” well, the result would have been very different!

• Just before the vote was taken Paraic Duffy spoke at some length in favour of the motion. That’s not on and it shouldn’t have happened. It was an appalling call in terms of where executive, paid staff sit within the governance of an organisation that’s based on members and their elected representatives. At that moment Paraic ceased to be Ard-Stiúrthóir for any GAA member who was against the motion. And that’s intolerable.

• Derry’s Seamus Mc Cloy shone as a County Chairman who had the courage to stand up and state his and his County’s case. Bellaghy and Derry were never found wanting before. Neither were they at Congress! From all of us Seamus: Thank You!
• After the vote we mistakenly believed Donegal abstained on the vote. That was our inexcusable mistake. We can only apologise for it. But it shouldn’t have happened and we did Donegal a disservice. It’s the one thing in all of this we’re not proud of.

DRA Business

Well the DRA hearing finally happened, three months and three weeks after we went there.

Again, let’s not fool ourselves: we lost. The DRA didn’t accept our analysis. The DRA Tribunal’s report on our hearing is available in full on www.sportsdra.ie (look under Decisions) but among the nuggets in the findings are the following:

(Paragaraph 1): “Their status as members has never been in question; the contribution of their witnesses alone to the Association over many years, both as players and administrators, is most impressive; and, quite properly, their standing to bring these arbitration proceedings has not been challenged. As such, suggestions that have been made publicly (although not by those involved in this arbitration) to the effect that the Claimants are in some way ‘external’ to the Association, are both incorrect and unfair”.

A few leading GAA people and one or two journalists should read this.

Paragraph 44: “It would seem sensible, both in the context of Rule 11 and any enhanced expenses scheme such as that under consideration here, to fix not only rates of expenses but types of expenses allowable, because while certain heads of expenditure might happily fall within any man’s view of ‘expenses’ others might extend into what might justifiably be ‘reward’. “

Yes, we though that too. In fact it’s at the core of this whole mess. But confusion and mess it remains. Even after Saturday’s vote nobody has a clue as to what’s eligible and what isn’t. But the blank cheque has now been signed.

Paragraph 54: “Central Council argue that if the enhanced meal or mileage rate exceeded what was properly treated as an expense, the Revenue Commissioners would be entitled to tax it and no sums were payable that fell into that bracket: accordingly there is a safeguard against breaches of Rule 11.”

This means there’s no €1.27-a-mile rate for players in the six counties where anything above €0.60-a-mile is taxable. This part of the scheme delivers us a partitionist GAA. Now that is unacceptable … but it’s a reality.

Paragraph 54: “That does not, in our opinion, answer the question why a (well-off) club should remain prohibited from paying its members Civil Service mileage rates (since, by Central Council’s definition, those rates constitute expenses and not reward), while inter-county players would be free to collect them”.

Yes, we wondered about that too. One rule for one … another rule for another! And certain conflict down the line.

Paragraph 61: “The Schemes may be a very good idea, and they may be a very bad one”.

Well, we’ll let you make your choice on that one!

Paragraph 63: “Although unsuccessful in the result, it is clear from the two sets of arbitration proceedings that the Claimants cannot be said to have failed in their endeavours”.

It was gratifying to hear this. But we’re not foolish nor naïve. We didn’t get the result at the DRA we wanted. The outcome is the GAA adopting a scheme that we believe, in the DRA’s own words, will be “a very bad one.” That means we failed.

We can’t close on the DRA without putting on record our appreciation of how Drumquin and Tyrone’s Paddy Fahy led the line for us at the hearing. A tour-de-force from someone who was never afraid to face the odds for things that were right.

So That’s It

We came together to try to stop this move towards pay-for-play in the GAA. Hopefully it’s not self-praise to say we made a decent effort at it. Everybody knows that those promoting the grants had to retreat hastily and embarrassingly from their 8 December position. We didn’t have to retreat from ours.

We tried hard and got great support from you all. But it wasn’t to be.

Anyway, life goes on. We hope it will be good for you and yours. But “Of One Belief” won’t be part of it. We now leave the stage!

Thank you all for your help and support. It was great being associated with you.

Go gcuire Dia rath agus bláth oraibh uilig.

