When all returns to what it once was, the GAA will be changed utterly – and that will be a good thing
TWO months ago, Tom Ryan considered what the year ahead could mean for the GAA. The director general’s report attracted most attention for his admirable candour in addressing the wild spiral in the cost of preparing intercounty teams, but otherwise it was a sober appraisal of what had been a successful year for the association – in headline terms, at least.
In its concluding paragraphs, Ryan tried to foresee the looming tests for the GAA.
‘I think a new fixture calendar and landscape will emerge,’ he wrote.
‘I expect the new football rules and championship structure to make a real impact. I have no doubt that there will be contention and controversy. Too many people care too much about the GAA for that not to be the case.
‘I expect many of those tensions will boil down to a test or examination of our core values.
‘Our values are under pressure on a number of fronts and it is essential that in 2020 we reaffirm these and get better not just at what we do, but how we do it.’
There is not a body in any sphere of public life whose plans for 2020 have not been entirely upended by the current crisis. The emergency that has consumed the country for weeks – with the prospect of weeks more to follow – will test not only the values that the GAA so proudly proclaim, but it will also probe it in a more fundamental way.
There is no sporting body in the country better able to absorb the problems that abound, but even the biggest and most successful of them all has been forced to take drastic measures that at the start of February, when Ryan’s report was published, would have been simply unimaginable.
Scaled pay cuts for staff have been implemented for April, to be reviewed on a monthly basis, but the director general acknowledged in recent days just how severe the problems could become. It could be facing a financial loss of €60million, presumably based on circumstances where playing the Championships in football and hurling would not be possible.
This was not scaremongering: this was an administrator with a background in accounting, a man utterly disinclined towards sensationalism, stating plainly how bad this year could become.
‘All we have is matches,’ said Tom Ryan this week. ‘We don’t have an international organisation that can come to our aid. Everything we generate is on the island of Ireland, and all within a two or three-month period, a period that could be lost to us so income-wise, we’ll suffer.’
The future of the Championship has become a discussion point over recent days, and when the possibility of the 2020 edition failing to get played was first raised, it was ridiculed. Yet that prospect has become more distinct even over the space of the past 72 or 96 hours.
For instance, a consensus is hardening that the current restrictions, severe as they are, will not be softened after April 12 and could continue into May.
A general return to school for pupils beyond Leaving Certs is not considered likely, either.
It is now accepted that the normality to which everyone aspires will not happen at the word of the Taoiseach. Ireland will wake itself but only slowly from this unreckonable time.
Under those conditions, few can believe that public health experts will give the go ahead for tens of thousands to start reassembling in stadia and around pitches all over the country.
Leo Varadkar talked about a fall in the rate of increase of cases to five per cent being one essential requirement for the loosening of restrictions. Measures to limit the possibility of the virus spreading will remain, and they could continue to include prohibitions on mass public gatherings.
In that scenario, the only alternative is playing games behind closed doors, but that, for the GAA, will be impossible on two counts.
Firstly, it would mean no gate receipts – and they are a critical source of revenue. In 2019, gate receipt income increased by €6.5m to €36.1m, as part of a 16 per cent increase in revenue from 2018 to 2019, the figure rising to €73.9m.
Without gate receipts, the GAA cannot function, so playing matches with no fans in attendance is a practical impossibility.
But it would also be a cultural abhorrence, the second reason why it will not happen.
While the GAA struggles with the growing tension between the elite end of its games – the inter-county level – and the clubs, where the great majority of its membership play and volunteer, there remains a powerful connection between county teams and their players.
Playing Championship matches without supporters would sever that link, do great damage and suggest that getting competitions concluded is more important than fans.
However, the increasingly uneasy fit between the demands of the inter-county season and the club one, will also be a part of any attempt at getting a season of some sort played – if that is possible. It is now virtually certain that the football and hurling summers will not unfold in the manner to which people have become accustomed.
A knockout format of some form will be required. Ryan said that different outcomes have been discussed by the GAA leadership, with May, June, July and August starts envisaged.
He recognised that May is out, and June probably will be, too. If action could resume in July, there might be a prospect for some back-door feature, but an August start would surely militate against this.
