NOT WORTH IT
Playing Leagues too risky and too costly – Duignan
OFFALY chairman Michael Duignan has questioned the wisdom of playing this year’s Allianz Football and Hurling Leagues during the spiralling Covid-19 crisis due to concerns over the health risks involved as well as the unsustainable financial costs.
The Offaly County Board amassed a €260,000 debt after a ban on supporters attending matches during the 2020 season led to a loss of gate receipts. Duignan said the projected cost of €200,00 for this year’s competitions will leave the county with a rolling debt of close to €500,000. Without support centrally from the GAA, or from Government, the two-time hurling All-Ireland winner has cast doubt on the viability of the Leagues altogether.
‘Say we’re down to Kerry again with our hurlers. You’re going 160 or 170 miles and you’re stopping on the side of the road to get a bit of grub like we did going to the Christy Ring matches up in Newry two weeks in a row,’ said Duignan.
‘You’re wondering what it’s all about in the present time. There’s no income. What motivates it all? It would be better if you started the
Championship a bit earlier and had a more robust Championship — t hat’s broadly my thinking.
‘The logistics of travelling in winter, the safety, players travelling from all over the country for training sessions and the lack of provisions with the current rules in place — even showering.
‘Then match- days are a complete disaster from a logistics point of view. You’re talking about 40 or 50 individual cars driving to matches, trying to feed them then. To me, it isn’t going to be worth it because there is no income from the League. There’s going to be no crowds at League matches, so what is the point?’
The deadline for all counties to submit budget plans for 2021 was yesterday, with Croke Park already projecting a loss for the year ahead in the order of the €15million in Government aid allocated to the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association to help bankroll the winter All-Ireland Championships.
Duignan said more financial support will be needed.
‘Some of the gear costs you’re spreading over a number of weeks but you’ re looking at between €200,000 and €250,000 for us, just hurling and football, for the League. And we’ve no money.
‘It’s amazing when you get down into the nitty, gritty of it. Every player is €1,200 or €1,300. Hurling and football panels. Plus GPS for the year. The cost of every night’s training.
‘We ended up, at the end of last year, with a loss of €260,000. Which was primarily gates. We would have been okay if we had our gate receipts. So that’s where we’re starting from. ‘Outside the top half-dozen counties, financially, most counties would be similar. Most small to mid-size counties like ourselves would have no money.
‘It’s as simple as that. So where are we going to get it from?
‘My view about the National League, even before wave three, was that we only finished in December and yet we have to get going again. We need a chance to get a breather and try and get our act together and get in a few quid or see where we’re going. And now we’re straight back into the Leagues.’
Inter-county squads can return to collective training on January 31, a revised date which has cast doubt on the slated resumption of the National League on the weekend of February 27/28. Even at that, the Allianz Football League is on a reduced, provincial basis of split divisions.
‘Croke Park asked all counties to send in budgets for League and Championship so they have to get their heads around that. We’ll have some commercial income from our chief sponsor but again our gates aren’t going to be there in the first half of the year. There will be no money coming in because a lot of the expense for a county generally is this time of year anyway.
‘Your income comes in the back end of the season when you get gates for county championship. Your expenditure starts with the heavy lifting in December, January, February, March — counties are going to need clarity.
‘The GAA will have to see if the Government are going to come forward because they won’t have the income because they won’t have crowds again.
‘We could be close to half a million down by the end of the League, facing into the Championship.’
Duignan says that for the GAA’s main competitions to be financially viable, the issue of financial support will be key.
The GAA is already looking at a l oss for j ust the National Leagues of around €4m.
‘Croke Park lost a lot of money last year and they’re going to lose a lot of money this year so it will likely be a combination of Government funding and borrowing — that’s the only way I can see it. Then take the longer view that when we get back on track, it will be a relatively small debt in terms of the income that the GAA can generate.
‘You’re trying to balance it with the latest wave of Covid, which is hugely different scenario even to October and November when we were playing Championship matches. When numbers were relatively low. We don’t know how long before the current situation is going to clear. It’s very murky.
‘We know we’ve no control over this but we’re maybe getting to a situation where we say there won’t be any training until March 1, for all the reasons.
‘I don’t think there will be an appetite in communities to see county teams training whereas that was there up until Christmas. I don’t think that’s there at the minute. The risk is so much higher right now. The new variant is so much more contagious. People are so much sicker and picking it up easier.
‘ I don’t think there i s an appetite to be going back on February 1. Now it all depends on how things change and how we get this under control.’
“We need a
chance to get a breather”