In one of Irish sport’s great ongoing turnarounds, the cash-for-elite-GAA-players terminology has been changed yet again. We’ve so far waded our way from “grants” through “awards” to “eligible expenses”   (can the term “dig-out” now be all that far away?) But the outcome remains tellingly the same: inter-County GAA players will be given sizeable amounts of cash simply because they’re inter-County GAA players. That’s the one sad, unchanging fact in all of this mess.

As the morass deepens we’ve been told by our President (”Off The Ball”, Newstalk, 18 March) that inter-County players, having had their GAA mileage rates already paid by their County Boards (at 50 cents a mile), can apply to have their rates topped up to Civil Service levels (at €1.27 a mile). It’s simply unbelievable.

In one of the GAA’s most ironic twists ever, we now have the GPA -which originally rightly railed at the fact that some elite GAA officials got better mileage rates than elite GAA players – endorsing exactly the same sort of grubby discrimination they said they came forward to oppose. Principle … where are you! But then maybe part of the GPA’s well-versed “plight-of-the-inter-County-player” is being cursed with cars that are, just as a fact of life, much more expensive to run than those driven by anybody else involved in the GAA. Maybe, to steal a phrase from another person; another time; and another place, the rest of us want to try it sometime!

You’ve Shown Us the Money … Now Show Us the Shopping List!

The new “Eligible Expenses” scheme is very long on the “How” (ie we get chapter and verse on the mechanics of the thing) but totally and worryingly short on the “What” (ie just what is going to be included in these mysterious “Eligible Expenses”). In plain GAA language it’s not good enough. GAA people at Congress in a fortnight’s time are being asked to sign a blank cheque. We were last asked to do this on 8 December last year: we all now know the narrow escape the GAA had then. There’s an old Irish saying that goes: “Fool me once, shame on you … Fool me twice, shame on me!” It seems fairly relevant here!

Let’s look at the new “scheme”. At first glance alone here are some of the problems with it:

• Just what are “Eligible Expenses”? It’s time to show us the beef! Give us a list of what’s in and make it clear what’s out. If that fairly simple exercise can’t be done … well, why can’t it be done?
• On whose authority is the GPA to be unilaterally introduced to important decision-making roles within the GAA?
• Why is the GPA the only party to all this not defined in the document?
• What are the legal liabilities for the GAA in involving a non-constituted body like the GPA in its corporate governance?
• Will team mentors/back-room people be eligible for these “enhanced expenses”? If not, why not?
• Ditto re people involved in inter-County Under 21 and Minor teams
• Ditto re referees, in many ways among the most important GAA people of all
• And what about the driver who brings County Players to training etc in his/her car: does the inter-County player then revert back to being a 50-cents-a-mile as opposed to a €1.27-a-mile burden?
• Who’s going to handle the administrative nightmare this will introduce at County level?
• What kind of expenses regime is it that’s performance-based? Expenses are expenses are expenses: if they’re tied in to some sort of performance-related arrangement they’re not bona fide expenses. Are we seeing a major GAA Trojan Horse here?
• Any encouragement of pooled player travel (and another stated government policy) now goes out the window
• Most seriously of all, after all the honeyed words about player burnout we’re now about to lever even more training/performance demands onto inter-County players: that’s simply not what we should be doing

There is a simple answer to all this. If the government has €3.5m to spare for the GAA, then split it between the various County Boards to help them fund their increasingly complex and expensive GAA work.

Equally, another thought. What about €25,000 for every County Board and €1,000 for every GAA Club in Ireland … but tied to them doing programmed work to address one of our huge community problems, binge drinking? Even give it on condition that they provide match funding/resources. Or do we just talk about those things … in the firm understanding that we won’t ever do anything about them?

DRA Business

Our first case at the DRA effectively ended in a no-score draw. But watch this space! The holes in the 17 March agreement (though maybe it too will turn out not to have been an agreement at all either) are already emerging. And options are being considered.

Whatever happens next we’d want to put on record that we have been treated with total decency and respect by the DRA. They’re honourable people doing an honourable job for the GAA. Sin é.

“Of One Belief”: Not a Group!