This, of course, assumes that the desire is to get the Championships played by some point in September.
Some models indicate that a straight knockout hurling competition would take five weeks, six for football.
There would be no roundrobin in the Leinster and Munster hurling series, no back door, no Super 8s.
Instead, the Championship summer would slip back into sepia, and those days when one loss meant the year was done, no matter how early it came.
That would certainly generate great excitement – any format at all would do so – but it would also see an enormous reduction in gate receipts.
But that is already inevitable; it’s a question of how big the loss will be.
Some compensation would come in the form of full houses: every game that is played will be a sellout. And if the association has already considered the effect of a €60m hit – the cost of no Championship – then any revenue at all would be an improvement.
But on the issue of money generally, Ryan made a point that should resonate with every official in the country.
‘We’ve got to manage things carefully now to make sure that however bad this year is, that we’re not paying for the legacy of 2020 in 2021 and 2022 and beyond.’
There will be no extravagance. The husbandry required to guard against financial difficulties has already had a profound effect on employees in Croke Park, but it will not end there.
Croke Park has proven a reliable safeguard against financial chaos for counties that
‘WITHOUT ANY GATE RECEIPTS, THE GAA CANNOT FUNCTION’
have had money difficulties before, but bail-outs could be much harder won in future.
In his annual report, Ryan talked about central approval for big infrastructure projects, and it would not be a surprise if a point was made to units about the vital importance of prudence in these times.
Sponsorship arrangements for the Championships could also be affected, but in the sports industry generally it is understood that a generally pragmatic air is governing discussions, with agreements to see deals run into 2021 should competitions not run fully, or at all.
A trickier prospect could be a later start, say well into August or even September.
Were the GAA given the allclear to resume action on the first weekend of September, knowing they could have both truncated but thrilling forms of the hurling and football Championships concluded by mid-October, it would present them with a dilemma.
Clubs would be as desperate to resume as counties, after all – and this was an issue Ryan addressed in his interview with the Sport for Business podcast.
‘When people are missing Gaelic games, they are missing their own local club stuff as much, if not more, in some cases because that is the real social outlet for people as well.
‘It’s not just a case of how long does it take to play the Sam Maguire, how long does it take to play the Liam MacCarthy?
‘It will be back – but they will be different. What precise shape or form I don’t know, but they will be significantly different.’
Encroaching on the autumn could be crucial for the Championship, but it will have an impact on clubs, then.
None of this is easy, but depriving tens of thousands of the chance to play games in order to get the Championships played risks alienating players feeling disenfranchised already, even further.
It is delusional, however, to ignore the fact that big inter-county matches are wildly popular, and move hundreds of thousands in a way that the diffuse club competitions do not.
And even the most ardent representative of the clubs would not try to pretend that the county Championships are not the most prestigious prizes in the entire association, as well as being the powerful revenue generators that keep the GAA running.
Therefore if there is the chance to get them played and it takes September and October to do so, it will happen.
Club competitions may well have to run alongside them, and the breathless grip that county managers hold on access to players may have to be lessened.
At the very least, the veto many of them enjoy over club fixtures could not be tolerated.
Not for the first time, the thought occurs that these highly unstable times could end up giving the GAA ways to solve problems that have seemed insurmountable.
The most serious is the fixtures logjam, the cause of most of the county-club tensions.
Reverting to the old knockout format is not credible, for financial reasons but also because the notion that an outstanding side could be dumped from a competition after one defeat is not easily entertained in a sporting world where every field game offers a second chance in its headline events.
But nor is the current system sustainable, where the intercounty season runs from February to September and players are effectively hot-housed for all that time, while club schedules are scratched.
Ryan and John Horan wrote a letter to the general membership this week, which concluded with those dreamy days when all returns to what it once was.
‘But when the time comes again for the boots to be laced, hurleys to be gripped, nets to be hung and the pitches to be marked and when the time comes for men and women, and boys and girls to run out into the air and play the games they love, sport will be more important than ever before,’ they said.
‘We are planning for that day – whenever that day may be. In the meantime, we can help make that day come quicker if we do what we are being asked to do by the people who know what they are talking about.’
It is an enticing prospect – but no one knows when it will materialise.