A PROFESSIONAL ERA IS DRAWING CLOSER FOR THE GAA

A vote to change the club championship in Cork could smash GAA’s Rule 6.22, a law governing availability of inter-county stars, and usher in the professional era

IN the week that is in it, how fitting that the mother of county boards should follow the mother of parliaments through the voting lobbies. This Tuesday night Cork delegates will vote from a number of options – three to be precise – one of which, if passed, could have farreaching consequences for the longterm future of the GAA.

We appreciate that reform of the county Championships in Cork is not going to break the ice with the ladies – not even in Copper Face Jacks where loose talk about the merits of the double-sweeper system has been the spark to write the opening chapter in the most unlikely of love stories – but while this might not be sexy, it could open doors that may never be closed again.

The third option which delegates will be asked to vote on would allow for clubs to play a number of games – in this instance two – without their county players in the round-robin stages of the county football and hurling Championships.

The proposal comes with the rider that the two designated rounds where county players will not be available will be diminished in status – they will be worth just two

points, half of what the other regular round games will offer to the winning teams.

It is both a contradictory and radical proposal, whose impact will extend far beyond Cork’s county bounds.

Contradictory in that it is in total breach of the spirit of GAA rule 6.22, which states that inter-county players should be made available to their clubs 13 days prior to a Championship match – it can be a lesser period if a county bylaw legislates for it.

However, that rule is contradicted by another stipulation which states that any player who is not part of a county panel on any given day when a county is involved in a League or Championship should be made available to his club.

The reverse, of course, implies that the 26 panel members involved cannot be made available in those circumstances.

If you have not already escaped through the powder room window as we batter you with a tortuously convoluted rule book, we only make the point that rule 6.22 matters far more to the integrity of clubs than all the soft talk peddled by GAA politicians when they do their party piece at the club dinner dance, sickening the diners with soft talk about how precious they are.

But irrespective of whether the Cork proposal is a matter that needs to be referred to national congress, it is now a national conversation the GAA must facilitate and that can only be a good thing.

In terms of gravity, though, what Cork delegates will muse over on Tuesday night is no less serious for the GAA than the plethora of votes to leave Europe is for Britain.

Clubxit does not have quite the same ring to it as Brexit, but should Cork delegates vote for that option, that is what we will eventually end up with.

That, by the way, may not necessarily be a bad thing, because the GAA is in no state to shout about.

The club-county crisis has been a generation in the making. On one side, we have clubs crying for the help. On the other, we have GAA leaders in denial. This is merely leading the GAA into a conversation it must have openly, rather than conducting it inside its own head.

Of course, it will be argued that such a change would set the GAA on the course towards professionalism, following in the footsteps of rugby union from an amateur sport in this country – but who is so deluded as to think that day is not coming?

Should the GAA ever meet the CPA’s request to take a blank canvas approach to constructing a new fixture schedule, the mind boggles as to how the space would be found for a sustainable, integrated clubcounty schedule.

An expanded inter-county Championship with more games is not going to be undone any day soon.

Indeed, when the format of the football Championship is revisited after next year, the calls for the Super 8s to be extended to the not-so-Super 32s is likely to be deafening.

And we don’t really have to stress the point that revenue will dictate the structure of the Championship more than player welfare. After all, the more that is happening in the shop window, the busier the cash till.

The inter-county genie is not going back in the lamp and that leaves the GAA now eye-balling the reality that has been knocking at its door for an age.

Just like Cork, the GAA has three options. The first is to do nothing apart from throwing crumbs at the peasants in the form of a club-only month in April. The second is opt for a split club-county season. And the third is to go down the road of seeing clubs play without their county players.

All resolutions are flawed. The unfairness and chaos that applies to clubs under the current system does not need stating. A split season will shorten the inter-county promotional window and will deny clubs meaningful competition in peak season. While the Cork proposal may be rooted in pragmatism, it is only providing an ordered separation between club and county.

And, of course, it will raise the spectre of professionalism.

That is not as shocking as it sounds. After all, the unpublished Towards 2034 – a report commissioned by the former GAA president

Aogán Ó Fearghail to offer a perspective of what the GAA might look like when it celebrates its 150th anniversary – suggests that an ‘allowance’ to be paid to inter-county players and managers.

That report also optimistically suggests a dilution of the importance of the inter-county game and proposed the split season option to deal with the clubcounty crisis.

But there is no evidence that the inter-county game will be diluted in scale and size and that report’s suggestion that we are heading down the road to semiprofessionalism is impossible to argue against.

How we end up there is now what is up for grabs.

It is in that context that Cork’s vote will be framed and whether it is passes or not is hardly the point.

For there will be other meaningful votes to follow.