Several people have taken to calling us a group and querying our right to make our case and use options like the DRA. We’re not a formal group and always made that very, very clear. We’re much more than that. We’re GAA members and volunteers who have taken exception to how GAA volunteers and members have been persistently disenfranchised in all this. We believe in the GAA and have been committed to it. We like to think we’ve helped make it what it is. But we don’t want to see it destroyed for the next generations on the basis of the greed and short-sightedness of some members of this generation. But, having said that, we’re not about squabbling and quarrelling with fellow-gaels. The GAA deserves much better than that. But it also deserves better than some current/recent proposals!

“Of One Belief” is a branding or banner that we use. It’s nothing more and nothing less. And as of today there’s 1,031 of you signed up to it. Not a bad state of affairs!

To Close: The Best Line Yet!

From one of our classy and very honourable (but un-named) national GAA journalists:

“Of One Belief has certainly achieved a re-routing of the parade!”

Brilliant!

Presidential Unanimity

Over the past week all three 2008 GAA Presidential candidates have expressed, at a minimum, very grave reservations about the proposed grants deal. Tipperary’s Sean Fogarty struck the clearest of chords with many “Of-One-Believers” when he said: “At the outset we should never have entered discussions on it.” Liam O’Neill meanwhile commented: “If we renege on our amateur status history will not judge us kindly.” And finally Christy Cooney is clear that: “If it affects Rule 11 it shouldn’t happen and it’s up to Management and Central Council to convince Clubs and Counties that it doesn’t.”

Defenders of paying our inter-County players cash to play gaelic games are becoming an endangered species. But when the best that one national journalist who supports the scheme can come up with is an intimidatory “Sign up to grants – or else”, it’s hard to be persuaded by the logical and ethical brilliance of that particular argument!

Dublin Deliberation Deferred

In the light of the forthcoming DRA hearing and Central Council’s meeting of 17 March, St Joseph’s/O’Connell’s Boys GAC agreed to defer until April its motion due for debate at last night’s Dublin County Board meeting. The Club’s motion was fairly straightforward: it mandated Dublin to vote against the “November 2007 Agreement” (or any modification of it that continues to break Rule 11) at Congress. A number of other Dublin Clubs had already rowed in behind St Joseph’s/O’Connell’s Boys on this issue.

But Because We Pay Managers …

There’s a weird circular argument going round that because there’s a raft of “illegal” paid managers at work across the GAA, then it should be OK to also illegally pay elite players. And that those who oppose the grants are thereby hypocrites. Our position is very clear on this: we oppose paid managers. We think the principle of outside, paid managers at Club or County level attacks the very ethos of the GAA. They’re a cancer … and just because part of the body has a cancer is no reason to inject botulism into another part of it.

If the grants debate is won and the idea of pay-for-elite-play is binned, then we need to address the pay-to-manage syndrome with the same vigour. Let’s do it. Let’s bring in rules about who’s eligible to coach/manage teams, rules that run parallel with our existing rules which determine who’s eligible to play for those same teams. It’s not beyond the bounds of GAA possibility to do it. And it’s something we can address jointly, from Central Council down to the grass-roots.

That’s of course, if we’re serious about it! And if that hypocrisy doesn’t run farther than some might think!

Every Club and County in the Land and Beyond

Because those who should be doing it aren’t doing it, we’ve been trying to facilitate a discussion on the grants issue across the GAA. Over the past weekend the text below has been emailed to GAA Clubs; Counties; and Provinces, not just in Ireland but round the world. Nearly 2,400 GAA units have now received the following:

“Speak Now … Or Forever Hold Your Peace!“

What This Is About

At this year’s Congress the GAA will take one of its most fundamental decisions ever – whether inter-County GAA players should be given cash for playing our games. For whatever reason this issue isn’t being discussed across the GAA as it should be. But many, many GAA people are hugely concerned about it. We would like you to debate it in your Club or County. Your County will be voting on it at Congress. Make sure the votes cast on your behalf reflect what YOU think!

