Unnecessary risks taken at Congress could lead to strife

THE G.A.A. like any large organisation is continually evolving, and success and survival is reliant on its ability to change and adapt. With this in mind we are treated yearly to a plethora of Congress motions which are tabled in an attempt to sort player burn-out, address the club fixture issue and promote the game to a wider audience.

I’m not happy however that some of the changes implemented and proposed over the past couple of years have been properly thought through, with some of the ideas proposed contradicting the old saying: ‘if it’s not broken don’t fix it’.

We had a 78% backing of playing our All-Ireland finals on or before the last Sunday in August to facilitate the club fixture congestion issue. I don’t believe that this will do anything to help the club situation other than populate the summer with a more clustered inter-county calendar, and it will clearly hand the promotional landscape in September over to competitor sports such as soccer and rugby.

The consequences of this action could be very serious over the next few years given that both finals attract 82,000 attendances as well as guaranteeing a serious monopoly on media coverage for the ninth month of the year.

Tradition should be valued and for me the arguments for this dramatic change are not nearly compelling enough to take chances, with the repercussions of this decision worrying me greatly.

My next big thumbs down is to the super eight format for the football quarter-finals. Firstly, the bigger problem is lack of hurling games when compared to football and, most importantly, if we are trying to provide more room for club activity, the decision to increase inter-county games defies all logic.

I could go on for a while on this subject, but a focus on the 24 weaker counties would make much more sense than providing extra games for the Dublins and Kerrys of this world.

Finally, because of the format the likelihood of a minnow breakthrough is now all but impossible given the safety nets available at this stage for the hierarchy of the big ball. The strong will get stronger and surely this can’t be the aim of progressive change.

Pay per view G.A.A. is also a route taken that hasn’t shown enough positives to maintain. Whilst competition between the broadcasters is healthy (and it has seen RTE up its game considerably), I believe the ethos of our national organisation should be to allow accessibility to all televised games whilst getting a fair price from the channels for the privilege. I haven’t seen enough visible benefit to suggest that this was the best way forward.

Last Friday we again had over 30,000 people in Croke Park to celebrate the club dinals. There have been very few negatives relating to the decision to place the parish deciders on St. Patrick’s Day, with the competitions going from strength to strength and attendances soaring, particularly over the past number of years.

Yet there is talk of a date change here also. Completion of competitions in the calendar year has merit, but the exception should be the retention of this wonderful March 17 occasion.

It doesn’t cause any severe disruption to have eight clubs involved in the competition between February and March, and there would be no justification for change to something that has been a huge success story. I sincerely hope there is no motion proposed and passed here.

There are many wonderful and innovative things happening in the G.A.A. and we should be very proud of its achievements.

However, I feel we should be careful in the changes we implement and the above changes (particularly the motions passed) carry a degree of risk.

Are the risks necessary? Not in my opinion and I fear time will back up my fears.

Finally, good look to the Peter’s men in their All-Ireland semi tomorrow. Go out there and create history lads.