The GAA must share the spoils of summer

IF there is one cliché that is wrecking my head it is the lazy line that this year’s Championship is the ‘gift that keeps on giving.’ Really? Well, it may well do for the GAA in terms of the higher gate receipts from all those extra games, and for the broadcasters who are being gifted the kind of drama a Sopranos box-set would not come near matching, or for the paid members of backroom teams that continue to grow and thrive. But I can tell you one group who are not benefiting, unless somehow they can monetise all the sort words thrown in their direction, and that is the players. I know of a player on one of the squads — not Limerick by the way — who was involved in last weekend’s festival of hurling, whose banged up car failed its NCT recently and he does not have the money to buy a replacement. His parents have to find that money, as they also have to find the cash to help him through college, because the commitment demanded of him to play hurling restricts the amount of work he can do in the summer to help earn the kind of money that would get him through college. This is a story which is being replicated up and down the country. The big frontline stars will get sponsored cars and college bursaries — and more power to them — but you have lesser known talents investing the same time but only being rewarded with hard times. There is an answer to this and it is one that will cost. Every inter-county player who is going to college and is not already in receipt of a scholarship should get a significant grant. I am talking up to €5,000 on top of the GPA government grants to help them on their way. And where will the GAA find the money? Did you not hear? There is a gift out there that keeps on giving… Time they started sharing it.