We’re All Adults Around Here

We have a particular view on the cash payments. We’re totally against them. But we don’t expect people to unquestioningly follow our line. We want you to discuss this issue and to reach a conclusion you’re content with. We hope you’ll share our view. This circular sets out why we oppose paying some GAA players to play gaelic games. It’s going to every GAA Club and County. Circulate it to your colleagues/members. Read over it and make up your minds. What you’ll read here isn’t being discussed across the GAA as it should be. But the GAA is us as much as anyone else. Let’s make our view count!

If Grants Are Paid To Inter-County GAA Players, Then …

• Our Rule 11 (”a player … shall not accept payment in cash or in kind in conjunction with the playing of Gaelic games”) is blown asunder

• Under EU law, the players’ GAA activity will become an economic activity and be subject to EU commercial law: our fundamental GAA principles and rules about eligibility; transfers; and so on will go out the window. Players will be able to move as they/sponsors/whoever sees fit. And they’ll hold “restraint of trade” powers over GAA Committees at Club and County level. It wouldn’t happen? Look at the Bosman; Deliege; Meca-Medina; and Kolpac cases at the European Court of Justice.

• Our amateur status will be gone and it won’t be coming back. Those behind the grants deal say it “copper-fastens” our amateur status. European commercial case law says something totally different. Which of them do you think will turn out to be right?

• For the first time in GAA history we will have two classes of GAA players/members … those who pay for the games and those who are paid to play them.

• We’ll have established the principle that inter-County players get money because of who they are. That process won’t stop.

• There will be no moral nor legal justification for not paying the teams’ backroom people … then the team liaison people … then our County Committee people … then …

• For the first time in GAA history single decisions by referees; umpires; linesmen; and fixture-makers will decide into whose pockets tens of thousands of euros will go

• Illicit “sponsors” will be able to offer teams cash prizes for winning things: the EU “economic activity” reality will mean we can’t stop it

• Once the government pulls its funding (as it inevitably will) the GAA will have to pick up the bill

• Club players picked for their County will have a clear financial incentive not to risk injury at Club level. The Club/County divide will grow dramatically.

• Any chance we have of tackling the poison (and it is a poison) of paid managers in the GAA will be gone

• Volunteers will increasingly say: “I’m off!” They have in every other sport where payment was introduced. Just look at Club rugby in Ireland (if you can find it) ten years after pay-for-play came in.

And No, We Don’t Have To Do This!

Let’s remember a few basics that have got lost in the fog here:

• In the GAA nobody has to do anything! If players think the burdens are too great, they should walk away … just like the rest of us should. We’re volunteers, ALL of us!

• In the GAA there’s no such thing as an “Inter-County player”: we have Club players who happen to get picked for their County

• Amateurism and volunteerism are at the heart of what the GAA has been and done for 124 years: change that and you break the core GAA dynamic. And Ireland suffers disastrously as a result.

It’s our choice and ours alone whether we accept pay-for-play, however it’s dressed up. Oppose the grants. Let’s get back to doing what the GAA was set up to do, providing “no charge” gaelic opportunities for the people of Ireland. Join us at www.ofonebelief.org

O Wad Some Pow’r

The great Robert Burns put it as only he could:

“O wad some pow’r the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us”

In that light what about this from the Mayor of Wexford, George Lawlor, at last weekend’s Leinster Convention:

“Some people who seem to be shouting the loudest seem to be abandoning the fact that were it not for the GAA they would not be in the economic circumstances they find themselves at the current time. Also, in relation to power bases in the GAA, it has to be said that the day when a club secretary or chairman or county board delegate decide they want to go on strike, I think that’s the time you will see who are the powerhouse and who are the engine room within this organisation.”

Confused? Not Half As Much As We Are!

“I would be surprised if county boards made a decision on a document that they haven’t seen.” Pauric Duffy on 3 March 2008.

So how come Central Council could make a decision on 16 February, on the same document it hadn’t seen either, to seek Congress’ “satisfaction” with that document and its contents? We certainly expressed surprise then … but who else did?

Is there just a wee bit of double standards at work here?

And Finally, Keep The Faith, All 950+ Of You! The Next Month is Critical!

