FEEDING THE BEAST

The GAA are playing a dangerous game by trying to keep provincial councils sated while ignoring the massive appetite for change

‘AN APPEASER IS SOMEONE WHO FEEDS A CROCODILE WITH HIS FRIENDS’

LIKE good manners, a good political stroke never goes out of fashion. Lyndon B Johnson, the former US president, had a phrase for the time-honoured practice of silencing a political opponent by affording him a voice in a room where he would not be heard, when he decided something had to be done about the tormenting presence of FBI Director J Edgar Hoover.

‘I would rather have him inside the tent p***ing out, than outside the tent p***ing in,’ he declared.

You may have heard that already but proof it is still heeded in some circles was evident this week when the Club Players Association (CPA) emerged from the fixtures taskforce committee tent to the sound of pulled zippers.

The GAA’s official response, of course, was ‘surprise and disappointment,’ but if that is true then Croke Park is both easily surprised and disappointed.

The CPA could be accused of naivety in accepting the invite to come inside the tent in the first instance, but the truth is they were made a Sicilian offer – one they could not refuse.

After all, this is a single issue group established to lobby for a fairer and more equitable fixtures calendar for the vast majority of the GAA’s player membership.

Against that backdrop, it simply could not turn down an invite to sit on a committee which sought a longterm solution to the crisis, even if the CPA knew from the outset that the likelihood was they were housed in a tent rather than a boardroom.

Since it was set up almost three years ago, the CPA has been coldshouldered by Croke Park, denied official recognition and even had a motion seeking greater transparency in voting at Congress heavily defeated by a body which never wearies of extolling its democratic virtues.

Had they said ‘no’ it would have been held against them always – the one time they were given a forum to advocate for change, it would be seen that they had been hesitant.

And yet from the moment GAA president John Horan informed the committee in May that he would proceed with the introduction of a Tier Two championship, it became evident that the fixtures taskforce would become more of a fixtures plaything.

The proof of that is likely to be revealed in the one recommendation of three which the GAA will pursue when they are published this week. It favours the current system being tweaked to ensure that the existing club-only month in April be extended by up to three weeks into May, with the possible knock-on impact that the All-Ireland finals revert back to their traditional September date.

There are two other likely – more radical – recommendations that are expected to emerge if what was leaked in recent days proves to be correct. One proposes that the provincial football championships be split into regions of eight, played off with two groups of four, with the bottom team in each group dropping into Tier Two.

The final proposal goes further, recommending the abolishment of the League, provincial championa ships played in the first three months of the year and the introduction of a league/championship during the summer with group positions determining which teams go into tiers one and two.

The latter proposal is broadly in line with a detailed submission from the CPA, which begs the question: why walk away from a committee that appears to have heeded it?

But there is a difference between recommendation and an effort to convey free and radical thought.

The only real choices that are likely to be left in play is the status quo as it applies currently or as the CPA have labelled it, an ‘enhanced status quo’ that would take the GAA back to a failed future, which would put the squeeze even tighter on club fixture schedules in autumn and winter.

But this is where this affair was always going to end up. Horan’s insistence that proceeding with his Tier Two proposal would not impact on the fixtures taskforce hardly stands up to scrutiny, especially when it is likely that two recommendations have envisaged a very different way to facilitate a secondtier championship.

And yet what will inevitably be supported by Central Council is conveniently tailored to suit what was passed at Special Congress last month. How neat.

‘It was nonsensical. In any business you would not adopt a shortrange strategy not knowing what your long-term strategy was and the fact that you had set people in motion to come back with long-term solutions, it really seemed to be undermining it,’ said CPA chairman Micheál Briody this week.

‘One of the recommendations will be an improved status quo; which retains the Super 8s and the tier two and you are left thinking is this really what it was about all along.’

There was nothing so urgent about the introduction of a Tier Two championship that it could not have waited for another year, equipping the fixtures taskforce with the blank canvas needed to address the fixture crisis.

No one should be codded into thinking that there is an easy answer to this. One of the flaws in the CPA’s ‘Fix the Fixtures’ slogan is that, a bit like ‘Let’s Get Brexit Done’ while it is catchy, it can also be a gross oversimplification of an extremely complex challenge.

There is no simple solution but neither is the answer to do nothing, especially against the backdrop of an inter-county competition structure which has proven to be not fit for purpose and a club fixtures calendar that is not delivering.

But if the best the GAA can come up with in the face of a crisis in the way the calendar is set up is more of the same in the knowledge it will appeal to vested interests, not least the provincial councils, then it is sleepwalking its way into an even bigger mess.

No less colourfully than President Johnson, Winston Churchill reminded of the political danger that comes with a culture of appeasement.

‘An appeaser is someone who feeds a crocodile with his friends in the hope it will eat him last,’ once declared Churchill.

There is only so long the GAA can avoid that reality.

Make no mistake, the feeding frenzy for change remains.