50 years of All-Star gold
Martin Breheny
IT CERTAINLY wouldn’t happen nowadays – a representative of a cigarette company chairing a meeting of sports writers in their deliberations on who were the best performers in a given year. It was all very different 50 years ago. With cigarette promotion so extensive across a range of areas in the early 1970s, there was intense competition among advertising agencies as they worked at convincing manufacturers of the merits of their particular brand of creativity.
Sponsorship of sport was also increasing, another area quickly targeted by cigarette companies. So when the main GAA writers of that era finally decided that it was time to launch an awards scheme honouring the best players, sharp-eyed PR people spotted the opportunity.
None more so than Pat Heneghan, who was representing PJ Carroll and Co. So when 10 GAA correspondents met to select the first All-Stars teams in October 1971, he was chairman, having earlier been central to bringing Carrolls on board as sponsors.
It wasn’t without controversy. Even allowing for the different attitude to smoking back then, there were many within the GAA who were unhappy with having a cigarette company sponsoring any area of activity.
Crucially, though, they had no influence on the proposed All-Stars scheme, which was an outside initiative. Still, the journalists were anxious to avoid conflict with the GAA and were pleasantly surprised when the-then director-general, Seán Ó Síocháin, informed them that Croke Park would back the idea.
A half-century later, the scheme is still running on high power, having survived quite a lot of turmoil and trauma along the way. Nominations for the 2020 teams have been announced (delayed from last October because of Covid), with the final selections due in a few weeks’ time.
Movements
Reaching 50 is quite a milestone, but the scheme should, in fact, be closer to 60 years old. Indeed, it would have been, except for that most Irish of difficulties with new movements – the split.
In the early 1960s, a group of GAA writers met in a pub in Dublin’s Moore Street to consider launching an All-Star scheme. The proposal was passed but, for reasons which presumably had their origins in the GAA’s overly democratic decision-making mechanisms, was deemed to have failed because it didn’t get a two-thirds majority.
Cue a heated debate, no progress and an idea left in abeyance, pending further discussion at another time.
However, before the correspondents reconvened, Gaelic Weekly magazine announced the introduction of their own All-Stars scheme.
It ran from 1963 to 1967, but since it didn’t have official GAA backing and was largely ignored by the wider media world, it ran aground. Mick Dunne (initially Irish Press and later RTÉ) led the campaign to launch a new and official scheme, complete with sponsors and a glitzy presentation ceremony, the first of which was held on December 15, 1971. Carrolls did an excellent job marketing the new arrival, including the production of large colourful posters, which carried pictures and citations for all 30 players. They became essential decorations on pub and club walls and, in many cases, a whole range of them are still to be seen around the country.
Croke Park bought into the All-Star concept enthusiastically, deciding to further extend the reach by organising tours to the US for the winners and the reigning All-Ireland champions.
It was a fairly low-budget exercise in the early years, with no hotels provided for the players. Instead, they stayed as guests in the houses of GAA enthusiasts in various American cities.
The one constant since the launch of the All-Stars has been the rows over team selection. It started immediately after the first teams were announced.
Mitchel Cogley slammed the selectors (which included three of his colleagues in the Independent Newspapers stable) for “dropping a heavy clanger in the omission of Mick O’Connell”.
And there was more. “I just cannot understand the omission of Mick O’Dwyer. But of all the boobs, surely the choice of Cork’s Ray Cummins at centre half-forward (football) takes the biscuit. Has he ever played the position at top level?” thundered Cogley.
If rows over selections – and they have continued every year – were inevitable, the All-Stars’ founders handed
themselves a ticking bomb by insisting that a term of suspension rendered a player ineligible for selection.
Croke Park drove that requirement on the basis that sportsmanship should be at the heart of the scheme. In theory, a laudable sentiment, but it didn’t take into account the seriousness of the incident which led to a dismissal or if indeed it was even warranted.
Effectively, a player sent off for a trivial offence by an untrained referee in an obscure club game was debarred from All-Star selection. The hard-line stance led to many players, whose sportsmanship pedigree was no less sound than the rest, missing out on awards.
It caused some embarrassing episodes, such as when Kilkenny’s Mick Brennan (1979) and Offaly’s Pat Fleury (1982) weren’t allowed to attend the presentation function, despite having been selected. They were sent off after the team announcement, but before awards night.
While nobody had any difficulty with sportsmanship being among the selection criteria, the removal of discretion regarding a player who had served a suspension was unfair and illogical. Still, it was retained for many years.
Despite the many controversies which have been part – indeed perhaps even an essential element – of the AllStars scheme, it has survived because it recognises high achievement and attracts widespread public interest.
The closest it came to hitting serious trouble was in 1995-’96 when sponsors Powerscreen, backed by the GAA, handed selection responsibilities to the players.
Ignoring the fact that it was journalists who devised the scheme and acted as selectors up to then, they were unceremoniously discarded.
Croke Park’s acquiescence to what was essentially a sponsors’ power grab has always remained unexplained. But, whatever the reason for the change, it backfired badly.
Not only did the scheme suffer a massive drop in coverage, the teams showed that players weren’t the ultimate selection experts either.
They sparked controversy by omitting Jason Sherlock, whose arrival on the scene as a 19-year-old had played a major part in Dublin winning the All-Ireland football title for the first time in 12 years. Players also chose the 1996 teams, but journalists were restored a year later.
Away from fulfilling an important function in honouring players, the AllStars also played a big role in changing the attitude to sponsorship in the GAA.
The McNamee Commission, which issued its report in 1971, recommended a more open approach to the concept.
The All-Star scheme was the first high-profile sponsorship and it quickly demonstrated how it could benefit the GAA.
It took them quite a while to fully explore the lucrative source of income and exposure but, once they did, the success of the All-Stars venture was always held up as the example of how sponsorship could be successfully harnessed.
Sponsored by PwC since 2017, the scheme has had six previous backers: Carrolls (1971-’78); Bank of Ireland (1979-’94); Powerscreen (1995-’96); Eircell (1997-2000); Vodafone (2001’10) and Opel (2011-’16).