The mantra for opposing pay-for-play in the GAA remains the same. We work within (and want to protect!) the GAA’s structures and systems … so:

• Bring this issue up in your Club and bring it to your County Committee to swell the very significant tide of GAA opposition to it
• Make sure your voice is heard when it reaches the floor of Congress
• Make sure your Central Council delegate reflects your County’s feelings when this issue is debated at Central Council on 17 March
• Talk to people about the damage pay-for-play will do to the GAA … and how Ireland will suffer as a result
• Keep hammering home the point that nobody in the GAA has to do anything: we’re all volunteers … and if the burdens are too much we should just walk away or reduce our input

• Above all, in the GAA we don’t pay people to play our games!

To close on another positive note, the 950^th person registered with us yesterday. Not bad for a small rump of malcontents!

Time-after-time this message came up loud and clear from the floor. People are open to all sorts of other changes … but these core values remain sacrosanct. If there’d been a vote taken on Saturday, pay-for-play would have been cast to oblivion. Let’s finish the job at Congress on April 11/12 in Sligo!

Full Steam Ahead to Congress

Getting the pay-for-play issue onto the agenda for Congress was a huge achievement. It leaves things a very long way away from the fait accompli attempted on 8 December last. In Pauric Duffy’s own words on Saturday last, we’ll “get a proper discussion there”.

But things remain unclear in other ways. We don’t yet know for example what motions will be on the Clár at Congress. We understand Fermanagh’s motion, unanimously endorsed at the Fermanagh County Convention, has been rejected. Yet we equally understand that a yet-to-be-framed Central Council motion on the issue will be on the Clár. To a lot of us there’s just something not-quite-right there.

Replying to a question posed at the National Club Forum on Saturday our President Nickey Brennan spelled out his position as follows:

• The grants/awards/pay-for-play proposals will be published by mid-March
• They will be circulated freely within the GAA and beyond
• There will be full consultation prior to Congress
• They will be debated openly, honestly and fully at Congress

If “mid-March” is Friday 14 March, that effectively leaves just three weeks maximum for a “full consultation” prior to Congress. That compares very poorly with the time given to debate issues such as player burnout; the hurling championships; and, of course, things like Rule 21 and the opening up of Croke Park.

But our task remains the same, to get this issue debated and then rejected in such a way that it never comes back onto the GAA table again. And we’re still of the view that any proposal to give money to GAA people, players or otherwise, requires a change to Rule 11.

No doubt Central Council’s motion will seek such a change. If it doesn’t … we’ll be back!

The Tide Keeps Flowing

The O’Connell’s Boys Club in Dublin has submitted a motion to its County Committee seeking to mandate the Dublin Central Council delegate and delegates to Congress to vote against any attempt at pay-for-play in the GAA. The O’Raghallaigh Club in Drogheda is doing the same in Louth. And one of Ireland’s great GAA Clubs, St Gall’s of Antrim, has voted against grants/awards/pay-for-play.

All of us should be doing similar things through our own Clubs and County Committees. Saturday’s Club Forum gave a very clear message about where the grass-roots stand on all this.

It would be criminal to let them down.

Why The Grants/Awards/Pay-for-Play Scheme Has To Be Opposed

There are many, many reasons why we shouldn’t touch the grants/awards/pay-for-play scheme with a barge pole. Here’s twenty to start with:

• It flies in the face of our Rule 11 which clearly states that “a player, team, official or member shall not accept payment in cash or in kind in conjunction with the playing of gaelic games”. As such it represents an attempt at the most fundamental shift ever in GAA ethos and policy. And it shifts the entire focus within the GAA from “We” to “Me”.

• It is a policy which, if introduced, will never be reversed: once the principle of paying players is introduced, experience in every other sport in every other setting shows that the only issue for debate thereafter is: “How much more?”

• The GAA is about giving, not taking. The GAA gives the money it earns back to the people of Ireland in the form of facilities; coaching; games development; and equipment. Only by retaining our amateur status can we ensure this reinvestment continues, generation after generation.
• Playing for your County is a choice, not an obligation. Always, always, always in the GAA you do what you do because you want to. If you don’t want to … then don’t do it. That brilliantly simple concept has served us so well for 124 years. This proposed arrangement totally undermines that understanding.

