Revolution is in the air and the GAA must listen
Croke Park must not pass the buck to county boards
MY love affair with the GAA began when I was five years of age and I discovered the wonder that was hitting a ball with a stick.
This thing has been part of me — and I am hardly alone — ever since. It is who I am, it is what I am and it is everything I believe in, which is why my head is in a whirl and my heart is in pieces this week.
I am not going to claim that I am in shock, but this runaway train has been coming down the track for longer than I care to remember, and longer than the 11 years I have been writing for this paper.
And yet when it derails right in front of your eyes, it still does not take from the trauma.
This week, in their latest poll to their members, the Club Players Association are asking for guidance as to whether they should ‘escalate’ their actions, having been left frustrated going through the official democratic route.
They are now fast approaching the point of no return.
The logistics are such that even with in excess of 25,000 members, if the CPA went down the road of calling a nationwide club strike, it is unlikely to happen.
At the end of the day, players, no matter how warped and unfair the schedule they operate under, will want to play, but the fact that the conversation has reached this sorry point is enough.
In one way, it is hard to get your head around the fact that some day soon you might head down to your local field and be met by a picket.
In another way, it seems the most obvious thing in the world to be greeted with.
The club game has been trampled into the ground and Croke Park’s latest sticking plaster solution has merely served to expose just how infected the club game’s wound has become.
The suspicion that the designation of this month as ‘club only’ was an act of tokenism rather than a serious effort to address the single biggest crisis to confront the GAA since its foundation has been reaffirmed time and again, with tales of club woe all around the country.
This weekend the opening round of the Limerick hurling Championship will take place.
Last weekend, the entire county panel attended a threeday training camp in the University of Limerick, relieving the clubs of their county players.
Clubs were denied access to their players with less than a week to their opening round Championship game by the county team, whose first Championship game was five weeks away.
Parity of esteem, how are you?
It makes a mockery of the notion that this is the club’s month, as they make do with whatever crumbs are thrown their way by the elite.
We have been writing this for an age, but this is the price that you pay for allowing powerful individuals, facilitated by compliant county board officials, many of whom are more interested in reflected glory than in fair governance, to rule.
This is the hell hole the GAA’s top brass find themselves in, but the first thing that they need to acknowledge is that they are ones with the shovel in their hands.
Croke Park needs to take control and not pass the buck to county boards who not only lack the political will to represent their club membership but whose allegiance, more often than not, is to the county manager they appointed.
The argument will always be made that clubs run county boards, but while that sounds find in theory, it is not the case in practice for all kinds of reasons.
There is always pressure put on clubs to row in behind the county team, which demands everyone wears the green jersey.
And clubs that stand alone in defiance may well feel the wrath of their board somewhere down the line and they are aware of that.
On top of that, the lines of democracy are never as pure as they are made out to be.
The club delegate who is attending county board meetings for an age is often likely to have a closer connection to the board executive than to his club players who he is supposed to be representing.
There are all kinds of reasons why the GAA is not capable of competent and fair governance at local level, all of which Croke Park is aware of, and that is all the more reason why the lead has to come from the top.
I have never been one for the GAA’s overly-complex rulebook, but I have always understood that its primary function is to ensure that fair play is delivered.
One of the motions which the CPA unsuccessfully tried to bring to the Congress floor was to write the month of April as an exclusive club zone into the rule book, yet it could not even make it that far.
But that is exactly what the GAA need to do and not just with the month of April
Central Council have to take ownership of this, and after consultation with all of the stakeholders involved they have to come up with an agreed fixture schedules which work for the club and county.
They need to open their eyes and their ears because revolution is in the air.
They have two choices, they can turn a deaf ear and in the process allow the club game which is weary of being patronised as the ‘corner-stone’ of the association wither and die.
Or it can start to put some manners on a self-serving minority, whose interest in the game does not extend beyond their own reflection in the mirror.