• Paying this money establishes a dangerous precedent. The GAA will have to pick up the tab when the government, as it inevitably will, drops out

• Inflation and claimed “increased-costs-of-playing-gaelic-games” will have to be factored in

• There is no moral argument for not paying the same money to the inter-County back-room people who put in the same time and effort. Counties will have to come up with the money and the arrangements to do this.

• Once we start paying back-room teams, there is no moral argument in turn for not paying other County Committee people: they put in as much (if not more) time and effort and without them there would be no County GAA to start with.

• It is not at all clear who carries the legal liabilities (of which there will be many) in all this. The first case for “wrongful dismissal” or whatever from a County panel is inevitably on its way.

• The “Bosman” and other EU rulings mean once money becomes involved and “restraint of trade” issues invariably follow, the GAA won’t have a legal leg to stand on in terms of stopping players transferring to Counties where their financial prospects are better

• There will be a financial incentive regime in place in the GAA which discourages elite players from putting themselves at risk in Club games

• There’ll be no incentive or justification to address the current poison of paid managers in the GAA … which should be an absolute priority for the GAA

• Some players will inevitably object because they have to play more matches than players from other Counties to reach the Championship Quarter-Finals and be awarded the money that comes with that. This will fatally undermine the structure of our Championships.

• The first headline as follows is already on its way: “That refereeing decision cost us ‘so-many-thousand’ euros”

• We will have a scenario where County A’s players get the money on the basis of attending 80% of, say, 100 sessions whilst County B’s players will get it on the basis of attending 80% of, say, 50 sessions

• The scheme seriously expects people with full-time jobs to “visit schools and youth facilities” as part of their new “GAA contractual arrangements”. The costs of those school and other visits will have to be picked up by someone: that someone will be the Counties.

• The GPA has already claimed players should be entitled to a share of TV money (”HQ Warned to Share TV Money Around”, Setanta, 23 October 2007). The GAA will have no moral (let alone legal) justification for opposing such a future GPA claim … paid directly to them of course by a third party, the TV company. (No doubt it will be backed up by the threat of strike action – which in the new pay-for-play context it will actually be a strike)

• The rest of the GAA is still expected to fundraise to provide elite facilities when the users of those facilities are going to have to be paid to use them

• The new contractual requirements placed on players are the diametric opposite to the supposed concern with over-burdening players … and on which we recently held a Special Congress

• The GAA will be morally and legally unable to oppose a sponsor who offers a County panel a large, performance-based, sum of money to win a title

And Finally … Keep The Faith … All 900+ Of You!

The mantra for opposing pay-for-play in the GAA remains the same. We work within (and want to protect!) the GAA’s structures and systems … so:

• Bring this issue up in your Club and bring it to your County Committee to swell the growing tide of GAA opposition to it
• Make sure your voice is heard when it reaches the floor of Congress
• Make sure your Central Council delegate reflects your County’s feelings the next time this issue is debated at Central Council
• Talk to people about the damage pay-for-play will do to the GAA … and how Ireland will suffer as a result
• Keep hammering home the point that nobody in the GAA has to do anything: we’re all volunteers … and if the burdens are too much we should just walk away or reduce our input
• Above all, in the GAA we don’t pay people to play our games!

Finally, the 900^th person registered with us last week. Not bad for a small rump of malcontents!

• There never was any agreement
• There certainly is no agreement at present
• There will be no agreement in future without the full and proper approval of Congress

It’s a huge turnaround face from what we were all presented with as a “done deal” back on 8 December. In one of the night’s more bizarre moments, the GAA claimed during the hearing that “any reasonable person” reading their press release of 8 December would have had no doubts that the whole issue would have to be decided by Congress.

That saw virtually every eyebrow in the room hit the ceiling! If that had been the case, Ireland’s clearly full of “unreasonable” people. One of these is evidently our President, Nickey Brennan who as late as 13 January in an interview with The Irish Mail on Sunday was clear that only if (other) people submitted motions, would the issue “get an airing” at Congress.

One of the other sad experiences of the night was the GAA’s refusal to give the Tribunal an undertaking that it would actually do what it promised to do. Because of that we sought an adjournment of the hearing so that the case could be re-opened if the GAA didn’t live up to its promises. The DRA ruled in our favour on that issue. That means our claim that giving money to GAA players breaks Rule 11 is still alive … and it remains and will remain our contention that any approval of a grant scheme at Congress requires a change to Rule 11.

We’ve attached a press release on the DRA hearing, you can download it from the link below:

grants_agreement_in_tatters.doc

Someone aptly described the whole grants/awards debacle as “the-deal-that-never-was”. Our task is now to make sure it’s “the-deal-that-never-is”!!!

There’s still plenty of work ahead.

In the Meantime … Be Afraid … Be Very Afraid!

Part of the argument in favour of the scheme-that-never-was but which was nonetheless launched on us on 8 December last, was the claim that the payment of money to elite players for playing gaelic games actually copper-fastened our amateur status.

That claim certainly flummoxed the plain people of Ireland!

But it would equally hold no water at all as far as some very “un-plain” legal people at the heart of the EU are concerned. Following a case taken to the European Court of Justice by Christelle Deliege, the Court ruled in December 2005 that since Mme Deliege received money, including some from her own judo federation as grants to improve her sporting performance (now where have we heard that before?) as a result of taking part in judo, her sporting activity actually constituted an economic activity … and therefore enjoys the full protection of Community law.

On that basis, if we give money to our players then all our tried-and-tested GAA rules and understandings about registrations; transfers; and even the management of our games immediately go out the window to be replaced by EU work/employment-related rules and regulations about restraint of trade; image rights; access to GAA income; and so on.

It would never happen?

Try that one with someone you know in any other sport that’s gone down the pay-for-play route! In the meantime, enjoy the last remaining kick of the “old” GAA. It isn’t going to be there for much longer!

Going to Congress: Can You Get Your Head Around This?

We understand that Saturday’s Central Council meeting, at the request of Management, voted to send a motion to Congress seeking approval for its grants scheme. (This was despite GAA press officer Feargal McGill being quoted in last Thursday’s Irish Times as saying the grants issue would not be discussed at the meeting because its only order of business was the Special Congress the same day … but then positions here do seem to shift on a daily basis!)

Now tell us if we’re wrong on this but here’s our understanding of the current position:

• On Friday night at the DRA, Central Council confirms there is no agreement nor was there ever any agreement
• On Saturday morning Central Council votes to send a motion to Congress about a grants agreement (that they’ve told us doesn’t exist)
• Central Council is therefore backing a motion on a scheme that doesn’t exist and to which it’s not committed
• Even better, Monday’s Evening Herald (28 January) has a GAA spokesperson telling us that on Saturday past, the motion that Central Council voted to submit to Congress has yet to be framed by Management

So there we have it. Central Council is committed to nothing except to a motion that Management has yet to draft on an agreement that’s yet to be framed.

And in all of this, still not a word for us ordinary GAA people (who keep the whole show going) on “our” GAA website.

There is in life something known as The First Law of Holes. It states: “When you’re in one … stop digging!”

Sounds like very good advice here!

And Finally … Keep This Issue Alive!

The mantra for opposing pay-for-play in the GAA remains the same:

• We work within (and want to protect!) the GAA’s structures and systems
• Bring the issue up in your Club
• Bring it to the National GAA Club Forum on 9 February
• Bring it to your County Committee and swell the growing tide of County opposition to it
• Make sure your voice is heard when it reaches the floor of Congress
• Ask your Central Council delegate just what went on at the 8 December and 26 January meetings
• Make sure your Central Council delegate reflects your County’s feelings the next time this issue is debated at Central Council
• Talk to people about the damage pay-for-play will do to the GAA … and how Ireland will suffer as a result
• Keep hammering home the point that nobody in the GAA has to do anything: we’re all volunteers … and if the burdens are too much we should just walk away or reduce our input

• Above all, in the GAA we don’t pay people to play our games!

This past week has seen huge progress in the campaign against pay-for-play in the GAA. The DRA has delivered a major result. But we’ve still work to do.

Let’s finish with another wee bit of Churchill (well, Viscount Brendan Bracken, a member of Churchill’s wartime cabinet was the son of JK Bracken, one of the founders of the GAA!):

“This is not the end.

This is not even the beginning of the end.

But it may perhaps be the end of the beginning!”

Beir bua!